brommy

What was the score?

It's great to read some match detail but it can lack some context without a scoreline.

It definitely happened immediately after Forest's joke of a cross field pass, so it's hard to think it wasn't linked. Could be that Digne shouted something like 'These are ****'. Emery didn't like his lack of respect for the opposition, knowing it could lead to Villa players taking it easier and Forest players increasing their efforts to prove Digne's comment wrong. Not sure how that links to Digne's "When? When?" and smirk though.

Whatever happened, it obviously wasn't a major issue, as Emery still felt able to call on Digne for his 35 minutes substitute appearance.

5 minutes ago, romavillan said:

Bellingham is a nose isnìt he? Or Albion?

Even bigger than those - Stourbridge Town.

21 hours ago, delboy54 said:

Last year the insurance for my oldish toyota yaris runabout cost 220 quid for me and the missus. Direct line said that premium is now 570 this year

I know stuff goes up in price but this increase is crazy....needless to say I have some considerably cheaper quotes

I think most insurers are capitalising on the news that car insurance has 'gone through the roof' and hoping existing customers begrudgingly accept profiteering increases.

This month my renewal quote from LV was £920, up from last year's £560 and an increase of 64%.

I've cancelled the renewal and moved to Aviva with a near identical '5 star' policy. The cost, after a bit of cashback, was £540; a saving of £20 on last year's deal and a massive £380 cheaper than LV's renewal quote. Customer loyalty certainly does not pay!

Mate, last night's loss was proppa proppa. Mate, it was a proppa defeat to a proppa relegation candidate and without any help from them lot up the road. Mate, mate, matey mate.

Born in Selly Oak and lived in Northfield and Selly Oak suburbs of Birmingham until age 22, so around 6 miles or 10km from Villa Park, as the crow flies.

Last 32 years spent just south of the Lickey Hills so 12 miles or 20km. Fortunately the extra distance is soon travelled using the M5, so I'm still home in an hour after the final whistle.

On 26/01/2024 at 15:20, sidcow said:

Last night I watched a Big Match Revisited.  Villa v Leicester from our title winning season.

Was a fascinating interview with Saunders afterwards who was annoyed with the TV people for raising the size of the players win bonus.

There was quite a long conversation about how the players earned every penny of their enormous bonus.  The interviewer persisted and a conversation took place about the morality of the eye watering amounts the payers got paid these days and how the average working man fan might feel about it

The win bonus was £500.

But Saunders was talking about how football was now an entertainment business and entertainers get paid a lot of money and so should footballers.

He also said something along the lines of how important players contracts were now the most important tool and in his opinion things were only going to go one way.  Seems he was a bit of a visionary.

He also said an Aston Villa player thoroughly earns every penny they are paid.

Just made me laugh a bit about the "eye watering" amounts those players were deemed to be earning.  I think all of them still had to go get a "normal" job after they finished playing unless they made it into management or something.  What would those journalists think of todays players becoming multi millionaires off a single contract and flying around in private jets?

In case some of the younger VTers are thinking 'Yeah but that was two lifetimes ago, a £500 bonus is probably tens of thousands in 'today's money' ', after accounting for UK inflation, £500 in 1981 is now worth £1845.

That's probably just 2% of the average weekly wage of a Premier League starting player!

2 hours ago, The Fun Factory said:

On a slightly different topic what has happened to the proposed rail seating in the upper holte? Thought it would be installed this season? Having gone to Chelsea with the rail seats in the shed end it reminded that we were supposed to be doing this. The club also needs to do more disabled seating regardless of any stadium expansion or not as well. 

I believe it was recently mentioned this is being completed in the summer.

3 hours ago, sidcow said:

The other question is how sold out was it? Was it rammed or half empty? 

Ideally it would be sold out but not rammed.

Is this even confirmed or could it be a way of -

Increasing interest - with the new season approaching;

Raising Hamilton's profile even further;

Kicking Mercedes up the backside to increase their performance;

Detrimental impact to a competitor team as Ferrari end up being 'snubbed'.

Just wondering, at least until confirmation.

4 minutes ago, Genie said:

It’s quite unusual to have a deal agreed with a rival 1 year out. Mercedes won’t be happy to have Lewis listening in to all their technical plans now, only to take it to Ferrari.

I wonder if now that this is in place something happens for this season? Maybe Sainz and Lewis to swap seat this season?

Mercedes paying the world's most expensive gardening leave?!

Hamilton off to Ferrari in 2025 would be a surprise, wouldn't it?

1 hour ago, CVByrne said:

£12.5m is a lot for him, hopefully it's closer to smething like £8/9m + add ons

I understand the sentiment of this kind of statement but, as with any signing, is it possible to judge what fee is good or poor value, until sometime in to the player's tenure at a club?

