villaajax

"Every week I follow the boys in claret and blue and red and white. We even conquered Europe in 1971, 1972, 1973, 1982 and 1995..." Doesn't flow quite so well

I tried to get a ticket via Ajax but their allocation is sold out.

Basically a new director of football came in during the summer, upset a lot of players, let top players go, brought in complete unknowns to replace them and then hired a manager who had never really achieved anything of note and had never managed at a particularly high level and was known for playing defensive football, which is something Ajax has never played. A complete recipe for disaster and it proved to be. After fans rioting, the club finally sacked the director of football as they realised that he was the instigator of the problems and they gave the manager a little more time. The players were happier and the players who had left the club celebrated the sacking on social media. Ultimately the manager, Maurcie Steijn could not turn things around and appeared tactically inept, so he was replaced by club hero John van 't Schip and things have been on the up ever since. I would expect Villa to win both legs but the league table doesn't tell the whole story of Ajax's season so far.

I need to get hold of one of those awful double scarves

I started playing FC24 again, a bit, but it's a little tedious. I miss the customisation of the PES games, building any classic team and kit that I wanted. I miss online play just being an option and not the main feature of the game. Playing continental tournaments to unlock classic versions of the winners. Music that you don't have to mute.

It's like a 'Go Yorkshire, go!' chant to represent England really.

I had to get a British passport because I kept getting hassle coming back in. Last time from a lady with a thick Eastern European accent, where's the foreigner solidarity?

I've still only been to see the Villa and Ajax men's teams play once each. Back in the 2008 UEFA Cup

Godverdamme! I hope VP tickets go to general sale

Not sure if this is the correct place but I didn't feel it fitted the main football boards. Has anyone had any experience with getting shirts framed or using kits to do so?

Had a lot of Arsenal supporters sat with and supporting us. Not sure why, but they were great! Not often you can say that about Arsenal supporters...

Game's gone soft.

89 for me

Ward didn't walk around to applaud the fans with the rest of the team like she normally does but instead brought her daughter on for a wander around. I hope I'm reading too much into that... I thought we performed very well today but Bristol took their chances and we didn't. We were all over them otherwise.

I'd rather we invested in the women's team than buy random little clubs around the World.

One problem with those formations... I don't think we have that many outfield players...

You know wht, this is a great outcome. We only lost on paper, not on the pitch and United get knocked out.

That would be a harsh punishment that benefits United, so make sense that they'd do it. There's money to be made out of that name.

Surely the awarding of games would only apply to the ones with ineligible players?

Feeling kind of extra rubbish lately. I live with a sense of bleakness that I just get along with but January is always a rubbish month. Having my birthday in the middle of the year, the end/start of a calendar year always feels to me like a mid year review where I just remind myself I'm failing at life, in my opinion. As I said in the General Chat about lockdown, I enjoyed it because it felt like life was on hold. I've been doing a lot of genealogy recently and have managed to get my mum in touch with cousins she hadn't spoken to in years and some she didn't even know existed, as well as her best friend from her teens and I'm glad that I've been able to do that because I feel bad about being a dead twig on the family tree. Her side of the family has been traced back over 500 years and it just comes to a dead end with me. I'm 34 this year and I've never actually been in a relationship. If it's not outright rejection then I just get messed around, more than once I've had girls agree to go out with me and then they find someone better and that's the end of that, most recently, a girl who seemed to liked me even more than I liked her just flipped and blanked me one day and that was the end of that, total silence and ignorance. I am very introverted, I have no confidence or self worth whatsoever so to even get to the point of asking a girl out or telling her how I feel about her, that is a hell of an effort and each time it fails, I just feel a little more dead inside and what's heightening this at the moment is that I've kind of taken a liking to a girl at work but I know it's a bad idea to even make an effort because ultimately I will end up feeling even more miserable. Growing up I always thought I'd have my own family by now and be happy but here I am, alone and nothing to show for my life, my best efforts to make anything about it better always fail. I really do feel that all I'm here for is to keep my mum going and when she's gone, I don't need to be here. Never thought I'd see the day when the best thing going in my life was Aston Villa, haha.

I'll think of her parody of "I've Got a Brand New Combine Harvester"

I guess for me it felt like life was on hold. That I wasn't wasting my life, because it was on hold. With life being back to normal, life moves fast, I can't get my head around the fact I'll be 34 this year, I still feel like I'm in my 20s but no, I'm 34 and have nothing to show for my life. Absolutely nothing. I miss the pause.

Anyone else miss lockdown life? I was certainly less unhappy.