icouldtelltheworld

You've set me off now!!

Me too tbf mate, but I haven't got used to being confident of Villa winning. Doing the double over Arsenal is something my brain struggles to compute

West Ham - W Arsenal - D Brighton - W Leicester - L Leeds - L Loads of hysteria when we lose the two in a row, with people apoplectic that Smith hasn't made enough subs and Mings being championship level at best, despite being on 39 points and right in the mix for Europe

Alice in chains Radiohead The police Pet shop Boys Arctic monkeys Smashing pumpkins Dinosaur Jr (not sure about this one) Garbage?

We've got away with one there

Stonewall that. **** sake

Jesus **** christ. That's horrific

Oh definitely, I think a bit of naivety showed last night, were a young team still learning our trade in the PL if were being honest. I don't have you have to be that spectacular to break the top 8, some fairly average teams have managed it the past few years (Burnley bring a good example). We'll get there, and this is the most enjoyable top flight season we've had for well over a decade, it hurts to throw away a win but when you look at the overall context there are way more positives than negatives IMO.

I'm actually not as annoyed as I thought I'd be and I think I've worked out why: Over the past 10 years or so, some of our best moments have been shithouse smash and grabs like the one Burnley carried out last night (the 3-2 against Man City where Weimann scored the winner is probably the best example), but even last year there were examples of it - we had no right beating Norwich 1-0 on boxing day if we're being honest, they battered us that day. But heres the thing. Now we're the ones on the receiving end of a shithouse smash and grab. It happens. We know, because we've dished plenty of them out. We're the ones on top in most games now, which means from time to time we'll be on the end of a freak loss like the one last night. I thought some of the football we played in the first half last night was exquisite, the best we've played all season IMO. You have to give credit to Dyche, they might play defensive, physical football, but he's miles away from the likes of Bruce, they looked a different team after half time. We still should have won, we didn't, it happens. I'm sure lessons will be learned and were still very much on for a top 8 finish, which all of us would've bitten your hand off for in the summer

This with bells on. Hope that he returns to Villa Park one day and receives the ovation that he deserves. Best of luck Conor, thanks for memories and everything you did to get this club back where it belongs.

Interestingly something very similar happened here on a massive scale from around 2012 for a few years. Huge numbers of people were told they'd been overpaid child tax credit, often by many thousands of pounds and lots of them ended up on direct debits paying back money that they didn't even owe. I know because me and my ex-partner were harassed for around £3500 in child tax credit overpayments for several years. Whenever theyd send out a letter we'd send one back asking for evidence that we owed the money (there isn't the time or space here to explain how farcical some of the replies were, but once we received around 100 pages containing nothing but images of a PC showing that annoying 'performed an illegal operation' message - 100 **** pages of it). We were teenage parents and the whole thing was obviously very stressful and worrying. After about three years of back and forth, I received a phone call from HMRC one day informing me it had all been an error and that they actually owed me £150. Happy days. However, I know for a fact lots of people ended up paying money back on even bigger sums than we were being chased for. You can only imagine how easily a single mom would agree to a direct debit over the phone if a gov agency rings and tells her she owes thousands of pounds. I barely noticed anything about this in the news, except the odd paragraph buried away in newspapers around the time I was offered my £150 explaining that the government had rectified an administrative error (given the rhetoric of the Cameron years I don't believe that this was an error for a second). You can probably make an accurate guess as to how many politicians resigned or lost their jobs over the whole thing.

Watching the play off final back, I'd completely forgot that Ashley Cole played against us for Derby that day. If you'd pressed me on it I'd have told you he retired years ago

Remember watching the documentary that came out when he became England's record goal scorer, you can easily forget just how good he was as a teenager/young man. World class on his day. My first memory of international football is the 1998 world Cup, I'd have to say Rooney is the best England player that i can remember in that time by some distance. If he'd been around in 2002 alongside Beckham, Owen et al then England would've been serious world Cup contenders. FWIW I think he'll surprise people and make a decent coach. Always got the impression he's a little more intelligent than the average fan's impression of him. What a career though, good luck to him. Remember being 10 or 11 when he scored that goal against Arsenal. Something quite sobering when you realise that if you'd made it as a footballer you'd be approaching retirement!

