icouldtelltheworld

2 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

The reason I'm asking is because I'm cynical enough to wonder if somebody's phone is being hacked.

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

13 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Was it uploaded by someone?

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

Just now, AvonVillain said:

Personally, I'm not sure how it's tricky or difficult or confusing or problematic or anything... he's a genuinely brilliant young prospect, getting regular minutes, signed a new contract, happy to be a part of the squad and makes a difference every time he takes to the field.

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?

2 hours ago, Laughable Chimp said:

 

lol what? Trezeguet gets plenty of shit on here and plenty were okay with us selling him during the summer despite how important his goals were for us whilst Mcginn gets excused a lot on the "he wasn't fully fit" excuse.

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.

22 minutes ago, est1874 said:

Although I didn't think we were great by any stretch of the imagination, I don't really understand all the negative reaction. Sheffield United are characteristically very hard to break down even when they're more open, looking for the win with 11 men, so naturally an early sending off was going to make them very hard to crack. There's been plenty of evidence to suggest that we are poor in unlocking a highly defensive tactic, and whilst that's something that we'll have to work on, it's also not representative of the majority scenario for the rest of our season. We will primarily be dealing with teams who give as good as they get, and perhaps better more often than not, going forward. So training will generally be focused on scenarios where we're up against it.

Ultimately we got the 3 points and Martínez and Cash both looked good, so lots to be positive about.

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.

58 minutes ago, MentalM said:

100% agree

I feel Hogan has good attitude, he put work in but didnt work out here.

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.

34 minutes ago, slowandlow said:

There was an extensive article in the economist or FT about this a few years back

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.

 

Quote

 

"From 1953 to 1964, service sector employment around Birmingham boomed, with major British and international banks, professional and scientific services, finance and insurance, adding three million square feet of office space. In the decade from 1951, Birmingham created more jobs than any city except London, with unemployment generally below 1%.

But then in 1964, the Government declared Birmingham’s growth “threatening”, and banned further office development for almost two decades. To add insult to injury to the region, its cities suffered among the worst architectual destruction of that decade, with much of old Victorian Birmingham torn down and medieval Coventry destroyed.

What would have happened without these disastrous policies? The size of a country’s cities normally follows a rule called ‘“Zipf’s law”, by which the second largest city is half the size of the largest, but Britain is an exception. By one estimate, Birmingham should have twice as many people, and Nottingham a third more. Those shortfalls, perhaps also due to years of transport neglect, are staggering."

 

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

4 minutes ago, Pelle said:

In that interview, did I get it right that up untill a couple of days ago he didn't know where to play? Which to me sounded like it wasn't clear in which position he was meant to play the coming season. Or did I get it completely wrong? If not it sounds like we're having a new player coming in rather soon. Rashica?

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!

10 minutes ago, bickster said:

Right this statement deserves a fuller reply thatn I originally gave

Famous Manchester Music Venues:

The Hacienda: Demolished now Apartments

Lesser Free Trade Hall (Where the Sex Pistols played twice....): Demolished, now a Hotel

International 2 (Home of The Stone Roses if you like): Demolished, apartments

The Boardwalk: Building still there, now offices

Twisted Wheel: Demolished, Now a Hotel

Rafters: Been closed since 2010

Band on the Wall: Still going

Famous Liverpool Venues:

The Cavern: Demolished to become a car park, don't be fooled into thinking the current one is anything other than a theme park

Erics: Later Bradys, Some Bar on Matthew St but again, the current Erics is not the same building and is another theme park

Planet X: Demolished and is now part of Liverpool One

Royal Court Theatre: Building still there, now a theatre again (No music)

Litherland Town Hall (Beatles first gig iirc) - Medical Centre

The Jacaranda: Was closed for many years, now reopened as a pub and record shop, does not trade off any Beatles association.

The Blue Angel: Still a club but populated by pissed students of the worst kind, makes no mention of the Beatles playing there.

The Stadium: Demolished now Offices

Out of all those legendary venues, only two still puts bands on and three are still in existence

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.

14 hours ago, Xela said:

Oh West Mids is like that.. you've got the big beast that is BCC then Walsall, Wolves, Sandwell, Solihull, Dudley and Coventry that make up the wider West Midlands county. In that respect, its no different to Merseyside.

Yu could always tell when you went from Brum council area to Walsall council area by the bins... Walsall has green, brown and black bins for various waste and up until recently in Birmingham, you just used to throw your bin bag in the street on collection day! To be fair, I think Brum have improved on that front. 

Its just that within Brum CC itself, its too big IMO. 

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

3 hours ago, Mazrim said:

Gabby speaks a lot of sense. More than most Villa talking heads. I like him.

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

19 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

Look at the povety in south Africa and the way of life for many people. Some reoffenders may not have a choice due to having nothing.

London has povety yes but not the kevel of what people there have. Massive gang problems there also.

Im not full of "bollocks" please  stop being a baby and have a adult Conversation without the crappy digs

 

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