danceoftheshamen

Sadly that was a really predictable outcome today. For me we are not anywhere near good enough defensively for a top 4 finish. Mings injury ensured that in game 1. For me he is our best defender by some margin and it will repeatedly cost us aginst the better teams this season. As for attack? Well at the moment sadly Watkins is a dud and Bailey is largely poor, albeit with the odd decent game at home i guess. He is far too casual though for a top 4 side. So as soon as we had to change things round when Carlos got injured, it was effectively game over as a contest. You can't play Liverpool away with a patched up unsettled defence & two duds out of three up top. Poor performance against a much better team. Got exactly what we deserved. As for top 5? Mings' injury & the persistent missing of sitters will kill any chance of that.

Surely we are past the silly days of selling our best players to those usual clubs who always but always do this deliberately at the most awkward times (Anyone remember Liverpool upsetting Gareth Barry by tapping him up & spreading rumours as we were chasing a big end to the season?) It is a typical Liverpool move to unsettle a player just as the window is about to close when we would have no chance of replacing him. win win for them, lose lose for us. The only possible reaction is to tell them to do one!

Sounds about right, was having a discussion at the weekend about the latest generations behaviour patterns in a meeting to do with nightclub events. Some of the things which go on now were: They are extremely egostisical, have the attention span of a fish, are more interested in posting images of themselves on tic tok than actually doing anything like dancing. One of the club owers was watching on his cameras as a group of girls spent literally half the night taking pics of themselves in various poses whilst the main dj was on....They were in the middle of the dancefloor but not dancing or showing any interest in the DJ or music but proceeded to just pose & post for 41 minutes! If you ask most of them what music they like now they are lost the usual answer is a blank look & then "i'm not actually particularly into anything".. too interested in self / ego and reflecting this on social media. Oh yes...welcome to 2023!

So another dodgy penno anyone?! I see they are desperate to have them up there again this season. I truly wish they would investgate this dodgy Premier League, it's so blatant it's actually comical now.

So I hope and assume that clip has been forwarded to the authorities, must be traceable from that. Note it has several likes too. Those idiots need flushing down some toilet somewhere.

Oh goody! Points deduction for them?

Ahhhh! Makes the win all the more pleasing

CLICKY: Has to be surely

Well of course Bobzy there are the odd ones which still go against, although 90% of the time this is when they play against another of those 6 clubs namely: Man U, Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool, Man City & Chelsea. (No surprises that this was the ill fated "Euro Super League "Breakaway 6). Out of all those I would say Man Utd are the clear front runners, regards being given a huge helping hand, followed by Liverpool the London clubs & City. Now of course the odd decision goes against those breakaway 6 clubs, but very seldom (by comparison) & when it does it rarely impacts the result of the game or results in a "goal against" so to speak. So the sending off against Palace (which I agree was incorrect) didn't really impact the result. There was in the same game however a big penalty appeal for Palace towards the end which would have impacted the result, which rightly or wrongly wasn't given. My point is that had the tables been turned and that scenario was played out at Arsenals ground with them 0-1 down, then that penalty almost certainly would have been given resulting in a 1-1 draw....We saw this at Anfield when Liverpool were 0-1 down, got back to 1-1 & were then given the most pathetic penalty for a blatantly clear dive! Anyhow, Clearly we have differing viewpoints on it Bobzy which I respect. I have however been watching this dodgyness for years now and it is actually really obvious when you take everything into account. Looking at it decision by decision doesn't enable you to see the overall pattern but when you look at it over the course of a few seasons, (not just Villa games, that's not my point at all) then it is very clear that those teams get a huge benefit from a ridiculous number of big decisions across a season. We are what 2 weeks in? Already Man U got a win when they should only have at best 1 point. Liverpool received a helping hand too at home to Bournemouth with the game 1-1. Multiply that up over a season & you can see the impact it has. Are we supposed to ignore that? So yes there will be the odd decision, like the sending off in the Arsenal game, but the averages over a season and even moreso over several seasons make it as clear as day that something is amiss.

