brummie

Is there a sporting event in the world less interesting than Liverpool v Chelsea in the final of something? Even including shit sports like F1 or Rugby?

He has got a very lived-in face, hasn't he, Trippier? A sort of World War 2 / rationing / tough upbringing look to him. Like he did a few years down the mine before getting discovered. James Milner is similar. Looks like at some point in his young life, he was forced to resort to eating coal and grass. Anyway, I like him. I know he's a clanger-magnet these days, but I still like him. He looks like what moron ex-pro commentators would call "an honest pro".

If Chelsea are daft enough to offer us stupid return on what we paid for Jhon Duran, we'd be stupid not to take it. Rumoured to be a charlie big bollocks, and Emery being unimpressed with his attitude.

The combination of nice colours and high quality fabric, I reckon. (this is a low quality apostrophe based joke)

I'd go even further than that, they seem to think he's shit these days.

Also, it's not just you doing this, there's going to be a lot more of it happening in future - in general in the PL, i mean - than has in the past, due to FFP. We're doing the same (and we're facing, maybe a bit further down the line, the same FFP woes you are) right now - signing some kid from Boro, a 12 year old Serbian right back and allegedly a goalkeeper who has to leave training early most days to do his paper round.

The proud parents!

He looks like a not quite fully formed embryo.

and that is exactly why naming rights for existing grounds never bring big money. I think it is one of those things where clubs which have a historically named ground work out that the balance between money it brings in, versus the lack of stickability in the media, and the grief they get for it from the fans, just make it not worth it.

Well, Man City did move into a CW games venue, and there's one of those already about two miles from Villa Park. It's an athletics stadium, though. I'd rather play at St Andrews than have a venue like West Ham's. Digbeth is Blues territory. Somewhere around the Jewellery Quarter would be nice, but again, unlikely because of land needed (plus the fact it has new residential places going up everywhere these days),

I think fundamentally, that is exactly what he is doing. I think - and I get that reasoning - he is calculating that we spend an ever increasing amount to fix one problem (the North Stand) but then if we ever want to do anything else (and they've talked about growing to 60,000 lataer if they think we need it) then we're actually going to be faced with a new, even bigger problem (the Witton Lane stand), and an existing problem which will be worse (the transport). It is weird. I understand why he's not saying this clearly, I get that totally. It still annoys me, though.

We first had plans to replace the North Stand under Lerner. The facilities in it are awful. There is plenty of land behind it to demolish and build new - so, the plans which were put together with Grimshaws (fancy architects) including a much bigger stand plus an entertainments venue behind, loads of space. The context for this is a 30,000 people season ticket waiting list. However, behind the Witton Lane stand (which is officially called the Doug Ellis stand, a name which has curiously failed to catch on in the years since it was changed) and is where the away fans go there is no room whatsoever to expand. We bought a row of houses to demolish behind the stand which that one replaced in the 90s, and that took forever, to do that again would be difficult. Added to that, the internal areas of the stand are horrendously out of date. Behind the Trinity Road stand is a park, so lots of space there (although part of that is the grounds of a 16th century stately home, which we wouldn't be able to get anywhere near), but that stand is big enough and up to standard. re them pausing the plans - demolition was meant to start the week after the Foo Fighters gig at the end of the season. It has been thus for ages. Two things have happened though. Actually, three. 1. Inflation has apparently pushed the cost of steel through the roof and the cost is now way beyond the original 100m. 2. We've appointed Chris Heck to basically run the club, from the 76ers (NBA), who clearly has a less-romantic view of Villa Park, but in his favour, has a massive record in hugely boosting revenues (did miracles at the 76ers). He reckons we can fit 3-4,000 seats in by adjusting what we have (no idea how, I actually do not believe this). However, he wasn't involved in the new stand plans so wants to pause. He did make a good point about playing maybe in the Champions League with a three sided ground, but really, taking that route there will never be a 'good' time to close one end of the ground. He has also said - and this is spot on - that the transport infrastructure around the ground is so bad with 42,000, it will be terriible with 52,000. The upgraded ground was supposed to go hand in hand with a rebuild of Witton station to massively improve capacity and the link beween station and ground, but again, it's a complicating factor and an understandable one to cause us to stop and think first. 3. Literally in the same week, Edens and Sawiris (who are both incredibly rich, so this is about more than money, it will be expertise) sold a minority chunk of the V Sports Group (which owns us and their other clubs) to Comcast, who, as well as owning Sky, also have a long history in stadium infrastructure (ie funding and building of new ones). In the same week. That is not a coincidence. He has been questioned on whether we are looking at moving to a new stadium somewhere, or rebuilding where we are and swears we're not. Frankly, I don't believe him. He's already proved himself very fucking hard to pin down and force the truth out of on the badge fuck-up, so he has no reason to be honest now. If he said we were looking at moving, there would be an absolute avalanche of protest. I do think, though, that we will be rebuilding where we are. One problem with that is clearly where we play for the two or three years in the meantime (Wolves maybe? No chance Blues, plus it's not big enough even if it wasn't Mordor. Albion maybe but again too small). I don't think we would build elsewhere - despite it clearly being a massive city, the idea of somewhere to the south is a non-starter for historic reasons, the city is pretty dense and there are no obvious places. There would be one possibility, which is the Smithfields area which is where they held some of the CW games last year, and is right slap next to the bullring, but there's a masterplan for retail / shops / offices there, so very unlikely. Anyway, apologies for the length of this post, but I do think this whole saga (much like yours) is indicative of how clubs like us, yourselves, everton have realised that, esp now it seems we really can't just inject money for players endlessly, we need to massively, massively boost commercial revenue. I also think Spurs' success has been an example which a few clubs are now realising they need to imitate to some degree.

