ThunderPower_14

Batsmen don't need to ask their opponents if the ball is dead because they look at where the ball is and it's obvious. Bairstow didn't bother to look. It's unquestionably dead if the keeper has moved it on. If the keeper is still holding it, stay in your crease. Again, Bairstow didn't check. It's not like Carey tried to disguise what he was doing at all. Runout attempts on complacent batsmen are attempted all the time in all kinds of scenarios. It's always necessary to make sure you're safe in your crease, it might just not seem that way because every cricketer does it automatically and these situations are rare. You're getting taught to stay in your crease from the earliest levels of cricket. I played for 25 years, I saw lots of people in that time get out because they were complacent about whether they were in their crease or not. Wicketkeepers attempt stumpings on batsmen who are complacently adjusting their feet all the time. McCullum famously did the exact same thing to Paul Collingwood, making his sooking particularly egregious. Bairstow tried to catch Labuschagne napping 2 days earlier. The idea that this is sly or underhanded or abnormal is silly. This whole circus has become wildly overblown because it's the Ashes and England are looking for someone to blame. No different to Stuart Broad having been a pantomime villain in Australia for the last decade because we wasted all of our challenges and then he smashed it to slip and didn't walk.

This is about as nice as a round badge can be I think, much better than what we got and would be even better with the newer lion, but it's still just a round badge an will automatically look Man City/Chelsea inspired.

It's good because it captures what the 76ers are all about and have been all about historically in a clean modern way. American sports can be VERY traditional, especially among famous old teams. That traditional feel was a central thrust of their rebrand. I know US teams seem to overuse the stars and stripes and the red white and blue, but for Philly it's been central to their branding from the beginning. They're the 76ers! Their whole brand is Americana. That's what was going to resonate with their fans, and it has been spectacularly successful in doing that.

The dullness is just the online shop renderings, they're quite vibrant in real life. More importantly, it was a clean, modern interpretation of some of their classic looks, and took them from couple of decades of muddied, forgettable branding to something iconic and striking. American sports tend to be very traditional about their uniforms, especially the older teams, and this brand refresh was coordinated by someone who understood what Philly fans wanted. It has been wildly successful for them. Heck absolutely has the runs on the board in terms of taking a traditional old team and getting their branding right.

Agree. I have an Adidas shirt from the 2018 WC that I wear all the time and it's just the replica version but it's the most comfortable football shirt I own by some distance.

Agree completely, it would be the best short term stop gap solution. Nobody wants to keep the old badge. The new lion is excellent and very nicely executed. Just drop the roundel and run with the Lion in all of our branding for the season, then you don't have the bizarre disconnect of running 2 badges.

Look this seems bad but ultimately a great club wakes up and pisses excellence at every facet of being a football club, from the first team to the tea lady. If the club feels like this is a missed opportunity, be ruthless, rip the band-aid off and do it properly.

The new badge looks great on the kit. They almost have to change now because they've killed any momentum the kit release might have given the badge by actively distancing ourselves from it. Really weird behaviour. We've Leeds'd ourselves without the backlash from the fanbase.

I am generally positive about the possibility of stripes. It's not a classic villa kit but neither was the Luke kit. I have huge nostalgia for the 99/00 thick striped kit.

Jack's dad is a Villa fan so it's probably wishful thinking. I don't think there would be barriers to him coming back if he wanted to and was still an elite footballer. We're hardly the kind of club to get hung up on sentiment if a player of that quality is available.

Doug Ellis took over when we were at our best and when the PL came along we were primed to ride the wave to the top, but he lacked any foresight whatsoever and scrooged us down to mid table mediocrity. An owner with some vision in the 90s and we've got at a couple of PL titles at this point.

City winning a treble is absolutely disgusting for football but really happy for Jack. At least he didn't leave to waste away on some big club's bench, he's gone and won everything as a key part of the side.

I absolutely think there's a large element of racism. Tyrone, because he's a prominent, confident and eloquent black man who speaks out on social justice causes, will unfortunately have people who hate him because he says things they don't want to hear. With sportspeople it's even worse because there is another element of people who will slate him because he's "just a dumb footballer and shouldn't have opinions", and in addition you have people who hate him because he's an excellent player who plays for an opposition club. This happens everywhere there are eloquent, activist black sportspeople. Look at Kaepernick. Look at Lewis Hamilton. Look at LeBron. Look at Simone Biles. For the Australians on the forum, an very prominent case over here was Adam Goodes, a legendary Indigenous Aussie Rules player who toward the end of his career took a bit of a stand against the racism he faced and started to get booed by sections of the crowd at every game, by people who would say they weren't doing it for racist reasons, but didn't do it for the first 15 years of his career until he spoke out. Tyrone has become my favourite Villa player since I started following in the late 90s. His performances are a big part of that, but i'm also so proud to have someone like Tyrone represent us. Just everything you want in a Villa player as a player and person.

I think he's got pretty good potential to get back to playing good football, he's 31, hardly over the hill for a modern footballer if we can get his body right. A lot can change in an offseason with modern sports science and if his body was absolutely shot, we wouldn't have signed him in the first place. He's a perfect impact sub type. His style of play seems to fit how Emery likes his teams to attack.

Sad to see him leave but really glad he came back and played some great football for us. I hope this means we've got a right back lined up.

It's not impossible that an enormous offer comes in for him but his value is enormous at the moment and he has a long contract. We'd be well positioned to get a massive fee and be able to replace him reasonably well. I'm not sure that there are many clubs who both need a goalkeeper and will be prepared to spend £50mil+ we'll expect for him. To take the next step we need to accept that while we're climbing the mountain, some players will get their heads turned by big CL clubs and be off. We just have to make sure that we re-invest well and that our culture means we improve regardless.

Yep, by about triple the next highest. He must have really struggled to stay on the park early in his career.

Emery has unlocked something in him and the rest of our forwards. Our passing when on the break is absolutely brilliant, managing to thread the needle to find a free player in the box pretty regularly. We don't panic and we find the pass, and Ramsay is probably the best proponent of that in the side. Lethal on the break and just beautiful to watch.

I teared up when he took the ball over to the corner flag. No more fitting end to this wonderful season than Captain Super John McGinn holding off 2 players to run down the clock to secure a famous victory.

According to Transfermarkt our squad is worth more than Juventus. This competition is obviously full of banana peels, but the average team we'll play will be worse than the average team we play in the PL, and the best teams won't be better than the top 6 or 7 PL teams. We can and should absolutely win this. It's been too long in between trophies.

Brilliant game when it mattered most. Such an exciting player. He'd have to be in the running for a senior England call up shortly given the players getting named in the midfield. Brilliant season, going from strength to strength.

So, so proud of that effort against a Brighton side who threw everything at us. What a wonderful season once Unai came on board.

Brentford winning is irrelevant with Tottenham up by 2. We have to win

So many blown chances! Come on Villa!

So inconsistent with his cards. Some very soft yellows and some cynical professional fouls not given