icouldtelltheworld

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

Absolutely - I think we lack an identity to a certain extent. It's crazy that someone could visit Brum and leave with absolutely no idea that the city was the birthplace of heavy metal and the place where Lord of the Rings was written - with numerous landmarks still standing that Tolkien took inspiration from. Those are just two examples of Brum's heritage that could draw visitors from across the world if more was made of them. One of the saddest things for me is the Crown pub outside New St station. Some of the biggest bands from Brum played their first ever gigs there, it's been abandoned for at least 5 years and was ear marked to be turned into apartments. In Liverpool or Manchester that would've been turned into a tourist attraction and would be attracting visitors all year round.

I love it here and can't really imagine living anywhere else, I think the city is improving all the time and will continue to do so over the next 10 - 20 years (if working from home sticks around, I can see it being really good for Brum as the economy will likely become less London-centric). We're also the youngest city in Europe, and I think that can be a positive thing over the coming decades. Brum has its problems, the same as any other major city and I can see why it would be a bit intimidating at night for those visiting from elsewhere, but I've never really felt unsafe here. A lot of the issues described here (knife crime, homelessness, begging etc.) are issues that are on the rise generally right across the country and can be attributed in large part to political and economic decisions that have been taken over the past decade. Birmingham is consistently one of the ten most deprived boroughs in the country, and the poorest areas of the city are amongst the poorest places in the UK (and likely among the poorest places in northern Europe) - so cuts to services are likely to be more acutely felt here then in many other places. I still think there's more cause for optimism than pessimism, and feel that the improvement in the city centre itself has been really noticeable over the past 10 - 15 years - hopefully that improvement can have a trickle down effect on some of the more deprived suburbs in years to come. I'm perhaps more of a glass half full person, but even if you consider the deprived areas of the inner city (Handsworth, Aston, Newtown etc.), you're talking about some of the most racially, ethnically and culturally diverse places on the planet. Combined with high levels of poverty, it's not surprising that there are problems - but relatively speaking those areas are fairly harmonious when you consider the incredible diversity within them. In many other places on earth that would be a recipe for all-out conflict and civil war, so I think there's a lot about Brum that should be celebrated, which unfortunately is something that we don't do as well as other cities.

Absolutely brutal starting 11

First England game I've watched since the world cup. Crock of shite, Southgate is stealing a living - he doesn't know how to fit creative players into the team and it shows badly, Jack hasn't got a hope with him in charge whether he gets on the pitch or not

Arrived on the scene by taking the piss out of Liverpool in that semi-final (one of our most memorable moments of the past 10 years). Showed incredible loyalty really to stay with us for 3 years in the Championship, could have kicked up a fuss at any point and would really have been within his right to do so considering where the club was and how good he is. Never moaned when his move to Tottenham fell through, got his head down and dragged us to the Prem (captaining us in a win at Wembley on the way - pretty rare for us in the past 20 years). Took the piss out of Blues a few times on the way. Pretty much single-handedly kept us up last season, we'd have been down by the time lockdown came around without some incredible solo efforts from Jack. Maybe it's a generational thing - I'm in my late 20s, so I became aware of football two years after we last won a major trophy. For me, he's 100% a legend regardless of if he stays or goes this summer. He dragged us back to where we belong and kept us there, and has clearly been playing with players far below his standard for the past number of years. Probably different for some fans who remember us in 1982 etc., although my dad was in Rotterdam (and has been going VP since the 60s) and reckons he's never seen a more talented player at the Villa. Will always be a Villa legend in my eyes, although I can understand why that might not be the case for everyone

With a sizeable pay off in hand. Nice work if you can get it

I remember being shocked by this at the time. As I understand it, Riley has Jewish heritage but was not raised within Judaism - fair enough then for her to take an interest in antisemitism and speak out where she sees it. But for her to then accuse a Jewish intellectual with actual lived experience of antisemitism (not to mention time spent living on a Kibbutz) of being a 'spreader of antisemitism' struck me as being particularly nasty and distasteful.

Agree with this. Think he'll go down as a bit of a cult hero once his time here is done, has his limitations but works hard and has scored some massive goals for us. Seems to really care about the club as well. Remember Newcastle game earlier in the season when he came back into the team, so much excitement every time we got a free kick in a good position