Abacus

Absolute monster of a player. Always think of when he was on 5 a-side games in training that everyone wanted him on their side as he was just so competitive, and he just goes all game. Not sure I've seen a player like him before. He won us that today all over the park and it was a deserved goal to put us in the lead.

He's looking straight at it as well. Very poor

Shame for Tonali after the Chelsea game, but I don't see how you could drop anyone after Arsenal. Hopefully he gets some good minutes as a sub later if they're tiring, so happy with that lineup. Expecting a tough one today, but hopefully our confidence is up.

I want to see him with a traffic cone on his head, being pushed down a hill in a rickety shopping trolley.

Oh right, that's why I'm the wrong person to ask then

OK. I'm no longer a long-standing season ticket holder, I gave it up after many years during Benitez's last season. So, to be clear, I'm not who you're asking. I gave mine up because I thought our loyalty was being abused and I also no longer enjoyed going. I do know some longer standing season ticket holders, who still stayed during that period because of their seats etc. We fell out a bit over that Anyway, I think the question, and please correct me if I'm wrong on what you're asking, is that if we moved stadium for the good of the team would you be happy to lose your seat and take pot luck on getting a ticket in the future. And the answer to that would probably be no. Unless I have I gotten the question wrong.

I would, yes

Well I think the question was more about a small relocation rather than a complete move to somewhere else. Which I'm ok with. Thing is, I remember before even going to games and feeling the excitement of that in town, wandering around the city and hearing the roar when we scored. Knowing if we'd won or not, but asking the score anyway. I don't think you can replicate that anywhere else - it made me a lifelong fan and so my first steps into SJP felt like I was stepping into the shoes of people that had lived their whole lives that way. It's sort of what you buy into, come grim times or joy. But then, for the city it is the heartbeat of a whole week. Edit, it's what makes SJP special, it's why it has to keep being bang in the city centre, it's why we go. And I have probably misunderstood the question now

It's not a daft question, and I'm not the person to answer it, since a move a bit back into Leazes park would be ok with me. A complete rebuild at least keeps it at the top of the hill, but I understand that may not be possible with the limited capacity it could likely bring, so if moving a bit is the better option, then fine. I don't support any move out of the city centre, nor to the Arena site. I suppose there is an identity crisis really about what any club really means. Your owners won't usually be local, nor will most of your players. So what are you actually supporting? Just the name of the club, wherever it plays? Bobby Robson answered this all much more eloquently. It's why people are attached to the pitch, the years of walking the same streets to get there, seeing familiar faces on the way, the memories you had watching that piece of grass. If you strip everything else away, and there really is nothing more as players, managers and owners come and go, then that is what you're left with. I guess that's the argument. But yeah, Leazes would work for me.

Shot!

Two and a half years? Obviously looking to save a bit on the compo.

Agreed. It still makes me laugh that Bruce was thought of as hard to play against tactically because even he didn't know what he was up to.

Taking that at face value, he probably knows his body better than most by now and that there would likely be another breakdown if he pushed it. So maybe he doesn't trust himself either. He's certainly a conundrum to medical science In which case, the fault doesn't lie in him, more on the club for not moving him on and a couple of posters pointed this out at the time. But then again, at the time he wasn't sold we weren't really in a position to replace him as it now looks from a financial point of view, so maybe there is no real fault. But I still can't help be annoyed with his lack of availability - I'm just not going blame anyone in particular for it, which would be nice and cathartic to be able to do. I do think the best thing for both him and the club would have been less of a workload and maybe a warm weather environment for a smallish fee had there been, say, Saudi interest. Maybe he'd then have had an outside chance of staying fit enough for the odd England game last summer. But hindsight is a wonderful thing. As it has turned out, he just adds to our squad problems, which I'm a bit tired of thinking about.

Osula played well when he came on, Joelinton as well all game. Very good and we had the best chances as well.

Personally, I don't think that's the choice. Isak has had chances and fluffed them this season due to being rusty and / or injured. That's not Howe's fault. Previous to that, he's been banging them in when fit, so he is normally deadly in a Howe team. Find this debate a bit strange, but hey. That's the beauty of a forum.

It was an important sentiment at the time, when we were rotting from the inside out and apathy was setting in. It's still important now, in that I don't expect us to win anything but I'd like to go into a match with hope and ambition, rather than all the delusional Geordies expecting to win rubbish.

It could be that we adopted a pressing style at first with the players we had, who might not all have been very good, but could at least run around. As we've added players like Bruno or Tonali, we've tried to shift the playing style, but landed somewhere in the middle so far, and I'm discounting much of last season because of injuries and Tonali's ban. Or, it could be that we just bought good players opportunistically, failed to sign a few we wanted which has left us unbalanced (Botman's injury has been huge) and just haven't found a way to make it all work yet, notwithstanding we're mid table anyway. Or it could be that after a less than perfect pre-season, we've played a lot better in the last few games, the results haven't yet followed and there is an overreaction to a defeat away to Chelsea that almost everyone expected us to lose or be battered in anyway.

I haven't bothered watching a champions league game after the first round I don't think. What do they matter? If you're a Villa fan for this season that might be different so I don't mean to do it down, but for anyone remotely neutral it's just games for games sake, with the same teams likely to get into the knockout rounds. So I won't bother to watch those either, except maybe for the final. And I'll probably not be bothered about who wins that.

Send that offer to Neilsen

I assumed that some American companies have been banking on ever expanding worldwide TV income in a relatively closed league to grow their assets. It's no real surprise they were generally more in favour of the ESL to the horror of most real fans. I do wonder about when and whether the saturation point gets reached, though. I can't be bothered to watch much of the CL league qualifiers this year for that reason - too much football in a stale format. You wouldn't think that as a Villa fan this season, but I wonder about whether that will be the case should the novelty wear off for them. I guess, though, I'm not the target market, it's more international fans. Even there, though, it can't grow forever and many of the remaining untapped markets are poorer and don't have the money to assume it will grow forever. In the meantime one of the reasons the pl is the most watched league in the world has been the unpredictability, rather that the procession it has become, and the atmosphere at the grounds which are in danger of lessoning just because the match going fans aren't the priority.

We played well, with some better finishing from an understandably rusty striker we would have won that game against a top half Brighton team. There are signs things are clicking into place recently, I think. So, I think the criticism of Howe is OTT. But it can't be denied we're an unbalanced squad who are no longer over-performing - not sure whose fault that is re the squad, but we're in a straight-jacket with the legacy squad and PSR. The squad needs additions first and only then if results don't follow would I start looking towards the manager.

I think if the last transfer window taught us anything it's that there are very few PL clubs we can deal with. Really need a couple of players to freshen the squad up and it's pretty obvious where - we needed them last summer to be fair and that seemed to be the messaging at the start of the window - so hopefully Mitchell is on the case for January looking in Europe and further afield instead. January will be a pretty big test for me as to whether this transfer relationship with Howe and Mitchell will work.

Philosophical question; what is premium mince? Anyway, I've always found the much coveted British chicken balti pie is always sold out early on match days.

0-6 Just for balance.

I don't particularly think this result is on Howe - we did enough in that performance to win it, normally. What I wonder is where the footballing vision is coming from. With Staveley gone as a driving force, I'm basically pinning my hopes on Howe now as being the man with the original plan. Lose him, and what are we? He needs backing in January for sure, like he should have had in the last two transfer windows. I realise the financial reasons as to why that wasn't possible of course. But we're kind of in difficult third album territory after all the highs of the 4th place finish and the CL campaign. Time for Mitchell to step up, maybe.