skarroki

Just one of those where both teams and sets of fans will be gutted. You just don't want to draw a big team at this point. There's no easy games obviously as any minnow could have the games of their lives to cause an upset, or Stevenage 12 months ago where they didn't even have to try that hard. The problem for a club in our position now is that there's no particularly hard games either, other than City and Liverpool. You go into every other tie thinking we can get through. And every round after that where you don't get city and Liverpool you think it could be your year as you edge closer to Wembley. Chelsea away feels like we're out the cup but I'll also be disappointed to lose to them and I can't get my head around it.

I'm one of the simpletons loving the Wrexham documentary so would love us to play them. Have it at Villa Park and get a full episode of them talking about it being a huge game and what an amazing stadium VP is etc etc

Not too fussed either way about Duran, I'd rather not lose him but a lot of the fee we were paying was performance-based I believe. If we can get around having to pay that and make a profit on him in 12 months might be worth wishing him good luck and putting faith in other academy prospects, and getting a more senior backup for Watkins.

There's a lot of nonsense going on at Leeds with most the players having ridiculous loan and buy release clauses to higher division clubs if they got relegated baked into the contracts. That's why so many of their players have gone on loan around Europe and Harrison is at Everton. £20mil release clause would not surprise me even slightly. Worth mentioning he's represented by Wasserman, who also represent Mings, Lenglet, Dendonker, Teddy Rowe and Bogarde. So I think we would have had plenty enough dealings with them that they would perhaps flag the release clause of a player to us. They do represent loads of people throughout Europe though so I wouldn't say Villa is a particular stronghold for the agency, just that there are definite and recent connections.

I'm not saying the bad attitude thing isn't true, but the guy was absolutely sensational for Dortmund for years and as a teenager, consistently across seasons and competitions. And Man Utd spent the best part of 2 years trying to sign him so publicly they may as well have paid for public service annoucments about their intentions to pay more than what Dortmund were even asking for. Dortmund very publicly and memorably said he was their best player and they wouldn't sell for any price after a certain date in July as it would derail their season too much and they stuck to that despite how much Man Utd tried the year before they got him. Hardly stinks of a bad player and awful attitude they were forcing out the door. Also the thing about Vidic being in the dressing room with him? Unless it was for charity it's nonsense, Vidic left United in 2014 when Sancho had just turned 14 and was playing for Man City youth teams. Vidic retired when Sancho was 15 and he didn't sign for United until Vidic was 40. These rumours about him being a terrible person recently just seem quite revisionist. The guy openly said he was struggling mentally early last year. I don't know why everyone sided with the bald fraud over this too, the guy quite clearly making a complete mess of managing Utd in every other aspect seems to have been widely backed over this decision to treat Sancho like a second class citizen whilst continuing to play a lad in his position with 1 assist to his name and sexual abuse charges in public domain. I want to be clear I'm not accusing anyone here on this site or who I've quoted of racism or anything similar in nature, just stating that broadly non-white and/or non-british players seem to be called out for bad behaviour or unprofessionalism even when there's no real evidence of it aside from vague comments from a manager, whereas for example Grealish stumbling around streets coked up and smashed is just him being a lad and enjoying his success, him taking months to get going again the following season is just one of them things. I really hope Sancho turns it around, he was completely unplayable when he was still a kid in Germany, with that Dele interview last summer it's a good reminder you never know what's going on in some players lives or when that stuff will catch up with them and completely derail their careers. I used to work in a call centre with a lad who's brother was and still is a professional footballer and this guy could well have been too but he just met the wrong "friends" at the wrong time and was sat listening to abusive customers on commision 11 hours a day instead of living the dream.

Kind of surprised by this one as I wasn't sure he'd get into a club this high up the ladder and their fans who actually are okay with the signing seem to think he'll be backup. Hopefully he proves everyone wrong and does well. When lads like Barry are stuck in league two though does shock me when Revan and Chrisene are suddenly showing up in the championship. The clubs that players move to always seem so random, I'm sure we've got things in place to ensure it's a good fit but there's nothing obvious or stated from the outside.

