brommy

18 hours ago, limpid said:

I used a quick tap of my phone.

It was other fans who were using paper tickets or being slow to access the QR code on their phone that caused delays to enter Villa Park (in comparison to PL games where around 75% of home fans quickly tap on with their ST card), so you're definitely off the hook on this one!

I had my phone already showing the QR code which took 2 seconds to scan, so it wasn't me either, but I'm curious how to enable the 'ticket' to be able to tap on?

Has anyone asked the club why ST cards can't be used for cup games purchased by ST holders?

My son queued from 2 minutes before half time to 5 minutes in to the second half (over 20 minutes), to be told the chicken he'd ordered and paid for had sold out so they needed to refund him. An unacceptable delay and unacceptable stock level in the Holte Upper.

Given the high prices, the club are missing out on some serious profit, by not shifting as much food and drink as they logistically should be able to.

59 minutes ago, Wainy316 said:

Why has getting people through the turnstiles in a timely manner suddenly become so difficult?

Sell out cup games with tickets on paper or phone to be scanned takes that little bit longer than a quick tap on with a season ticket. I usually arrive at the Holte Upper 15 minutes before kick-off. It typically takes a minute or two to queue, be searched and go through the turnstile. Last night it took about 4 minutes. Still okay in my opinion, although I did walk past queues to the Trinity Road entrances that looked like they might take longer than 5 minutes, which isn't so reasonable.

26 minutes ago, MrBlack said:

 

hardly raving, but more a typically useless summary on why he made the 11. Amazing he still gets paid:

 

Nicolas Jackson (Chelsea): Cristian Romero had been sent off - again, Micky van de Ven pulled his hamstring and limped off, James Maddison was taken off, and all in the first half.

Then, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for Tottenham, Destiny Udogie makes an unnecessary challenge and receives a second yellow card.

With nine men left on the pitch and Spurs the architect of their own downfall, due to a combination of stupidity and recklessness, the stage was set for Chelsea to take complete advantage and Nicolas Jackson did just that. He finished all of his three goals very calmly.

Naming a hat trick scorer in a team of the week after listing exactly why it wasn't a performance typically worthy of a place in team of the week. That's so Garth Crooks.

6 minutes ago, Chine said:

I’m currently in the Isle of Wight, the weather has been pap , lots of heavy rain , hailstorm today very windy and quite a few flooded roads 

Did you visit Blackgang, Chine?

8 minutes ago, Kingman said:

He'll be gone for Christmas and another season down the drain 

Just bought a buy-to-let on Cheddar Road, so I hope not.

Best result for us, just in my opinion, of course.

1 hour ago, duke313 said:

Enjoy it while it lasts, according to Arsenal fans second season syndrome is going to kick in any minute now

Checking the fixture calendar after each Villa win and muttering - 'it must be starting next week then.'

3 minutes ago, Hornso said:

I'm fairly certain we did something similar recently? Sneakily moved the ball back a bit when the ref wasn't paying attention to help us get it up and over the wall. Or am I imaging things?

Digne against manu.

1 hour ago, StefanAVFC said:

3rd exit poll (the late poll) also suggests majority for the opposition. That’s 3 now. 

When are the actual vote counts announced?

48 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

I think the aim remains to either remove Gaza from the map altogether or shrink it significantly - a good strategy to reduce terrorist attacks along a border is to remove as much of that border as you can.

 

After some geography homework, the Gaza strip, as it's often called, is currently around 25 miles long and 7.5 miles at its widest point. It's perimeter is around 66 miles long compiled of 7 miles bordering Egypt to the South, a reasonably straight coastline of 25 miles to the West and the remaining 34 miles bordering Israel to the North and East.

It's possible Israel is attempting to force the strip into a 'Gaza square' at the Egyptian border. It'll shrink their border to secure from 34 miles to 14, a reduction of almost 60%. It'll make life in Gaza even more difficult than it is now and presumably restrict any population growth, another benefit to Israel.

