ThunderPower_14

I'm someone who struggles with military based public holidays etc. Obviously Australia has basically no history of war apart from wars fought on the other side of the world, but Australia still tries to have a fairly strong national identity based around the defence force which bothers me quite a bit. England obviously has a much darker history of war and conquest and there is a lot more baggage that comes with celebrating that, and unfortunately it's part and parcel of honouring conscripted teenagers who made the ultimate sacrifice in WWI. You can't separate the two. I don't see an issue with how McClean does it. His position is strong and reasonable, and he holds it despite people using it as a culture war stick to beat him with. And it's that culture war stuff that really pushes this sort of thing into the limelight. Right wing types who want to push their militaristic views and want to normalise the celebration of war spouting outrage. It's all very American. Another factor to consider is that you just know the loudest and angriest of the people threatening him would be against a pride badge and would celebrate players refusing to wear it.

That pass was like something you'd see from prime Iniesta. Vision and execution at the absolute elite level. Amazing to think we plucked this guy out of Scotland a few years ago for £2.5mil and he's not only been an enormous driver of positive culture for us, but he's making passes like that.

But it does have it's own level of character that has been beaten out of our last couple of badges through the design by committee process. We're probably going to get something similar in broad strokes to what we've seen in this thread and across the internet, we just have to hope the designer can cut through that and design something that feels like it represents us.

I can't immediately remember a player anywhere developing such deep chemistry with his teammates so quickly. You'd think he and Ollie had been playing together for a decade. A huge credit to him and a sign of a very high football IQ. Sadio Mane is an excellent comparison.

Legend. Made supporting Villa fun again for the first time in a long time, and turned the culture of the club around and signed some of our best players. He laid a brilliant platform for Unai to build upon. And he's one of us! So nice to see the interaction between him and Unai and the mutual respect there.

This is completely incorrect. Having widely popular footballers in your squad has been important for decades. Social media is just the way that celebrities connect with their fans in 2023. There's a reason sports teams employ social media divisions and put a lot of effort into getting followers. She posts loads of Villa content, it's most of what goes on her insta, with football related stories basically every day. That's 15,000,000 people who might never have thought about Aston Villa having Aston Villa in their social media feed every day. When we complain that we have no chance to match the global reach of the sky 6, having a prominent, popular player like Lehmann helps to bridge that gap. Lehmann gives us access to fans that otherwise wouldn't consider us. Awareness brings in new fans, new fans means more money.

I also like the idea of replacing shootouts. It's an awful way to lose a knockout game. I've always liked the idea that after 120 mins, each side loses an outfield player every 5 minutes until a golden goal is scored.

Cannot believe that wasn't given a penalty, absolute garbage. Clearly forcefully pushed in the back causing him to miss his shot.

Fantastic news! He'd have been very difficult and expensive to replace, and he's working so well with his teammates under Emery. UTV

I completely disagree that he's forgotten how to play attacking football. He's playing in Guardiola's system there and he'd adapt to Emery's system here. In fact I'd argue that he's just about a perfect player for how Emery likes to create chances. He's surprisingly quick with the ball, has excellent vision, places and weights passes beautifully and likes to use movement to create space.

I think it's strange to specifically not want Grealish back. If he wanted to come back he'd immediately be our best player but he'd have a much, much stronger squad around him than when he left, and he'd shine. As much as him leaving was just part of the business, it's also part of the business to leverage familiarity to sign players where we can, not unlike our signing of Ashley Young a couple of seasons ago. Jack is a brilliant footballer who would improve us. If he's squeezed out at City and his love for the club makes him choose us over say, Newcastle, Tottenham, Man U etc, that's brilliant.

I think they're going hard to stamp time wasting our of the game, and as time goes on players will adjust and added time will get back to more normal amounts.

Absolutely There's been a few of these now where a defender clearly only touches the ball in the manner that be does because he's trying to stop the ball reaching an opponent in an offside position, but then because he's intentionally touched the ball, the offside is now invalidated and the offside player is onside. It's ridiculous. If a defender has made a play on a ball to stop it getting to you, and you're in an offside position, it must be offside. The worst one I can remember was Salah scoring against Wolves in the FA cup last season. Salah miles offside as the cross is played in, defender throws a desperation header which goes up in the air and lands with Salah who scores, and VAR upholds the goal because the Wolves defender getting a head on it is an intentional play on the ball, despite the fact that he only did so because of Salah being in the box. It's an embarassment that they haven't fixed this rule and it's interpretation.

