HanoiVillan

To be honest, we're an English football club, it shouldn't take being 'schooled in the ways of Chinese business' to get bought. However, I wouldn't expect fans to be kept up to date with proceedings anyway. This may or may not happen, but certainly whatever one or two blokes said on Twitter won't be the difference.

I found this blog post had me nodding my head quite a bit - clarifies one of the main issues with the Leave campaign, that of the lack of an actual plan for the future: #Brexit: strategic incompetence for fun and profit 'Out funder Peter Hargreaves thinks leaving the European Union would be “like Dunkirk” and would turn us “into Singapore”. That he mentions two of the most catastrophic disasters in our history is surely Freudian. Dunkirk saw the British Army booted off the continent of Europe, forced to sabotage every bit of its equipment heavier than a Bren gun, let down by a serious failure to prepare adequately. But at least they made good their escape. You couldn’t say that about the Singapore campaign, during which the total means of national power were all comprehensively thrashed, jointly and severally. In this case, there was a strategy, laid down years before, and a huge investment in infrastructure, but it was profoundly unrealistic and poorly thought through. This time, there was no escape. Does that remind you of anything? It should. People keep saying how much the referendum campaign reminds them of the Scottish referendum campaign. In the Scottish campaign, it became painfully obvious that despite having had 40 years to think about it, the SNP hadn’t managed to answer a question as basic as what currency would circulate in an independent Scotland. In the referendum campaign, it is painfully obvious that despite having had even longer to think about it – right back to the 1950s – the Outs haven’t come up with anything like an alternative. As @Scientists4EU says, with 40 days to go, the SNP had published a 670-page white paper on independence detailing how they planned to unpick Scotland from the UK, and do you see anything like that from the Outs? . . . Ideas there are. Part of the problem is that they are entertaining quite so many options. Perhaps we could be like Norway, Switzerland, Canada, Singapore, or Albania? Each one comes with a little national flag, a sort of enamel lapel pin, for the sake of easy reference. But they have next to nothing to do with the countries named. Take Norway. Being like Norway sounds pretty sweet! Anyone for some prosperous, egalitarian Nordic social democracy? It goes without saying that none of the Outs have any intention of, say, legislating that all public companies should have 50% women on their board of directors, or worse, that their boards should include worker representatives. It also goes without saying that there’s no way Brexit would cause more oil to appear in the North Sea. What “Norway” means here is that we’d leave the EU but stay in the European Economic Area, thus keeping (mostly) tariff-free access to EU markets so long as we respected EU regulations. I say “mostly” tariff-free, because in fact there are nontrivial tariff barriers between the EU and Norway on agricultural products. Actually, one of the main selling-points here is that we could be more protectionist towards farmers and fishermen. On the other hand, we’d still have to pay into the EU budget, respect the rules, and accept freedom of movement for labour. Also, financial firms in the UK would have to get regulatory approval for each EU country where they wanted to do business. . . . What about Singapore? This is the one that really gets on my nerves. A lot of right-wing people imagine that Singapore is a libertarian utopia because the public sector share of GDP is quite low. But this is silly. Singapore doesn’t have big spending ministries, but it does have a huge sovereign-wealth fund that owns major industrial and infrastructure projects in the country as well as financial investments worldwide. Rather than pay welfare benefits out of tax money, Singapore made it compulsory to pay into private insurance, through the so-called central provident fund, a little like a much more comprehensive version of Obamacare. Oh, and basically everyone lives in a council flat. After independence (from Malaysia, and Britain) the Singaporean political and business class took a joint decision to develop the port as the major regional transport hub, and to take advantage of that to build up industry around it, notably chemicals and computer/semiconductor manufacturing. Their thinking was that economic development in Asia would create a huge opportunity for this role. This worked really well, but it’s worth noting that it was very much a succession of joint decisions by government technocrats, political leaders, and investors rather than some sort of idealised libertarian hands-off process. That is supposedly more true of Hong Kong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a myth too. You’ll note they didn’t start off by creating a new tariff barrier between their massive port facility and the market it serves. Also, Outers tend to imagine that the Singaporean financial centre is completely unregulated. Financial people find this intensely funny. Anyway, it’s much more accurate to think of Singapore as one of the so-called “coordinated market economies”, like Germany or the Netherlands. Now, does anyone think the Outers have any plan to be more like Germany? Thought not. They want to get Out precisely in order to avoid being more like Germany. In the end, this shows us two things about Out. One thing is that they have failed – haven’t even tried – to put forward a coherent strategy to avoid their Dunkirk moment turning all Singapore. The second is that, as with the SNP, there are reasons for that. Sticking with their original plan to join the Euro would have shown up that an independent Scotland might be a lot less nice than they made out, and certainly no haven of protection against recession. Using sterling would mean admitting that independent Scotland wouldn’t be all that independent. Inventing a new currency would mean admitting that the social basis of independence would be a huge bet on the oil price. They didn’t answer the question, because the question threw light on all kinds of other questions they didn’t want asked. Similarly, the Outers don’t want anyone to ask about their post-Brexit plans because the content of their plans, such as it is, is invariably vastly unpopular. How many people want to turn the country over to Mosseck Fonseca as a libertarian tax-haven? Well, Peter Hargreaves probably does, and he has a billion reasons for that. What is it that first attracted billionaire financier Peter Hargreaves to Brexit? It looks like we found the missing link between Out and ski-ing – money! But let’s not pretend he is normal. Similarly, does anyone want the common agricultural policy but with more farm subsidy? Only people who stand to collect, and they’re a tiny minority. The answer, then, is strategic incompetence. You can avoid having to answer the difficult questions about your post-Brexit policy by simply failing to have one. That this strategy appeals to Boris Johnson ought to be obvious.' http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/2016/05/15/brexit-strategic-incompetence-for-fun-and-profit/#comments