29 minutes ago, bickster said:

What do you mean A book, there's bloody  three of them. How the f*** he managed to write three books in his state whilst walking round the garden is what amazes me  

Ghost writer. Literally.

3 minutes ago, bickster said:

Why are you here then?

I don't see VT as unsolicited social media. VT isn't a large a inner city public toilet - more like a decent pub or restaurant toilet where you're much less likely to see anything untoward.

5 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

God social media is the biggest cesspool I’ve ever witnessed regarding this topic. Utterly depressing situation with utterly predictably depressing outcomes. 

I'd highly recommend not visiting social media at all. It's far from a necessity and it's disadvantages far outweigh it's advantages.

Think of it as the biggest, dirtiest inner city public toilet you'd rather not even imagine. It's there and could be useful but visits can be avoided and you certainly don't want to stay to browse.

6 minutes ago, Genie said:

From the outside looking in, attacking your neighbour when the lives of your 2.4m population relied on that neighbour’s survival might be the stupidest thing in history.

 

Perhaps like being trapped in a room by a wasp nest blocking the doorway and deciding the only solution is to punch open the nest.

2 minutes ago, Mic09 said:

I see no great difference in stabbing or bombing. A life is a life regardless of how you take it. 

And if you take that into consideration, the west looks like the worst offender of the century. 

Quite possibly, unless collateral deaths are considered a relevant issue, such as targeting military or militant resources that attempt to use civilian areas as 'protection', but that's a discussion not just for this conflict.

3 hours ago, KentVillan said:

Is it particularly important if the babies were beheaded or shot or stabbed? Whatever the method, it seems clear a lot of innocent children were murdered.

It disturbs me that there is a fascination in the method of baby/child murder and that some methods are apparently more heinous and therefore other methods, whilst still unacceptable are more tolerable. Whether disinformation on the method of child murder was used, there's no denial that child murder happened. I see no reason to increase my disgust if children were beheaded or lower my disgust if they were shot or stabbed to death.

There's something wrong with human nature if there is a reason to alter the method of mass murder of babies, children, or adults, before publicising it. The method shouldn't matter.

5 hours ago, andycv said:

I don't think they'd be able to get away with that, given I understand the bid is binding.  Might be wrong though!

I agree with the recent post by @The Fun Factory. I can't imagine any repercussions if Villa Park is 'only' at 50k capacity. Although I'm not saying 52k won't happen prior to Euro 2028, I won't be surprised if the phase above 50k doesn't happen in time.

I've previously seen Villa Park full at 46k but it will be something special to hear 50 thousand announced as the match attendance. Because of segregation, to achieve an actual attendance of 50k+, they'll need to build the next phase after 50k is technically reached.

I'm still really hoping 52k is built and I'm very intrigued where the extra 2k will be located without a new D.E. stand. I'm currently guessing: the corner of the D.E. and Holte (restricted view issues?); an extension at the back of the Holte Upper; relying on the government allowing a safe standing ratio of more than the current 1 to 1; or a combination of more than one of the above.

29 minutes ago, Paul33 said:

Surely its meaningless stuff really. Players will sign new contracts regardless of their intentions ...... it simply means the club can hold out for a bigger fee from the small handful of mega-clubs who can afford him (eg; Grealish, Delph, etc). Be interesting to know what the buy-out clause(s) would be !

Good news but if the likes of Man City, Arsenal really throw big money at him then the club will, I'm sure, release him but I doubt very much that there is any risk of that.
 

Do you believe the only teams Ollie would be interested in moving to are teams that will never be interested in Ollie?

If not, his contract extension is far from meaningless.

14 hours ago, paul514 said:

With regards to the Euro 28 bid, I think posters have missed the biggest bit of info from the story......

Listed on the BBC website is a list of the host stadiums with us listed as......

7. Villa Park (Birmingham) (52,190)
 

To my knowledge no one has said what our new capacity will be before today when the stand is done.....

The 52k figure was listed when the official bid was made a good while ago. Some discussion on this thread followed, focussing on where the extra 2k seats (above phase one's expansion to 50k) would be.

