Abacus

Outfield yes, but I'm wondering about a keeper. A young one maybe, one to be 3rd choice, given Karius is off.

Agreed. Hopefully they buy some Adidas shirts from JD Sports.

A very frustrating scrappy stop-start game, which was exactly how Brighton wanted it. That first goal was a bit of a killer for us, but either way we never really found our rhythm, or were allowed to. So it all felt a bit flat. All in all, it's not a disaster - 6th is still in our hands with one last push. Looking forward to Wednesday now - we could all but guarantee it there, what with Chelsea playing Brighton the same night.

No, it's that rather than repositioning the sun we're just trying to figure out how to affect the tilt of the earth's axis to change the angle of sunlight. Yes, this might affect the planet's seasons causing untold misery for life on earth and mankind in general, but fuck off man. We've got human rights too.

Just shove a bunch of glow worms through all their letterboxes and build merrily away.

Agreed, but next season is the real test for him. See if Villa can cope with a likely terrible CL draw like we had, plus little money to strengthen to progress due to ... reasons. To my mind, Howe will have come through this benighted season with flying colours. Emery's difficult second album is coming up and fair play if he manages it and keeps shaking things up.

His argument is basically that fans are a captive market, so will buy the shirt anyway and could be exploited. Wonder when he realised that?

Dan Ashworth is edging closer to Manchester United. Think that's the important word - Monty Dan really is dedicated.

It's not so much of a devil's advocate opinion, I've thought likewise. When he joined, we seemed like we were about to be the next Man City. And then rule after rule came in. Saying all that, I think he's bought into us now and isn't one to duck a challenge, especially as we can have a proper go next season. Rafa, apparently cold hearted and ruthless, stayed because he could see something here. I hope Bruno feels the same way because he's already a hero for me and could go one step further and become a legend. Go to Arsenal and get knocked out in the quarter finals of the CL? Meh. He'd get a bloody statue if he won something with us.

They can get to fuck.

Absolutely love this thread btw

Agreed, but we'll probably have a few of those types in a few years, instead of most of us who stuck about through relegations in the pissing rain, or decided we couldn't stick with an Ashley run club and gave up our weekends with mates. For all his wind-ups he did play that question with a straight bat when most would hide. Still think he's a traitor, like.

Let's not be hasty, now.

In this case, he probably can.

Assuming they did get the upper end of those guesstimate valuations, they'd need to completely rebuild their squad - it probably needs some major surgery anyway, and I don't see much appetite from their current owners to gamble in that way. Was wondering how much their whole club was worth - I'd guess maybe £100m? That's for a club treading water and making losses, where an extended period out of the PL makes you fall off the face of the earth media-coverage wise, and where their upper limits in my lifetime were the Peter Reid days. Which was still unsustainable, in an area generally in decline and without the money in the fanbase to increase gates to the level they can compete with. Not to mention the dreaded North sea. They seem locked into where they are right now, like a lot of other similar clubs. And with the barriers to getting that high again seemingly so huge, I'm not sure it's worth anyone pumping money in. A huge reliance on their academy then, and maybe a couple of lucky play-offs, to get them a season or two in the PL with the hope of parachute money to give them a chance of being a perennial yo-yo club. Pretty dispiriting really. I don't think I'm being overly negative towards them there either.

Yes, I suppose in marginal calls such as these, that's where I should err. Cheers.

Yes, probably would have been better in the managerial-merry-go-round thread, but there we go. But then, it's also a joke about Ashworth. So after much deliberation, I put it here.

Let's have the concept of time itself sponsored.

Waiting for the tantrum where Ratcliffe claims he's heard that ten Hag is the best in the business at gardening, so it's absolutely ridiculous he has to pay £20m to stop him leaving and to keep him cooped up in the manager's office instead.

I'm not sure if that was overt, but the reports were that they certainly said it was anti-competitive. Can you hear the noise of pennies dropping?

Re legal challenges, the PL are about to be in a whole world of them you'd imagine as everyone fights like cats in a sack. What a mess they've made

Yeah, that's why I said "on the face of it". And I agree with you - I think that's exactly what's happened to them. They've hit the glass ceiling and realised that. But if we'd done it, can you imagine the noise?

The more you look at it, the more sensibly we seem to have played it - playing nice while the rules blow up on their own, and no longer being billy-no-mates in the playground.

On the face of it, it's quite a reasonable request by Villa given it hasn't increased by inflation for years. But since those rules drop away in 25/26 (I think), it suggests Villa might be quite close or over the limit now, so are susceptible to being raided. They'll also be in the CL next season and so must realise they need to strengthen and are hemmed in like we were. And at the same time makes a complete mess of the current points deduction farago that's happened.

They do make the point that after the collapse of the ESL all the traditional voting blocks in the sky 6 have broken up - they all want different things. So, at least we've disrupted all that, meaning the anchoring vote was actually quite clever by us, I reckon.