danceoftheshamen

Yes because we had a goal disallowed for the exact same thing at..... Arsenal! Except on that day we only had one player "in the keepers eye line" (Which he was actually nowhere near). So which one is it? One of them is clearly a dodgy decision whatever way you look at it. Then add into that fact that this happens almost every time you play one of these teams. If you look at each individual one you can squirm around it and find a reason why they made a decision but what you cannot explain is why then do 95% of those go in favour of the same teams?! Just to add that at my work place last night everyone including Man U, Forest, Liverpool, Derby & Leicester fans, many of whom are season ticket holders at their various clubs, were all coming up to me, shaking their heads and laughing saying "Yes I saw it, it was shocking" & words to that effect. So it definately isn't just some posters on here by any stretch. In actual fact not one of them didn't think it should have been called offside. The general feeling was that it was the FA balancing out the goal Brentford scored against them last week.

That right there is the true power of the corruption! These teams can have a poor season but then they tend to get a load of dodgy decisions which keeps them there or there abouts. It defies the law of averages even, which should set the alarm bells off straight away.

It's not just us Tro, Its the same for the other 13 teams who are not part of the " we want a super league" group. I work with loads of Leicester & Forest fans and also a couple of Wolves & Derby fans. We also deal with drivers from all over the UK so there are fans of most of the clubs I speak to regularly. This is happening the same with them also, always against those same teams. So I am not trying to say "Villa are singled out" far from it. This is much bigger than that. It is a Premier league issue generally with all of the teams suffering like us at the hands of officials who are following two sets of rules. One for those "big 6" clubs & one for the other 13 of which we are one. It's a disgrace quite frankly & needs calling out, which is why I do call it out every time it's rears it's head. Leicester got a couple of duff calls at Old Trafford this weekend for instance when apparently a UTD player should have seen red. Sound familiar? It must be worth no end of points per season to those clubs, so it's no wonder they can have an absolutely awful year & still be there or there abouts. It does my head in having to repeatedly talk about it but then we simply have to make more noise about it so it's harder to get away with it for those involved. Keep saying things like "it all balances out over the season" etc is effectively facilitating it.

Well I personally have seen us win the biggest prizes so midtable for me is the minimum level this club should be averaging. I do feel we should on occasion be challenging once we have overcome the destruction of the later Lerner years up until NSWE. This of course will take time as we have a gap to bridge and as quick as you start to build, the Grealish's of this World will set you back. So it's like 3 steps forward 2 back all the time. This sifting of progress of course makes it a long slow climb back. Add to that the clear bias towards the usual clubs and massive helping hand they get (Which is largely why they will still be there or thereabouts even on a poor season) slows things up even further of course. So lets get back to midtable first and then maybe one day it will all get investigated, as it should be and the ceiling of corruption will be removed alowing clubs like ours a fair chance to rise up again. The Money is of course also an issue but the corruption, for me, is the bigger hurdle. Once the stadium is expanded & if we can maybe win a cup or two & get into Europe, which will boost our international profile thus bringing in more cashflow, we should be able to compete for the higher echelons much better. That corruption will always be a big issue mind you and that's why I see it as the bigger hurdle than the money. Financially we do of course already have wealthy owners, the stadium will be on a par with the big 6 soon too and we have a huge fanbase already. Of course we are behind the top 6 on that score currently simply due to a lack of trophies in recent years. Win some silverware and start competing in Europe though and this will grow rapidly, so that gap can be closed. At that point I don't see anything, other than the aforementioned corruption, that would stop us from at least competing with those clubs. Heck on a season like this one with Liverpool, Chelsea. Spurs & even to a point Man City faltering, we would get the chance to nick a top 4 spot. This is what Spurs did a few years ago and look at them now. This is however also the exact bit where the corruption kicks in, so this, under the current circumstances, would be very tough.

