Vancvillan

His post match interview was less than convincing in terms of him staying. I guess he could have done what a certain snake that shall not be named did, but I think his subconscious betrayed any attempt to hide the fact that he's gone whether we stay up or not. Would love him to stay but can't see it. And like others have said, at that point he's just another ex-Villa player to me - no-one is bigger than the club.

They say the hardest thing in writing is to describe a complex situation in very few words. This is **** poetry.

Yeah, hindsight is 20/20 but maybe taking the armband off Jack in December to "give him freedom to concentrate on playing" or something might have been a good idea. It's a bit of a gamble but I think it's a good idea - it'll either free Grealish of some shackles and get him focussed solely on playing, or send him on a bender where he ends the night banged up for dinging his Lambo again.

That's fair - I haven't been to the Holte in a decade so I don't think I'm influenced by anyone in particular, by my first (and second and tenth) thought was that he bottled it. I think lot of players from Nat Lighthouse to Nathan Baker would have buried it, but that's obviously just opinion and reasonable people can disagree. Also, I'm fine with anyone having negative sentiment towards a player and I his should be something up for discussion - it's the personal attacks on social media that are repugnant.

I feel like I'm the only one who thinks that even if we stay up we're possibly losing 3 of our best players. Personally I think Jack and Dougie will be gone with there way, then potentially one of Mings or McGinn. The counter argument is that we come out of the gate early with some big intent to show that we're not content to circle the drain again - I just hope that we do.

I think this is the problem some fans have with AEG - he looked like he bottled it. You must see it differently.

****.

Ssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh....

Never had the pleasure of a visit to Dean Court, but I bet Bournemouth wish it was packed to capacity so that they had all 600 of their fans in full voice.

Yeah to be fair I'm being a bit harsh - he just didn't pull up trees for Villa and I'm tainted by his mufc roots. We had plenty of genuinely terrible players, he was just an average performer who had a solid rough patch and happened to be at the club during the dark years of us circling the drain.

Christ - I'd completely forgotten that he even played for us. He had some memorable (positive and negative) moments too. I guess that's my memory only having room for so many shit players over the last few seasons.

Before he put the ball in for the goal the commentator even said "based on today I wouldn't have Hourihane anywhere near this if I was the manager". They were talking up his delivery early on so it's not like they were biased. Obviously he put that one good ball in, but his delivery was objectively terrible before that.

The fact that people have voted Conor for MOTM convinces me that were actually watching different matches. One good delivery for the goal, everything else was gash.

Didn't Sterling come on at HT?

As long as VAR rules out their first goal we'll do them.

He does know how to bang them in vs Crewe Alexandra and Liverpool U17s...

Why did he duck for their goal?

What happened to his shooting? Like like he's had all the muscles removed from his legs...

You are Jack Grealish and I claim my five pounds.

I hope he goes abroad. I genuinely can't think of a Prem team I'd be ok with him joining. Any team I don't already hate is so small / crap that the reality that they are a step up would also be crushing.

The thing about Trez is that if you showed me footage of him this season and asked me where he played I'd never say winger. He hardly ever drives to the byline to get the ball across. I could probably count the number of dangerous crosses he's made on one hand. Wearing mittens.

To be fair if we were at war I would have already pulled the old "ouch, my bone spurs" and be sat at home with a nice cup of PG Tips.

If we go a couple down early I'd pull McGinn.

I voted "other". While Biden would win emphatically if the election were tomorrow, Trump still has a (narrow) path to victory and it's hard betting against the latter given his ability to sow and capitalise on division / fear given the current climate. All that said - it's 2020, which started with an impeachment process (remember that?) where even the concepts of lockdown orders, the economy crashing or defunding the police would have been almost impossible to explain to the majority of the electorate. And we only just passed the half way mark for the year. I'll go both candidates dead by November, so Stacey Abrams edging out Mike Pence. Oh, and **** 2020.