tom_avfc

I like these kind of options quite a lot. Players who have done it in the Championship before. Its why I think the Grabban loan signing was such a great option at the time. You don't need to be a Premier League player to do well in the Championship - players like Cameron Jerome, Dwight Gayle etc. have proven that already.

I believe it's do do with the intent to get the ball. As the ref considered the Denmark player to be genuinely attempting to get the ball then the double punishment rules kicked in and he didn't get sent off. In the Sweden game, the Switzerland player made no attempt to go for the ball and just deliberately pushed the Sweden player over when he was in on goal which makes it still a red card. The fact that the intent of a player is pretty difficult to judge makes me think this rule isn't really helping. Additionally, the Croatia player had an open goal so it was a definite goal without the foul. As Modric missed the penalty, the punishment of a yellow card doesn't really sit right with me.

Oh don't get me wrong - I'm not at all optimistic. I don't think achieving more than 34 points less than last year is being particularly optimistic to be honest. I'm just not prepared to predict that low a points tally at this particular moment (although losing Johnstone to Albion is more worrying than anything before). I'll wait and see what happens between now and the start of the season and you can call that being optimistic if you want. Sorry if 3 points more than SHA last year is being optimistic. If all fans consider more than 50 points as optimistic next season then the atmosphere at Villa Park is going to be as great as ever next year.

Wow - this is a hell of a claim. Which of the three league cup performances was the best then? Johnstone saved us a hell of a lot of points last year so this claim is a little bizarre to me.

I think this is the one that shows to me how much shit we're in. At 6.5 million for a young English keeper who's just had the season he's had for us this is a no brainer for anybody in the Championship. I wish him all the best to be honest. He rose above all the stick he got and turned the Villa support around which is no mean feat. I hope he goes on to good things - it's just a shame it'll be with the carrier bags.

I know that transfer embargoes can be handed out based on FFP (although given we don't plan on making any signings its debatable how much of a punishment this would be for us!) but was unaware of points deductions and would be amazed if a team was relegated as a result of breaching FFP.

Yeah it's a typical English media comment though. It sets them up for a fall and if we get beat it provides easy ammunition for them to jump on the team and criticise. Its the kind of arrogance that pisses off other countries and I can see why to be honest. As I've said before its a very even tie that could go either way and if we lose having given it a good go I hope (as unlikely that it is) that everyone cuts the team a bit of slack and doesn't go in on the complacency angle and criticise the entire squad.

But I don't get how you are even capable of taking a guess at the squads other teams would have. I wouldn't even be able to predict who'll be playing for us come the start of the season let alone teams like SHA, Bolton and Ipswich for example who I probably wouldn't even be able to name more than 3 or 4 players in each's current squad. Unless you have serious knowledge of Championship football and the situations at each club then I'd have thought there's little difference to this than just picking a number of points out of thin air. To come to the conclusion that we'll finish 34 points worse off than last season based on guesswork is quite extreme in my opinion. We might sell all our best players over the coming couple of months and other teams may be strengthened and weakened accordingly but until this has actually happened I'm not sure how anybody can even start to predict a finishing position for various teams.

Not sure how a Championship Predictor can be done without any idea of what our squad (or any other squad in the division) will look like. Seems pretty meaningless and horribly pessimistic based on the squad we currently have available. If you're not basing it on the squad we have available now then it seems like this is a guess at the results of 46 games over the course of the season, having also made a guess at the squads of the 24 clubs in the Championship come the start of the season. This seems pretty pointless at this stage - at least wait until the transfer window closes and even then who'd have predicted Cardiff in second place last season.

Yeah I agree and am sure they're not doing any more than concentrating on Colombia. However, I worry that if we get beaten by Colombia then the fans and the media will jump straight to the complacency and looking ahead accusations without acknowledging the fact that Colombia are more or less on a par with England anyway and however focused we are, we could still lose the game. I'm sure they'll go out there and give it their best but I'm not convinced that they won't fall short to be honest in one of the more evenly matched games of the round of 16.

I don't think this is a game to compare to the Iceland game and that's doing Colombia a huge disservice in my opinion. They've lost one game at the World Cup which was with a man sent off after 3 minutes and they still equalised in that game. I don't see tonight's game as much more than a 50/50 shot for England no matter how much the media will try to portray this as some great shame if we get knocked out to a decent Colombia side. We've beaten Tunisia with a last minute winner and Panama (the worst team in the tournament) so I'm sure we're not going to be complacent against a stronger side than both of these. If we lose, I'm not sure I'd put it down to complacency which I'd have said will be more of a worry if we did get through against our potential quarter final opponents who both appear weaker than Colombia in my opinion.

