icouldtelltheworld

You might have a point - certainly wouldn't be the first time!

Point is that someone took it in the first place I guess, nowadays it's always likely to end up on the internet. Silly really, he's such a high profile character that something like this will obviously end up getting out somehow

We've now got by far the best team that we've had in at least 10 years, over to Dean now to get the best out of them. I'm sure that he's relishing the challenge

Idiots, we signed him last summer FFS!

I agree that he's a fantastic prospect, but it's tricky in that it's unclear at this stage whether his development would be best aided by staying with us and getting minutes in the cup/off the bench, or going out on loan to a championship team to play week in week out. As there's been talk that he may be going out on loan, you'd imagine it's a decision that the hierarchy have been weighing up too

Really deserves credit for our record against lower league teams since he came in (I know we lost to Fulham in the FA Cup last year, but if we're honest the gap between the top of the champ and bottom of the prem isn't all that great). A few years ago you were guaranteed to make money betting on us to lose against lower placed teams in the League cup, but our run to the final last year was impressive and we've made an excellent start this year. With Stoke in the next round we have every chance of a good cup run again this year, I'm feeling very positive after last night.

Did really well last night and unlucky not to score from close range early on. Great play for El Ghazi's goal and I loved seeing him take a shot from distance too. I had wanted him to go on loan, but at the moment I'd veer towards keeping him around the squad as another option up front. It's a tricky one, but a nice problem to have!

Jordan Pickford is really shite isn't he?

This is true but opinions on VT are often very different to the rest of our fanbase as a whole. Trez is very popular with posters on Villa facebook groups for example, a fair few seem to think that Traore will arrive as second choice behind Trez.

Hope we take this one seriously, think the big clubs will be even less interested in the league cup this year so could be a great chance for us to go one better than last year.

Agree with this completely. Grealish very unlucky not to score with one of his three decent attempts too, on another night at least one of those goes in. I felt you could see signs of what we were trying to do but we couldn't quite get our passing going when we got towards their box, which is no surprise given it's the first game of the season and we were playing against a well-drilled team who defended excellently. Lots of room for improvement but plenty of positives too.

Always felt he was primarily brought in as cheap cover in case Jack got injured. With that in mind I think he's probably worth keeping around the squad, definitely limited in the PL by his lack of physicality, but he's a creative player and so offers something different to our wide players.

Definitely - has clearly wanted to get away and play football rather than sit here and collect his wages. Certainly not the case for all of our flops over the years.

Pleased for him really, clearly signed by a manager who had no idea how to use him. It's a short career and they get paid good money, but it must be depressing to end up in the situation he did straight after the hitting the best form of his career with Brentford. Hope by moving to Blues he can be happy and settled somewhere, but will keep my fingers crossed that they still have a shite season.

Think that I've found it! Thanks for the heads up For anyone who might be interested: https://www.economist.com/blighty/2013/05/31/how-to-kill-a-city

This article may be of interest to posters in this thread: https://unherd.com/2020/09/the-plot-against-mercia/ Essentially argues that the success/growth of Birmingham and other places in the Midlands was deliberately sabotaged by London-based planners.

What I love about Jack's interview is his honesty about not being sure if he was going to stay with us. He is clearly ambitious and has been convinced that the club can match his ambitions. We've been losing our better players (often to Man U!) my entire life - this really feels like it could be a massive turning point for the club

I think he meant that it wasn't 100% sure which club he'd be at next season - said that he didn't want to start the season here and then move on before the end of the window, so wanted things clarified before the season began.

Best signing of the summer IMO. As much of a sign of intent from the club as any of the other signings we will make - delighted!

Thanks for this - interesting info, definitely an exaggeration on my part but I still feel envious of the way other cities celebrate and promote themselves in comparison to Brum. I stand by my point that other cities do a much better job of celebrating their cultural history than Brum - theme parks or not, Liverpool's cultural history is much more visible in the city than anything in Birmingham.

Definitely agree about Brum CC being too big (I think it's the largest council in Europe, but that might be one of those urban myths). Personally I'd divide it into seperate councils for North and South Brum. I know Andrew Mitchell has suggested breaking it up into the seperate constituencies but IMO that would be dreadful for the poorer areas of the city (as well as being an administrative nightmare)

No mention of Sutton Coldfield's ongoing struggle for independence from its colonial masters at Birmingham town hall? I remember a few years ago someone was going round sticking tudor roses over the Birmingham coat of arms on street signs around Sutton, and the only thing that the new town council seems to have done with its limited powers has been to erect "welcome to the ROYAL TOWN of Sutton Coldfield" signs at the borders with Erdington and Kingstanding... Some fantastic quotes here: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/sutton-coldfield-makes-bid-break-12651887

I've been surprised by how much I like him as a pundit

There's an interesting point to be made here. Social problems (violence, crime, drug addiction, mental health, teenage pregnancy etc.) are almost always higher in places where there is more inequality, so whilst poverty is a huge factor, it's not so much the levels of absolute poverty that are the best predictor of things like violent crime, but the gap between the richest and the poorest in a given society. Whilst the UK doesn't have levels of poverty that are anything like what you find in South Africa, what the two countries do have in common is massive inequality between the richest and poorest people, which is associated with higher social problems right across the board. America also has really high levels of inequality and sees high rates of crime, drug addiction, mental health issues and so on. The UK, South Africa and USA are all massively unequal societies, whilst comparitively wealthy societies such as those in Scandinavia or Japan have a much smaller gap between the richest and poorest people, and also see much lower levels of crime, drug addiction and so on. There isn't any correlation between having a harsher criminal justice system and reduced rates of crime. If you want to reduce levels of crime, the best way to do so is to address poverty and inequality. Interesting graph showing correlation between inequality and social issues:

I think there's the makings of a useful player in Marvellous - as others has said he's a good option to have against teams where we're likely to have our backs against the wall. I think he needs to just focus on the simple things, disrupt play and make the short pass to another midfielder. He struggles when tries to overplay it by running with the ball or making a longer pass