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Just read the hedge fund that held the original position has declared bankruptcy. Blimey These people have boats to pay for....

This has raised a number of questions about the system and those around it. The Reddit group behind this had their Discord server taken down, supposedly for hate speech, last night, when seemingly there was none. Retail trading apps prevented trading on GameStop, and now some of the other shorted stocks. The Reddit group has had thousands of bot accounts appear trying to encourage people to shift away from the GameStop position and into ones. The media has attacked the group as a cartel somehow not playing the game correctly. The NASDAQ CEO has called for regulation against this kind of movement. Basically the wrong people are playing the game the way they want to play it, and those normally calling the shots don't like it and are using every trick they can to save themselves. I hope they burn.

I see we've been crap for so long that the concept of competition for places has become strange to some

Yeah I disgaree. it works every week. We've got one of the best defences in the league and the second most clean sheets this season. And we use zonal marking. Any decent team uses Zonal Marking. Nobody notices zonal marking when it works 99% of the time but as soon as you concede a goal everyone screams "Oh My GoD zOnAl MaRkInG iS sHiT!" Goals are conceded multiple times every week in leagues all over the world from man marking, but nobody ever mentions it.

Add me to the loving Villa right now crowd. Rome was not built in a day you cannot go from relegation candidates to Europe without a few bumps in the road. We play lovely football all the players have improved from last year. Every defeat is a learning curve. We will win some lose some for the rest of the season and then add to the mix with new players to improve again. It's a great time to be a Villa fan best in over 10 years enjoy the the ride.

He conceded a corner from a ricochet off of him after tussling with probably the strongest CF in the league. Unless goals are given for corners conceded, I'm failing to see how that goal is on him?

My mom sometimes watches the football with me. ( Turned her into a Villa fan lite over the years ). She watched the first half with me yesterday, then went to bed. Told her about the result today, and how we threw it away. I kid you not, she said " Who threw it away, I bet it was Ming's? ". I felt so bad but couldn't help but laugh Awe bless Tyrone man. He can't catch a break!

Definitely an agenda with Mings IMO.... Cash fails to stop 2 crosses - Barely a new post Mings gives away a corner that Barkley/Luiz fail to defend - Mings post explodes as does twitter

Sometimes I feel that we get a bit too complacent due to the way we often dominate games these days, which can lead to not enough urgency in attack (because we think we'll get loads more chances anyway) and not treating opposition attacks seriously enough. Both were on display tonight.

I’ve never added cheese to a burger

If any midfield was overrun last night it was Burnley midfield with Westwood and Brownhill looking all over the place. none of the goals came through Dougie position and like most of the season he hasnt been an issue defensively but everytime we lose we need to remove him for a clogger

I don't get this desperation at the moment to just jump on individuals when we lose a game. We're over achieving, we're playing some of the most entertaining football in decades and we're on the up. Last nights loss was down to multiple things.

