Jonas

Emery Emery what's the score?

Emery's well pIssed off - haaad lines la Its an old scam the red-card - Arsenal and Man United mastered the "accidental" stand on

Yeah. Wouldn't say unconvincing but wasn't convincing either, in the spirit of the occasion will defer to their Wimbledon style set-plays and crosses

Hall brilliant. Tonali class. Jer Jer. Schar imperious. Unflustered really, that was just my shot away to buggery nerves. Outrageous record at home to these continues. Two defeats since 89 and neither with eleven men. Forguson will be effing and blinding and mumbling about how great Villa are into crate of Sherry. Placated and abundant libations. Cracking stuffs.

That's right. He'd been chased out of Chelsea after dropping a series of howlers and completely costing them games and had a repuation here as being terrible for us. The scorelines didn't reflect the way we were hammering teams (Bristol City apart), with the end of 91/92 and the league-cup ties we'd won 15 straight ties and they were one of the few sides that didn't beat us the previous season where we won comfortably so with all those factors I thought we'd run up a cricket score. Its stuff like that where I learned to fear being confident about games, Edited a Grimsby team onto Sensible Soccer that night to get some payback, helped only a little. Even pictures from that game on the 1993 calender felt uncomfortable. Re the 28k for Southend, wasn't far off average really for under KK the previous season - all gates were between 21-30k, even the Bournemouth cup game under Ossie was 26k.

No point even figuring him in to any plans. Just a bonus if he's available. Like when John Gallacher popped up on the bench out of absolutely nowhere.

That's my only qualm, this bullshit goes down in the history books and in time will be forgotten that the place was half empty. Nobody is going to check the footage years down the line if they can't be arsed to go to games now. Could maybe get a freedom of information request like they did for AEW All In 2023 to see the actual numbers

PSR!? bah! PS-arse more like

When we've both had home FA Cup 3rd round ties it pretty much goes idenitcally to the season average figures. 26 times out of 29 going back to 1967 we've had the higher gate, often by huge margins (20-30k) and more than double at times. There's form for getting a bigger gate against non-league teams- 7k more against Hendon in 1974 (and 14k more against H**eford than they got) *would have been more but sadly they don't always qualify for the 3rd round

Like the empty seats at Man City. Nice homage to Maine Road.

Wont be partaking in this. Dislike them too much, even before the major role in hobbling our future. It'll feel like Peter O'Toole said on Becket - its no fun making love to one's own widow

What a bleak ffp/psr result that Chelsea-Villa one was. Hit the glass ceiling same as us. Club that's been allowed to spend its rich owners money for 30years beating a team that hasn't been allowed to spend its owners money. And where's the legacy in that? Aston Villa have historically been a much bigger club than Chelsea who were an utter dogshit club until the late 90s but weren't when the music stopped with the cartel next to emtpy chairs so that's the way it has to be? What a load of shit.

Think its a standard result for the season were having/going to have. We'll finish upper midtable they'll probably finish lower midtable (though hope they go down), looking back nobody will bat an eyelid at that result it would be that typical. Allowing for forgetting how disjointed a performance and bad a game it was

Fully agree. Additions keep momentum going even if an illisusion and things get refreshed. Even if its just one addition to title winners. Its rare to stand still. Can think of teams that won the league then did nothing and dropped way off as a result the following season as well as our own experiences from the extremes of under Ashley and with Sir Bobby. Its no guarantee things will get get better or even not go backwards but stagnating re players seems to always lead to a drop off.

Yeah we've already seen this season that playing well cuts no ice on here so lets not pretend playing well and not winning would satisfy people

Fully convinced and have grown more so with every game that this is the epitome of a midtable season. Just different degrees of averageness every week - play well lose, play okay win, play badly draw, play well one week bad the next - might be a handful of occasions where we hook it up and both play well and win this season.

Thought we were getting a bit spoiled there with 1 and a bit fit strikers.

May as well get Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus on the blower and fuck off with Man City. I've dreaded a euro super league all my life but if all the future holds is fighting for 7th whilst the mostly despised top six compete amongst themselves in a league constructed to ensure both of those outcomes, it'd be little loss

I stood on the paddock towards the Gallowgate for 90% of the 90/91 and season and you could hear the smattering of away fans from the likes of Oxford (not going OTT to say a mini bus worth) doing their naff little cheerleader chant "give us an o" "O!" thing from about as far away from them as you could get. Pre Keegan was probably only Swindon in the league that decade that was a good midweek atmosphere. FA Cup games were good though.

Was at the Derby ZDS game also in the Gallowgate scoreboard with a mate and his dad after thinking about never coming back at the previous home game and supporting Whitley Bay (who beat Preston the same day) instead. Applause for good goals by opposition was still a thing then regardless of the meaningless of that cup. The above rearranged Oxford game and Paul Simpson's goal and Tommy Wright's for Leicester around the same time getting that treatment. Wasn't at the game but its clear on the coverage David Hirst scores a great goal for Sheffield Wed in what was basically a relegation six-pointer which we were on the short straw of and was still applauded. Think Recoba was probably the last time it happened.

Its like the opposite of the game monopoly. In that game you can buy a ton of pretend things with pretend money that has no value in the real world, you can only pretend to be rich. Whereas with football now you can have as much real life actual money that in any other walk of life has face-value value and you can buy anything you like but in the game of football its meaningless and worth nothing and you have to pretend to be poor.

Only because of an overreach to "2 years this January" for dramatic purposes We've sold two players for £65m this summer if it comes to that boom

Didn't say they hadn't. And in case were being pedantic they've spent £133m more than us this year and about £150m net more than us this year. It entitles them to competitiveness I'd say. As per the point. When we spent more we finished ahead of them and thrashed them. Now that's not that case that's not the case.

Can't believe we persued Tonali for a long time. Probably would have been a non-starter had we not qualiied for the CL and he signed a couple month later.

When you've a 25man squad, big chunk of whom aren't premier league quality, you're going to play an Italian international. He plays Longstaff and Murphy regularly which obviously he'd rather not. Not even saying he doesn't rate him just don't think left to his own devices Howe would have signed him.