danceoftheshamen

Sadly I agree that the protection racket that surrounds these scummy 6 clubs will ensure there is no relegation for them. We already saw VAR trying to intervene when they were losing against Brighton. Every single big decision, a couple of them totally blatant like the McTominay non sending off for a blatant red card offence and the disgusting failure to award Brighton a Penalty when it was as clear as day that their player got a charge in the back off the utd player.. VAR of course conveniently ignored both hiding behind the "not clear enough to overturn it" excuse when it couldn't have been any clearer! Despicable, and the reason there is not a cat in hells chance they will be relegated. Last season should be evdidence enough of this when they were woeful & still finished Europe! I see the disgraceful & violent Romero hair pull on a Chelsea player also went "unoticed" by VAR. (It is of course very unusual for a scummy 6 club to be victim of a blatant VAR going against them "Unless it is against another scummy 6 team" as was the case here with it being Spurs vs Chelsea) History also shows different outcomes for "hair pulls" for non-scummy 6 clubs as compared to scummy 6 clubs. No surprise Man Utd are front & central in this as in 2016 Leicester City's Robert Huth got retrospectively banned for pulling Marouane Fellaini's hair & yet in 2018 Fellaini (Then playing for Man Utd) then pulled Matteo Gendoui's hair and a free kick resulted but no card & no retrospective ban! Move on to 2022 & Romero's disgraceful assault on Cucurella, far worse than the Fellaini incidents by the way, and VAR fails to do anything about it whatsoever...Guess who was the VAR ref?!!! .......Oh yes! ... The man himself, Mike Dean! But because VAR looked at it (With blind eyes) no retrospective action can be taken. No doubt had that been Mings on Romero he would have seen red & been banned. The whole thing stinks to high heaven.

Judging by Bournemouth he is even worse in a one up top system

Absolutely gutted for him, what a tragic start to his Villa career & at his age devastating for him & us. Need a new CB again now. What an all round calamitous start to the new season, what with the Bournemouth debacle & all. Thankfully he helped us get the first win which just could be the most important one of the season.

Typical Villa Happened to Adama T too didn't it? against Notts County in the cup. Our new players almost always get injury issues almost as soon as they kick a ball for us. Bailey vs Everton Last season for example. Heaton & Wesley both doing their cruciates it just goes on & on.

Good luck Keinan! Go and clean the place after that Deeney bloke stinking the place up.

Exactly my point! 30 crosses by all accounts! You just know he would have got on several of those and held the ball up for others.

Maybe that is the plan? To not be too predictable? To vary the patttern or something

And yet he is likely much better at holding the ball up than any of our current strikers who seem incapable of doing it! For me he would have done much better against Bournemouth, as well as knowing their game having played against them last season, than Ings who was totally ineffective. Oh & a question for you all.. On current form.....Who is the better finsher? Watkins or Keinan?

Dunno but i cringe when I hear sweet Caroline & Hi Ho Silver Lining. It's not like they are exclusively Villa songs even. But then I am a DJ so I would have some stuff on which most people at the game wouldn't have a clue as to what it was lol! I like fresh cutting edge stuff rather than music that's 50 odd years old.

Quite frankly it was a disgrace that he didn't start against Bournemouth in my view. Head & shoulders our most consistent defender in my book & also contributes with goals & sublime forward passes on occasion. How the heck he got overlooked is yet another reason I have given up on Gerrard.

Exactly, So in other words if you take out the false impression of the new manager bounce it was relegation form.

At this point , after watching that absolute horror show against the mighty Bournemouth, I would take just survival as this seasons achievement. As we saw last season with Newcastle, you can suddenly whip through 14 games in this division without a single win, if you get off to the wrong start. I just hope & pray that our home form level is way above our away form level. That's what I am clinging to but I fear the dressing room has now been divided after "Mingsgate" and I am genuinely fearful for our season. Sounds as though there is some internal disruption affecting things as that performance was not normal. That was more than an off-day, it was like a bunch of disinterested blokes going through the motions with no interest in trying to get a result.

Have to add.................Emile Heskey! We were I think 2nd or 3rd and scoring freely when he arrived. 4th was absolutley there for the taking. Signing him was like throwing a huge blanket over our goals for column and we ended up 6th.That was the huge mistake for Lerner & O'neill in my view. A poor, poor decision. It was clear for all to see that our goals had dried up as a result but MON's stubborness in persistently playing him instead of Carew etc reminds me of Gerrard's insistence in playing a woefully out of form Coutinho!