Supposing Rogers joins us for an initially perceived bargain of £8m and is a flop? Yet a fee of £15m would trigger comments of Boro 'pulling our pants down' - way before he could possibly prove a bargain signing.

1 hour ago, theboyangel said:

What date is the Chelsea replay?

As @Kingman wrote, it's destined to be Wednesday 7th February.

We have games on the Saturday before and Sunday afterward but as Chelsea play on the Sunday before, that probably rules out Tuesday 6th.

I think Wednesday 7th would suit us well. 4 days after Sheffield Utd away and 4 days before manu at home. There seems to be exponentially more recovery/fitness issues with a 3 and 2 (usually only at Christmas) day gap.

1 minute ago, Herman22 said:

It almost seems they are making it as difficult as possible. You’d almost feel sorry for the refs.

So you can handball it, as long as you don’t score but you can handball it and pass it to someone else who can score. That makes sense. 

I can kind of see why those rules are in place. Unintentional handling isn't handball but, as all the governing bodies of football decided, nobody likes to see a goal scored by the player who has handled - unintentionally or otherwise.

5 minutes ago, limpid said:

RPI linked. The clubs with large grounds won't care as long as it's giving them an advantage.

If the cap is worth any value it needs to be lower than the highest clubs charge. Surely that will 'cap' the income of Sky6 before it affects us. Obviously more seats helps, but that's the case now with or without a cap.

23 minutes ago, limpid said:

I think an £80 cap sounds about right if it was proposed.

I wonder for how long though. That's unlikely to curtail our ticket income for years but I expect the London clubs would be affected before long.

6 minutes ago, Follyfoot said:

you are proppa rattled mate

 

I'm more rattled than Mrs Overall serving soup.

2 minutes ago, sidcow said:

The Merseyside Reds?

Not global enough. The Solar System Scousers has more reach and financial gravity pull.

9 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

To be honest, I don't think they're going to come up with a better name than 'Liverpool'. 

Not when 'Aston Villa' is already taken.

4 minutes ago, Genie said:

Sounds legit. 

Bit like the Man City owners finding creative ways of putting money into the club  

I expect those loopholes will be properly closed after the outcome of the charges against citeh are announced in 2025. Even if the case against citeh isn't proven, the PL (and following EFL) won't want that much egg on their face again and are sure to revisit the exact wordings and effectiveness of their laws. I'll be slightly surprised if the sty@ name sale to their own selves helps them climb the greasy pole for more than the next season or two.

3 hours ago, limpid said:

I hope so. If I've thought of it, I guarantee others have.

Given previous PL voting issues have required a majority of 14 of the 20 clubs, I'd be surprised if an average price cap on home ticket was agreed to. It's one thing to 'do the right thing' and agree a £30 cap for the small minority that away fans represent, but capping home ticket prices would be like Turkeys voting for Christmas. Really can't imagine the London clubs being happy at anything less than an average of £80!

12 hours ago, limpid said:

But if we start the day it's agreed, and assuming that we have a contractor ready to go, it'll take two years to build, with less revenue.

It'll be such an easy sell for the big clubs though, that they are doing it for the fans. How could any of the CEOs be seen to be against that?

Fair enough but I still think we're chatting about something that's not going to be built at a time when something is very unlikely to happen.

3 hours ago, limpid said:

My biggest concern with delaying the rebuild would be a league--wide introduction of a price cap for the "average fan" ticket. I've not heard this proposed, but it's already a thing for away fans where first they introduced parity with home fans and then a fixed price.

If we are in a smaller stadium with poor facilities for upselling food, drink and merchandise then this could really hurt. And I can't see the big clubs objecting to another way to keep smaller clubs down.

As you wrote, I can't see an average fan price cap being introduced for home fans. However, if it were, wouldn't that encourage expansion as the only way to increase gate revenue? Kind of the opposite of what Heck's current plan is.

3 minutes ago, R.Bear said:

Unedited? We changed the badge and removed the "prepared" years ago. It's not edited, it was changed. You're obviously a big Villa fan 

My mistake on the old badge 'prepared' omission. I'm a slightly overweight Villa fan of near 1000 games attended. Not sure if that's 'big' or not, but then I'm not looking to be judged.

The AVFC, un-detailed pale yellow lion are enough for me to prefer the recent offerings, as I previously posted. I had hoped an explanation behind a different opinion would clear your amazement that some might prefer the crest with 'Aston Villa' and the detailed gold lion to the Lerner era 'AVFC' yellow lion crest you posted.