HanoiVillan

1-0 at half time, so that means it'll be 1-1 after 50 minutes. We're still in this!

The Rotherham fixture is a huge help, they should be safe with 2 wins, pretty much definitely 2 wins and a draw. So they just need to win that, and get a win from Cardiff or Preston at home or Huddersfield away. I think they'll get what they need unfortunately.

Sound advice that, tbf.

If any of this lot can get 2 wins from their last 7, they'll be safe: QPR probably just need one tbf. Apparently Wednesday played quite well today but just couldn't score, maybe they'll be the ones to get it together.

In that case, it would depend who was running Aston Hall Ltd; if it's different people entirely that's basically okay (though it's worth noting if Aston Hall Ltd ends up a massive money sink then you could still end up with bad situations like the club overpaying for its use), but if it's Chris Heck or whatever then no, his focus should be on the football business.

Those things are mostly fine, but I probably wouldn't be okay with just owning random restaurants; on the other hand if they were part of the stadium complex like Villa Live was originally planned then it would be not just okay, but excellent. The basic premise here is that the further you get away from the core business of 'being a football club' then the more you encounter different types of business challenge that we may not be equipped to resolve, that may be cyclical in other ways or subject to regulation, that ends up dragging down the football business. I mean, you can take the absurdities in other directions as well. Why not build an Aston Villa supermarket to compete with Tesco? Why not set up Aston Villa Rented Properties Ltd and try to become the biggest landlord in the local area? Re Aston Hall, if the club had a particularly excellent idea to use it for hospitality (I doubt they will, because it's several hundred metres from the stadium and what is it really going to offer people seeking hospitality at a football club that can't be provided better and more cost-effectively in the hospitality areas of the stadium?) then I have no issue with the club approaching the council to do some sort of deal to use the space occasionally, for a fee, but I'm opposed to any situation where the maintenance and upkeep of this old building ends up on the balance sheet of Aston Villa Football Club. In the end, we've appointed people to executive roles because we think they'd be good at running a football club, and that's what we should allow them to do.

The differences between selling routine consumer items that football fans want to purchase as part of a match-going experience on the one hand, and taking over a long-term commitment to maintaining a listed building located on the opposite side of a park from the ground and which serves no footballing purpose and is of no interest to match-day crowds on the other seem too obvious to have to expound at length.

Also, as I've said before, we're a football club not the National Trust. We don't need to getting into the business of preserving crumbling stately homes that serve no footballing purpose.

Not to greatly disagree with this, but would he have known he was under investigation at the time these bets were placed?

Yeah, I live in Stourbridge and this makes public transport a real option for the first time for me.

Is there much need for one? The pick up point is not that far from Moor Street . . .

Anything which reduces pressure on the roads outside the ground and disperses fans into the city centre is good news.

The Midlands does have a 'car first' mentality but I think it's important to remember we're not a different species to Londoners, the difference between our mentality and theirs is largely a consequence of patterns of historical development and poor public transport links. I drive from Stourbridge to VP now, despite living near Stourbridge Junction, because despite everything it's still faster. That difference would only get more pronounced if we moved halfway to Coventry. If the Midland conurbation were far denser and had an S-Bahn style underground it might be a different story, but as they say about my aunty . . .

I think this nicely summarises the problem, that many fans are primarily concerned about sporting equality (from which perspective it seems bad that clubs can monetise 'being in London' and others can't), whereas PSR rules are about ongoing financial viability, from which perspective these things are great.

Well you learn something every day.

A housing project is a lot of additional money but a reliable stream of revenue. But by the time they've built this stadium, Peaky Blinders is going to have been off-air for about a decade, hard to see many people being interested. Maybe Wagner can try and get the financing for a spin-off movie or something.

Too reckless IMO, don't think he has the discipline for it (I don't think it's an accident he hasn't already been offered a gig).

Much like Hopkins, he's a troll who feeds on negative attention and is trying to monetise it. And as with Hopkins, as soon as people stop paying attention it stops working.

Absolutely not. There's basically no moderation at all.

It was arguably a worse squad that went to Russia, but not much in it either way: 11 of the same players, and most of the other changes (I tried to put them like-for-like, but Southgate took an additional defender instead of an attacker) are much of a muchness. Most of the swaps are squad players who didn't get much if any pitch time in either tournament, with the glaring downgrade of not having Rooney this time. In the run-up to 2018, very little was expected from that squad. In the immediate aftermath, absolutely everybody felt that England had over-achieved given the squad available. Now, I understand, a national team manager remains in place for a long time and everyone gets fed up with them, but there's some re-writing of history happening if people are going to insist that England suddenly should have been challenging for the tournament with basically the same side as 2 years prior. One frustrating aspect of the debate is that people assert that England's squad is massively better now, without considering whether any part of that appraisal is actually *because* they've done better at tournaments than they used to. I'm not saying that's all the difference - in particular, Kane is a genuine difference, a truly world-class striker who really does it for England - but nobody ever seems to even consider it.

No worries. Similarly, apologies for getting annoyed. But yes, I think it's time for me to call it a day in this thread. Time for some other voices.

Which bit is a stretch? That Zaniolo is better than Coutinho today, in 2024 (obviously), or that Zaniolo 'isn't up to it' (debatable, depends what 'it' is I suppose)?

I don't really understand why you're patronisingly intervening in this conversation, but I can assure you I'm able to read so please do one.

'His record gets worse' if you're bothered about his win percentage against top 10 teams. As I've said, I don't really care about this.

I will admit I am, to a certain extent, playing devil's advocate, because the cosy consensus in this thread irritates me. But I will absolutely fight to the death that **** third place playoffs don't matter, and that including friendlies in a manager's record is bullshit.