Okay but done over a month ago and suddenly found online as an easily accessible, public item anyone can pull a copy of? Who was the first person to find the copyright and start shouting about it enough to get national attention? Why did it take so long to find? I'm a complete nerd when it comes to videogames and especially Pokémon and you wouldn't believe the amount of stories over the last 10 / 15 years about new Nintendo consoles, logos and new Pokémon games that all just end up as dead ends, some randomly have their trademarks and stuff renewed out of nowhere and then nothing again. So maybe I'm being completely stupid about this but it feels like a thing I've heard before where people have been furious and then nothing until a few years later someone is like "remember this? What was all that about" If Villa have paid for this badge and someone's created it, couldn't it just be copyrighted for legal reasons with no intention to use it? How many other images have we got under copyright and how many of them are relating to the badge and in current use?

This is very cynical but whenever one of these "leaks" happens where it's difficult to work out where the leak started, who had the material to put it online, I'm inclined to assume it's a deliberate ploy by someone and not accidental. Either club endorsed, to float the current favoured badge internally and monitor the reaction to it around the world to see how people feel about it. Or, what I would think, someone from the external logo design company has done a fairly basic mock-up of a badge for the club based on what the people our side involved on this have requested, this has been sent over and someone probably junior within that company has seen it within an email chain and downloaded the image. So they have sent a mockup of the badge to a news outlet anonymously to try get a bit of cash. I normally think if it would involve more than 3 people it's probably not what's happened, so I would bet the club is maybe waiting to next week to understand who has leaked the badge and what steps the company has taken. If they know that either this is all fake nonsense, or that it's a genuine design but from ages ago and has moved on since, they won't address this at all because the proof will be in the reveal when a completely different design is shown. Twitter football moves so quickly these days, especially in transfer windows, this will all be buried by midday tomorrow I'd think and no-one will care

I'll come back in February

Sorry to respond when you've said you're leaving it but more generally speaking in, this is what I meant by box clever. If he's coming in at 31 on a 3/4 year deal it's a bad move, if we spend £22mil on Zaniolo and bring Anderson in too, keep Bailey and Diaby and don't play with wingers it would be bizarre. If we know we can get good money for someone in the squad who's perhaps floating that they wanna go, and the recruitment team feel like they can get someone on the continent signed up to a pre-contract agreement, even if we're paying higher wages/ agent fees etc, for profit and sustainability rules we'd be in profit because we'd bagged a transfer fee for one player and paid no fee for the other. For example, if Traore is saying he wants to play regularly and we get offered £5mil from Turkey that's £5mil profit, if we then bring in X from Germany who's on £10k more, a similar age on a 3 year deal we'll be £5mil to the good by the stupid rules which can go towards a top target instead of being eaten up by supplementing the squad with a £15mil player on less wages on a 3 year deal that would balance out to £0. Sorry if I'm labouring the point, I just feel that with all the workings with fees at the moment, I think we could bring in more players who are genuinely top tier in the summer if this season carries on in the same vein. Spending on any position means we have less wiggle room if someone amazing becomes a realistic target. If Leao becomes available in August for example, and we've got any chance at all of getting him in a room with Unai and Monchi, I don't want us to have spent £45mil across a backup striker and a couple midfield bench options that's meant a deal isn't possible or we have to sell a good squad option to make it happen. Especially if there were interesting free transfers to be had on sensible contract lengths.

Why is he? Has he done something in his personal life that makes him undesirable that I've missed or do you just not like his personality?

Anderson is genuine competition and is also free in a position we don't have particular depth, and will be coming in next season not in Jan. If we don't sign Zaniolo it's like for like replacement.

Lot of stuff still swirling that Djed Spence was recalled as he's being sold. We need a right back in the club, if we'd got him at the time he went to Spurs I'd have been absolutely buzzing.

Look for every example of one thing there's an example of the opposite, but people talking about Anderson at West Ham as if that's his entire career and therefore he's not that good, sound like people who still can't help themselves with mentioning Emery's time at Arsenal as if he'd never held another role before or since. The guy has played most minutes of every season since 14/15 and is consistently getting great numbers in the league. We are going to have to box clever to continue rising and this guy on a free looks good business.

Think if O'Riley is on the move we should be in the conversation 100%

Living in Leeds I actually have a slight soft spot for the team and the Podcast The Square Ball is top tier in terms of team specific podcast. Don't know anyone that doesn't rave about this guy and think he's brilliant. He's only turned 22 a couple months ago so to be honest I think he's a similar situation to lots of European talents moving to the Prem. They bought a brilliant talent around 18/19 but were fighting relegation and he wasn't ready to be bedded in slowly, he wasn't given the opportunity to cameo and make a name for himself. There's people who still have no idea who Duran is even though we spent £20+mil on him a year ago. Some of these guys just stay out of sight for a while.

