Panto_Villan

Isn't that the definition of speculation though?

Yes, I’d agree it’s definitely a credit to the players that they’re willing to be taught. That might have been one of the appeals of coming to Villa for Emery - there’s no bad apples or egos that think they know better than the manager.

Much as I’m going to miss Ash I’m also kinda enjoying the irony that every time we sign an “older” player like Moreno everyone complains that he’s too old at 29 - and then when we release someone fast approaching 40 for being too old we're all moaning he should have been kept around

Good luck Ashley. Surprised the contract wasn’t renewed personally, but I guess I’ll defer to the manager on this one. Great player in both stints here. I’ll always love him for (briefly) making me feel like I’m not actually that old.

Reading the first few pages of this thread are hilarious. We thought it was ridiculous to have a 35 year old playing for us.

I would have thought Ashley Young’s kids would be in their mid thirties by now?

I said this a few weeks ago and I think recent events put the Wolves result into perspective - most teams have a blip once in a while, and our rivals had them too. It was always premature to write us off after a couple of bad results. The team has been outstanding since Emery came in. He’s given us that extra five or ten percent on the pitch that means that almost all of the 50/50 games seem to go our way. It’s a huge achievement and it should give us so much momentum going forward. Hopefully it makes us a much more appealing destination for the type of players we want to recruit this summer, too. What a time to be a Villa fan!

I’m pretty sure what you’re seeing isn’t representative of the average Brighton fan. Reading the match thread it seems like there’s a bunch of people on VT who hate Brighton for refusing to throw the game to deprive Spurs of a place in Europe, so I think there’s always a vocal group of angry fans in every fanbase with unreasonable opinions.

Nah. Glad to see Brighton in Europe, well done them. Hopefully we’ll finish above them next season but I’m always glad to see “small” clubs mixing up the top 6.

That’ll do pig

I came to VT for the football talk, but I stay for the grammar talk.

Probably McGinn. He's clearly a good laugh, and he always seems to make time for fans in all the stories / videos I've heard so I suspect he's probably a genuinely good bloke too. I don't think you can fake that. For some reason I get the impression Ashley Young is a slightly toned down version of the same thing too.

Working mostly from home is great for experienced members of the team, particularly senior leadership who want to sit at home in their nice house and already know everyone they need to know and how to do their job. It's much less great if you're a new grad living in a box room in a shared house, who doesn't know anyone at the company or really even how to do their job. Learning all that stuff in a remote setup is much more challenging, as there's a lot of basic stuff you pick up from being around more experienced people (not to mention younger people often want a social life as part of their job). I don't think you can just say "it's just a different way of working" when it comes to the early years of people's careers, tbh. Sure, that's not going to be a massive problem if people are working from home 1 day a week. But a lot of people right now still seem to think that working mostly or fully remotely is going to be the norm in the future. In my experience, that view tends to be held by people who have already spent 10+ years working full time in an office and already have the necessary skills to work from home efficiently (and like doing it, and have a home situation that allows it). I think in reality there'll be a lot of roles where not being mostly office based isn't really practical for any length of time. Yes, you're right that even fully remote work isn't going to die out. I've run a business that's been entirely remote for almost fifteen years now, and it always worked fine for us even before it was cool. But it being the dominant way of working for most companies? I'm pretty sure that's a covid-related blip.

I think this will be a temporary blip, to be honest. Maybe people might be allowed a max of one or two days a week at home at a push, but I think the most successful companies in the long term will be the ones that have all their staff together in the same building the majority of the time. I think most big companies are still coasting on the fact most people have previously been in the office five days a week at that company, so already have their networks / accumulated knowledge / "company culture". But that collectively erodes over time if people are working largely remotely, so while it's great for a while I think in a few years it'll start to cause problems.