You gotta love Ollie! Very frustrating at times of course but he has so many good parts to his game and now & then hits a scoring streak, just needs to continue to work hard on his finishing.

This'll no doubt be to facilitate the cover up now that it's becoming so blatantly obvious to more people. They did the same with Dermott Gallaghers weekly cover up session.

On another note, lovely stonewall (that's sarcasm btw) penno Liverpool got against Bournemouth

Spurs are also one of those 6 clubs so the point is mute. As I said in the post most of the decisions that go against them are when they play another of the favoured clubs. Man Utd Spurs falls into that catergory.

I can answer this.. It is because Man Utd have been lower in the league than they want them to be and have been for a few years now. Hence the "helping hand" is coming out thick & often now as they desperately try to get what is frankly a mid table team, to finish in the top 4. They achieved it last season and Utd were largely awful.... Work that out! I've been saying how this works on here for years now but have always been shot down in the main. Finally people are starting to become more aware of just how corrupt this League is. That Wolves no-penalty literally could not have been any more stonewall and yet a whole team of officials, with the benefit of replays etc, said it was inconclusive.... well that is 100% conclusive that this League is corrupt in my opinion. Notice how they pulled it out in the last few minutes of the game too with UTD clinging to an undeserved lead. If it had been 3-0 to UTD they would have given it. Regards this new offside situation, it is once again the new season "smokescreen" they have created, purely to facilitate all the incoming dodgy decisions we & the rest of the "other" teams will inevitably get against the usual clubs. We all know who they are of course. They do it every season and it's then used to coverup "mistakes"...& yet as in every season, 90% of them will go in favour of those clubs with most of the ones which go against them being when they play against each other or when it doesn't matter. It's easy to give a penno aganst Man Utd when they are already 3-0 up for example. If it's close you won't get the decision......They, if the roles were reversed, would of course. Happens every season and it's so predictable it's actually ridiculous now.

I personally think we are going to really struggle defensively with Mings out. We are severely lacking aerially now and against the big teams we are going to get found out I fear. For me we desperately need a new, aerially dominant defender, even if on loan for the season. I see Torres as a brilliant, intelligent player technically, though aerially he's just "Ok". Both Konsa & Chambers are not the strongest aerially either & as for Carlos he's still not quite right and appears to have lost some of his spring aerially since the injury. So Mings was by a country mile our best defence against the aerial threat. We surely have to get someone in? Teams will totally be targetting us with loads of high balls into the box and balls over the top now. A huge challenge for Emery to resolve this now. Thing is who on Earth could we get in?

For me losing Mings is like losing your captain and biggest rock of the team... It is a massive blow and will leave a gaping hole. I must admit to not being impressed (yet) by Either Torres nor Carlos and Digne / Cash I thought looked out of sorts at Newcastle too! I fear this is going to take some sorting out, losing Buendia has also largely nullified the extra creativity we brought in (Although he does also go missing very often anyway) The big issue is that this now pushes Bailey closer to starts, which to me is scary as he is, for me, a poor player and a liabilty. Him ahead of Cash on that right side, is an accident waiting to happen. We have many good players but we are a badly damaged unit right now. I see a worse team than last season with a lot more question marks about them at this point in time. We need replacements if we are to have a good season still otherwise I am revising my prediction to having the kind of season West Ham had last time out.

I thought we were a shambles defensively from minute one to be honest. The defensive line was all over the place, & that was with Mings & Konsa in the middle. I though Digne looked off it, Cash is still a liability, Konsa was not his normal self & was solely responsible for their pathetic game killing third. Mings was trying to hold it all together and when he got injured we were finished. Torres looks very limited and far too slow & Carlos is not near his best yet either. I thought we looked okay in patches up front, apart from Watkins still being a woeful finisher.

Absolutely embarassing performance. Zero optmism now for this season. Our defence is atrocious without Mings. Watkins & Bailey continue to be dog turd. Shocking line up I felt from Emery. Another dreadful start to the season. We need replacements fast now for Mings & Buendia else we're in trouble. Why on Earth does our season always start like this?! Pathetic form & season ending injuries... Every year!! It's infuriating. Dreading Everton now.

