brummie

He's from our academy, on loan to them. Played very well in that covid match against Liverpool's first team in the cup last year. Very impressed with him tonight.

Exactly those.

I hope we are not in for him - the legal nastiness is proper nasty, that would need to be cleared up first.

We've got the third or fourth richest owners in the league. They had to spend a ton of cash just to dig us out of the shit and get us back up. Our ability to spend isn't so much limited by the cash in the bank, it's FFP, but they seem to be finding a way around it. Although to be fair, also we've got an excellent youth system in place so it's not all about money. Jacob Ramsey being the latest example - plus the youth product we sold for 100m recently (name escapes me).

TBH until he turned up at our place, I hated him too. Mind you, I hated John Terry even more, but by the time he left, I had nothing but respect for him. He was brilliant for us in every way.

Louie Barry! Yes, Liverpool. Almost a full strength side against kids as our entire first team and even the most advanced youth team players who had been training with them had to miss it due to covid. Rather than fanny about trying to get out of it, we played the proper kids. Lost 4-1 but at one point pulled it back to 1-1 with a great Barry goal. A really, really good performance.

It's not, to be fair. Scored a goal last year in controversial 'can't field a normal team due to covid so we're going to have to put out our U-18s' circumstances. In fact, probably the Villa goal that made me smile more than any other int he last few years, due to the circumstances.

The third signing we've made from Barcelona in the last six years. One for the trivia fans there.

Who, as it happens, has frequently been our best player this season!

Tripper is a top notch signing, though. It's not like you've just signed a 52 year old Ashley Cole.

Think that's a great signing for us. Looking forward to seeing what he can do.

Yep. He’s not even a footballer, just an athlete.

He's like a modern day Tony Daley with more pace and even less finishing.

Traore is crap - he runs fast in a straight line, and that is it. We had a load of decent players in our most recent fallow years who just got dragged down to our level - Ayew, Veretout, Gueye et al. Traore wasn't one of them, he was turboshit from day one. I can't believe Spurs want him.

Danny Ings isn't working out for us with Watkins. I would not want us to sell him, but I think he'd be an excellent signing for you.

Yes he was, and he wasn't given anywhere near enough time to prove himself - he'd hitched his wagon to a total fucking relegation express train, don't forget. I wish we'd persisted with him, and since leaving, he has gone on to do well in Italy. I wouldn't be at all disappointed if we tried to get him back - he's a good player.

Permanently injured

SJP must be the most accessible ground in the top flight though. I’ve frequently spent 90 minutes in my car trying to get from Villa park to the M6 (so close its visible) after a match. i leave early sometimes. especially in the decade ruined by McLeish, Sherwood, Lambert, Garde, Bruce.

Gerrard has joined a club where the turmoil around ownership change (don’t forget ours was so bad we were within two days of administration) is three years down the road and there is a coherent structure around the football management side of the business, a setup that can survive a change of manager and a well established academy that is now producing real talent. That has taken three years to get right and operational. Howe has joined you minutes after your new owner came in and replaced the most disfunctional wilfully malevolent ownership in the top flight, a club run for, what, 12 years by people who not only have no idea how to run a football club, they never really cared too much. Yes they look like comparable circumstances on the surface but they are actually two entirely different challenges so it is really tough on someone like Howe to compare the situation he has picked up with Gerrard and his (not to mention extremely early days). we had this when we shifted Lerner only then to have to shift that absolute chancer Xia - the dynamic was, we’d spent so long agreeing that things were SO bad that the flip side was that they’d take a long time to put right again.

i like Dean smith but we clearly are significantly more organised than we ever were under him or under Cabbage heed.

His brother Aaron is at the club too, reckoned to be the better player. Really happy for him. What a goal.

Mings is alright but always not too far from a clanger. However, he makes up a lot of that by being a born leader. Konsa is easily our best defender. Not even close.

We have now drawn Man United in the third round of the FA Cup 5 times in the last 21 years. in 2000 United didn’t play in it as they were in that world club thing. Darlington replaced them. We drew Darlington in the third round.

Felt sorry for him, he inherited an absolutely out-of-control juggernaut headed directly towards a cliff edge. That cunt Agbonlahor being the ringleader taking the piss out of him. If you look at some of the players we had then - Veretout, Amavi, for example, they've gone on to do very well. The club was effectively riddled with cancer.

Two bald men fighting over a comb and no mistake.