brummie

"first to offer >100m will get the club" So, even at this late stage, not a scintilla of the notion that he might have a duty of care to make sure the club ended up in good hands? Even Doug Ellis made sure he did that. What a cunt Ashley is.

Darius is a smashing lad, and the best Spike Lee lookalike we've ever had playing for us, but I wouldn't back him to score twenty goals in the Edgbaston Paper Boys League, sadly.

I honestly don't think our finest fiction writers could have invented such an utterly, utterly fucking clueless owner. When I read that email thing earlier today, I genuinely thought "that can't be true, must be a joke", but no there it is. And as for the wisdom of putting the club so desperately on the market whilst trying to reach agreement with someone to be your new manager, well fucking hell. My heart goes out to you. I walked past the Sports Direct unit in the Bull Ring today. Even that looked a dreadful fucking mess.

No smoke without fire? "There is no way that we have offered Michael a two-year contract at almost £3m per season, with a further 12 month option dependent on injuries and goals. It's more like 2 and a half" That's exactly how I read it too.

I dunno about this. On a pay as you play deal maybe or somet contract with the right to kick him out if injuries give us the excuse. I wonder if MON will see this as the chance to play him alongside Heskey all the frigging time, though.

Breaking Gossip indeed, as in made up by most of the newspapers yesterday some time.

Harris is the Mr Big when it comes to brokering takeovers of football clubs. He was the person who got Lerner's takeover of us through (they're big mates apparently). He also got Shinawatra in at Man City, though, on the negative side.

Not for long you won't be, not now he's reduced the price so much.

Football eating itself. Yet more proof.

Leitch built the beautiful old Trinity Road stand at Villa Park, with its gables and stately home style steps / entrance, which Ellis tore down. Shame on him, that's the one thing above all others I can never forgive him for.

Bentley? Is the Milner experiment over already then? I don't know. There is a rumour MON wants to play him through the middle, apparently.

Which is precisely what Villa fans were saying about Gareth Barry last week, and we'd already had a year of him bleating about wanting to go and sit on Gerrard's lap at Liverpool. Naive to assume that any player wont have their head turned by the kind of money Man City have now.

I don't think he will either. What'd be the point? I think the kneecap thing will also be prime in his mind, even if all the other obvious obstacles were removed. Watch out for City, though. They're far from finished.

I read something the other day that said that Everton only stand to make about 6m a year extra from the move to the new stadium. Goodison is currently a bit of a mess, and a ground from a bygone age, but in my book that's exactly why, if you leave and go to some bland-o-drome, another little piece of football history will die. I'd take a trip to Goodison - poor facilities, bad view and all - over a trip to something like the Riverside absolutely every day of the week. I hope you don't move.

Villa after Lescott and Bentley, according to a slew of unreliable sources. Bentley I wouldn't be too fussed about, so long as the price is right. Lescott we'd have to pay a shit load of money in fee and a chunky-assed salary to have any hope at all of dislodging him, even before convincing him it is a move worth making. This would be where it starts going stupid. Man City fuck us off with their greater-than-ours financial muscle. We then take it out on someone else with our greater-than-yours financial muscle, and on it goes. Plus, he's apparently got some very real problems with a major local gang which would probably keep him away from the area, in any case.

Villa fans had pretty much resigned ourselves to losing Barry to Liverpool this summer. However, to see him jump ship to Man City at the earliest opportunity just makes me angry. He's clearly gone for the money - 25m over 5 years for someone who will be 33/34 at the end of it - and if that's the case, then fine, but it is the bullshit he came out with last season that annoys me, the "dream move for CL football" etc etc and the utter shit he published yesterday. Footballers must think we're absolutely stupid. Incidentally, all this "12 years service" stuff. That's 12 years for many of which he couldn't get a start in our team. 3 years ago the only people interested in buying him were Portsmouth. In that time, MON has turned him into one of the first names on the sheet for England. Two years into that 3 year period, he was blabbing about going to Liverpool. Incidentally, for a reminder, check this: http://blogs.notw.co.uk/sport/2008/06/gareth-barry-bl.html For an example of this paragon of loyalty. I'd have preferred him to stay, he's a good player, but anyone who thinks he is crucial to us in anyway didn't watch much of us the last season, Laursen (till injured), Luke Young, Ashley Young, Petrov, Carew - all made bigger contributions than Barry did. We've lost better players than Gareth Barry and gone on to do well before, so I'm not too worried about that, but this "loyal servant" stuff and the "footbal challenge" nonsense makes me want to vomit. Oh, and in his letter to Villa fans yesterday, he actually used the line "this is a world cup year, I need to be playing in my strongest position regularly" as a reason to go there. What utter, utter shite, bar being moved to LB when injury forces a change mid match (which I can remember happening once this season), he always plays in his best position, and it was the fact that MON started playing him there in the first place which got him in the England side. Footballers. Not just Barry but pretty much all of them. They think we're fucking stupid, and do you know what? To keep on swallowing this nonsense, they've probably got a point

Someone will take Owen on a pay-as-you-play basis, i'd imagine, he's still got enough of a reputation to get that at the very least.

I'm aiming my spaff for Angelina Jolie's boat race the next time I knock one out. Do you reckon it'll land there?

That's more like it. That's what football is about, hatred.

Start talking. A couple of years ago, Bruce appeared with a tasty black eye. When asked what had happened, he said he had stopped someone from nicking his motor from outside his flat in Solihull What actually happened, although clearly I couldn't believe such a thing was true, was he'd taken umbrage to local orange, hobbit-like footballer and serial shagger Lee Hendrie getting to know his daughter quite so well, expressed said opinion to the little scrote, and found himself in a brawl with him, ending in the black eye.

Thank the baby Jesus for that.

Has everyone heard the story about him, Lee Hendrie, his daughter, a made up story about someone trying to nick his car, and a black eye?

Regardless of whether he's shit / past it / not bothered about anything other than England / the right move away from getting his career back on track, he's surely a talismanic figure of bad in the recent demise of Newcastle - the figurehead of "bad shit" that people, inside and out, point to when talking about Newcastle. For that reason and that reason only, you should be glad to get shot. Personally, I think anyone paying him 60k a week wants their head looking at, but anyone taking him on a "pay as you play" deal is probably taking a gamble worth taking (so long as they're within easy reach of his stable or his mine shaft full of gold, or whatever it is that he goes home to Cheshire to wank himself off over every night)

I heard it was a lot more than "making fun" and more like holding his head down the bog and flushing it. Yup, heard it was more along those lines too, which is just way over the top, especially as he was only young then. Kind of admire the guy for sticking to his guns and not putting up with it tbh. So do I. And i say that as a man of a particularly low follicle count.

I heard it was a lot more than "making fun" and more like holding his head down the bog and flushing it.