HanoiVillan

**** sake

Mad that the ref blew up then, I'd be fuming. Feels like his laid-back approach isn't quite right for this game, did he not watch the reverse fixture?

Regardless of that stupid refereeing, we need to try to work out at least one way to create an overload in this half.

How's that not a penalty?

Need Carlos to stop trying to force passes that aren't there.

Sure, that's possible. He doesn't seem like a bullshitter to me, but I don't know the bloke and I could definitely be wrong. I'm not his hype man or publicist, I have nothing invested in his reputation. I'm just pointing out that these claims were not just made in articles and tweets in January, but were repeated on Thursday.

That is exactly what he thinks, yes. My point is he'll play Kane so much anyway that we could manage without Rashford's '3rd choice striker' role.

Tanswell was on the Athletic podcast last night, and repeated that Newcastle were interested in buying him in January. He also named Ramsey as one of the players we might sell because we need to raise £50m before June 30th. Of course he could be wrong, but it's not just old information, he repeated this stuff yesterday.

Have come round to thinking he needs to be told he won't be selected for England until he's on form and visibly committed to his club. We could take Gordon, Grealish and/or Palmer to understudy Foden at this point.

The guy is a genius, at the end of the day.

Have we just kissed goodbye to our only chance to avoid a PSR breach?

The point I'm making is that it gets less and less useful the fewer games and parameters there are left. The games are what matters, not the percentage. 'The horse doesn't know the odds', as they say.

Good post, this. A useful perspective.

Yes, was just going to make this point. These numbers have had England at everything from nearly 90% to not much more than 50% at different stages. Ultimately the numbers have no predictive power at all. We know what actually matters, which is whether English teams - including ourselves - progress. There's no comfort in the numbers if you don't think the teams will win.

It had never occurred to me before that he might be doing these in his pyjama bottoms.

Yes, agree. Obviously puts us in a position where clubs can potentially low-ball offers and see if we cave. That being said though, the way he words that bit about Ramsey's fee ('it would be around fifty million') made me wonder a bit if there has been some concrete discussion with interested parties. Maybe not, but found it interesting that he chose to venture a guess around a specific number.

He may well mean that Sanson was signed in case of a Luiz bid that never happened some time prior to those Arsenal bids. Buying players to cover expected departures is pretty normal, it seems very likely that Rogers is Ramsey's replacement for instance.

We don't have a choice, need to raise a significant sum by the end of the financial year.

Jacob Tanswell was on the Athletic podcast earlier and talked about our PSR position: The relevant bit is from 25:36, and he says: 'The PSR elephant in the room has been there throughout the season and it's looming now before June 30th and the end of the financial year. It's going to be difficult - obviously Douglas Luiz is one of Villa's biggest assets, he's got a good contract left, everybody expected him to leave in 2022 when Arsenal came in with several offers. Villa even signed Morgan Sanson to replace him, as it turns out Sanson's now gone, Douglas Luiz is still there. He's one of those players that Villa fear or think they will have to move on simply to comply with PSR, similar to Jacob Ramsey, obviously you saw Newcastle were interested in him towards the end of the winter window, obviously not sure if that would be the case now but he's one of those players that would be open or would ease PSR concerns because he's pure bookable profit, it would be around fifty million and that's essentially what Villa are needing by June 30th to comply with PSR regulations. But you look at the wage bill as well I mentioned earlier they've got a really high wage-turnover ratio, they're gonna have to sell the likes of Lucas Digne who's Villa's best-performing left-back this season instead of Moreno because he's on £120,000 per week, Moreno's on a lot less than that . . . uhm . . . they've got to look at other high earners as well, but also keep Emery happy.'

THANK YOU TOBY KEBBELL!!!

This is literally true, yes. And in general, Villa fans made *far* more noise all night. I'm not making some biased point about how great Villa fans are here; I imagine that happens every week. And sometimes the away fans are louder at VP too - you get this experience sitting as I usually do in the Upper Doug - but the differential is completely different. While VP may not always be a cauldron of noise, there are at least a number of standards that get sung multiple times per game; they just don't even really seem to have chants at City. Yes - I was there* with a 'soccer tour' of 75 Americans, young players and their families, and no surprise that's the ground where a tour company could just easily rustle up 75 tickets at fairly short notice because there must have been 5,000+ empty seats. But I bet the group I was with made more noise than the average home fan, they were absolutely scathing about how dead it was. *it's a long story, but quite boring I honestly couldn't tell, but the layout of the ground makes no sense regardless. Obviously it's a bowl, but one 'end' behind the goal has an additional tier compared to the other 'end', so why on earth do they put the away fans in the taller end? Wouldn't you naturally and obviously try to make that your noisiest part of the ground? It's a long time ago now, but I remember back when I was there 20 years ago there had been some effort to 'bring Maine Road with them' or whatever, and along one side they had a giant banner with 'the Kippax will never die' or some such and that bit made a lot of noise, but no sign of any of that now. You do wonder where those 30,000 fans they used to be taking to third division games in the nineties actually are now, presumably they're either too old or dead or can't afford to go to the games.

Can't believe you'd ruin my low-effort stereotyping with something as crass as facts.

Found myself at the Etihad last night, for the first time in nearly 20 years (pretty sure the last time was back when Stuart Pearce was managing them). I know it's not a novel observation but it is a dead, dead place to watch football. Literally only started singing when they were 3-1 (with the bizarre chant, 'to the library, 3-1') and then only for a minute or two, then again after the fourth but for less time this time, then about 15% of them had left by 82 minutes. What, you don't even want to clap them off the pitch? Seem to have no songs for any individual, except 'super Jack Grealish'. Nothing for Foden or Rodri. Silent, boring, utterly dead. It's not just the ground, there was honestly way more atmosphere when they Joey Barton and Sun Jihai in midfield.

Hopefully they've learned to make a good paella.

If our PSR situation is as dicey as it appears we probably won't be signing many players regardless of whether we make Champions League or not.