I was thinking that we could look at bringing someone in that would offer us options on the bench and would either join on loan, with a view to making the deal permanent or be a young player from an EFL team, that are mid-table (so willing sellers). The following list of EFL players was given by Gregor Robertson was in today's Times, that might give us some ideas, for this window or the next: "Hot on the heels of Eberechi Eze, Ollie Watkins, Joe Rodon, Jarrod Bowen et al — all of whom have made the step from EFL to Premier League with relative ease — is a bulging stable of young talent from the British Isles and there is a greater willingness than ever among Premier League clubs, it seems, to recognise their potential. The headline acts this season, perhaps, have been Brentford’s goal-machine Ivan Toney and the mercurial Michael Olise of Reading; and you are well aware, I’m sure, of the skillsets of the likes of Norwich City’s Todd Cantwell and Bournemouth’s David Brooks. But there are plenty more future stars out there — and I was tasked with picking ten of the best. Omar Richards, Reading - From the Championship to the Bundesliga? Richards is entering the final five months of his Reading contract and has been widely linked with a surprise transfer to Bayern Munich, with whom he is now free to negotiate a pre-contract agreement. The 22-year-old, who joined Reading after his release by Fulham aged 16, was converted from left winger to left-back by the coaching staff but has lost none of his attacking intent. Jaap Stam, the former Reading manager, handed Richards his debut in 2017, but since becoming a fixture of the Reading defence over the past 18 months his development has been remarkable. No player in the second tier has made more tackles and it is a rare sight to see a winger beat the south Londoner, who made his England under-21 bow in October 2019. Nathan Collins, Stoke City - Collins, who hails from Leixlip, near Dublin, joined Stoke at 14, has captained Republic of Ireland through the youth ranks, and was handed the armband by Nathan Jones, the former Stoke manager, against Leeds United last season aged just 18. Collins is a commanding presence: 6ft 4in, athletic, but composed enough in possession to have played both at centre half and right back in 19 Championship appearances this season. Several Premier League clubs are reported to be weighing up bids for Collins, who hails from a footballing family. His father, Dave, played for Liverpool and Oxford United; his uncle, Eamon, for Southampton and Colchester United. His brother, Josh, plays in the League of Ireland, as did his late grandfather, Mick. Adam Armstrong, Blackburn - Armstrong is the Championship’s joint-leading goalscorer on 16, alongside Brentford’s Toney, both of whom spent time with Newcastle United in their formative years. Armstrong, who has already equalled last season’s haul, made one Premier League start for Newcastle against Manchester United at Old Trafford in 2014, before loans to Coventry City, Barnsley, Bolton Wanderers and Rovers, which was made permanent in August 2018. The diminutive striker is a bustling, bundle of energy, with intelligent movement and what appears, at times, to be a policy of shoot-on-sight: the 23-year-old has taken on a whopping 122 shots this season, 42 per cent of which have hit the target. Harry Kane is the only player in England’s top two divisions to have uncorked more efforts (124). Ovie Ejaria, Reading - Ejaria is one of the most technically gifted players in the Championship and — closely followed by the Queens Park Rangers winger Bright Osayi Samuel — statistically the second tier’s best dribbler. The rangy, nimble-footed attacking midfielder, who spent nine years in Arsenal’s academy before joining Liverpool in 2014, was loaned to Sunderland, Rangers and Reading, before making the move to the Madejski permanent in the summer. He has flourished with the Royals, often dazzling with moments of virtuoso skill and, crucially, is beginning to improve his creative output — Ejaria has had a hand in six goals this season. Callum Styles, Barnsley - Styles was released by Burnley in early 2016, before joining Bury and making his debut for the Shakers on the final day of the 2015-16 season, aged 16. He joined Barnsley in August 2018 and this season Styles, who is comfortable with both feet, has impressed from the left of midfield in Barnsley’s high-pressing 3-4-3 formation, with his marriage of craft and industry. Only Reading’s Richards has made more tackles, and Styles has scored four goals in all competitions, including a magnificent left-footed strike from outside the penalty area against Nottingham Forest in November, and a low, right-footed drive in