Gringo

It's a bit of tosh reallly as last season we had people who wanted to put a positive spin on anything they could find. But now we're going back into VT topic area. Lock thread please, silly in the first place. It's all a facebook thing - that forum is lame, so I'm moving next door. We didn't want to know. Just contribute something.

Domenyk Lattlay Fottfoy

A committed bunch of chaps trying hard.

Which is an improvement on the majority of last season, so onwards and upwards.

lee mason === cock

ANother hoof ball to no one

If we turn Bent into a winger d'ya reckon we can flog him for £20m in the summer?

Good play by warnock

Jol's had a look at the Villa set up and realised he has to change things to get a grip of the game.

Now it's our turn to show we can respond to the challenge.

great tackle by fat boy dunne

Joke booking, joke referreeing.

We're doing an awful lot of attacking for a team parking the bus.

Aye, but if it was deschamp's bus they'd be even more attrractive going forward.

Inches stan, inches.

A glorious start to a New Era. Same as last season's opener - 3-0 to the mighty Villa.

Madrid, Spain (CNN) -- Football players from Spain's top two divisions vowed to go on strike at the start of the season if the team owners don't provide "guarantees" that hundreds of players who are owed back wages are actually paid, the players association announced on Thursday.

"We're not asking for more money. We're just asking to be paid what's due," Juanjo Montener, spokesman for the Association of Spanish Footballers (AFE) told CNN.

Association leaders, flanked by some of Spain's top football stars, such as Real Madrid goalie Iker Casillas and FC Barcelona defender Carles Puyol, held a news conference at a central Madrid hotel, vowing to strike but leaving the door open to further talks to try to resolve the dispute before the season opener scheduled for August 20.

But the Professional Football League (LFP), representing the clubs in first and second division football, issued a statement soon after saying it "doesn't understand" the players' call to strike.

The club owners said they had been negotiating in "good faith" with the players association and that club owners on August 3 established a new "guarantee fund" that would "guarantee some important quantities of the salaries of players affected" by club bankruptcy proceedings.

Montener said 22 Spanish football clubs in first and second division have had financial problems serious enough to involve bankruptcy or receivership proceedings. He said 300 players have filed complaints that they are owed back wages.

dr who might be easier than star wars...........

+

==>

al jazeera"]The European Central Bank (ECB) has decided to intervene decisively on markets to respond to the escalating debt crisis, a eurozone monetary source said after a conference call between ECB and G7 finance ministers.

Officials on the conference call carefully considered the situation in Italy and Spain, and took a note of a statement by France and Germany that stressed their commitment to European financial reforms, the source told the Reuters news agency on Sunday.

"The Euro system will intervene very significantly on markets and respond in a significant and cohesive way," the source said.

The ECB has said it would 'actively implement' its bond-purchase programme after Italy and Spain announced new measures and reforms to bolster their finances and economies in general.

"It is on the basis of the above assessments that the ECB will actively implement its Securities Markets Programme," which purchases bonds issued by eurozone governments on secondary markets.

So the ECB is going to take action, but I was under the impression that they weren't able to do this until the ESFS program was ratified by all the participating govts, of which so far none have done. So are the ECB in breach of EU law or are they making it up as they go along.

Strange things happen when a group of people decide to unilaterally ignore the law.

They've got a temporary exception to EU laws whilst it's deemed to be a problem. But the way the law was framed it has to be introduced by local councils and amsterdam for some strange reason (ie 50% of their tourist income were dragging their feet) - but it has to be introduced by 2015 (I think). No doubt the EU courts will keep extending their temporary exception ad finitum.

The EU court judged the dutch plans for a 'weedpass' illegal under EU laws (we're all EU citizens now, no discrimination allowed), but allowed the govt to proceed on the basis that they can ignore the law when they don't like it.

reuters"]Tel Aviv blue chip index closes down 7 pct after delayed opening

* Market fears another global recession

* Circuit breakers used for first time since 2008 (Adds closing prices, bond prices, cenbank/finance ministry statement)

By Tova Cohen

TEL AVIV, Aug 7 (Reuters) - Tel Aviv shares closed 7 percent lower on Sunday in the first response of a developed market to Standard & Poor's downgrade of the United States' credit rating that has sparked fears of another global recession.

The Israeli market along with a few emerging markets in the Middle East were the first to trade after S&P on Friday cut the U.S. long-term credit rating by a notch to AA-plus from AAA due to concerns about the nation's budget and climbing debt burden.

The TA-25 blue chip index closed down 6.99 percent to 1,074.27 points and is down 18 percent since the start of the year. The broader TA-100 slid 7.2 percent. Israel's market is closed on Fridays and Saturdays.

The Tel Aviv market's opening was delayed by nearly an hour as circuit breakers kicked in when shares fell more than 5 percent in pre-market trade.

The last time circuit breakers were used was on Sept. 21, 2008 after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a spokeswoman for the stock exchange said.

