Annoyman

Ashley Young is a busted flush who left us for money and dived against us at the first opportunity, [breaks down hysterically sobbing] I can't believe he's come home

If Belgium are in possession in the 10th minute they'll put it out of play Hopefully not with a deadly cross arcing towards an unmarked Lukaku I guess Idk, let them do what they want imo With all the relief that he turned out OK and the situation settling down, it's kind of a downer to think that it's still quite likely that his career ended at that moment

Completely agree. It seemed to me that UEFA gave them a hard choice of a) finish the game tonight and b) finish it tomorrow at 12pm, and then when the players reluctantly chose the first option it was presented as if they'd spontaneously asked for it. Pretty contemptible if so, and like you say the players shouldn't have been forced to make that decision anyway

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It's Talksport! ¯\(°_o)/¯

Barkley wasn't an outrageously bad decision though, it just didn't work out after he got injured. He was heavily involved in the Liverpool and Arsenal wins and won 6pts with his goals against Leicester and Southampton. Nobody would necessarily have predicted his output would be essentially 0 for the rest of the season after the Brighton game I don't think?

Lads I don't think Grealish's inane press conference was that likely to be seeded with cryptic hints about his club future one way or the other, sometimes you're just professionally required to waffle some shit to keep the press happy

I'm not sure it's a very flattering look to go for I was grimacing at the photos on BBC Sport yesterday showing how heartbreakingly terrible Gazza looks these days, but then realised they were re-running their Euro 96 footage

I hope they do that 100%, but there could be a release clause or a verbal agreement, there could be a huge bid after a successful Euros where he finally says he wants to go etc. We've all been here enough times in the past to never be 100% confident any player will definitely stay imo, and while Jack Grealish isn't Fabian Delph I don't think the boyhood club/captain stuff counts for as much as fans like to imagine - like it certainly counts for a lot and has been a huge factor in him staying but it's not enough to guarantee him as a one club man

I mean they couldn't necessarily give Buendia a straight answer about whether they'll sell Grealish, the most honest answer they could probably give is "we're going to try not to but who knows"

Yeah I guess I'm ignoring that we already got away with selling our ground to ourselves under his watch. Dunno if the dream is to basically just do things that are functionally identical to what Man City did and be like "what?" if anyone kicks off Oh well, hopefully a shins-intact Grealish and Buendia are starting together on the first day of next season so I can distract myself from what a dang sewer football is

I don't think the boyhood fan/captain stuff matters that much either way anyway in most cases, as it may not turn out to with Grealish before long JWP does feel implausible in a way Buendia didn't though; it's hard to see envision Southampton being willing to sell him at a price Villa should be willing to pay given our other pressing priorities at full back and CF The other thing I don't get : I know people are routinely dismissing the Twitter talking point that Buendia signing means Grealish must be going but, their positions being different aside, if we're not selling Grealish (if), how are we meant to keep spending £100m+ on players like this every summer without getting rinsed by Financial Fair Play? We don't have all the fictional revenue streams Man City have set up to be able to circumvent it

I guess it's just the circle of life, I'm having a quick scan through all the Getafe Club de Fútbol forums from June 2018 and it's just all these 200 page threads where they're like "Emi nunca se trasladará a un club pequeño como Norwich City ajajajajaja" and then getting increasingly furious as the move unfolds

I think that we hate Villa thread is at least partly gallows humour/tongue in cheek Slightly less sure what's going on here:

All the Arsenal fans I know IRL are sound for the record

Reddit is a premier hotbed of Gooner derangement imo, there seem to be a lot of systems thinking sports science American clowns who have drunk the kool-aid a little too hard to prove theyr'e legitimate soccerball fans

Ah this **** rules. Big fan of the club's recent signings just being like "ah here lads we've signed a good player", no fuss, no underwhelming chicken sandwich at the chairman's house Count me among the people slightly baffled to discover Norwich fans apparently hate us and consider us a sideways move ¯\(°_o)/¯

I think the last 0-0 left us one short still - we've won 75 to their 76

They deserve this to be fair. The red card killed the game really, it looked like it would boil over and produce a red at one point, but it ended up coming from an apparent complete accident instead If it stays like this I wonder if the early run of fixtures could be important next season. They can play football are good on the counter and have a striker who will score goals, but they need to not get that Brighton thing this season of narrowly losing a bunch of games they played well and getting that stink of failure hanging around Shout out to Pontus Jansson sauntering leisurely onto the pitch eating a protein bar at a corner then immediately getting knocked senseless by a goalbound shot from his own team by the way, huge vibe

Dean Smith doesn't look anything like bacon. Alex McLeish definitely looked like breaded ham though

Bamford will no doubt be issuing the "is it because I is privately educated" statement forthwith It is harsh on him after the season he had tho! 7 assists nothing to sniff at for a striker, and he had as many spuriously disallowed goals as Watkins did

Only tangentially related but do you remember this one win against Stoke at VP 10-11 years ago where they had a first half goal somewhat spuriously disallowed for a push on Stephen Warnock, and their fans went so mental celebrating it that they still hadn't noticed it was disallowed until like a minute after play had been restarted? Never seen anything like it to that level. It was like our fans went from winding them up over it to like, desperately trying to get their attention to let them know because it was getting kind of weird

Delighted the Holte got to see one get smacked in the net in front of them. El-Ghazi being so calm on penalties really racked up some points and there was a really good spread of goals and assists across the whole front four in general Targett was the 2nd best player in enough games to be in with a shout for player of the season overall IMO, though today was a very tough one Shame Leicester bottled it again, but not sure how I would have felt about a situation where City winning the Champions League was somehow the banter outcome

A real spread of big performances tonight with fierce competition for 2nd place in the man of the match rankings. Watkins is looking so sharp and intelligent out there in addition to running his legs off, just tremendous. He's scored a fair few goals this season from capitalising on errors, but his movement and alertness causes so much nervousness in defenders and goalkeepers you can't put it all down to luck Not content with scoring a great winner to take the points in a tremendous match, El Ghazi also committed a foul then acted like he'd been shot dead in the process despite there being no meaningful contact at all from Allan. Deliciously satirical. I wonder if anyone else caught that reference