In Australia I absolutely get a bit of cred for being a Villa fan because it's a relatively unusual team to follow. People who ask me immediately assume I know what i'm talking about. Agree fully about access. We're really lucky with the Premier League in Australia, Optus Sport has every match so it's quite easy to follow. The championship was a lot more difficult and I spent a lot more time looking for the streams thread each week.

That's thoroughly embarrassing for the PGMOL. Wow. Mistakes happen, but it just sounded like an absolute shambles in there which stopped the mistake from being identified and corrected. Cricket 3rd umpires are usually broadcast talking their way through the decision, and I think it works and makes sense. I'd say broadcast the VAR officials live, mostly so that they know they're being broadcast and conduct themselves thoroughly, systematically and professionally. That'll stop the exact chaos that caused this mistake.

I know kits are produced well in advance and there are long term scheduling issues, but surely Castore could use an alternative fabric and produce new kits for the players only in a relatively short turnaround time? There was a situation several years ago in Australian rules footy where my favourite club were approved to use a historic uniform design due to a colour clash and a relatively small manufacturer managed to get the guernseys produced and shipped from the factory in Fiji to Adelaide for the game within 6 days. Surely given the horrendous press this is giving them every time we play, they could do a special run of kits for the players kits only. Same cut, just a different fabric.

Bang on, and it's our 2nd committee driven badge in a row, which I think it's exactly why they're both 6/10 type efforts.

77% compared to the other option. That's very different to a 77% satisfaction rate. That doesn't mean it's an ideal or particularly popular badge and I think the general feeling about it is that it's a bit of a missed opportunity. Heck has come in, sensed that lack of satisfaction and did his job and made a change. Our brand is very different to the 76ers, but Heck led a rebrand there for a famous old team that focused on a consistent, modern interpretation of their historical branding and knocked it out of the park. He made sure that he fundamentally understood the brand and the fans connection to it and gave them something that satisfied that. It's been a tremendously successful branding exercise. If he applies the same philosophy to our rebrand, he'll give us something that makes us proud and stands the test of time. I also disagree that a badge needs to be unchanging. Your badge, like every aspect of your brand, like every aspect of your club, needs to be constantly reassessed to take sure it's doing its job optimally. Certainly the nature of a badge means that a change shouldn't be undertaken lightly or too frequently, but if it's looking long in the tooth and nolongernfit for purpose it needs to change.

Great performance on the road. Martinez kept us in the lead but some bizarre refereeing, stopping the game to give the yellow when we were basically through on goal was insane. The ref did well with the red though. I thought it was clear but that he might not give it due to the ball being involved. Could have easily been 4-3 instead of 1-0, but we absolutely deserved that.

Yep! Every single VAR check should be the booth telling the on-field ref to have another look. He gets to see a replay twice from each relevant angle at full speed, and then gets to decide whether he changes his own decision. Simple. Including offsides, for which there should be no lines drawn. If you can't tell it's offside from a single replay, it's not offside.

This is basically how the Australian football works. You'll only have a couple of games crossover across the weekend, with games starting from Thursday night to Sunday evening. I know midweek European games might make this slightly harder but I don't see any issues with more kickoff times. Just allows us all to watch more football.

I'd like how players speak to the ref to be handled basically just like Rugby. Only the captain and they address him with respect or they get yellows. But my 2 rules changes would be: 1. Scrap all the silliness about whether a player is "in play" or not. If you're within 30m of the ball, you're offside. 2. Penalties should be like those MLS penalties from the 90s where you start 35 yards out and have 5 seconds to shoot, but you can dribble first.

I've been a supporter since just after McGrath's era and started to be able to properly follow us in the mid 2000s when the internet and increased coverage made it feasible to do so. Grealish is our best player in that time. You could make an argument for Martinez, but goalkeepers are a different category. I think the only other outfield player in the conversation is Benteke, maybe Young.

Signing his mate Diaby seems to have really pushed him on this year. They clearly love playing together and we're getting some excellent performances from them both.

Brilliant to see him in such a good run of form after a tough loan spell last year. Some really nice finishing