Annoyman

When was the last time we had an entertaining match against Sunderland? Guzan saving 15 penalties and Milner scoring a thunderbolt/a handball while falling over aren't enough to count on their own.

Heskey angled himself well to finish the cross in fairness, it's just he didn't seem to get a great view of it coming to him and looked a bit wryly amused that he'd scored. The commentator on my stream was repeatedly insisting that he knew nothing about it and that it had hit his shoulder on every replay, despite that not really appearing to be entirely true. I think having to watch James Collins impersonate Dystonic Free Willy between you and the ball would make any finish count as a bit tricky, really.

Young was a constant thorn in West Brom's side, who continually hacked away at his blur-of-motion legs like an explorer trekking in dense jungle.

The BBC's Metaphors Department straddling genius and idiocy

Gah, Fantasy Premier League have given the assist for the first goal to Heskey.

I don't think I've ever been less enraged while watching Mark "**** Off" Halsey ref a Villa game, maybe not actually being there is scaling back my mob mentality bias? Kind of expect the West Brom fans to be raging at the 8-14 fouls stat and unloading on Ashley Young, but the benefit of televisual replays suggests they were actually just definitely fouling him about every eight seconds in the second half.

Also, did Lichaj start and has he been good? He looks like he's got a crazy forward burst in him once or twice a game

Albrighton is frighteningly good at times, like the entire teachings of the John Robertson 70s Winger discipline inexplicably squeezed into the only narrowly post-pubertal frame of a kid with a big nose from Tamworth; thought he'd taken that cross on in far too much of a hurry, then he bends in this Beckham-like really bad person that bounced itself in off Heskey

From what I've seen (ie the second half) this seemed like a decent performance that was a recipe for a late disaster of an equaliser, but with a two goal cushion, if it stays that way, this looks like it's been a pretty committed, impressive win?

Haha, Brackley on this stream launching into a five minute rant about goal-line technology and how Blues have been robbed, oblivious to Ridgewell standing there like a hulking offside lemon

Not to be predictably biased here, but was the whole of the ball even over the line at any point?

Hahaha, Diouf trying to do his sneaky keeper-blocking shit and Friedel breaking him in two and getting the free kick anyway

Our counter attacks are starting to look better than before with Bannan, Downing and Ireland picking the passes, can see us scoring a few ruthless Arsenal hot knife through butter type counter-attack goals this season, as opposed to the kind of scrappy pace-based ones

Stuart Downing opened with a volley that deflected beyond keeper Richard Kingson but Marlon Harewood levelled with a side foot shot before the break.

Nathan Delfouneso volleyed to make it 2-1 but Blackpool equalised when a DJ Campbell shot deflected in off Collins.

ahaha the chick writing the BBC match report doesn't know what a volley is

The "Villa surrendered a lot of leads under O'Neill" thing is a myth, for a long time we were the team that lost from a winning position the least in the entire league, that dropped off a bit last season but it's been this year when we've been really bad with it

I'm playing this match on FIFA. It was 1-1 at this point, and Crouch missed a header from a corner in the game at the exact same time he did in the match, so it's definitely accurate.

NB Ledley King's going to score an OG in eight minutes for 2-1.

Oh.

Dowie just needs to get a job in an office putting pens in boxes or some shit, is he actually good at anything?

Would hope to see a strongish team at VP, minus the dunce ref and the batshit hostile atmosphere would hopefully be fairly different looking

Not sure what exactly in Dowie's career has convinced him he's above this gig

Don't think any result short of them getting two late goals would be a disaster, but Lord, Curtis Davies scares me

Guardian says this:

Everton were forced to cave in last year when English football's richest club relentlessly pursued Joleon Lescott, although City were helped on that occasion when the player eventually pushed for a transfer. There is no suggestion that Milner will do likewise at Villa, with sources close to the player saying he will leave the decision in the hands of his club despite the prospect of more than doubling his £45,000-a-week wages at City.

Milner is known to feel a debt of gratitude to O'Neill for the perseverance the Villa manager showed when he signed him from Newcastle United a little under two years ago for what many felt at the time was an inflated £12m fee. He also recognises the part O'Neill has played in his remarkable development over the last 12 months

No quotes but that's quite believable. Kind of assume there's been a similar situation w/ Ashley Young at a couple of points over the last few transfer windows.

Well given that old hands like King, Lennon, Dawson, Defoe and even Younes to an extent have been pretty big players for Spurs over the season it's maybe fair to say that Harry's got them back on track to the top four threatening team they'd become by 2005-7, and that a couple of smart buys like Modric and Thudd/Bale becoming awesome have kind of cemented it nicely for him; it's not that surprising that they've pipped hastily thrown together across two managers Man City in that regard

Yeah I think Spurs have definitely proven that it's beyond them to beat a team good enough to finish in the top four of their league

Hart even got the start of second half opposition goalkeeper polite applause thing, which is kind of unthinkable in that derby

Gabby celebrating winning the penalty like it had immediately won the game was asking for trouble though

McLeish calling it a "great tackle" is the funniest thing about it though, like yeah he pathetically brushes the ball three inches with one foot, completely failing to disposess the player, and then he takes the player out with his other foot anyway

That's not "great" it's "hilariously shit"

The fun just goes on and on

http://msn.football365.com/story/0,17033,8652_6119075,00.html

Just read that article and Carr is still banging on about Johnson getting the ball. How thick does he have to be. You would think a player playing football at the highest level would know the laws of the game would'nt you.

One last time now. GETTING THE BALL DOES'NT MEAN IT'S NOT A FOUL

And as for the comment about kicking the penalty spot "there was something on my foot I needed to get off" well what a jerk.

F.A. please have some balls and ban this worthless dumbass

Problem is, his own manager, every ex-player pundit currently working in the media and 90% of the football press are still dozily perpetuating the same "if you touch the ball it's never a foul" canard; even O'Neill didn't seem to be really clear what he was arguing against

The FA really needs to get McLeish and their players in a room and get Martin Atkinson to repeatedly scream "IT WAS A **** PENALTY YOU DUMBFUCKS" at them with a loudhailer

If Gabby hadn't have been brought down he was getting the ball. The ball was not going out of play. It was a pen.

I can't believe that all these so called professional pundits haven't even mentioned that.

Not a great performance but results are all that matters at this stage of the season and in derby games.

The fact we were fairly crap just makes it sweeter! :-)

Yeah, so sick of this. I'm gonna head over to the MOTD2 studios and break the fingers of the first pundit who drops some wrongheaded, Laws-of-the-Game-dodging science about how it can't be a foul if you get a stud on the ball for three quarters of a second

Brad Friedal's never going to retire, let alone die

Milner's run up was so blatantly shaped to shoot the direction Hart dived in, it was like he used the Hull one as a mind game

For one of the least fouled teams in the league we get a **** gigantic amount of penalties, I guess counterattacks against stretched defenses and having inhumanly fast really bad people will do that for you

I thought Gabby was outstanding today - his running and positioning and ball use - apart from where he fluffed that 3-on-1 - were all superb and that goal was a peach!

Yeah. Pitch was shit anyway though, a couple of other passes bobbled out of existence on it over the course of the game.

Man, so Chelsea are as good as Liverpool were last season

funny old game

I don't think it's anywhere near guaranteed that both Spurs and City will lose at the weekend so 4th will probably be gone before it becomes crazily tight, but improving your points total every year is alright by me