brummie

Yeah. Won’t be fun though, nerve shredding.

Permanently injured

Sure we’ll lose but that will be seven Wembley trips in ten years. Mixed feelings about this one. Nice night tonight, but could do without the distraction. Which is, I know, a horrible nu-fan way to think, but I can’t help it Great feeling when that late winner went in though.

19/22

I know which club is first on my attempt.

That was 'classic' Bruce last night. No discernible style of play, no tactics beyond slapping the players on the back and geeing them up, just hoping that enough of the players have enough individual quality to get something (that was his entire approach when he was with us). Feel bad for you lot, as it's exactly what we saw from him. Also in his post match interview detected a few signs of classic Bruce blame deflection / credit whoring (notice he mentioned how little he signed Hourihane for) and a 'we'll roll we sleeves up' non-comment at the end of it.

What happens is when a game sells out, they let ST holders who can't come sell their ticket on, through the club. They give you 80 percent of 1/19th of the cost of your ST, so it's a pretty good deal. So if you go to the Villa OS at the moment you'll see there will be like a dozen tickets available - those are basically returned ST tickets, so, so long as the game is on general sale (and it will be now), you should be able to get one.

Hope you're up to date with all your vaccinations, HTT. Wolves fans are odd. No bad feeling or anything resembling rivalry between the clubs, until they finished above us for the first time in almost 40 years, and since then they can't stop singing about us. I don't get it. It's like they're apeing Coventry fans, who loathe us and sing songs about us all the time, yet I have barely met a single one of our fans who gives a shit about them. It's weird. I’m constantly in Wolves, they are an odd bunch indeed. I was there last Thursday for the first time since before August and I noticed a growing hostility towards Villa like! I’m actually tempted to go there and watch this as a neutral if I can. Villa was my first ever away game and my fave away ground. What’s the chances of getting tickets for this? For which match?

I'd rather be higher up the table, but it's all very tightly bunched so not worried yet. I am enjoying watching us, we try to play some good stuff, and have in spells looked very good. It's noticeable that we have a style of play. I saw a post on the Bruce thread here a few minutes ago about you getting results was about players rather than the manager, and I think that's spot on, that's what it was like for us under Bruce. I don't feel that way now. There's a kinship at the moment between fans and team / manager which I have not really seen in a very long time. I read a post somewhere by a Villa fan saying that we've always loved the club and now we love the team, too, and mushily sentimental though that sounds, there's a definite element of truth in it. Crowds are up - every match sold out so far - but the most noticeable thing is the support, even when they're losing, they get the support because we can see that there's at last a defined plan. We've had rich owners before and there were some good times under Lerner, but looking back, it was all a bit brainless - spend, spend, spend and then get bored and watch it die. This lot seem properly genuine. I am enjoying going to the match again after 6 or 7 years of it being like a second job or something. As for the signings - Engels, Heaton, Mings, Luiz, Nakamba - all quality. Trezeguet meh. Targett shit, Wesley weird (one week excellent, the next embarassing), Jota hard to tell. So many signings, though, it is bound to take a dozen games for them to gel. We were basically left to rot for 5 or 6 years. Bruce was testing at times, awful towards the end, but nothing like as bad as the Lambert Mcleish years. The most important thing was surviving Lerner - incredible that his final act of incompetence was to sell to a con man - and get back on our feet. The play off final this year was magnificent, as was the 10 game winning run, but what made it all better was the fact that a year previously we were actually facing a winding up order, we'd been so badly run. Frightening times, and I suspect that's got a lot to do with the positivity now - a feeling you can not take things for granted.

Hope you're up to date with all your vaccinations, HTT. Wolves fans are odd. No bad feeling or anything resembling rivalry between the clubs, until they finished above us for the first time in almost 40 years, and since then they can't stop singing about us. I don't get it. It's like they're apeing Coventry fans, who loathe us and sing songs about us all the time, yet I have barely met a single one of our fans who gives a shit about them. It's weird.

Grealish fit. Good. Heaton fit too, also good. So long as we don't see a front 3 of Trezeguet, Wesley, El Ghazi, I am reasonably confident.

I might miss this one. Fucking monday night kick offs FFS.

This.

*fires up next manager sacked odds*

That geese thing (which if you google it, is actually quite impressive) is used in about 90% of all management books ever written.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49962935 Same old 'it's just banter' that could've been easily avoided in the first instance. The club have responded pretty well to it - and it's 20 or so pissed up kids at an away game singing about McGinn being Nakamba's 'master', his dad being a rasta etc etc - idiotic but they probably don't even realise that that master line is so offensive. Anyway, fair play to the father of one of the kids, as:

What happens next is he'll have a go to the media about the booing, along the lines of 'they need to be realistic' and 'a bad performance and it's off wi me heed'. His idiot son will then start getting stuck into people on twitter. Totally ignoring that we had these exact same arguments when he was here. The difference now is that, in the championship, those non-tactics, the dreadful dirge hoping someone shows a bit of class and gets something, that works way more often in the championship than it does in the premier league.

His prick of a son will start weighing in soon enough, too.

This from him today: ... is a great example of how he's his own worst enemy. Rather than use it as a chance to maintain a dignified silence on it and just soak up the positivity of winning, he's effectively doubling down here. He really is fucking stupid at times - why perpetuate the animosity? He's now just setting himself up for a fall if the next two games don't go so well. That is exactly what he was like with us.

I'm more shocked by the fact he appears to have 1.6m subscribers. Who gives a fuck about all that other stuff. *plugs cock into wall socket, solders nipple*

Deserved that. Did well at Spurs against a team whose last game was the CL final, came back from a 1st minute penalty and a 12th minute deflection against Bournemouth and should have taken something from the game, buried a hoodoo tonight against Everton. Mild optimism. Great atmosphere in the ground, too. After 8 years of watching utter turgid shit and a goal every other game, it's nice to feel a massive bond between the fans and the team. It feels different. Although in the end, it probably won't be.

"I think we had the better opportunities" - get used to hearing that, even when patently untrue. "i know the supporters, I'm one of them" - get used to hearing that done to death, too.

That's 80 percent of football reporting these days, especially from local outlets.

He'll probably try for James Chester as well. Although slightly different as he is excellent. Only problem being rumours re him being physically fucked after, errr, Steve Bruce got him to play through injury for about six months.

I would be surprised if he didn't move for El Mohamedy - he loves him. I quite like Elmo. If you do buy him you'll get to see Bruce's weirdest tactical innovation - big diagonal lug up the park from the keeper for Elmo to ping into the box. Weird.