brummie

Hmmm. More suggestion we might be leaving or rebuilding Villa Park. First, selling a chunk of us to Comcast (who own Sky and NBC and also do stadium builds) so they can be our ‘infrastructure partners’ and today some more appointments as directors, including the person at co-owner Wes Eden’s’ company who oversaw building a new stadium for the Bucks. That doesn’t sound like a coincidence. i don’t think any of this would be on the menu were it not for football becoming even more of a rapacious money driven industry than it already was.

Kidding nobody. Let me know when you want to come down for a match, I’ll make your dreams come true toony

The thing that is impressive with Emery is the total shit show of Gerrard that he took over. He took us from 17th (and only not 18th on goal difference) and with a squad that was totally demoralised by Gerrard’s mind games after a third of the season and got us into Europe having added only one player in the January window. He’s been amazing, but I think the circumstances he took over in gets forgotten by the media, mostly because they can’t accommodate the evidence that their hero Stevie G was a total fucking fraud. One other thing worth memtioning that doesn’t get highlighted much in the media - they also changed the entire football management side of things - Monchi on transfers (another proven winner) and Vidagamy as Emery’s right hand man, they’re the triangle of power basically, it’s not all about the manager. They also binned Christian Purslow, who I thought largely did a good job, but made the fatal error of pushing hard for Gerrard when Sawiris and Edens (the owners) were apparently far from convinced.

Arsenal aren’t all that. We didn’t even have our best player on the pitch.

ha ha yes thanks very much for that, chaps. ‘Angeball’ ha ha.

I was at that match, it was the 1982 European Super Cup (which we won, those were the days) final, the home leg. Gordon Cowans scored a penalty and one of the Barca players literally followed up on him and kicked him in the air and into the net. Genuinely the sort of thing that these days would get you a massive ban and probably a criminal investigation. It's on youtube, worth a look just to see how fucking insane it is. People get all starry eyed about tikky takky football purist Barcelona but forget they were fucking animals for decades. re the original point, I used to support all English sides in Europe too. Tony Parks in that 1984 (?) UEFA Cup final for Spurs, Forest in their European Cup finals, I always wanted the English team to win. It's totally the opposite now though - except, topically, for right now with this 5th place / coefficient thing going on which has forced me to want horrible things to happen.

14% possession for West Ham so far. #moyesball

Am I missing something, and I have no particular interest in this subject (well, a passing one, I guess) but how come 'footy headlines' are getting treated as having some sort of legitimacy on anything? Aren't they one of these 'two teenagers in dad's spare bedroom' operations?

Not sure i had entirely realised how incredibly dirty Brentford are until today. It's relentless.

He's a great player though. Southgate doesn't half have some talent available to him.

That's a bit harsh. Although I just watched his post match interview and he looked edgy as fuck. He looked like i do when my Mrs looks over my shoulder at my internet banking and notices something I'd rather she didn't see. Yeahbutnobutit'slikenothingit'ssortofyeahbutyeah *wobble*

We are so weak in that line up but now Olsen is in goal, that’s it. every shot on target = goal. I’m not watching it now.

He’s not even a footballer really, just an athlete. When he played for us, he was genuinely terrible even alongside one of the worst selections of footballers ever to play for us.

It's the little things about the 'big six' entrenchment that piss me off these days. After tha Man City - Arsenal boreathon, Neville and Richards were saying they've never seen a team limit City as much as Arsenal did. We had 22 shots against them at our place, they had 2, and both of those were in the same 'action', and we actually beat them. Now, I don't really care about this massively, it's not exactly going to change anyone's life, but it does show that these people are just so entrenched in thinking it's all about 'big six'.

Yeah, but the idea is to encourage responsible management of finances to avoid the situation whereby, if say you'd been taken over by a minted benevolent body, they might fund you big style, then pull the rug financially and leave you in the shit as they walk away (this is exactly what Randy Lerner - as an individual investor - did to us). For example, without getting too much into the Saudi thing, there's no doubt there is a risk of volatility around state owners of clubs - even just the possibility of some sort of legislation, for example. Just as there is, to be fair, with any organisation that pours money into a club and then, for whichever reason, gets taken out of the picture. This is why the general theory behind FFP is absolutely sound. The problem is that the theory is great, but the practice is really showing that the current rules don't work, in fact, they just entrench the power in the English game, which is the last thing it needs. At the same time, Forest and Everton knew the rules, and they took the piss. What, for example, did Forest think would happen when they were spending christ knows how much on 300 players in a transfer window? The 'law' is an ass sometimes, but it is still the law. As an aside, you can kind of understand Forest and what they've done, as they had a particularly troubling set of circumstances around staying up (not that that excuses it). There is at least a visible logic to it all with them, even if it's iffy. Then there are clubs - like you and us - that have to push the limits to the absolute max, but can at least point at the league table and say it's investment, yes, and it's big numbers, yes, but it is at least building something. Then you look at Everton, spending way more money, and on what? A selection of horrendously overpriced shite players, slogging it out under a relic of a manager at the arse end of the table.

I think, with the deflationary impact of PSR on the transfer market, there's zero chance they're getting that much for him this summer.

Grealish will be at West Ham next season.

Those double height perimeter adverts are really distracting.

I pay for Sky Sports but am watching this on a stream with foreign commentary because it’s less annoying than Peter Dury. That’s a bit wrong, economically speaking.

This. if Man City win the league, what difference does it make, everyone knows they’ve just cheated their way to all this. Even their own fans are probably bored of it all now, let alone the rest of us. Then think of Arsenal winning it - their absolute dickhead internet fan base, that plastic haired twat running up and down the touchline. Piers Morgan. Nein, danke.

I thought the same, it barely required ten seconds of analysis to spot that. Clearly offside.

Not doubting his coaching ability at all, he's doing a really good job there. He just smells of Pardew every time I see him on the telly, that sort of hubristic, arrogant way some managers have.

Yes, exactly this. He was cunting on about 'winning the XG' yesterday.

I think he's doing a very good job, but does anyone else find themselves seeing a bit of Pardew* in Gary O'Neil? Read that elsewhere today, and it struck me as correct, I knew he reminded me of someone but couldn't recall who. * in a bad way.

Remember us playing at home to Juventus in the 1983 European Cup quarter final, against what remains easily the best team I've ever seen play us at our place, by a mile. Boniek, Platini, Paolo Rossi, Tardelli, Dino Zoff - fuck me, what a majestic line up. We lost 2-1, and put up a decent showing on the whole, but the one player on our side who had the talent to have played in that Juve side was Sid Cowans. He scored for us - a diving header, after he'd put in one of the most fucking delicious little two footed shuffles of the ball I've ever seen (imprinted on brain for the 41 years since) before playing it out and running in to head the return ball in. Genuinely feel myself getting a bit teary here just thinking about that, hairs on arms standing up, the lot. Football, eh? It's nuts.