Bogarde only played 14 of the 23 league games he was available, seemed to fall out of favour at Bristol Rovers. I would think he's being recalled because Matty Taylor doesn't want him, rather than because a club higher up is trying to get him in. Don't think he's seen a minute on the pitch since Taylor came in. Really happy for Azaz to get a move to a big club like Middlesbrough and seemingly cement himself as a championship player. Was league two level when we brought him in so been able to help him up the leagues and give us a tiny bit of wiggle room in the P&S rules.

Probably already been mentioned but couldn't find it as I lazily scrolled through, surprised that we're not heavily linked with Guirassey given his release clause, seems to have been linked to so many other teams maybe because a lot of people need a top first choice striker. I personally think if this isn't a purple patch in his career he'd be best joining us and being bed into England slowly from the bench as a rotation option, learning from Emery, Paco and the rest of the team. I don't think it'll happen but I don't see why we'd be any less likely than anyone else to take a punt

One thing in the back of my mind in all this is that I hope we do the double against Man City. If we don't challenge for the title I at least want to see anyone other than Man City win it. Our amazing season so far also highlights how a lot of other contenders have completely pooped the bed over Christmas when there was a chance to put a buffer between the top 3 and Man City. However I can't tolerate a lot of Liverpool and Arsenal fans either with the way they cry after every bad decision and anything other than a win. Several Liverpool fans I saw last night saying they'd opened a 5 point gap now at the top because "Villa don't count" is infuriating. So I guess we're just going to have to win it ourselves.

I would argue you've named a total of 0 elite forwards in that list. I wouldn't take any of those ahead of Watkins and none of them are coming to Villa without breaking a transfer record or wage structure, and then they'll be sat on the bench

Was happy they did this because they covered the Villa Man City game by bringing in two City fans and a Spanish expert to analyse Pep and Rodri. Barely touched on Villa. Beating Arsenal forced their hand I guess. For an establishment at pains to say they don't just cover the big clubs they're very good at having none of their daily shows cover any of the bottom ten other than Everton, when comparing them to City and Chelsea charges or Burnley when they can talk about Kompany and where he'll be next. Brighton finally got a podcast about them where the Brighton writer wasn't involved and they spent most of it trying to decide which club De Zerbi would do best at when he leaves. Wolves and Brighton both get insanely bad VAR decisions against them and they are barely looked at, but Liverpool get that awful offside call and we get almost a running series spread across different podcasts to discuss for a week how we could allow this to happen to poor old long-suffering Liverpool. It was like a marvel tie-in event with people showing up everywhere, talksport, BBC, you have to follow everywhere the athletic sent it's writers to discuss the awful injustice and get the full picture of their narrative.

I'm here yet again to moan about The Athletic. I was loving them when I first signed up years ago. I recommended them to a bunch of friends, family, former work colleagues. I cancelled my subscription last year and it's only still ticking over because I clearly didn't whine about their drop in standards enough to my Dad who paid for an annual subscription as a present. Finally be off that in a few weeks now. How they can justify the constant advertising of their other podcasts, alongside the sponsorship deals they now have on podcasts that are "ad-free on the app to all subscribers" - what do they consider as ad-free? A two minute conversation where the features of the new Google pixel phone are described followed by "I'm from the Liverpool podcast" is advertising. Alongside this just straight up intrusive ads on their app now! I'm paying to read these articles and I have to close the app because I can't scroll past a moving image about Omega tablets?! Is there any insight into why their standards have dropped so dramatically.

Think someone who is that prepared in every other aspect will know who he is about to face in interveiws too now, especially as the media can be so ridiculous in both Spain and England. If he knew the guy was from Salford and had allegiances, and came in first question with such a closed, negative question, he's trying to put Emery on the defensive. I felt like Emery just flips the narrative completely by firing that really awkward response back at him which leaves Emery with all the power in the interview and the journalist flailing a bit, which leaves him to ask an open question to get Emery talking and gives him a chance to actually analyse the game as a whole and not "can you explain all the bad things".

Palace at home? Duran slapping that thunderbolt in when it looked like the winning run was coming to an end