The market fears the U.S. debt situation could spiral out of control and possibly lead to a double-dip recession, said Zach Herzog, head of international sales at the Psagot brokerage.

The tel aviv exchange missed a lot of the fun on friday, but at the close the NYSE was virtually unchanged, and the downgrade was yet to happen.

It's going to be quite savage tommorow.

and not one bbc or sky news reporter on site - all they show is twatter pics and mobile phone videos. Maybe it's to make it more like the african riots. Are all their journos on the piss on a saturday night, or do they only cover the pretend riots that the agent provacateurs set up for them?

you Petrov lovers.

You're lame

thebeeb"]China has scolded the US over its "addiction to debt" after rating agency Standard & Poor's downgraded the US' top-notch AAA rating to AA+.

State news agency Xinhua said unless the US cut its "gigantic military expenditure and bloated welfare costs," another downgrade would be inevitable.

But other countries, such as Australia, France and Japan, said they retained their faith in US bonds.

Which is all very nice. But seeing as all the investment banks use the ratings to determine the (future) value of the bonds, we're going to see a Margin call Massacre on Monday. Barely 18 hours ago I questioned the value of recalling the political puppets due to the stock market falls - but this is clearly quite diffferent - here is something where muppets could actually add value by co-ordinating and getting the investment banks to agree to an approach to the downgrading of billions of dollars worth of collateral held against all sorts of investment vehicles; persion and hedge funds included.

If they puppets want to keep the bubble afloat they need to be on the phone all weekend.

League:

Expanding on the leagues within a league theme - I think the premiership has fragmented a bit further

Last two seasons:

Four leagues - teams challenging for the title, for chumps league, midtable stragglers and the haunted - with little movement between those groups.

This year I see those groups splitting like this (with the teams sorted alphabetically within each group):

So Villa, anywhere between 7th and 14th.

I'm not too worried about the defence in itself, but with a lack of cutting edge, the team will be under pressure for long periods and confidence will take a hit along the way.

Cups:

We won't get very far at all without some luck and victories on penalties.

Players:

Eck will get more out of the players than the previous incumbent but without a couple of the youngsters making the breakthrough we will be rather threadbare in the final third.

What do I want:

The kids to fill the holes, becuase it doesn't look like money is going to

What do I expect:

A lot of draws, some poor runs that will see us staring at the trap door, but enough gumph from the senior players to steady the ship and take us to mid table.

As the younger generations take up the seats on commitees and in the Commons

The current generation of muppets were born in the 60s but they're still in hock to the right wing media. They we currently cultivate and grow career politicians whose only loyalty is to party and benefactors one can't see that changing in a hurry.

Someone's singing from the wrong hymn book

thebeeb"]US loses AAA credit rating after S&P downgrade

News ticker in Times Square, New York. 5 Aug 2011 News of the downgrade ended a tumultuous week for US finances

One of the world's leading credit rating agencies, Standard & Poor's, has downgraded the United States' top-notch AAA rating for the first time ever.

S&P cut the long-term US rating by one notch to AA+ with a negative outlook, citing concerns about budget deficits.

The agency said the deficit reduction plan passed by the US Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough.

Correspondents say the downgrade could erode investors' confidence in the world's largest economy.

Is this important?

Because you have pan-govt regulations like solvency II that mandate that x% of funds are held in AAA rated instruments then these funds will have to start planning to move out of US debt into somethng more stable. Of course you can ignore S&P and pretend you use Moody's or a blended rating. But the agencies tend to follow one another so it would be no surprise for fitch & moody's to have downgraded the US by friday.

Money will move into UK and euro bonds, making the debt cheaper for the UK (well done gideon) and prolonging the basket case euro currency which will make it's collapse even more tragic.

The fall in dollar values will harm chinese exports acting as a damper on their growth which in turn will double (ot triple if you include the costs of the extended euro bailout) whammy germany whose main export markets are the US and China.

Though govt debt for the UK will be cheaper, exports will be hit and financial flows into the UK will be harmed by the strength of the pound. This week Japan and Switzerland have been actively trying to devalue their currencies and swervin Mervyn will have to join in that game in the coming months.

Globally there will be downward pressure on 'real' equity and commodity prices which may be offset in actual terms where they are priced in USD. Precious metals will be strengthened as the other safe haven, the USD, weakens.

Alternatively S&P will announce on Monday it was all a clerical error.

The other two major credit rating agencies, Moody's and Fitch, said on Friday night they had no immediate plans to follow S&P in taking the US off their lists of risk-free borrowers.

Officials in Washington told US media that the agency's sums were deeply flawed.

Unnamed sources were quoted as saying that a treasury official had spotted a $2 trillion [£1.2 trillion] mistake in the agency's analysis.

"A judgment flawed by a $2tn error speaks for itself," a US treasury department spokesman said of the S&P analysis. He did not offer any immediate explanation.