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God, how depressing. Given I was a child, my feelings toward it were probably heightened - but winning the League Cup back in 1994 and 1996 was amazing. I'd long for us to win something again rather than a qualification for a competition we'd likely do nothing in. It makes no sense (to me) because the aim of football is surely to win, not to get the most money.

Sold into the hype of THE GREATEST LEAGUE IN THE WORLD because beating a little old French side isn't anything. But the MIGHT of Arsenal? WOAH! Edit: Either that, or a large proportion of our fan base are turning into that Arsenal fan base that everyone used to take the piss out of for "winning the top 4 trophy". Some delicious irony in there, somewhere.

There's no issue with it... but the obsessing is bizarre. We need to finish 4th and it's dealt with. Furthermore, the more important part (for me) would be the actual winning a trophy part of football. But, y'know, people love the balance sheet and that.

Football now isn't about where you finish in the league, it's about the coefficient and the balance sheet. Wild.

For me, it's a soft foul. I'm not sure he really impedes the attacker that much - he's absolutely looking to go to ground... ...but... if you're giving it as a foul, a red card is then probably the correct decision.

I’ll take being 4th in the league and having the ability to build play in the way we do over a marginal improvement on defending set prices.

lol tucking money into investing Cost of living hasn't hit this guy!

I don't think he does. Konsa and Torres will be our central pairing going forward. Mings will be a squad player. He's in his 30s, has had a serious injury and played zero part in our best season for a long, long time. I just can't see him coming back and being first choice.

Mings doesn't get in our starting line up. Pau is an absolutely integral part of our back line and how we play - why on Earth would we move him into a position he's never played before?!

In fairness, Arsenal had won 10 of their last 11 games (the 1 game they didn't win was a 0-0 draw away at Man City) and had comfortably beaten Liverpool (3-1) and Newcastle (4-1) at home in that run. Similarly, our away results against the teams around us have been a loss at Man City (4-1), a loss at Liverpool (3-1), a win at Spurs (1-2), a loss at Newcastle (5-1) and a loss at Man Utd (3-2) and we were coming into the game having almost gifted Brentford victory at Villa Park and (IMO) having been the second best side against Lille. The bookies had us at around 9/1 to win which is pretty high odds for a one-off game and the vast majority of us wouldn't have expected to win at all. It was a pretty surprising win.

His teams are always a nonsense. It's just clean sheets and whoever scored, so I'm guessing... Palmer, Isak, Cunha, Gordon, maybe a Man City midfielder since they scored 5, probably a Man City defender, Newcastle defender, think Gibbs-White got a goal and an assist... maybe a defender from Palace since they kept a clean sheet. Errrr... think I need one more player there... not really sure what else happened. Did Brentford beat Sheff Utd 2-0? Maybe a guy from Brentford.

Understandable that he has no emotional resilience given his upbringing. Hopefully he's got some good support around him and not people like the manly man on this forum.

Fans of all clubs do it - including Villa. Another shit shift in modern football. Things going badly in that one game? Boo the team and leave early! What? We paid for the ticket - we can do what we like!

Schrödinger’s announcement.

Football Weekly did the same when discussing games on the podcast. It just shows how the day panned out and gives MORE DRAMA.

Just chronological order. ”Liverpool have done <x>, time for Arsenal to step up”. It’s **** odd that people get so het up over the running order of MOTD.

Rogers doesn’t count!

Exactly. And, whilst it's understandable for fans to discuss how a game is going and "OMG make some subs!" etc., we should really constantly remind ourselves that we're currently watching a good team playing under the greatest manager we've (I've) seen at Villa Park - and I genuinely think that. Like having Martinez in goal, we have an absolutely World Class manager leading us. It's hard to comprehend because we've been a very average if not poor (by Premier League standards) side for such a long time and a lot of the feelings we (I) have around games are sort of scarred by that... but this guy is an absolute master. As Gary Neville said on his podcast... "the next thing about Arsenal, today - and, I felt this as a coach when I was over in Spain - when you're up against a master of a coach, a top coach, who can design a game of football... he just designs a game of football, an outcome, he almost sees it and he's patient enough to sort of let it develop and his teams seem to have that ability to follow it. He's a class act, Unai Emery... an absolute class act as a coach. You know, in all the sort of "top jobs" that are mentioned - Villa, at this moment in time, what he's doing there is special - but you see all these jobs that are available in the summer at Barcelona and Bayern Munich and Manchester United and Liverpool and... he doesn't get mentioned! He's not available either, but he's one of the best coaches in Europe ... Arsenal were up against a coach with know-how today who imparts know-how and knowledge on his team and they (Arsenal) fell for that in the second half... what he did in the first half, they dug in and defended resolutely and they were compact. But the start of the second half, he split his back line... the momentum shift in that one passing movement where they got out <some description>... I thought "oooh, it's changed. He's got them playing." He's gone in there at half time and gone "Now, we're gonna go play" and God they played in the second half, Villa... the reason Arsenal got beat today - yeah, you can point to many things - but in the end, they got out thought by a fantastic coach who designed the performance and designed the outcome and his team followed his instruction. It was a brilliant away performance". This is where we're at. We're no longer reliant on individual brilliance from Benteke or Grealish or Martinez or whoever to get us a result. We're reliant on a manager who sees everything and can react to everything. We're reliant on having an entire squad with the right mentality to take on board exactly what he's saying. We don't have the player quality and depth of, say, Man City - and this is a game of football, so sometimes surprising things happen - but we have a manager who is absolutely there. He's right up there. Lets just enjoy that for as long as we can.

Obviously fine to look at a transfer window, but we've just beaten Arsenal 2-0 away from home and are still to bring back: Tyrone Mings Emi Buendia Jacob Ramsey Boubacar Kamara Matty Cash as well as having Douglas Luiz return from suspension. Even if you assume they're all simply squad players, that's 5 "new signings" compared to where we are right now.

I thought it said V Sports board? Edit: OK, the actual update is with "Aston Villa Limited" so not V Sports. Shouldn't be stateside then!

If we didn't get an incredibly late win against Palace or draw against Sheffield United or late wins against Burnley and Luton then we'd be lower than where we are. Similarly, if we won all of our games this season we'd be champions. Football doesn't work like that. You can't look at a tiny selection of past games in this manner. We're where we are based on how well we've done over the course of the season and the victory against Arsenal was a great performance and bounce back from the disappointment in drawing against Brentford.

Is it even definitively Aston Villa-linked? These guys have invested in V Sports. There were rumours r.e: a new MLS side (Las Vegas based, wasn't it?) being created. A large development could happen in the States, no?

There’s a whole 2 or 3 minute section about how good Emery is and was in this game. It’s a decent analysis.

I know, hence…

Puts his points across really well there and a very fair assessment of the game given his Arsenal bias. Fair play.