So I wonder if we'll get a personal visit from Howard Webb to apologise after we were robbed by the non-double offside call for their 3rd goal? You know the one which is actually much worse than the one they disallowed for John McGinn at the Emirates a yera or two back when just one of our players was stood in a similar offside position albeit much further from the play and obviously nowhere near their keepers eyeline. No didn't think so! In a court of law I think I know what the verdict would be........ (Hint - Corrpution) You could say it's sour grapes after losing although personally I am sick to death of it happening so obviously & blatantly almost every time we play one of these clubs. It is not possible for that amount of key decisions to consistently go in favour of these teams whenever they play against one of the "rest" of us, namely the 13 clubs who are not part of the "boys club". It needs investigating by an independent body a bit like Fifa was when the CIA was involved. They truly disgust me. Says it all when they have to promote a spin merchant (Dermot Gallagher) to try & cover it up every week. It also says it all when the one time they actually make an error against one of these clubs (The Brentford goal V Arsenal last week) that they send in Howard Webb to personally apologise and then magically, (as was clearly the brief) they ignore the blatant offside which was worse than the exact same one were disallowed against the same team! Apparently according to Gallagher "these are the most difficult ones to judge" and yet the one yesterday was far worse & more obvious with 2 players offending one of whom was ducking & swaying deliberately vs the McGinn one when it was obvious the single player involved was nowhere near the line of sight. Yeah good cover up attempt Gallagher. It's just mistakes though don't you know!

It is so obviously corrupt, cannot believe people are still not seeing it. Called it in the pre-match thread ""So another biased Referee assisted team incoming. We would have to play so incredibly well to overcome that and Arsenal that sadly I only see another defeat"" Most obvious call of the season after their "personal apology from Howard Webb". No doubt VAR would have swung into action had our player done what Saka did or had we scored with two players clearly offside as was the case for their most important 3rd goal. Or had Ollie Watkins been diving around so blatantly every 5 minutes. Of course MOTD are the complicit and rather biased friends of these clubs too, so simply brushed it all under the carpet, as they normally do. The Premier League is corrupt, when you understand this it becomes actually very clear. Shame as it totally spoiled what was otherwise a good game. Still at least you have your "Tense title race" still going on eh Premier League, must be good for the coffers that.

This thread is so depressing, kind of makes me think what is the point of renewing my & my daughters season tickets next season to be honest. if there is no chance of success then what on Earth is the point exactly? If this is what football has become quite frankly..........I'm out!

Ah!! So Arsenal are contacted and apologised to by the FA for the “ human error” in their game against Brentford and now we get given the dodgy VAR ref who apparently can’t even draw lines for our game against them? No doubt the FAs way of making it up to them. Dodgy VAR assisted defeat incoming then no doubt

Or “A ref adjudging the exact same scenario with the teams reversed ignores his pleas and tells him to get up” is probably more accurate

Well Heskey was shocking so lets hope so

Never understood why we paid so much for him from Everton in all honesty. I always thought he was overrated when he was there. Lots of hype about him but in reality he had very little impact on games for them too. Just bang average at best.

So another biased Referee assisted team incoming. We would have to play so incredibly well to overcome that and Arsenal that sadly I only see another defeat. Lets face it these "Scummy 6" clubs get helped so much by the corrupt FA officials, that effectively the impact on their performance is like this.... A poor performance = Average Average = Good Good = Very Good Very good = Excellent Excellent = Totally unbeatable Unless they are playing another scummy 6 team of course when normal form applies.

I think the missing word is "Corrupt" Once again it is a "Favoured 6" team against one of "the other 13" and yet again it was as clear as day he was simply going to give them everything. I lost count of the amount of times their players dived when nobody touched them. DeBruyne & the german bloke were doing it all game... heck they were all at it and every single time he gave them a free kick or whatever.....Meanwhile at the other end of the pitch, our player gets crunched when their defender goes right through him and takes ball man & everything...Nope that's a good tackle apparently. So tiniest touch on them it's a freekick or penalty and yet they can go right through us and it's a good tackle.....Yeah alrighty then!

I certainly admire your optimism Useless We are so riddled with Sunday pub league style errors at the moment that I'd be shocked if it's any less than three in this game too and I really cannot see us scoring the 3, 4 or 5 goals we would need to score to get anything from the game. The problem is you cannot really coach out those type of errors, in fact I would go so far as to say no Premier League coach would even be expecting to have to deal with such pathetic play, so wouldn't be used to having to try to coach players out of it at this level. Then there is the sheer lack of drive that some of these players are showing, you can't coach "drive" or "fire in the belly" either. Hopefully he drops the players in question having said that I guess. As for relegation, well in a weird way if you are going to have the worst performance of the season you may as well have it against Man City rather than against one of the teams you would hope to beat. We need to start playing again though, rapid, as it does appear that we are on the beach currently, a typical "nothing to play for" team. The issue is if it carries on we'll be dragged back into it a lot quicker than some seem to think.

He is surely near a start now? Has looked a lot better in his last two appearances, albeit short ones (no pun intended ).