It hasn't just been the managers, though - Suso was shown the door early on and replaced by Lange, presumably because they thought he wasn't performing (which in hindsight may have been a tad harsh given most of his signings came good). He wasn't in a position where you'd expect to see people get fired quickly but it still happened. I don't think the owners are at all scared to get rid of people if they think they're underperforming or can get an upgrade. And yeah, of course, if the owners thought they could get an upgrade on Purslow then he'd be gone - I agree it'd probably be in a less abrupt way than you get rid of a manager, but he'd still be gone. Ultimately though it sounds like you're agreeing with me here. If Purslow was anywhere near as bad as the naysayers on here make out, he'd be very easy to replace someone better. The fact he hasn't already been eased out and replaced with someone more competent suggests that the owners are actually happy with the job he's doing, which means anyone who thinks Purslow is an idiot must also think the owners are idiots.

A premier league football club changes the most important member of staff (the manager) on average every ten months or so. The barriers to firing people clearly aren’t that significant; they usually just mean you get a hefty payout. The disruption caused is worth it in the long term. If the owners thought Purslow was holding them back he’d be in the bin immediately. The owners are far too savvy to keep an underperformer around in such a key position.

The post was partially in jest because I recognise it’s nice to appreciate how far we’ve come, and it’s still occasionally funny. But I really don’t think we talked this much about McLeish after he left, or even Bruce or Dean.

I don't spend that much time in Other Football, but the fact that the Grealish thread is no longer on the front page and that the Gerrard one still is is a sad state of affairs. I guess the guy is a club legend now. We should build him a (shit) statue to commemorate the place he'll always have in our hearts.

Was that the Mi-24? Was it mechanical failure? I missed that at the time. Apparently the incident today was even worse than initially thought. People are now reporting a Su-35, a Su-34 and two Mi-8s were all shot down this morning by friendly fire. I guess that’s one way to deal with a shortage of parts.

Seems like Ukraine has been using those Storm Shadows to good effect in the occupied territories over the past 24 hours, along with US decoy missiles to confuse air defences. This morning Russian air defences reportedly shot down one of their own SU-34 fighter jets and two of their own helicopters. Not that they’re spooked or anything. Edit: might just be the one helicopter.

I guess I'm splitting hairs to some extent here, but what you actually want is for wages to increase more than prices are increasing - i.e. for prices to come down relative to earnings. That has the same effect without the problematic economic aspects of deflation. What do you think the powers that be should do about it, though? I agree that quite a lot of people just don't want to accept they are now poorer, but I'm not sure what the solution to that is beyond waiting for financial reality to convince them.

Rumours on Twitter drawing from Russian military bloggers are that Ukraine has launched attacks near Bakhmut and Soledar and started taking ground in various areas. Looks like the first stage of the counter-attack has begun, at least - although obviously it might just be exploratory attacks, or fixing attacks designed to get Russia to commit its reserves so Ukraine can attack elsewhere in a few days. One poster pointed out that all the panic in Russian channels was an interesting contrast to the previous Russian offensive, which had been ongoing for about three weeks before anyone actually noticed.

Love it. I look forward to the day when they're just threatening a "lukewarm response". Missile experts seem to think the picture of Klitchko standing next to the warhead looks correct for a Kinzal, don't they?

Realistically you're going to see prices decline from what they now as energy prices decline to normal levels. They won't fall back to previous levels, but the spike in energy prices was so severe that prices are bound to fall at least somewhat when they correct. Particularly in areas like food prices where energy plays such a big part. You don't want actual deflation, though, where prices are consistently dropping month on month for a prolonged period. That's actually a lot worse than inflation (just ask Japan).

Inflation and its relation to interest rates is an incredibly complex topic, and not even a fully settled question among economists. But yes, this is one of the reasons why the government is resisting giving public sector workers pay rises that match inflation, and why the governor of the Bank of England is saying private companies should not do it either. At the most fundamental level, the events of the last couple of years (e.g. the war in Ukraine, Brexit) have made us poorer - which means things have got more expensive compared to our incomes. You can't escape that with everyone putting up their wages by the equivalent amount, because then companies would need to raise their prices by the same amount, which just entrenches inflation and causes a cycle where wages and prices continue to drive each other up. (Simplistic explanation for a complex topic there obviously)