ThunderPower_14

Digne has really made that leftback position a battle in the early stages of this season. Assured in defence and very strong going forward.

There is something absolutely magic about that celebration. Imagine having conceded and it's that barge arse Scottish meatball who has no right to be as good as he is and he's running to the corner flag with his hands upside down over his face to make a superhero mask. It's arguably the most joyous thing in football.

****. Looked to be in some good form, we'll miss him badly this season.

We absolutely didn't need to go crazy. Our points per game under Emery was excellent. The squad chemistry was good. We just needed a few signings to mix in with what we're already doing. We didn't need to change half the first team and stutter as we're trying to bed everyone in. I'd argue we've spent our money very, very well. Tielemans was on a free.

I really like the away. The lion mashup is a cool idea well executed and gives some visual interest to a clean white kit. I don't think much of the home but I'll get the away

Really happy for him, he was a great professional while here and it's great he's getting a feelgood move to a club who has embraced him. Gotta be happy for him.

Everything looks so positive about this getting done but then the other half of football twitter has him all but confirmed to Al Nassr. Let's see him holding a shirt up. Massive signing if we can get it done.

Yep, he's absolutely got several years left at a CL club in him if he wants it. If Man United hadn't been so shit over the last decade he'd have a much better reputation. He's an excellent keeper.

Yep, he has that sort of natural positioning and finishing that you can't really teach. It's not something that will disappear at Premier League level, he scores wherever he plays. With the way we play under Emery, keeping composed and sliding the ball around the box, having someone in there who gets in position and buries chances will be very valuable. I think it would be absolutely insane to sell him unless we get silly money. He'll be worth twice as much in 12 months, then twice as much as that 12 months later, and we've got him on a long contract.

I don't think you change it for no reason. McGinn was a terrific captain and was in the form of his life under Unai, very happy for him to keep the armband and hand it to Mings or Martinez when he's off the pitch.

I guess the 2005 Ashes side will be handing back their MBEs for ball tampering the entire series? It's different when England do it though, isn't it?

Agree, Ashes series are always good but this one is particularly good. Both games have been seesawing, right down to the wire affairs and there's a lot of feeling in it. While i'm not a huge fan as a spectator of this new strategy of bouncing out opponents instead of pitching it up, this is as good as cricket gets as a contest.

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.