I get it's about fitness etc but that was the exact same standard we were seeing from fully a fit Bailey & Watkins for most of last season (with Watkins of course I mean Finishing wise, he is pretty good at most other stuff). Beundia was back to his wasteful self too, which was also his norm last season. Yes I get he scores a few goals and sets a few up but how many does he cost us with simple passes which he just oddly passes straight to the opposition? There were many positives too of course, many more positves than negatives but I'm not going to ignore the few negatives I saw just because it's pre-season! I thought the whole idea of pre-season was fitness, working out tactics and identifying weaknesses. So I think it's justified to mention said weaknesses, surely?

They both need to step up to the plate in my view. Shocking performance from Watkins today.

Positives from the "tournament"... Diaby, Torres, Konsa, Cash, Bidace, Carlos, Mings, Tielemens, Kamara, Negatives (In my opinion) ...Bailey, Buendia(Apart from 1st game when he did well) , Archer, Watkins Luiz I felt was way off it today but is normally decent. Oh..& Brentford are a really flukey team. Watkins is a woeful finisher... should have had a hatrick today... Zero is shocking from those chances. Bailey continues to be quite embarrassing to watch.

For me the Saudis would absolutely sink to ridiculously low levels to get Newcastle established. Afterall they are known to do rather horrendous things to people who "get in their way". That is fact and I cannot see why on Earth they wouldn't continue to play dirty to navigate FFP rules in order to get what they want. It's what they do as the history of behaviour shows us. Why that would be labelled a conspiracy theory is beyond me. It's actually just looking at past behaviour and assuming they will now bring that into the World of football, to get what they want. Diaby may be part of that, he may not. It may well be just agents in this case. But do I think they will be up to dodgy stuff....Hell yes, 100%!

You see this is more like it and exactly why Fifa / Uefa need to find a way to intervene here. The PIF fund, having just bought Newcastle, are now rigging the whole game. We are quite clearly a threat to Newcastle next season in the Premier League with arguably both teams going for a top 5 place. On the one hand we get castigated by UEFA for our association with a Portugese team, on the other Newcastles owners run amok in a jumped up league where their owners have not one but four clubs which they are using to "interfere" with Newcastles direct rivals. Taking Diaby off us, Henderson from Liverpool etc etc whilst I believe also buying and then loaning a player straight away to Newcastle, a player who is on obscene money which Newcastle would never be able to pay due to FFP. They are basically running amok. Setting up Newcastle by strengthening them whilst in other ways weakening their rivals. Where are the regulations from the governing bodies to stop this happening?? The whole thing is becoming farcical. It's effectively Man City on steroids. Immediately Fifa & Uefa should ban them from loaning players to any of their member clubs and from having any rights of any of the clubs they own from entering European competition. As for Diaby himself, well he'd almost be stupid to refuse the money. Would you? Footballing reasons maybe something but what is that really going to count for when the whole thing is basically being trashed by corruption? World football and the Premier League is fast becoming a farce. Beware Fifa & beware Uefa...... especially beware Premier League!

He does an excellent job coming on & tightenng things up ( Unless it's against Stevenage ), rarely give the ball away and his height really helps us on occasion too. Very good squad player for me. I undertstand if we need space in that squad / wage bill though having said that.

Sounds like the ridiculous tickets they dish out on match days at Villa Park. Literally teams of un-uniformed wardens turn up in small unmarked vans to try and ticket as many folk as possible whilst the game is on. Been done a few times myself yet was parked in "grey area's" not causing any obstruction whatsoever and with no clear markings. Yet when you appeal they just whitewash it highlighting ridiculous unknown "laws". Surly common sense would prevail during a match day and they would be a little bit more lenient? Doh! I forgot, gotta get those £££££££££'s in hey. I never go into Birmingham centre at all now purely because of all the ridiculous parking regs & charges everywhere. I guess Mr Monchi will have no issue paying his mind