Annoyman

Agree with all that but that said: he needs to stop brandishing imaginary cards at refs even if he's right, could easily have picked up a fifth yellow in a couple of recent games for it

Hehe yeah Watkins is an incredibly thin-skinned cry baby, who should be deeply ashamed of (and possibly charged by the FA for) the heinous crime of pointing at a man. He has ruined any chance of ever having a good reception back at uh, the club that was chanting that he's a judas and a "**** Ivan Toney". This apparently partially stems from him "over-celebrating" in the 4-0 last season, which, idk, in his post-Gerrard malaise he looked so unlikely to hit a barn door that day I wouldn't have begrudged him a couple of extra backflips

also thinking that ex-players have a duty to act like they're at a funeral when they score against you because a few players did stupid performative "look at me not celebrating" acts after scoring is a really pathetic development of recent years.

Brentford aren't the Great Satan and they had a couple of booooorderline pen decisions go against them alongside the fairly straightforward red for Mee, which their fans are now venting about. Most of them aren't insane losers losing the run of themselves calling for legs to be broken. This is all kind of embarrassing and I feel like everyone involved needs to go home and calm down a bit, get charged by the FA for failing to control their players, levy some stern internal discipline and then play out a comparatively unremarkable Actual Football Match in the return fixture

In the meantime our trophy drought continues, while the number of Premier League clubs to win the "would definitely have beaten Villa if not for the ref and all the players we had out" trophy reaches double figures for the season. Sad!

Turns out that was former Wales international David Phillips. It added to the purgatorial nature of most of the game effectively I guess? May we never hear his voice again.

yeah Drury is way too over the top and pretentious, he needs the classic PES/dodgy international feed pairing with Jim Beglin's incredibly tame warm bath truisms to balance him out. Can't be doing with him alongside Neville and Carragher's spittle flying everywhere

Feels like a lot of the slightly younger generation of commentators coming through have knocked the overwrought Mowbray/Drury type stuff on the head a bit and are a bit more straightforward in their style, which I am extremely here for

Elsewhere, Wrighty's retiring from MOTD and I'm gonna say it: he's one of the good ones and I'll be sorry to see him go

The first half was...alright? The open game suited us better than the alternative, but our chances were falling to the wrong players, and conceding a sloppy tame set piece goal so late on was potentially disastrous. We did see Pau doing what he was originally meant to do as part of a back three and I thought he was excellent.

The second half was ten minutes of total dominance by Villa with no end product, ten minutes of Brentford threatening again, then the red and load of embarrassing craziness

It's a great result but Emery needs to get a big mental reset going this week because people were losing the run of themselves and acting like maniacs. There's no good reason for Kamara to have put himself out of three matches, and Watkins, with the caveat that we probably won't know exactly how bad the stuff this rando in the crowd was shouting at him was, doesn't really need to be making the game about that and causing melees

All in all, well done, now please calm down and have an early night FFS

Just now, osmark86 said:

Ref is absolutely not in control here

Tbf everyone on the pitch is behaving like an absolute maniac at this point

Dimbulb pundits going on about how all you have to do to beat Villa 5-0 is simply beat their offside trap by timing your pass and run perfectly five times, you'd think somebody would have cottoned on

Just now, Herman22 said:

Who’s the co commentator on Optus Sport? Clearly doesn’t like Villa whoever he is. 

I don't think he likes being alive by the sound of it

17 minutes ago, oishiiniku_uk said:

Nice one, Roy! After the way Pep acted on the touchline against Luton last week he more than deserves that. He may be magnanimous in victory, but Guardiola shows his true colours when things don't go his way.

Tbf Pep was 100% magnanimous in defeat to Villa, but then again has there ever been a defeat in his career where he had fewer possible excuses available at the end of it?

"if it wasn't a goal it should've been a penalty for cash handballing it"

"it was headed onto Cash's shoulder from point blank range then ricocheted around into Havertz' arm and hand. Only the attacking handball is an offence under the current laws of the game."

"it doesn't touch Havertz' hand though"

"here are like 3 or 4 angles in slow mo of the ball touching his inner arm then his fingers"

"the ref couldn't have seen that from 30 yards away, he was guessing"

"here is a is a view from behind the goal of the referee being about 18 yards away and looking directly at the incident as it happens, accompanied by audio of him immediately after the whistle saying he's disallowing it for an attacking handball by Havertz"

"it should've been a penalty for Cash handballing it"

Everton ruthlessly slamming unanswered goals in against Newcastle and Chelsea while Goodison goes absolutely buckwild is pure box office imo

I think the 10 point deduction seemed fair enough but it's also fair enough if they immediately put 10 points back on the board while foaming at the mouth in response to it

"Saka was clearly onside " is a new one, "there is no evidence at all from any of the replays that the ball touched Havertz' hand at any point" was a bizarre talking point from yesterday, especially after watching MOTD again. "the ref was 30 yards away and couldn't possibly see the thing he blew immediately for, he just guessed because PGMOL is engaged in a shadow war with the Arsenal" is a related derangement

Honestly the biggest issue I could see, allowing that the pen shout was a seen em given seen em not one, was the Carlos elbow/forearm on Nketiah which looked dodgy as **** on the replay, as was the bizarre mechanism by which he was somehow awarded a yellow by the ref that was visibly looking at something else when it happened

Lads Garth Crooks is a mascot, he hasn't known what day it is at any point this decade, getting angry at his team of the week is several steps ahead of "caring about Talksport bait" on the waste of energy scale

...my aunt lives in London, she says it's quite nice

Do we reckon Fulham are getting double figures against Newcastle? I mean it's maybe a stretch too far with Tripps missing

Cash on Bentancur was a nasty tackle but that alone  is...so much worse than anything Cash has ever done in his career

The guy's like an industrial thresher out there ffs

Every Arsenal fan I know IRL is sound and knows a lot about football tbh, they just have a high and very visible % of braindead attention seeking Youtube-y types and overcompensating hysterical overseas fans screaming on Reddit

Not sure it's reaching all the way up to Brum but London is actually slightly shaking from the ongoing Arsenal tantrum

Hope Leon is OK, two big contributions in a huge 135 minutes for us this week. We're past needing to wish for "Bundesliga Bailey" at this point and into new territory I think

50 minutes ago, MaVilla said:

what a b*tch Arteta is.

 

 

Beautiful synergy with the chant given that his actual entire experience at the game was to see the Villa and **** off home

Thank god for the TV coverage remembering to cut to the occasional identical 5 second long shot of him motionless and glowering

Pundits barely acknowledging Bournemouth in their solemn post-mortem for Utd

Why has John DVB Useless done this?

Gotta say I always love seeing people bust out "they played as if it was their cup final because it was us", the last refuge of the shellshocked

"hahaha look at your players running round busting a gut just so they can play us off the pitch. Nice to see we still live rent free in your heads I'm enjoying this, actually"

As much as it's had me grinding my teeth for the last 48 hours and will no doubt ruin my weekend whatever happens at Arsenal, Haaland astutely darted back onside just before the cross came in and they legitimately had two shots against us

Edit: no, **** it, I watched it again in slowmo and they would definitely have had to draw the lines on it at the very least. I never want to hear about "ghost goals" ever again while we've got to live with this hanging over us

Was reading their post-match thread and there's nothing really objectionable about the game, but the amount of (quite possibly premature) dejection and consternation that they might not win the league for a fourth time in a row is so bizarre to me, who on earth could want football to be like that