Saying i'm not patient? I've been waiting 40 years to see us have another really decent team! It's been all excuses, poor choices, lack of investment just at the time we had a chance to complete a decent side. Atkinsons, Gregory's, O'neill's & Little's Villa teams all were ok to decent but thanks to Ellis none were ever "complete" in my view. I remember the nonsense about Jounihno, Robbie Keane etc. All BS stories by Ellis who simply refused to go the extra mile needed to give us a genuine chance of titles etc FOR 40 YEARS we have been patiently waiting for owners like these. Now we need that manager who can build the team we need. I think that's pretty darned patient personally

"There for the taking", are the only words which spring to mind after Saturday. (I mean us of course), Absolutely dreading it.

The more I think about Saturday the more fuming I get. Of all the things to do on the eve of a new season you shaft the club captain and then face him off publicly by saying "when he looks me in the eyes" etc and give it to a guy who did nothing of a leadership nature at all on the day, with even media reporting that nobody was shouting or leading on the pitch! Why do that on the eve of the new season! He then drops the same player who was likely the only one we have who would have dealt with their giants in the air! To make it even worse the second best guy at dealing with them, who in my opinion on pre-season form and form last season, is Chambers! Instead he goes with the two players who have played together the least as a centre back pairing! One of whom has been suspect for a good while now. Unbelieveable to be quite honest. Coutinho should have been hauled off too quite clearly as should Ramsey & McGinn.

It really is a worry Chris, I don't see us beating Everton tbh. We have had a good few wins against them over the last few seasons and it just feels like time they got a result against us for some reason and we are looking pretty much in disarray after that shocking performance at Bournemouth. Would even be happy with a draw just to get something on the board. I don't like our strike force (Great to see Archer in there though but way to early to be expecting too much from him especially whilst it's a bit sour) nor our rather weird midfield. The two just don't seem to know how to play together and haven't done for a good while.

I see they have started early this season. Strike 1 - (Dubious) Brighton 2-0 up at Old Trafford, Disgusting leg breaking tackle from McTominay.....VAR fails to turn the given Yellow into a red. Strike 2 - (Disgusting) Then even worse an absolute stone wall penalty for Brighton when the UTD player rams into the back of the Brigton player blatantly pushing him over....Guess what! Of course no penalty given. Strike 3 - (Clearly corruption at play) Now UTD score and the ball hits the arm of the UTD player in build up - Strike 3 Goal given. Disgusting and corrupt. As ever Utd losing and in trouble, all of a sudden absoltuely everything starts to go their way assisted by the ref & a clearly corrupt VAR system.

Not for me, the glaring issue here is Beale leaving. Early signs are not good at all.

Sadly I think it went up in smoke already after losing and creating zero against most likely the Worst team in the division.

Well i'm personally finding it extrememly hard to stay onboard with this Gerrard thing in all honesty. The football is horrid to watch which in some instances is necessary if effective. This turgid stuff is not even effective more often than not, so what are we doing exactly. That was abysmal yesterday, as it was for the most part last season. I just can't see how we are expecting to get results with the same midfield-forward line that was quite poor last season? It's like watching last seasons Villa with a couple of repair patches stuck on the edges....But then SG counterbalances it all with this change in captaincy and dropping our best (although of course occasionally error-prone) defender in Mings. I still can't fathom why you would start Konsa over the impressive Chambers either? Especially when we were playing a team with little else but physicality & height!? .........Bizarre to say the least. I fear for us and am now 7/8 in the "need new manager" camp.

For me we just look so disjointed, sloppy and well, confused as a team. Sadly I just don’t get Gerard’s Villa at the moment and would be delighted to see Poch come in.

So the Pre season “optimism” I had has gone already, well actually not that I had much anyway really as Beale the brains left and we have failed to sort the lack of creativity or our spluttering srikers. Not a cat in hells chance this squad and manager finishes top half sadly. More drudgery as we saw pretty much all pre season.

Looking at the cold hard historic facts and taking into account this is Villa, this is a real potential banana skin fixture. Newly promoted team at theirs on the opening day, which is traditionally the worst day to play a newly promoted team on their home patch. All I will say is it is an opportunity hopefully, to get the season off to a good start. This is football however and opening day is the day when odd results happen. Couple that with this being Villa and I have no idea what the result will be

I wouldn’t normally care about any disrespectful comment about Villa from an18 year old but when it is a guy who we helped to develop to the heights he has over several years and when said guy has taken a chunk of the clubs money in the process, then Yes it annoys me!