24 minutes ago, MrBlack said:

Now that we're not building villa live at the same time, is there any chance of building a lot of the stand behind the current one before it's knocked down, giving us less time with a reduced capacity?

I think the need to remove much of the high level ground behind the current North Stand and how that will affect the power, water and drainage connections prohibits the possibility.

1 hour ago, StefanAVFC said:

In 31 years I've never felt any need to get involved in neighbourhood drama, I've never even told anyone off for poor parking, but it's come to the crushing end recently and I'm fuming tbh.

We live on a new estate, but it's completely privately owned. The owner of the entire plot of land divided different pieces of it himself.

First he divided some bigger pieces of it and sold it to his mates, family etc, and then they built their houses on it. Included in that is the President of our city (around 190000 people so fairly influential)

After that he divided another 30% or so into terraced houses which he funded himself, and sold. He's finished and sold about 80% of these and the rest are still a work in progress.

The remaining land is divided and either sold and built on, sold and empty or unsold.

Here's the plan of it:

The bigger ones on the right are his mates/family and the houses on the left are the terraces he funded. We live at plot 31.

Now, the drama.

As the land is completely privately owned, we don't have a road. I mean, we do, but it's just dirt. If we want a road, we have to pay for it ourselves. The yellow is the road. 

This topic has been going on for a while; the issue is we don't have a shared forum for everyone to discuss. There have been 3/4 meetings where about 40% of the neighbourhood showed up, and there's a FB group with about 40 people in it.

2 meetings ago, probably in June, we were discussing the financing of the road. 3 options emerged. Split the cost based on the 'ownership' of the road in everyone's acts, split the cost based on how the road 'touches' each person's land, and the option suggested by the owner of plot 47 (laughed down at the meeting by most) split the cost evenly in 'neighbourly solidarity'. Nothing was decided and the topic rolled on.

This week there was another meeting discussing the final costs from the contractor, and at the top of table, 4 blokes, owners of the biggest plots, plus the overall owner, who have decided the best option is to split the cost evenly. Why? Because if it's done 'fairly', they're out of pocket for anywhere between £10000-£15000. One owner of 4 plots has categorically stated if it's done 'fairly' he won't contribute. Due to his ownership, he'd owe about £20000 towards it.

Split evenly, the cost would be about £3200 quid. Based on our ownership of the road in our deed, our actual cost should be £930 quid. If anyone doesn't agree to the funding, then the road doesn't happen. People (who 'fairly' owe a lot less) raising concerns that paying more isn't really fair are being publicly accused of delaying the road, whereas the bigger land owners who will refuse based on the 'fair' distribution who refuse are not.

Us, the people in plots 32 and 33 are essentially being shafted, having to cough up 3x more for this than we should, on the whim of people with big plots of land/houses for what? In the name of solidarity? Where's our solidarity here? Why do we need to subsidise their decisions?

Another element here, the people in the terraces on the left 'fairly' would need to pay about £2200, so about a grand less than the even split. For them, because they bought a house directly from him, he said he'll give them the extra grand back. So if we do a vote across the neighbourhood, they're essentially bought.

 

That's very underhand, especially by undemocratically stating if the one option isn't unanimously agreed the naysayers are blocking progress.

As the primary purpose of the road is to unable unhindered access to one's property, another fair option to consider maybe to measure the shortest distance by road from the access to the estate (start of the proposed new road) to each property and add the distances together with each plot (the land owner should pay for each plot currently unbuilt) then paying for the proportion they use. I mean why should plot 1 pay the same as plot 52 when plot 1 uses a few metres and plot 52 uses a few hundred metres?

21 minutes ago, PeterSw said:

Also confirmation that it's actually unlimited alcohol too judging from the drinks menu 

They'll be hoping fans tuck in to the ice cream and pick 'n' mix soon after the savoury food. I can't be the only bloke who struggles to continue drinking beer after having something sweet.

Masons mount.