The problem with this is that on shuffle a playlist will play through the 36 songs in a random order but then after the 36th will regenerate a new order for the 36 songs (otherwise you’d just get the same songs in the same order again). This means that unless the 4 tracks come out at the start then there isn’t 35 songs that could potentially be next - there’s however many are left and then potentially any song could come up once every song has been played. It doesn’t seem to be the easiest concept to put into words so hopefully that makes sense!

This is only correct if the first song is from the album though as once the shuffled playlist has played through once then any song can be selected again for the second run through. Therefore the probability of the first 4 being from that album are 0.0006 (7/36 x 6/35 x 5/34 x 4/33). The probability will then rise and fall from there depending on which songs come out in what order so if the first song has been from the album then, as you say the probability will be (6/35 x 5/34 x 4/33).

I’m not sure I really get the arguments against VAR. There was an article in the times today showing that VAR had reversed 15 decisions during the World Cup of which they concluded that 12 were clearly correct reversals, 2 were probably correct and just 1 (the Iran penalty against Portugal) was clearly incorrect. Therefore, even if we ignore the 2 debatable decisions there’s a net of 11 correct decisions which without VAR would have been wrong. I’m sure your Shearers, Lawrensons etc. would have been sat in their studios criticising referee standards if this was the case. I’m more understanding of the view that VAR could have been used more often but as the system becomes more widely used, these issues should get ironed out. On a side note having watched the implementation of VAR at this World Cup I’d be a bit pissed off if we were in the Premier League that the owners have voted against bringing VAR in. If we’ve seen 12 correct reversals of decisions in the number of World Cup games, VAR could make a big difference over a full league season.

Yeah, you'd like to think that a team wouldn't. It's a bit similar to the game at St Andrews the other year when Gardner scored and ran back towards our goal to celebrate with the Villa fans. Mike Dean made Jedinak stand in the Blues half so that the kick off couldn't have been taken. In reality you'd like to think that the refs would use a bit of common sense to stop a team from taking the kick off but I suppose if they're playing by the rules then they'd have to let it stand.

I may be wrong but I think that the kick off can be taken as long as nobody from the opposition is in the other half of the pitch. Since players off the pitch are considered as out of play rather than in the Spain half, Spain could have kicked off if the last Portugal player had left the pitch.

Yeah, I think that's a fair point and does make the second one arguable (and therefore not clear and obvious I suppose). The first one was about as blatant a penalty as you're ever likely to see though and should have been cleared up easily enough with VAR.

I don't think there has been many in this World Cup to be honest other than the two that Kane should have had yesterday. I don't think one game where the VAR officials didn't seem to use the system correctly means that there's a problem with the system.

I think VAR has been a great success at this World Cup so far (with the exception of last night's game where England should have had a couple of penalties). Even the media who have previously tried to undermine the system haven't had a great deal to shout about. Its a shame that the officials using VAR didn't use it correctly yesterday but that doesn't mean the system itself is not good.

Are we getting French investment then?!

Yeah doesn't seem to be out of the ordinary really. I think the fact that we have cashflow issues now in June 2018 and those figures are our creditors at the end of May 2017 also isn't helping any analysis to be honest. To be honest, if what we're led to believe the figures now could be worse than those in the accounts.

Unless he went on to say "What Villa need to do is get a dodgy link with a super agent to pull off dodgy looking deals which no other club in the division could do at under market value rates" I'm not sure what advice he'd be able to offer to be honest.

Fair point on O'Hare - I forgot about his injury to be honest! Given that we have no links to Kodjia, Hourihane or Chester, its a bit of a stretch to say we are going to lose all of them plus Adomah and have absolutely nobody come in at all. If it did happen then the size of the squad we'd have would be terrifying.

I agree that what goes on in here is neither helpful or unhelpful to Villa at any time although would argue that the mood amongst the fans at games has had an impact on performances in the past (less so this season as the fans have generally been satisfied with results). In this case I just think it comes across as a bit silly for people to be calling out Tony Xia as a fraud or Keith Wyness as a good/bad person with no idea what is actually going on. A forum based on wild speculation is not a great thing to read in my opinion.

I agree with this. Wasn't Keith Wyness the man who reliably informed us that there was a plan in place for if we went up and a plan in place for if we stayed down? Given what's happened this week, the plan put in place whilst he was CEO for if we failed to go up doesn't look to be the most well thought out plan.