ThunderPower_14

Putting Villa (and probably Chelsea) aside for a minute, I think the Premier League is as healthy and exciting as it ever has been. The giants of yesteryear are stuttering a little bit and anybody can beat anybody. Clubs like Southampton and West Ham can be considered the form sides of the league. For a decade we had the Sky 4 and that was that. Apart from Everton once, they finished top 4 every season and everyone else was fighting out for 5th. This year, apart from Chelsea up top, there is a lot less predictability about it. Thinking about it, if Randy had taken over right now instead of in 2008, it might have been much better for us. It took the size 16 bowling ball of Man City to come through and smash up the top 4 and now if an owner came through with Lerner's initial attitude, he might actually be able to pinch that Champions League spot and catapult the club into the stratosphere. It's really hard to watch as a Villa fan this year, but go Southampton, go Newcastle, go West Ham, go Swansea. Keep busting up that pack so when the worm turns for us, the glass ceiling has been smashed and maybe Aston Villa can be a big club again. Funnily enough, it's easier to visualise a series of events that would lead us to a Champions League spot now than it was the day Martin O'Neill packed his bags. Bar the top few sides, La Liga isn't better. It's worse. They might have all the best players, but they all play for 2 clubs.

He's further away than he appears in that clip.

I've got relegation battle fatigue. Can we just have one season of mid table obscurity before launching into another relegation battle in 15/16?

RIP Phil Hughes What an awful thing to happen.

I think it is much more difficult for forwards to break through successfully into the first team. As much as it's fashionable to slag off Gabby nowadays, I'd argue a youth product playing 300 games, scoring 71 goals and playing for England a few times has been pretty successful for a youth product. It compares well to people like Anichebe and Ameobi who broke through at their clubs at a similar time. Think Robbo would sign up for that sort of career right now. He looked lively in a few of his sub appearences at the end of last season so hopefuklly he'll get a chance off the bench starting at Burnley. I think the key is hard work. Gabby spent most of his early career running his socks off and I don't think anyone could argue that he hasn't forged a great career for himself given his technical ability. We've had several more highly rated strikers come through the academy in and around the time that Gabby has been at the club but they've all fallen over when it came time to make the step from talented kid to premier league regular. Albrighton fizzled out, Gardner is either injured or not really making it. We're well overdue due for an academy prospect to come through and give us a few good years before becoming a megastar at top 3 club. It's frustrating.

I've done this with 4 before. We'd play 4 on 1 usually with the 1 playing until he lost. There was more satisfaction scoring a well worked team goal between 4 dudes holding controllers than there was scoring a well worked team goal between the same 4 dudes in a 5 a side team.

God I hope so Anyway that was a decent effort at a fake trailer.

To link those two up, the sponsors will pull out if the nations pull out. As evil and corrupt as FIFA are, at the moment, if all the big countries play, i'll still watch the Qatar world cup. I wont be able to help myself and neither will a few billion other people. But if England and Germany pull out and a few other reasonable sized nations follow, the amount of people watching will start to drop off very quickly, and then the sponsors aren't getting value for money, and that's when they pull out. FIFA just needs one gutsy, large footballing nation like Germany to pull out and everything else will fall like dominoes.

He's terrific at winning the ball but it was alarming at how much he was giving it straight back in the midfield. Maybe he just needs to be told to take the safest option every time and move the ball on once he wins it. His defensive midfield play could be absolutely vital but it's compromised because half the time he gives it straight back. I think he's alright on the ball but he doesn't think far enough ahead and runs himself into trouble. Carlos, win ball and pass ball to teammate until you've acclimatised yourself to the Premier League please.

Phil Hughes is in a critical condition in hospital after being hit by a short ball in a Shield game in Sydney. He didn't go straight down with the hit but was on his haunches for about 5 seconds before falling flat on his face. He had to be revived twice at the ground and Cricket NSW could not confirm if he was alive when he left the field. They flew in ICU doctors on a helicopter to assist. Pretty grim He was 63 not out and in the box seat to take the injured Michael Clarke's spot in the upcoming first test against India. Now what, maybe a Jules Bianchi type situation? Jesus Christ

Any way you want to spin it, that was the most exciting end to a WWE PPV in a decade.

As a lifetime Sting fan who will legitimately start following wrestling again after that, I was happy enough with Sting's entrance. I certainly wasn't getting him confused with anyone else. Sting probably needs his facepaint to follow his hairline up his head a little bit. The facepaint hides the old man face but the hairline is a dead giveaway that his peak was nearly 2 decades ago.

He definitely made me feel a lot better about the impending departure of Vlaar. If he and Clark can play together like that they have the ability to be our longterm CB pairing IMO.

Yeah this is really odd. Unless they've been told by someone like the Premier League to cease and desist it boggles the mind that they'd make editing more difficult or impossible. Hmmm. I was thinking about getting this but I really only play FIFA on career mode and the master league isn't as deep. This is a point against it. I used to love PES back in the day, my mates and I would all create our own clubs and do a massive fantasy draft and use our drafted teams against each other. There were 6 or 7 of us most years and we'd have big league days where we'd all play each other twice etc. The one year I got the number 1 pick instead of taking Ronaldo I took Gabby and scored heaps with him and insisted that it was a little bit unfair that I had him as he was the best player in the game every time I scored. Great fun.

All 4 defenders quite good, Gabby quite good as well. Midfield very average. Sanchez gives the ball back as much as he wins it. Everyone else had no impact.

We may as well go forward. It's nailed on that we'll concede again so we'd be better off trying to nick one

ffs

oooohhhh Wiemann get that on target

How many **** times can one Colombian man give the ball away?

I totally agree. In fact, we seem to have a terrific away kit every few years, but it seems to happen far less often with home kits. I quite liked last years, and the 2008/09 home which was the first Acorns one was absolutely beautiful, but before that you probably have to go back to the 1992/93 lace up to find a genuinely classic home kit IMO.

I've been looking through this thread and we've had some absolutely beautiful kits. What do people reckon the quintessential Villa kit is? Obviously it would have to have a claret body with blue sleeves, but which kit has been the best representation of an "Aston Villa" kit since the dawn of the manufacturer/sponsor era? Maybe this one?

I just heard I just heard I just heard I haven't bought a PPV in like a decade but I would have if I knew that was happening. If someone can get a video up here of the last 10 minutes of Survivor Series I will love you forever

You'd hope so but that doesn't just happen. Sure, the quality is a bit lower but it doesn't mean we'll be a powerhouse just by virtue of coming from a higher division. If we sort ourselves out and start playing positive, exciting football in the Championship i'd be really pissed off that we couldn't do that in the Premier League.

I've been slowly coming around to this. Maybe at Championship level i'd enjoy watching us fight for something again instead of praying that we don't get relegated.

It doesn't matter if there are teams that are worse than us if we don't learn to score. They say defence wins championships but the ability to put the ball in the back of the net keeps you up.