For me it appears to be partially a confidence issue with Bailey and partially a strength thing...Both physically and mentally sadly. He needs to replicate what Gary Neville has mentioned has made the difference to Rashford, namely "get on the weights". He reminds me of Rashford when he was way out of form, weak on the ball, running up blind alleys and getting disposessed easily, lacking any confidence and wayward shooting etc. Rashford disappeared for quite a while but came back much stronger and look at him now. A similar thing is needed for Bailey i feel and that starts with him being dropped.

It was a good atmosphere initially but that ridiculous mistake for their first literally killed us for 20 minutes. It was so so sloppy and typical of what this team does far too regularly. We battled back after that shock had been swallowed only to do the exact same thing again not once but twice before half time even and this having once again taken the lead, albeit somewhat fortuitously but then also somewhat deservedly having missed a couple of good chances. So I am not surprised there was a frustrated reaction from the crowd. It was so typical of this team. Doing all the hard work but then repeatedly making amateurish errors fit for a Sunday League pub team. For me that is what kills the atmosphere. Not the conceding of a well worked goal by the opposition but the shockingly poor way which we keep on giving them to teams. It is so demoralising as a fan to see that once, let alone twice but three & four times is frankly embarrassng. It was a re-run of Spurs at home last season when we outplayed them and lost 0-4...all four of their shots on goal going in The only difference being we looked much more threatening and scored a couple at least.

I actually thought he looked decent when he came on, aside from the once a game space shot. He literally does that at least once every time he plays. You could say it was a "sighter" but it's that far off it that would be pushing it. Very odd how he used to bury those in top bins regularly for Liverpool. Overall though I personally thought he looked quite bright.

If we are to have any hope of Top half finishes / Europe we need something now from this game or at least 2 points from the next two to make up for the kamikaze Leicester performance.

That's called shooting yourself in the foot, emptying the barrel into your own feet in actual fact. Amateurish defending. On a side note ...Bailey

Not a chance of Europe looking at that shambles defensively today.

It's a transfer & this is the transfer thread??

So Louis Barry just signed for Salford City on loan. CLICKY Salford City is excited to announce the loan signing of Louie Barry from Aston Villa for the remainder of the 2022-23 season! The 19-year-old impressed on loan at Swindon Town in the second half of last season, notching six goals and an assist in 14 appearances as the Robins reached the play-off semi-final. He was then loaned to MK Dons for the first half of this season, where he scored one goal and registered three assists in 22 outings for the League One side. In his youth career the forward spent a decade at West Bromwich Albion before joining Barcelona, and signed for Aston Villa when he returned to England. An attack-minded player with good pace and attributes, the former England youth international is keen to get started: “The Club’s going in the right direction, they’ve got really good owners backing them and when I spoke to the Gaffer, he put down the foundations of the Club was and that’s what I liked. “I met him a few days ago, and he told me everything that I wanted to hear, with facts as well. He showed me a really good presentation on the history of the Club, and what he wants to put into the players and that’s showing on the pitch as well. “I feel like coming here will improve me as a player, and hopefully help the team get up the divisions. “It happened last season as well [January loan] and I just got thrown straight into it but I dealt with it, and hopefully I can do the same here. They’re at a pinnacle part of the season, where every single point matters, so yeah it’s really tight up there at the moment. “I’m a very attacking player, I’m very forward thinking, whenever I get the ball I think forward. I’m a goal scorer, that’s where I made my name, scoring goals. I like to create, I like to make things happen in the box when I get the ball, I want to drive forward, get players and put them on the back foot.” The loan is subject to the usual EFL and FA ratifications; welcome to The Peninsula Stadium, Louie!

I am just hoping that something happens tomorrow. It often does go to the wire, especially in january. It may be clubs, agents or players basically seeing what options are on the table by tomorrow when the final decisions will be made (Presumably with a lot of the peripheral stuff already being done so to speak). Personally I would be surprised if Guendouzi signs this window. I also think the Delafeyou injury may well have scuppered us regards a wide player. We do now have Duran as an option for striker of course, who will hopefully get some game time this season. Fingers crossed something good happens tomorrow.

As it's really quiet on the transfer front at this moment in time, I've been thinking about the impact Coutinho has / doesn't have on transfers at the moment? As in the fact that he can't get a start under Unai. Does that work in our favour or not? I remember Gerrard stating that every potential signing he spoke to asked him if Couts was staying or not? As though it was a key factor in signing the likes of Kamara etc. So with him not able to get in the side does that highlight us as a bigger club than expected in some players eyes? Does it hinder us in some way or is it simply a non issue?