tom_avfc

But it was a blatantly obvious red card and as has been said if the player doesn't go down then it wouldn't get picked up. It's exactly the same as Trezeguet going down in an exaggerated fashion to win a deserved penalty. The attitude that its OK for one of ours to do it but its poor sportsmanship when somebody else's player does it is what annoys me. The actions of Alioski before the headbutt annoy me more. The constant winding up and provoking of an opponent to try and draw the reaction is something which we've fallen on the wrong side of before (Dublin against Savage and Benteke against someone for Spurs spring to mind) and is something which should be looked at more in my opinion.

This is fine and I completely agree with it. However, the hypocrisy comes when fans can't accept that its the same for every other team in the league. All you see from Leeds fans is "Grealish dives" over and over again when in fact all he is doing is drawing the contact and then going down to win the free kick. Its exactly the same situation. I have no real issue with what Alioski does in this situation other than the fact that he appears to be another in the long line of wind up merchants in the Leeds United squad. Would I want to see one of our players constantly trying to provoke a reaction from opponents? Not really, but if they succeed in getting that reaction then hitting the deck is the best way to ensure that the red card is correctly awarded.

This is spot on. I’m unsure how anybody who’s played or watched a game of football can think it’s not a penalty. The overanalysing of basic decisions is killing football for me at the moment. If that penalty had been given and we had no VAR then nobody would have had any issue. On a side note the reaction of both Graham Potter and Solly March post game tells you all you need to know. They know it’s a penalty and they know they’ve got away with one. I would say it evens itself out but with VAR I now think it’s clear that it doesn’t to an even greater extent than before.

Yeah to be fair I've got a backlog of games that I've bought in sales on the store and not even downloaded which I decided just to wait for the PS5 to play with the quicker load speeds etc.

Yes - full backwards compatability (or near enough - think there's a handful of games which won't work on PS5 but none that I'd heard of). Graphics won't be any different to PS4 Pro unless its been specifically patched for PS5. People are saying a lot of games are playing like completely different games even without the upgrade patch as frame rates are more stable etc.

I hadn't seen the issue about Ethernet connection. The wired connection always seemed to be much quicker on PS4 but I guess I'll give the WIFI a go if its a known issue. Thanks for the heads up!

This is a bizarre dig. The Villa men just beat Arsenal 3-0 and sit 3 points off the top of the league!

I think we had one against Man City last season that wasn't given. I remember thinking it was ridiculous that the goal wasn't overruled by VAR. To me its not a difficult decision to make. It baffles me more that it took the ref and VAR 5 minutes to give an offside that could have been called fairly easily from one replay to be honest.

I don't see how it can ever be given as a goal to be honest. Barkley is in a position where the ball could easily hit him so he has to be having an impact on the keeper's decision. Arguing over millimetres of line of sight isn't really relevant. I get that it's annoying because of how well McGinn hit it and I'm not for one minute arguing that the keeper would have saved it had Barkley not been there. However, Barkley was there in an offside position and within the rules thats all that matters unfortunately.

Double post.

It’s completely irrelevant if he has line of sight or not. Barkley is stood in a direct line between Mcginn and the keeper. I’d argue that if he’s anywhere in the keepers eyeline at all then he’s interfering with play. It’s irrelevant that Mcginn has struck it so well. It shouldn’t have taken anywhere near as long as it did to rule it out. We had a similar one at Man City last season which didn’t get given as offside (I think it was Sterling). I remember being annoyed at the time as it’s really not a difficult decision to make.

Is there any way Bielsa can get the credit for the Villa win this time? Media must be gutted that it didn’t take Bielsa to show us the game plan like when he got beat by Liverpool. On a serious note, why is Smith not getting anywhere near the praise that Bielsa has this season?

I think this is pretty unfair. I have no real issue with Leeds fans getting excited. They’re back in the premier league and competing. It’s as good as it’s been for many years. It’s the media reaction to them that is irritating. When it’s being forced down your throat that Leeds are a great team and a threat to the top four before a balls even been kicked other teams fans are hardly likely to warm to them. Its pretty comparable with Newcastle to be fair. The media love in gets tiring and it’s no surprise that Villa fans found it amusing when they got relegated at Villa Park. I would add that the Leeds fans on social media appear to be a particularly toxic bunch which doesn’t help the overall impression of the club.

