Italy pretty much guaranteed an extra CL spot now - 1 team assured of a EL semi, plus 1 England vs Germany tie in both CL and EL.
Good draw for Liverpool, should make the final with relative ease
I thought without the ball he was quite good - he made some good tackles and didn't look like a raw kid.
With the ball is a different story, but he showed glimpses of what experience will make of him. He played one awful pass 2nd half to almost let them in, but other than that I dont think he stood out as being particularly bad.
Relatively, I thought he was better than Luiz.
Ref looked like he'd been given a Be a Ref for a Day gift experience for his birthday and cashed it in tonight.
Played in 3rd gear for most of it - if we'd gone with a bit more tempo we'd have won that by a couple.
I refuse to believe they'll be relegated until they're 4 points adrift with 1 game remaining and the team 4th bottom has no chance of a points deduction.
Potential Champions League money doesnt get paid until the end of the competition - gate receipts we'd obviously get, but UEFA wont be giving us £50m this June. It'd be either at the end of the competition or when we're knocked out. If we need boosting this summer then we'd need to sell a big value player because CL money won't be coming in.
In short, CL money won't be helpful to our FFP/PSR until 25/26.
It'll be this, or something similar.
If we dont own Villa Park (which we dont) then technically match day income wouldn't be the clubs either - it'd go to whatever pot of money that Springsteen, Foo Fighters, Pink, and the Motocross money went into and Aston Villa won't see a penny for FFP/PSR
There's a reason we host events - we aren't doing it for the sheer honour of having the above artists/events in "our" stadium.
They've been terrible all season, no idea how they're even in the top half never mind 6th. Their best performance all season was the 2nd half against us at Old Trafford.
They'll beat Man City though, just you watch
Exactly. Emery said in pre-season that his priorities in order were qualification for Europe via the league, Conference League, FA Cup, Carabao Cup.
He'd at some point prioritise the league, but not in March.
Apart from their form since changing manager after they lost at Brighton (I think)...
They've gone from 2nd bottom to 5th after winning 90% of their games. They're in a form (albeit in an average league), and you want to avoid in form teams
Maccabi Haifa
Ajax
Dinamo Zagreb
Servette
Union St Gilloise
Olympiakos
Molde
Sturm Graz
are the 8 winners. Probably want to avoid Ajax, Zagreb and USG - ideally Olympiakos as well