MessiWillSignForVilla

He looks a tad like Hans Gruber in that photo imo

Which would mean that he's taken a team that were consistently challenging Top 6 before he arrived (of Moyes' 11 seasons, they finished Top 6 - 5x, 7th - 3x, 8th -1x, Bottom Half - 2x) to just above the relegation battle in just three years.

He got them relegated out of sheer stubbornness in regards to his play style and his complete inability to organise a defence. If he hadn't stuck to his philosophy of "pretty" football, he could have easily kept Wigan up. There's a reason why the so-called survival specialists like Allardyce and Pulis play direct, "ugly" football, because when you're in the thick of it all that matters is getting points, not how you get them. If Martinez had spent more time focusing on organising his defence properly at Wigan, and less on the technical side, they would've had a much better chance of survival, just like when Jewell and Bruce kept them up. Now the same is happening at Everton, too much focus on the attacking and technical side, whilst their defence gets worse game by game seemingly. John Stones is almost Martinez football incarnate. Yeah he looks good on the ball and is quite good technically, but he makes some horrendous mistakes all because he's fannying about trying to look skillful. The amount of times I've watched Everton highlights this season and they've given away a goal/chance because Stones is dribbling in his own box or trying to play fancy passes with opposition players in front of him is baffling, and yet it still happens, a proper manager would've told him that sometimes you just need to word removed the **** as far away from goal as possible.

And he hasn't played football in 4 years and his retrial hasn't even started yet. I'd rather not take him.

Because calling it laughing gas doesn't cause a moral panic.

Hahahahaha Aston Villa player in being a prick shocker!

I'd actually quite like match fixing "Haha, we're not actually shit, we've just been losing on purpose!" Would make this season slightly easier to swallow, I already hate all the players anyway.

It's the Sun, so yes.

If it's the story I'm thinking about, it's the nothing story that he saw Bacuna pissing about on a segway or hoverboard (can't remember which) at an airport.

The other presenter was desperately trying to get him to shut up when he was talking about Little when they came back from the ads

Southgate is sitting in the stands next to Little today, perhaps he's being lined up? Probably a case of 2+2=5 though.

West Brom with 24% possession, 4 shots and 1 on target today... They may be winning but I find it baffling that anyone would want Pulis to be our manager and be forced to watch that tripe week in week out.

I thought this initially too, then when I saw the grooming charge, I assumed it must've been a technicality due to him admitting he knew her age but that it was still consensual (as consensual as doing stuff with a 15 year old can be), wasn't quite expecting the texts that have come out that seem as if he has actually groomed her and took advantage of her. I just can't fathom why he'd do it. Scumbag.

Considering he's 28, and with some of the stuff that's supposedly being brought up in the trial, I don't see him coming out at an age where he can realistically play professional football at a high level.

He was never this bad, he'd have scored 5+ for us if we'd given him this many chances.

Benteke having a shocker and massively out of form atm. Guaranteed goal at the Holte end on Sunday then...

I was thinking more when we blew our 2-0 lead at Leicester...

Just now on MotD, "They've never been 2-0 up this season" Errr, yes we have! I remember cause it's so rare!

I don't think that style of football is sustainable at the higher ends of the table, as soon as Leicester's confidence goes I can see them drop like a stone playing how they currently are, whether that be this season or next. Ultimately in football you need the ball to score (as the cliche goes, "the best form of defence is attack") and we showed under both Lambert and McLeish that 9 times out of 10 you're gonna be at the wrong end of the table playing that way. You can't let the opponent just have the ball for the entirety of the game and hope you can steal a goal or 2 on the counter, most of the time it just doesn't work. It's fine if you want to scrape to 40 points each season but if you want to work your way up the table, you need to dominate games more. Leicester are a bit of an anomaly really, they're the perfect mixture of pace, confidence, form, discipline and luck, they might be able to sustain it until May, but I doubt they will stay near the top of the table for long unless they adapt their style a little bit. So for us moving forward, I'd prefer to keep plugging away at what we're currently doing, it's more satisfying to watch than most counter attacking football and I think long term it's more likely to take us towards getting back to the top half.

Wrong thread.

Only in recent history, Gabby isn't even in our top 10 goalscorers of all time, him being our top Premier League goalscorer is just a testament to how bad we've been in the last couple of decades.

Idiot

play on you numpties!

This is the problem, surely the point of a takeover is that day to day running will be affected so that we are run better, to do say in football's current climate requires money, a lot of money. So it is possible for the fans to take the club over (though I have doubts about stumping up the required capital for the initial bid) but it won't change anything, instead of the blame lying at Lerner's feet it would lie at the feet of the 50,000 or so fans that own the club. As for football being a business the same as every other one, it really isn't. Football is a money pit, no owner can ever expect to make money off of a football club like you could with regular businesses, in 2013 over half of Premier League clubs made losses, and have only been making profits recently thanks to the TV money, but with the way transfer fees are going I can't see it being long until most clubs go back to running losses. There's a reason that most Billionaires don't invest in football clubs, because they aren't like other businesses and are bad investments unless you're willing to piss money away.