Annoyman

Milner played a one-two off a short corner and then blasted it in straight in from a tight angle away to Blackburn in, I want to say, 2010?

There was definitely pre-existing beef between Houllier and Carew which would have been an exacerbating factor and, John's cult hero status aside, that was probably more Carew's fault than Houllier's. Houllier expected a level of professionalism that was probably quite a shock to the system for a lot of those guys after being managed by an old school/tactically retrograde Clough disciple for four years

Really sad to hear this, he was obviously extremely well-liked and respected in the game and did a lot to get Liverpool back towards the big time There were a few really memorable moments in that 2010-11 season, like the City and Utd games mentioned above, the win at the Emirates and casually beating Liverpool in the beautiful sunshine at VP on the last day, with news of Blues' baffling and hilarious implosion filtering through. I think Ged was probably sadly already phasing out of the role for those last two because of his health. It felt a bit implausible and unwarranted that we snuck into the top half on the back of that at the time, but little did we know we'd never get near those heights again for ten years (Pires didn't really work out, but I do remember him being raucously applauded off after turning in one last absolute masterclass in midfield against Blackburn at VP)

Ah that's a cracking result, especially under the circumstances. It's so, so nice to have a reassuring presence in goal, the decision-making and leadership Matinez shows makes such a difference, on top of the shot stopping Balls of steel from Anwar there, was worried when I saw him taking it (because I don't want him to get more abuse), but he was nerveless. He's on BT now saying that he wasn't nervous at all because he trains them a lot and Grealish told him to take the pen, which is good leadership imo Though Ramsey held his own in a difficult situation and he was calming things down during that little beef on the halfway near the end as well A few beefs aside it wasn't really a bad-tempered game, if you saw the stats without seeing the game you'd be expecting a gd bloodbath Sucks to be without Luiz and Cash, who has picked up a few daft bookings

Villa weren't good enough today but I don't know what level of Stockholm Syndrome you have to be on to convince yourself that wasn't a penalty I remember Blues fans all being furious about Roger Johnson conceding a penalty on Agbonlahor in 2010 because he'd got a faint, irrelevant touch on the ball in the process of scything him down, the rules aren't any different today Lot of players slightly off their game today and it added up, Traore shows flashes of quality but he seems to leave the ball behind a lot

Does it not still hinge on "successful deception of an official?" i.e you only get banned if you successfuly gain from it (like Bamford did in 2019 with AEG going off) Daft to not book someone for that dive on the pitch though, particularly if I still have to suffer occasional debilitating flashbacks to the Kevin Friend debacle at Palace Both of those incidents happened four months apart, last year, because time no longer has meaning

This is pretty key I think - everybody please bear in mind at all times that whatever happens you will never be Graham Souness saying that some grass being long caused Liverpool to concede seven goals

The team had gone mentally by the point they were 2—0 down and starting to rack up daft bookings. Grealish almost scored a Maradona goal but made poor decisions most of the rest of the night. It was one of them. Bit worried about Watkins' confidence, and the full-back situation generally. I think nobody wanted to be the one saying there were signs of Cash being vulnerable at Leicester after how good the final result was, but that vaguely erotic slow-motion de-pantsing of Harvey Barnes did feel a bit ominous. I dunno if this can be a catalyst for a bit of a reset now that the 100% record and any feverishly-imagined push for the European places are gone. Its going to be a weird season and fatigue, injuries and probably Covid outbreaks will cause a few more mad seesaw runs of form for a lot of teams. Our run to Christmas has more winnable games than not and I hope there's at least enough of a mentality in the camp to have us feeling optimistic compared to last season by Christmas We'll uh, probably still be in the top 4 next week?

There probably weren't many of us who saw the fourth goal go in in March and thought "ah it's fine, we'll win this one next season" That ~intense fox banner they have up is a bit much isn't it, they've clearly got Wolves envy

Absolutely, had Everton starting Yannick Bolasie up front instead of DCL and then at Villa Park in the next game Palace played a front four against me of Zaha, Batshuayi, Ayew and Benteke on the left 6-0

Can't get over how weird Derek Rae sounds when he says "Douglas Luiz"

FIFA has better dribbling and player movement imo, but PES' passing and general ball physics are streets ahead. Far more subtle and realistic.

The Redcafe threads are definitely interesting reading. There were some very anxious Utd fans in August! They were worried they'd end up overpaying for Grealish if the Sancho deal fell through, and they were - very nobly - even more worried that Grealish would never be picked for England if Villa didn't do the right thing and sell him to Utd for 15 grand and all the players they don't like Hopefully they're all feeling much more relaxed now that they have absolutely nothing to worry about on either front - haven't followed their recent results very closely tho so not sure

Front four all looking like good professional footballers, at the same time Agbonlahor vs Naughton is a thing Norwich are gonna need to sort out

ill-disciplined rabble imo stop kicking people you jackasses

tough crowd BBC says says 51-49 on possession but maybe elsewhere differs can't see anywhere saying they had more shots on or off target though ¯\(°_o)/¯

If you're gonna claim Wigan had more shots and more possession you might as well go the whole hog and claim they won 3-0 and McLeish started emptying a shotgun into the Holte End at full time Hutton is a terrible footballer though, I don't know what universe that wasn't a penalty in

1-1 obv

We look to be still gelling in the midfield a bit, we have spells of looking good but are generally bad at keeping possession and having Zog lose possession by attempting to score the Maradona 86 goal every time he gets the ball is kind of getting in the way of improving that at the moment imo Gabby has enough pace to get round the outside frequently but being on the left he tends to stop afterwards and come back in on his favoured foot which I guess defeats the point I dunno; Bannan's crossing usually looks pretty good Hesk could maybe do a job later

Yeah, Ireland looks like getting a run in my team, keeps the ball well. Seen some nice little flourishes and classy touches, scored a classy swiveling volley with Fonz, bit like Carroll's just now but fancier Re; AI not tracking the runners, wouldn't the thing to do there be to switch out to the man near the runner and track him manually while holding down RB/R1 to get the other player to close down the man with the ball? Seems like the emphasis this year is more on trying to think on your feet and put out fires where it's most needed rather than constantly trying to tackle w/ every player, it's mad frustrating when you've been doing OK and then you have a lapse of concentration/coordination and Damien Duff or someone just walks through yr defence though

The non-fullback members of the Villa squad all look p. amazingly good, especially Petrov, Albrighton and Bannan. We're pretty low-rated compared to the FIFA 10 glory years though, Fulham appear to have far more 80+ players than us I've been taking it easy on pro difficulty with assisted passing and semi assisted shooting, default 4-4-2 with Gab behind Bent - Win, loss, draw in the first three games after an ignominious pre-season 4-5-1 experiment, but I'm creating chances and I just done Hereford 3-1 in the league cup with Fonz going goal mental

We haven't been bad Getting rushes of poignant misplaced enthusiasm when the commentator says "Young" is on the ball

It was an interesting mental image

While the erstwhile BBC Chief Sports writer will doubtless be keen to speculate as to the identity of the man many feel will be taking the hot seat at Aston Villa, he may come to have felt that inadvertently exposing his identity on a fans' web forum will come to have been seen as an ill-advised professional misstep. One thing is certain: if Carlo Ancelotti does take the reins at the Midlands club, the Villa hierarchy will doubtlessly hope that the Italian will bring them the success they will surely hope for. [continues for 2000 words]

THEY LUBRICATED THEMSELVES WITH HAIR?!