HKP90

I know, and you're right about Ramsey. I was expecting Sanson to push McGinn and take the shirt if I'm honest, and I don't think by his own previously high standards that SJM has been performing that well recently.

I've got no major issues with the lineup, but I wonder what Sanson needs to do to get a start. He must have knocked out the water boy with a long pass in training or something.

I must admit seeing him in a gillet made me involuntarily slowly shake my head.

Eh? Sitters? Ollie has to be one of the better natural finishers I've seen at Villa for ages.

That match was an absolute shambles for football. First time in ages a ref/decisions got me angry as a neutral. First pen for Brighton technically hand ball but he’s not even looking at the ball. Do we really want that penalised? How does that improve football? Then the free kick. He blew the f**king whistle! Second pen a blatent dive, not overturned by VAR. Absolutely awful indication of the state of football.

We made them think they had a chance right up until the final whistle. That’s revenge served cold!

Well if Deano got it wrong last week, he got it spot on tonight. Great result. Man it feels good to beat those pie munchers.

And their defender tried to stop the goal.

A large part of this fixture will be decided an hour before kick off when the teams are announced.

I loved Savo. Awesome goal. Remember jumping around like a lunatic when that went in.

Sorry, I’m not sure I understand what you are getting at? Refs as opposed to who? Refs being rubbish is another discussion (And many are, no question). At the end of the day the Premier League has spent a large sum of money implementing VAR, and has signed contracts with providers. It’s not going away soon. We may as well try to fine a way to live with it.

The longer it goes on, the more it seems like there might be a clause in Barkley’s contract.

Like so much on the internet, being a football supporter is now so polarised that it’s impossible to have a constructive discussion. In reality the sky is not falling in as some would believe, but if we are being honest about our recent performances, there are warning signs that we need to learn from and address if we want to consolidate our league position. For me, constructive criticism is vital to success, but that includes taking positives where they exist, as well as learning from mistakes. A positive is our resilience, and ability to fairly consistently get points from disappointing performances. We DO need to ask why those performances are being turned out, though, and I think we have covered most of them during the match thread, albeit quite angrily.

Gooooaaalll.

Look at my past posts and I’ve never been quick to have a go at Dean, and I am obviously still fully behind him as manager, but he has to figure this stuff out, cos it was painfully horribly obvious what the result of this team selection would be. Even to me as a mere fan drinking rum in my kitchen.

Spot on.

Everyone saw this coming. Awful team selection. This will be a proper spanking.

I love Deano, but I think it would be hard on the basis of this selection to convince the squad that it’s a meritocracy.

I’d love Lookman. Not sure how much Leipzig would want for him, but his ball retention is great.

I agree it was never a penalty, but if it was given, can someone explain to me why the Liverpool player wasn’t sent off? He’s in a goal scoring position there surely?

I think the answer is to give each team 3 VAR reviews each per game that they decide when to use. That way it weeds out all but the most contentious decisions, so we don’t have the farce of not celebrating every goal because it’s a chin hair offside, plus the refs have to take responsibility for their decisions again (i.e do their job) because they will have no idea if the teams will use their VAR token. Either that or bin VAR entirely, which i’d be more than happy with.

Surely no one in their right mind would agree to a contract like that.

Oh so Friday night must be curry and beer night at bodymoor.

I seem to remember us mostly playing cack in the late kick offs. No idea if that’s true, it just seems like it.

Richardson?