I don’t think that’s true at all. The Leeds hype has nothing to do with Villa. I wouldn’t want villa put on a pedestal for beating three teams, two of which are near certainties to go down and the other who stayed up on the last day of last season. The hype is ridiculous as it would be for any team who had achieved the same results over 8 games of any football season.

It’s just a really odd thing to do. The need to be seen to be doing something was odd enough when it was clapping your hands and at least generating some community spirit. The need to be seen to be standing in silence before returning back into the house is bizarre.

The refereeing in this Everton game has been so poor. Really strange decisions being made all over the place and some pretty nasty challenges being unpunished.

It doesn’t have any bearing on the game whatsoever though. For pretty much any game of football you could find someone giving it the big one before the game in this day and age. Proving Gabby Agbonlahor wrong is not the motivation that the Leeds players needed before this game.

I wasn’t really referring to any particular incidents, more the flow of the game. I’ve always felt it a bit of a weakness for us for a long time that we don’t have that nasty streak in us. In an ideal world that streak of nastiness wouldn’t be needed but it seems to help. To be honest that Mings incident summed it up for me. Bamford did his spoilt brat diving and rolling around turn and Mings loses his head. Before you know it Bamford’s got two more goals the second of which should have been stopped by Mings himself. There was clearly a plan to wind us up and the constant fouling (with a pretty lenient ref in terms of getting the yellow card out) clearly rattled us on a number of occasions.

I mean it’s pretty ridiculous to pin any blame for a defeat on a pundit isn’t it? If all it takes to win a game of football is for someone to point out a negative tweet before each game then I’ll get paid by Villa to print a load out for every game we play.

This is bang on for me. First goal was the key and ironically it came at a time when we looked the most threatening we had all night. I guess Leeds’ season could well be defined by how many times they take the lead in a game. Once a team has a lead against them I think it becomes a lot easier to deal with the style of football they play. Is it anything massively different in English football is a good question though. It seems pretty similar to how Wolves have played under Nuno to be honest. It’s a little comparable to how we played under O’Neill. The other thing I’d note about it is there’s a massive amount of nastiness on the pitch which seems to get brushed under the carpet in the media jizzfest. Klich and Bamford in particular seemed determined to kick out at players and Bamfords antics for the “penalty” appeal are nothing short of disgraceful.

You can’t really legislate for Bamford scoring one goal like that let alone two. All in all a pretty even game up to the opening goal. If we could have taken one of the chances we created then who knows what would have happened. Once they scored we were always chasing the game and that played into Leeds’ hands perfectly. In the end it could have been worse than 3-0. Plenty of time to regroup before Southampton now. I do think Leeds will prove to be a handful for most teams in the league.

Kind of feels like wolves have let them punch themselves out in the first half. Typical wolves performance though. With the players they have they should be capable of playing a better style of football. Gets results a lot of the time I suppose.

I’m sure they are but the lines don’t look straight half the time on these offside calls. Probably an optical illusion but they rarely look parallel to the pitch markings or the cut of the grass.

I take your point and would note that I wasn’t criticising people who had their doubts - I’ll admit I had my doubts. The people calling for his head at the first sign of us looking like getting relegated (doubtless the same people who will be doing the same when we inevitably hit a poor run this season) are more the subject of my post. He had credit in the bank from getting us promoted out of nowhere and for me even going down shouldn’t have seen him gone. The rush of “Smith out” posts pre lockdown was to me far too soon and highlighted the issues around the modern day clamour for instant success. But you never know, I suppose a name like Allardyce that was being given as an alternative could have us doing much better now I suppose.

This man took us from the bottom half of the championship to the premier league in less than a season. He then kept us in the premier league having overseen the largest squad rebuild the club has seen. We now sit in second place in the league having won four in a row at the start of the season for the first time in 90 years. I’m sorry but those of you calling for his head at any point in this reign don’t deserve this man or the football that we are witnessing now.