brummie

Arsenal need some fucking testicles in midfield. It's all very well passing the ball beautifully, but if you're slightly suspect in defence, and your midfield consists of artful pansies and puts pressure on said defence, you'll get nowhere, but you'll pick up plenty of plaudits.

Absolute fucking beauty, I will take Blackburn in the semi. I've a long history with the League Cup going back to 1975. I love it when we win it, but act like it doesn't matter when we don't. Like all other supporters (that might answer your question, Village Idiot). When we fluked past Cardiff, I said to my mate "we're going to win this". When we beat Sunlund on pens, I thought it even more. I am now convinced we're going to win it, and certainly more so since Spurs got put out last night.

Milner through the middle and Young and Downing on the wings (and switching quite a bit) apparently. I like the look of Downing. I liked him before we signed him, and was happy to wait for him to get fit. We've played some terrible football recently but managed to keep on getting decent results. Apparently a lot better today, thank Christ. Just hope it continues a bit.

Spurs were much the better team against Man United, had plenty of possession and passed it very nicely. Man U with two goals out of nowhere, though. Ive a feeling that will be a feature of their season, very much like against us on Saturday, by far the most fluent, passing team, but without enough of a cutting edge to make it count. Obv I'm posting this from my phone on the coach home from Portsmouth ** ** am i fuck.

Athletic Bilbao is my favourite away match ever. I don't have time to watch much foreign football, and support no foreign clubs, but if i had time to do so, it would be Bilbao.

1970s - watching Ron Saunders' second Villa side playing some really fantastic football (they were better than the league winning side, in my opinion), seeing Brian Little playing alongside Andy Gray week in week out. What a player Little was. 1981 - being crushed against my dad in the Clock End at Highbury with close on 20,000 of us, being convinced we'd fucked it up, then hearing Bosko jankovic had scored twice against Ipswich, the news rippling across the crowd, that we'd won the league, then the fans pouring onto the pitch at the final whistle. I don't have any kids, and I have no doubnt it is an amazing feeling seeing them born, but I can't really explain what that feeling that day was like, I can't believe anything is better. 1982 - Rotterdam, European Cup. In a way less memorable than 1981, because it at least came on the immediate back of previous success, which gave it a more achievable feeling. 1987 - relegation. I saw pretty much every match we played that season and from the first day of the season when Clive Allen scored a hat trick against us and we lost 3-0 at home to Spurs, I just knew we were going to get relegated. re the 70s and 80s, in my lifetime, although starting 3 years before I began going, we went from the Third division, promoted back to the first, to Champions of England, then Champions of Europe, plus two league cups in that spell, to relegated to the second division in a little over 15 years. Remarkable.

How's Barry looking?

Was it a bit like the scorching hot summer of 1914? I'm so sorry, I couldn't resist it.

Here's another. Travelling to another city to watch your team, getting there nice and early for a few drinks, then spending it is some vile, quarantined shit hole of an "away pub" (the Fernhurst at Blackburn, the Eight Bells at Fulham, the Cape and Gown for you lot at our place) where you are rammed in with pissed up morons, paying inflated prices for shite beer to a backing track of Sky Sports News and general idiocy. "Oh Fulham was fuckin ace, we went down the Eight Bells, it was fucking rammed with Villa!" Why? Why on earth do that? I can think of - off the top of my head - 20 really nice places to drink in the environs of Craven Cottage. Coming to Villa Park for a game? Fancy a drink? Go down Digbeth, or into the Jewellery Quarter, or some of the boozers off Colmore Row where you'll actually get real, proper, nice beer and food. Don't go to the Cap and Gown to wait in a primeval scrum at the bar to get served by some arsey gibbon who has charged you 2 quid to get in the pub in the first place, whilst the Police wait outside in their vans, filming the comings and goings.

"the football club" Manager **: "Well, we know we have to improve things at the football club, and we will be doing our best to bring players in in January, but we will only sign players who we think will benefit the football club etc etc" ** see Brown, Phil. Lee, Samuel. Pearce, Stuart.

Except for the Champions League next year, obviously.

Look at it the other way, you can have the talent of a Sunday league player and get toured all over Europe and play against the top players in the continent. Exactly. It must be absolutely fucking brilliant.

His name sounds like he should be a sadistic Roman centurion

He is doing what he always did for us - going missing for a couple of months or so. He always did it a couple of times a season, and I don't expect him to stop now.

I can barely remember seeing Bridge look comfortable in a game. He always looks so fuckwitted when he's on the ball.

Watching this game, and I know it is a friendly, but there are a number of players who really aren't ever going to be good enough at this level, despite having had enough chances. SWP, Bridge, Jenas, Brown for starters. Bridge isn't just shit, he's laughably shit.

Luke Moore has a great future in the game. But his brother Stefan looks even better. Oh yes

Wasn't that Ngog dive terrible? Ha ha ha ha ha.

When he played for us, Aaron played every week like he was playing a former club. Bless. I'm glad he's doing well now, though, he's a good pro.

See also Gareth Barry against us this season, and the same player at Birmingham City, whose fans - slightly bemusingly - booed him. I thought they'd have cheered him, but hey ho. Any way, he definitely let it get to him against us.

Sidwell is rubbish. I still don't really know what the fuck he actually does.

He's very close to Villa still, tears in his eyes on the pitch after the match last season when the Holte End were singing "One Gary Cahill". I genuinely think it gets to him coming back (he was crap last season at our place, too). I still think selling him is MON's biggest transfer mistake (well, except for Harewood, Knight, Davies, and Sidwell. And Carson).

heskeys carrying an injury i think. Yes, fortunately Heskey is injured.

...and Tom Huddlestone, that kinda came out of left field. Cahill from Bolton again in the squad, and still haven't got the cap. When we sold Cahill I was absolutely gutted. I still think he will be a top, top player. But yesterday against us, he was absolutely awful. The sort of performance which would have international managers running a mile.

Warnock in the England squad and rightly so.