If anyone really wants to see the damage FFP has done to football with the implementation we have, they just need to look at forums and twitter and see how often fans now have to talk about accountancy procedures like amortisation. I mean, I know it's not the most complex subject (although the guy in that tweet has got it wrong), but fuck me, I watch football because I like football, not to have to think about finance all the time. It's nuts, really.

Imagine being a 26 year old multi millionaire in Paris, though. Doesn't get much better than that. Not offering any opinion on stay or go, btw, just as aside. TBH if he went, it'd be pretty depressing for us as it'd show up the PL for even more of a closed shop than we thought it was.

What an objectionable cunt he was. The biggest wanker in radio commentary in decades.

Appointing Mourinho would be the same sort of star-fucking mistake that saw us appoint Gerrard, and Blues appoint Rooney. It would be absolutely idiotic to think that someone like him is more the man for this moment than Howe, and - to be honest - most managers already working in the PL.

Both you and us managed, for about a decade plus, to have flat commercial income whilst, most of the time, being members of an organisation which was fundamentally a licence to print money. Mind blowing. To be fair to Spurs - and, believe me, that is not something I ever like to do, let alone admit to it - they've played it very well in terms of growing commercial income, the new stadium etc. I do sometimes look at their crowd (ie the people, not the numbers) and wonder, when Son goes or retires, and those thousands and thousands of Koreans stop going to their games, how that'll impact them. Son is an absolute mega star in South Korea. I reckon on any given Spurs match day, they could sell 40,000 tickets to his co-nationals on holiday in the capital.

It has got harder and harder to do anything at all in January, it's all very much an anti-climax these days. I remember 2007 when we signed Ashley Young and John Carew in the same January window. These days it's all about maybe a promising kid from somewhere or a loan. Although having said that, we bought Alex Moreno in Jan last year and he's worked out really well, so maybe I am being pessimistic.

Well, it kind of is, like it or not. That's the legal system for you, it throws up things you don't like.

This story is bat shit mental. https://metro.co.uk/2024/01/15/chelsea-transfer-news-aston-villa-star-jhon-duran-becomes-target-20117751/ Chelsea want to borrow our (clearly not yet good enough to be) second choice striker? He's promising but very young and really not ready to get much game time with us, so no idea why Chelsea think he might do for them. Or that we'd lend them him.

Ha ha ha!

And what does all the above do? It just perpetuates the gap which clubs are trying to break in the first place, by selling them your best players because you have no choice.

He must have a fucking amazing agent. Probably the same one that Judi Love has, who manages to get her on everything on Channel 4.

Slight diversion, but about 8 years after that, I saw De La Soul at Mayfair Ballroom. What a fucking night that was.

Marvellous stuff! I also remember going to see the ska movie, Dance Craze, also at Birmingham Odeon. Great times.