All fair points mate - my view is that we wouldn't have become a yo-yo club but would have simply come back up better prepared for the PL (well established that we were promoted a year early, which is a large part of a struggles last year). Losing grealish would have been terrible, but I trust that the powers that be would have made good use of the money and we'd have been fine in the end. Luckily we avoided relegation and are now looking up not down, so its a moot point either way! Thankfully we never had to find out which one of us was right. Happy Friday

Absolutely. Although if I'm honest, relegation last year never felt as bad a prospect as losing to Fulham did in the play off final under the previous regime, which really did feel like it would lead to financial meltdown and all kinds of other problems. Under our current ownership id have backed us to rebuild and come back stronger, relegation would've been a blip but not a catastrophe IMO

I think those years in the Championship definitely improved him as a player - playing regularly for us and then becoming captain seems to have done wonders for his development (IMO he really stepped up another gear after getting the captaincy and has never looked back). I'm certain that he wouldn't have developed as well as a rotation player for Spurs or whoever and he could well have ended up as the latest young player to squander their potential. I remember there was talk of Leicester being in for him around the time they signed Maddison, and tbf that probably would've been a good move for him, but I'm sure he'd be happy with the way things turned out in the end. One thing that is certain though is that he'd reached a point where he needed to be playing at the highest level, I'm so happy that we won promotion when we did, as for his own sake he really would've had to move for PL football at the end of that season had we not. I also watched the the play-off final again last night and got a bit emotional. 100% my happiest day supporting this club.

Said it before but I think he'll go down as a bit of a cult hero when he leaves. Has had a hand in some great moments the past few years and clearly has the right attitude. Love that he's risen through the leagues and that by helping us to promotion he achieved his dream too, which is one of the many factors that has contributed to the good vibe around the club over the past 3 seasons. Be quite sad to see him go but I'd agree that after this season there simply won't be room in the squad for him. Would be an excellent signing for any championship club.

There's no magic money tree you know!!

The 'poverty premium' is over £1000 a year in Britain. The example of having to buy cheaper goods that need replacing more often is a good one, there's also the other costs associated with not being able to access credit, paying your gas and electric on a pre-pay card is by the most expensive way of doing so, someone who can afford to pay a monthly bill pays much less.

All fair points, although it seems to me that our approach throughout has been the worst of both worlds - not severe enough to stop the spread of the virus, which has allowed the economy to carry on at reduced capacity but taking more of an impact over a longer period of time, rather than accepting that there's going to be at least some short-term economic fall out, but ultimately the sooner the virus is under control the sooner normal economic activity can resume. Like you say a lot of people are largely carrying on as normal, so I can't see any end in sight with the way things are just now.

100% this. It seems like the government aren't wanting to be upfront with the public about how serious the current situation is. The number of people out and about us up massively on the first lockdown in the spring, and the list of reasons that you can be out and number of businesses allowed to stay open is a joke. Personally I'd have implemented an ultra strict lockdown for the whole of January with people only allowed out to buy the bare essentials, then reviewed the situation at the end of the month

Very impressive tonight

He might not ever make it here, but he's got something about him and would rather play for the Villa than Barcelona. Youve gotta think if he applies himself hes got more than half a chance of playing at a good level for this club. I've rarely been prouder to support the Villa than I am tonight - and for all our VT friends from elsewhere in the world, that interview typifies what this club means to those of us grew up in Villa territory. I know lads whose brothers played youth football with Louis just as I know lads who were at school with Jack. It really feels like we're on the cusp of something special over the next few years here. As others have said, all being well we could field a team half full of life-long Villa fans in the not too distant future. We've lots to look forward to boys!

Little bastard has lost me a load of money. And I couldn't be happier for him!

I could well be wrong, but you'd assume he still trains with the senior squad whilst he's under contract. In which case he's likely isolating? Time will tell I guess