Barnsley’s 1-0 win against Norwich City in the FA Cup on Saturday. Brentford, against whom Styles scored in the 2-1 win that secured the Tykes’ Championship status on a thrilling final day of last season, are among the 20-year-old’s suitors. Rico Henry, Brentford - Ok, so Henry’s talents may not be a revelation for most EFL followers. But after missing more than a year of football with a nasty knee injury, in the past two seasons the 23-year-old left back has become a key component in one of the best sides in the Championship. There isn’t much between Richards and Henry, who also couples the pace and energy and attacking forays with defensive rigour — no player has blocked more crosses in the second tier. Henry has clocked up 170 appearances since Dean Smith handed him his debut for Walsall as a 17-year-old, and it was Smith who took Henry to the Bees in 2016, too. Do not be surprised if the Aston Villa manager is among Henry’s suitors again if Brentford fail to win promotion this season. Jason Knight, Derby County - Knight is perhaps the pick of a hugely talented bunch of Rams academy players — including forward Louie Sibley, 19; the midfielder, Max Bird, 20; and the left back, Lee Buchanan, 19 — who have become first-team regulars in the past two seasons. Knight, who can play anywhere across midfield or wide in a front three, is an outstanding ball carrier. The 19-year-old scored six goals last term and has two in 24 Championship starts this season. In the absence of goalkeeper and captain David Marshall, Wayne Rooney, the Derby manager, handed Knight the armband for the past three games, and has made no secret of his admiration for the Dubliner, who has three caps for the Republic of Ireland. “He’s very vocal, which is very rare for a young player these days. He gives everything in training — tackling, running, very similar to the way I was at his age,” Rooney said. “He’s the one — not just for the younger players in the dressing room, but the older lads — who others can look at. He gives you energy, desire, runs non stop.” Harry Pickering, Crewe Alexandra - Another left back! (Can you guess which position I played?) Anyway, Pickering, who has been a permanent fixture in Crewe’s defence for the past four seasons, deserves his place on this list. The academy graduate turned 22 last month and has already clocked up almost 150 appearances. Pickering has a wand of a left foot; his passing and crossing from both open play and set-plays are particular strengths. Crewe rejected a bid from Blackburn Rovers earlier this month. For now a Championship move appears likeliest for Pickering, who has chipped in with three goals and two assists in League One this season, but his ceiling may well be higher. Brennan Johnson, Lincoln City (on loan from Nottingham Forest) - Johnson has been a revelation for Lincoln this season and has drawn covetous glances from Premier League clubs in the process. The 19-year-old, who is the son of former Ipswich Town and Forest striker David Johnson, has a little bit of everything: skill, speed, swagger, and is a creator and scorer of goals. Johnson, who joined the Forest academy aged eight, has seven goals and seven assists in all competitions for Michael Appleton’s League One high-fliers this season and is hugely versatile, comfortable playing anywhere across the forward line. Johnson also made his debut for Wales in a friendly against USA in November. Joel Randall, Exeter City - If a player in League Two is making waves, chances are he plays for Exeter. Since the emergence of Matt Grimes (Swansea City), Ethan Ampadu (Sheffield United, on loan from Chelsea) and Ollie Watkins (Aston Villa) from the Grecians’ academy, Premier League clubs have poached a number of burgeoning talents before Exeter supporters got much of a chance to see them in first-team action. Randall’s path has been a little different. The fleet-footed winger has made an eye-catching breakthrough this season after five loan spells in non-League since 2018. The 21-year-old possesses wonderful close control, is comfortable with both feet and at home on either wing, and has scored eight goals and supplied five assists in all competitions this season. Charlton made an enquiry this month but were priced out, according to manager Lee Bowyer. Swansea City and Celtic have also been credited with interest. Randall is another from good stock: his father, Adrian, enjoyed a 14-year playing career with Bournemouth, Aldershot, Burnley, York City, Bury, and Forest Green Rovers." He later mentions two centre halves, Harry Souttar (Stoke) and Joe Worrall (Forest), along with Reading's Olise (who he did a piece on a couple of weeks ago and said would otherwise have been first on his list).

