tom_avfc

Agree with this but Green isn't left footed. I think Adomah is the better player at the moment and Green could do with the competition for his place when he's back as you said.

What is this assessment of Liam Lindsay based on? I had no idea who he was until today but maybe you've seen a lot of him to know he's woeful. Just interested as I also think Heckingbottom is doing a reasonable job given the circumstances.

Completely agree. It's a bit rich laughing at a team losing 2-0 away to the league leaders when we've failed to score a goal against a relegation candidate and a team with 10 men from the 4th minute, both at home.

It was an almost identical red card to one I saw xhaka get for arsenal - might have been against Swansea. At the time of that one I applauded the sentiment of the red card. They're both completely deliberate fouls made with absolutely no intent of getting the ball. I'm completely in favour of these being red cards as I hate the games where teams will just take turns to completely wipe out a counter attacking player and this is a way to prevent that. Having said all this, it's not a red card by the current rules and Lansbury knows he's 'taking the yellow for the team', another part of modern football which I can't stand. Add this in with the diving seen yesterday (Kodjia, Lansbury, Snodgrass for us) and you can see why people are getting bored of the game really.

What/why?

From a quick Google it looks like that Walton played close to 30 games for Luton last year so is more experienced than Sarkic. Actually from a further Google it looks like he's picked up an ankle injury so Sarkic has probably been brought in to play until he's back fit. That's probably why he's only there for 6 months so hopefully he'll get some decent game time.

I think this is the key part of this move. I can't claim to be an expert on the goalkeeping situation at Wigan but I hope we haven't loaned Sarkic out to a team where he won't play games. If we have done, then he'd have been better off playing for our under 23s than going out. If he does get games then this is an excellent move for him IMO. A title chasing season in League 1 would appear to be a good opportunity for him to develop.

I thought Brexit would put a stop to these England Slovakia combined nonsense matches!!

No strikers? Has McLeish taken over the England job?

What do you want him to say? "We feel like we are comfortably better than Bristol and will win this game easily?" Talk about firing up the opposition. He's answered a question with the fact that Bristol have had a decent start to the season (they've won 3 out of 6 competitive games) and that it won't be an easy game. I'm sure he's targeting games like this one as ones we should be winning but what manager is ever going to come out and say that in the build up to a match?

This is true although I suppose the big teams having kinder draws will make big games later on in the competition more likely. At this stage there's enough United/Liverpool fans to mean that a game against anybody will be well watched on TV. I'd expect the United and Liverpool games to be chosen due to the lack of any particularly exciting matches.

Have the rules around the toss been changed then as I'm pretty sure Norwich took kick off? It always used to be that you either chose ends or took kick off but I'll admit that this may have changed. I was under the impression that we had chosen to shoot towards the Holte against Norwich but against Wigan they had switched ends hence we had the kick off. I may be completely wrong but I'm sure that's how it used to work anyway.

I thought Hourihane was decent yesterday but he looks like the player that is being restricted the most by Bruce's tactics to me. Seems to have something about him that we haven't seen much more than Lansbury for me. Also liked the fact that he (and Johnstone) made the effort to come right over to applaud and acknowledge the fans at the end of the game as opposed to others who half heartedly clapped and disappeared.

This just isn't true for me. He had a decent game but still missed an absolute sitter and again had no end product. Rather than being inconsistent at the moment his end product is consistently not good enough. He's being asked to do way too much but if we continue to play a winger who doesn't score and doesn't get any assists it's not going to help us get up this year. I'd much rather he was getting game time from the bench and we had a left winger playing who was a more well rounded player. For me he's just not ready yet to be a guaranteed starter and therefore we need a left winger.

To be fair Bacuna was on international duty for the majority of pre season. I do agree though that having him in the starting line up for the first match of the season and then selling him a week later is absolutely bizarre.

To be honest I just go to the games and hope we win each one. Its part of being a supporter surely. When I get to Reading I'll be hoping for a Villa win. If Bruce continues to produce crap football and crap results then he'll rightly go and given the Cardiff game I hope he's being made to feel the pressure. However I hope he manages to turn it around and we play well and win matches. All this the fewer matches Bruce is here for the better is beyond me to be honest. Who's to say we'll be better or worse without him. Whoever is in charge I'll be hoping for us to win each match as winning is the only way we're getting back to the Premier League.

I completely agree with this. However, the fact that I don't consider it particularly likely to happen doesn't mean I'm not hoping for us to win the next three on the bounce. I'd rather hope for this than to hope for us to lose matches just to see Bruce sacked.

What if we beat Reading, Norwich and Bristol? Doesn't winning games give us the best chance of promotion?

Yes I'd agree with that so it's a decent reveal for that reason although there's a character in the books (not seen on show so far) who would potentially render this completely irrelevant anyway. I've put it in spoiler although the character may or may not turn up in the show anyway so who knows!

Oh I was fully aware of the reveal. It was more the geeky side of me coming out to pick up on the Ginny/Gilly slip! As pointed out above it's more nuanced than legitamizing Jon as rightful owner of the Iron Throne. There's plenty of other characters who will all claim one way or another that they are the rightful owner. I hope it isn't as simple as a Daenerys/Jon alliance winning through at the end. Its been predicted for a long time by book readers and I'd like to think George RR Martin has something genuinely surprising up his sleeves for the end game. I suppose part of the problem with him taking so long to write the books is that it gives people longer to come up with theories regarding the end game.

Have I missed a Harry Potter crossover epsiode? Sorry to be pedantic and to be fair there are a lot of names to potentially get wrong!

Well he's not going to get sacked on the back of an away win at Reading is he?

Which is fine. That doesn't mean I hope we lose every game until he's sacked. I hope we win the game tonight as I do every game we play. If we continue to play as we did on Saturday I hope and am sure he will be sacked soon enough.

I dunno - I was actually hoping we'd win tonight to be honest. The wish for failure baffles me a bit to be honest.

I've genuinely got no idea why he's posted that. The way he's been jeered and abused by villa fans over the last few seasons I'm not sure I'd be putting any message like that out there. Good signing for Reading I think. Decent squad player and better than a lot of what we're left with. Our transfer policy is worrying me at the moment. We seem to have let all our sellable players go and replaced them with players who will have no sell on value at all or with loanees. Seems like a huge balancing the books job this window for me. If Kodjia has another good year I'd expect us to have to sell him next summer and then our squad really is lower half championship in its entirety.