Grunthos

Damnit, Milner, the ball goes behind you and you just stand there and look at it! Why doesn't the team care in the slightest?

Comical challenge by Cuellar. The lack of finesse is emblematic today.

Not a pen. Just normal contact in the box.

Nani has been gone since the 30th minute... and ManU still have 51% possession for the match.

"Well worth coming out on a wintry evening..."

Maybe for the ManUre traveling support. I can't imagine how apoplectic I'd be, sitting outside in the cold watching my team show no passion, no intelligence, and no drive with an opportunity to finish our first double over ManU for over 50 bleeping years.

Biiiiig John.

See what happens when you actually try to attack, guys? You get chances. Try it sometime.

Need to do better.

Need to do better.

Need to do better.

And, on cue, the announcers suggest that should have been just a yellow. Studs up on the ankle, but no, it's a ManUre player, it wasn't intentional.

Villa goal "opportunistic"

manure goal 'brilliance of approach work'

cock commentators

This. "What a response from Manchester United!" It's a **** own goal, you ass, nothing to do with ManU's quality.

Carlos is never pretty, but...

... oh, FFS.

Modric really is a dangerous bastard. Not sure what we can do about it, though. None of our midfielders are mark-out-of-the-game types.

It's really odd, reading stuff like this.

Yes, of course it's too early to be suggesting that Villa could win the league. We won't. Period, stop, end of. Yes, the team needs an injection of class in the attacking half, plus more quality in depth, to change that. All fine.

But then we get crap like this:

Our manager has the exact opposite record. He has won nothing of note, and when it looked for all the world last season like he was going to really mark his arrival on the scene by doing something significant he froze like a rabbit in the headlights and to this point in time isn't showing many signs of having learnt the lessons from the last campaign.

Really, really sick of this stupidity. As always, it's not about O'Neill particularly. It doesn't matter who is in the manager's chair. If that person isn't one of the recognized, proven, eighteen-trophies-on-the-shelf, top 10 managers in the game, then he's a guaranteed failure. Pay no attention to the things he does right, folks, anything that can be remotely ascribed as his fault (whether it actually is or not, whether there's any real evidence for it or not) is what we need to harp on.

I still don't see where O'Neill has actually demonstrated that the style of play we end up in for a lot of our less attractive matches is the style he's actually targeting long-term. I don't know what he's targeting long-term. Maybe he is stuck in the 80's and maybe he isn't. Maybe he'll never bring in the top-class players we'll need to push things over the top. But there is no goddamned proof of that in anything that's occurred so far. What we have seen is an influx of quality players, steady improvement in the standings, and very careful, thoughtful work by the manager on all fronts.

It's not whether MON is the right guy. It's the repeated, continuous, and utterly baseless insistence that he's already demonstrated that he's the wrong guy that I can't respect. No different from saying Hughes needed to be sacked, or Arsene Wenger should change the way he builds teams, or Roy Hodgson should never have been hired at Fulham because what has he ever done, anyway?

It's a good thing Villa haven't been subject to real sorrows in ages. The earnest efforts of so many here to drown themselves in invented sorrows, to wallow in the victimization of Villa being so large and so storied and not having won anything of note in almost 30 years, might lead to a serious uptick in self-inflicted hospitalizations and morgue visits were the club to ever collapse like a Leeds or a Wednesday.

*shakes head sadly*

*walks away*

Ah, Sir Alex, about that entitlement to points at home? It's revoked. Effective immediately.

Oh, and there's 75,000 spoiled children outside waiting for you to explain it to them.

Enjoy!

Come on you Villa.

Come on you Villa.

Come on you Villa.

If I'm MON, I spend the whole next week on possession-retention drills. This is embarrassingly bad decision making when we get control of the ball.

Gabby, dammit, you hold the damned ball. Don't be dumb.

Official added time will be five minutes. Actual added time will be closer to seven.

4-5-1 to lock it down. If that's possible.

Now *that* should have been a goal for them.

These commentators are going to be real pissed if Man U don't score. THere's only one narrative they're interested in.

If the result stays like this he can be king of Worcestershire if he wants.

True that.

Agh, Cuellar still isn't a right back.

Dammit, ref, that was a clear charge!

That's it, boo him, you idiots. He's clearly had his clock cleaned.