Clickbait scumbags.

Jack has 6 goals and 7 assists from 13 on the left this season and 0 goals and 3 assists from 5 at #10

I really want to understand all of this but I think I need Margot Robbie in a bath tub to explain it to me.

Good explainer here, beware a naughty word at the end if you’ve young ‘uns nearby:

I'm guessing it's the latter.

I wouldnt start him Saturday, but I would go back to our winning team before Barkley came back. Get Grealish back in the middle, Trez and AEG on the wings, and use Traore, Barkley and Sanson to change things from the bench. We've changed a winning side due to return from injury and look worse for it.

Finally done with my electronic/chillout album that I've worked on this past year and I'm super happy with the result. If you're into anything electronic please give it a go: https://gasparpoet.bandcamp.com/album/beratna-sovaj https://www.deezer.com/en/album/202630672

I mean this is true but doesn’t have any context whatsoever. Of those three defeats the first two are away against the current top two in the division. In both of those games we’ve lost to poor decisions late on in the game. We then absolutely battered a Burnley team that somehow found a way to score three goals from a game where their expected goals was less than one. Looking purely at results it looks like poor form. Looking at performances and the standard of opposition we’ve played I think we’re doing fine. It’s annoying that of the seven games we’ve lost this season we’ve had pretty awful refereeing decisions in about 4 of them and dominated the majority of them too. I’d say that if we continue to play the way we have been and add some additional quality in the Summer we’re in a very good place. The football we play under Smith is so much better than anything I’ve seen us play under previous managers. I’d say that Smith deserves better than us looking purely at results and saying we’re in crap form to be honest.

Hey man. You've been skirting around the issue here for weeks. If say ANTIFA and the outer left wing of the democratic party stood outside the white house, got egged on by say Obama with the words "March on the Capitol, you need to fight like hell or you won't have a country anymore", stormed the building with pipe bombs, zip ties, combat gear and wanted to hang the democratically elected VP, would you not think this was illegal and hugely irresponsible by a president of the so called "best" democracy in the world? It perplexes me, you seem to be a fairly grounded poster, just when it comes to this I think a lot of us is finding it hard to understand how you can keep defending this sort of behaviour. I get that America is hugely split, but underneath the polished Democrat or Republican veneer there's still the values that America was built on. In my opinion that wasn't populism and supporting rich, old white men with no valid life experience who lost an election by over 10million votes.

Delighted for him

The only thing more annoying than the defeat - and that is really **** annoying - is going to be the hair-rending over-reactions that are incoming. We threw it away, but we're the better team and playing our way is going to win more matches than playing their way. Need to be better at defending high balls though.

We'd all have took it happily a few months back. All I've wanted for a decade is a mid table finish in the premier League. Let's enjoy it. This is an improving team.

GameStop is a bricks and mortar store selling Playstation/Xbox games. Like all retail they got hammered by the pandemic and their shares dropped in value last year to be worth only a couple of dollars each. At the end of last year a tech investor bought up a bunch of the cheap stock claiming they could switch to being an online retailer and operate like Amazon. This month Hedge Funds massively ‘shorted’ the stock (The fund ‘borrows’ shares while they think the price is high and sell the borrowed shares, taking in the money from the sale. At a later point they have to actually buy the stock themselves to be able to hand back the stock they had borrowed to its original owner. If the price has gone down they can keep the difference, making them money, but if the price has gone up they will have to spend more to buy it back than they actually made selling it, losing them money). The reddit crowd got wind that Game Stop was being massively shorted by hedge funds and spread the word to use apps like Robinhood to buy in and drive up the price. Because the stock had now gone up instead of down all the hedge funds who had borrowed stock and sold it while it was relatively cheap (expecting it to go cheaper) now were in a position where they were forced to buy it back, but it had skyrocketed. Not only that but no one was selling. More and more of their shorted positions were racing away and there was no way for them to buy enough volume back to close their account. This was resulting in them taking hits in the billions of dollars and theoretically no limit to how big the losses could get if the stock value kept going up. However today the apps the reddit crowd were using to buy the stocks and push them higher prevented all new purchases of stock. The reddit crowd were no longer able to buy but were only permitted to sell them off. It seems quite likely that this was a manipulation of the market to give the hedge funds a chance to get out of the worst of their exposure. A number of investors did seem to sell and take their profits out sending the price down but a lot are apparently refusing to sell. We wait to see what happens next. Will more hedge funds have to close their short positions and be forced to offer big money to buy the stock back or did they get out already and it’s just a bunch of reddit kids left holding overpriced stock from a struggling retailer?

...and hearing this on brmb : Almost 40 yrs later i still get goosebumps hearing it !

Mods can we get this guy banned?

