PL: Newcastle h

Summary from Monday night Jed Steer (Luton)Away at Huddersfield [Playoff Semi Second Leg] (1-0) - Not in the squad (injury). Matt Targett (Newcastle) 12th/20Home to Arsenal (2-0) - Played 90 minutes. 67 touches, 74.2% pass accuracy, 1 key pass. WhoScored.com rating of 7.76. Little notes Luton eliminated from the Playoffs.

Cripes, I remember Dean Smith once saying that the Villa squad used to catastrophise at the first sign of things going wrong. But the players had nothing on the fans in that department!

Buendia from the start please Steven.

Wordle 332 6/6 Pulled that one out of the fire.

Hope Cash gives him the Doherty treatment x2 early doors.

FilmSaw #9 - https://filmsaw.com Educated guess

#Heardle #81 ️️️️️ https://www.heardle.app Lucky guess 90s Heardle #20 ️️️️ https://90s-heardle.glitch.me/ #90sHeardle No clue Heardle 80s #24 ️️️️ #Heardle80s #80sHeardle #Heardle @heardle80s https://heardle80s.com and again...

Obviously when you choose that specific group of games, it looks disappointing (I guess that is why they were chosen) and we would all have hoped for better. You know, I even have a sneaking suspicion that Steven Gerrard and the first team squad are disappointed with how it’s gone. But it is sort of how mid table football works. There are lots of teams scrapping to take chunks out of the other mid table teams. Villa’s performance over those matches is at the wrong end of a tight group of ten teams who in their most recent 19 matches have gained between 22-27 points. The group consists of (in ascending order) Southampton, Villa, Burnley, Brighton, West Ham, Palace, Leicester, Brentford, Wolves and Man U. The stand out team for improvement over that period is of course Newcastle who got 36 points from their last 19 games. I guess we all hoped Villa would achieve something like that following the start we had with Gerrard but it has proved more complicated. If you had told me we could get Eddie Howe as our manager to replace Smith, I would have bitten your arm off, although I know many of the “experts” on this site were dismissive of him when he went to Newcastle. Just shows. However, I think we should all cheer ourselves up by remembering that the season does not consist of just those 19 matches that you are so keen to focus on. There have been another 17 with two more to go, and, although the opening 11 were a bit of a disaster, overall we have gained enough points to be around the middle of the table and to end above some of the teams mentioned above. Gerrard has had a chance to get the measure of the existing squad and I am sure it will be strengthened over the summer. So it could be time to stop obsessively focusing on 19 specific matches, have a look at the season overall, and look ahead to better times next season. You know it makes sense.