brummie

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.

If Gerrard gets Klopp's job from here, then he will have done a pretty extraordinary job here, so I'll accept that. Think of some of the utter, utter gash that has managed us and you the last decade or more. Those are the facts we're having to deal with. Some of our most recent managers have been Tim Sherwood, Alex McLeish, Paul Lambert and Steve Bruce. Fuck me. All of those should have felt lucky to get a job in an Amazon warehouse after their showings with us, let alone Liverpool.

Gerrard isn't getting things sorted with us through being motivational. We are clearly 10 times as well organised under him than under Dean Smith, way more organised. Not only that, he understands the concept of game managements and using subs to change the game. We have way more defined shape, a way of playing, and he has turned Marvelous Nakamba into a really decent footballer, and all in a few weeks. I was decidedly not a fan of his appointment, but his backroom staff (Beale especially) clearly know what they are doing, and he has retained the members of our staff who knew what they were doing. He's really impressed me so far. He's also clearly used to winning and has a winning mentality. Five defeats on the bounce to three wins and a creditable defeat to Man City is impressive, but it is down to far more than new manager bounce.

Even if Konsa had touched that, there's clearly a Leicester player on the far post playing him well onside.

That part of Gateshead has the largest orthodox Jewish population in the UK outside London, it's so weird, so totally random. It was 1988-89 I lived there, and believe me, it was absolutely rough as nails. Lived in an end terrace on Osbourne Terrace and had kids throwing bricks trying to piut through the side window on the second floor. Mate had a decent Fiesta XR2 - first day we were there, neighbours knocked on door and advised us to not leave it there as there was no chance it would still be there in the morning. Walking down that main road towards the station one time, can't remember what it's called, there were a load of high rise flats which aren't there any more (we went back there 10 years ago), some bloke comes running out of the grounds carrying a big telly, vaults the wall without dropping the telly, then turns around and just throws it at a copper chasing him. At 9am. We used to drink at the Five Wand Mill, proper locals boozer. We were probably the only students in a 3 mile radius. We'd enter the pub quiz and win it every week to the point that the one night, the gaffer advised us to leave as the locals were getting fucked off with us (they'd started shouting stuff about 'the little fucking professors') It was rough as fuck but I wouldn't change it for anything, happy times.

Loved. If he had added consistency, he'd have been one of the best strikers in the world (and therefore prob wouldn't have played for us). He's always going on about how we remain his team since he left, so he's remained massively popular. Also scored in that 5-1 demolition of Birmingham and celebrated by picking up that ball boy in front of the Holte End. Good times.

Oh, I didn't even know Agbonlahor was involved in this, I didn't look that back in the thread. I dislike that cunt intensely. Makes himself out as Mr Aston Villa, yet spent years here masquerading as a 2 goal a season striker, and the absolute poster boy of the lack of any form of standards that saw us achieve a comedy relegation in 2015. He's an absolute fucking bell end and the vast majority of sentient Villa fans would agree with that.

Birmingham is a great city. Great pubs, world class music venues, excellent restaurants, loads to do. Yes, it has all the benefits of a big city but that comes with all the down sides too. As for that documentary, it's like judging Newcastle on some rough-arse boozer in Byker* * I haven't lived in Newcastle since 1990, so apologies if Byker is now like Islington. I was going to refer to Bensham, where I lived in 1989 for a year - one of the most terrifying years of my life - but obviously, someone would raise the obvious contradiction that it's in Gateshead, not Newcastle.

Gerrard doing alright with us thus far, I'll admit (as a confirmed sceptic of the appointment). He clearly has us playing with way more organisation and direction than we have had so far this season. We've had plenty of flair in patches but no really shape or form. He has also managed to get Marvellous Nakamba (who is really not marvellous at all normally) to look like Makelele for two games running. So much of football is about confidence and organisation.

These "Can i have your shirt please" people are worse than cancer. Face cancer.

Paul Lambert brought a 49 year old Grant Holt in to play for us for a season. When he joined, Lambert said to the press "He's a real man". We all looked at each other quizzically, with a sense of "this guy is fucking nuts".

Norwich are unstoppably going down, but Dean Smith will bring them straight back up again, no bother.

You lot go on about Bruce and how awful he was here, and how depressing the whole episode was. We had him in the Championship, which meant he used to roll out - three times a week - his catchphrase, "That's the Championship" (message being: I know the Championship). Shit. Just coughed up some sick thinking about it.

I am already sick of it. It was like this with Houllier - the love in - only at least with him there was no prospect of him going there as he'd already been there. I can come to terms with the appointment, I suppose, but it is a bit deflating. What is notable is that you and us, both clubs with plenty of money to spend, wound up looking at the same underwhelming cast of candidates. If it were just us, I'd worry about lack of ambition, but it wasn't. I dunno. I guess if he gets in with a shout of the Liverpool job any time soon he'll have done very well here. Unless it were some sort of absurd OGS style fuckupathon.