It's really difficult to criticize Deano after the improvements we have made this season but I think at 2-1 last night we needed to sub Barkley and Traore. Barkley could barely run and ducked out on a couple of tackles. Cash was exposed down our right side and had insufficient support from Traore. For me Nakamba for Barkley and Trezeguet for Traore First post so don't be too harsh on me

Has won the 2nd most aeriel duels from our players this season, only 2 Burnley players have won more than him all season

The dip is because no-one can buy Gamestop shares. Basically the hedge funds in collusion with regulators have artificially wiped out all demand (even though the demand is there), so that the price heads off a cliff. More corrupt than the Premier League referees!

People saying he should have passed it to Watkins are crazy, Watkins was further away from the goal than Jack was

I couldn't disagree more. Zonal marking being shit is the biggest myth in football.

Have the daily Mail suggested yet that the RAF will collect the vaccines from Europe if the EU try to block them?

Bullying is everywhere because kids are words removed An I don't think it's more prevalent these days, you just hear about it more. I'd wager it's actually less prevalent than it was in the past

He was so good last night. But I was sad because I came to a realisation that if we ever lose him, I won't be as interested any more. He's the thing keeping me watching football. I just love watching him. Best player in the world and I'm being deadly serious.

Zonal marking stops more goals than M2M, but when you concede one it looks worse - Barkley’s job was to disrupt the run but he didn’t.

Scenes the first time he misplaces a pass on his debut

Not a peep from the Konsa thread but the Mings thread is right at the top after a defeat, what a surprise.

Burnley are a tricky outfit who have more success generally against the bigger teams. Fair play to them they out fought us second half. Thought we looked a bit arrogant second half if I'm being honest, trying to carry the ball past Burnley players like they weren't there. Say what you like about them but they can all throw a tackle in. Needed to be more street smart in that second half. As much as I appreciate what a good footballer barkley is going forwards he doesn't offer a lot when we're on the back foot same with traore, lovely to watch going forwards but having both in the same team is dangerous.

I have to say today has been the day on VT where we flaunt our credentials so I want to state now I have a CSE in Rural Science.

Sometimes you don't get the rub of the green when you dominate a game. People will pick it apart with a lot of Captain Hindsight analysis, but we've absolutely spanked them there. Forget about it and move on.

You nasty lot leave Naka alone, he held my sons hand onto the pitch as mascot v Leicester last year and was really nice and chatty and friendly to him

I thought he was very poor. Clearly a good player who didn't fancy the Burnley battle. First goal on him. Lots and lots of skirmishes lost because of him. I thought he should have come off earlier but you see what happens when he does. Davis, embarrassing. Ghazi and Trez as anonymous as they could be. We are very short on quality and it shows. Ross, you have a lot to prove. We should be helping each other here because we all know there's no future for you at Chelsea. Do you actually want to play for Aston Villa or just piss about playing 1-2s with Jack Grealish? Not that he does, but Jack's good enough to swan around and do nothing but fancy flicks. You aren't. Sort it out.

We play some lovely football. Really enjoyable to watch and our results this season have reflected that. However, our success has got us ahead of ourselves a bit. We must remember that our squad is still very young and our manager still inexperienced at this level. As such, our biggest issue showed itself: Our naivety. This isn't the first poor result we have had despite having an overall good performance in a game: Brighton at home. Southampton at home. Leeds at home. Burnley at - you guessed it - home. In those games we have been undone by either overconfidence (Brighton), poor finishing (Burnley), poor attitude (goaded by Leeds) or poor game management (countless free kicks with Southampton). Today was a mixture of overconfidence followed by frustration and poor game management. In the case of the latter, it was simply the lack of subs. Burnley had used 3 by the 75th minute. We had none until the 82nd. At that point, they had scored 2 in about 5 minutes to win the game. Sadly, you could see it coming. Traore was fading and McNeil finding space down our right. Dean should have responded to the fresh legs of Burnley's midfield - especially when up 2-1 - but failed to do so. We are learning - but that one was hard to take. Must do better.

You mean the one in the first half on his left foot which hit the bar? Don't think that was an easy chance.

Am I the only one who finds Steve McManaman to be the most insufferable prick going?