Friday (on Amavi): 'To call him fabulous at this stage, is indeed up there with your usual over hyping of players.' Sunday (on Grealish): 'I think he's dogshit tbh.' On the one hand, ludicrous rhetorical inflation, on the other, calling somebody out for the exact same thing

I think this confusion is possibly my fault, because my post wasn't worded very well, but the 60% figure refers to total food mass, rather than any individual foods.

On the last page you were saying you weren't evaluating Japan's U23 side, now you seem to be doing exactly that. Regardless, the fact that he didn't have an amazing performance in a dead rubber game in which none of his teammates played particularly well (while still getting the job done) tells us absolutely nothing about his use or otherwise for us. And I really have to push back on this use of the word 'dogshit'. He just made his youth international debut, obviously nobody employed in the sport thinks he's 'dogshit'.

A pretty dumb message though. 'We're capricious and incompetent at basic business.'

We already produce less than 60% of the food we eat, so the notion it's some kind of 'last line of defence' is pretty questionable. And while areas might need hosepipe bans, on a global scale we're one of the least-adversely affected countries in terms of water issues.

Talking about lies and so on, this claim that Turkey is about to join the EU is the biggest load of shit of them all.

There's no way Cameron would have voted Out if he wasn't the leader. I don't even think he'd have voted Out if he was in Boris's position. For better or for worse, Cameron is presenting himself basically 'as is' in this referendum. Corbyn yes, he would have voted Out if he wasn't leader. That's the Bennite position, and I think Corbyn in perpetual opposition mode would have taken that.

It's not a new kit, but watching Monterrey play last week was a laugh:

Well that's mature

I don't necessarily disagree with some of that. Obviously, there are some conditions to my prediction - I mentioned two, that we actually invest £30m-£40m in the squad, and that we actually appoint a decent manager - but you can include some others as well. One that I thought was inherent in the first condition, but can be separately addressed, is that we actually get a new owner. If Xia fails the ownership test, or turns out to be lacking capital in some way, then all bets are off. In terms of the manager, I would hope RDM has done a certain amount of homework and is basically familiar with which players he wants to keep and which he wants to sell. He should also have some ideas in terms of player recruitment. While nobody expects him to be a scout, in the short term he may need to consult his own rolodex. It's true that we haven't got months to dilly-dally in, and we may have to boogie a bit faster than we are used to in the PL, but it's worth remembering the playoff final was only yesterday and the transfer window isn't even open yet. While we don't have a lot of time, we aren't a million miles behind. On the mid-table thing, we're just going to have to agree to disagree, and if Xia does take over, I think given everything he's said so far there's a 0% chance he will consider 12th to be an 'understandable performance'.

During the Taylor Part 2 and DOL years I began to drift away from Villa, and paid less attention to our results. Since supporting another PL team was obviously out of the question, I used to watch Chester City (as was) semi-regularly, and had some great times there. (In fact, this brief phase is still acknowledged in my email address even today!)

Honestly, reading that list of names puts a spring in my step. If RDM can get that load of no-hopers promoted he may very well be the right man for the job.

Stewart Downing? I haven't been following Boro, maybe he's been useless, but he seems to fit your requirements there.

Apparently there's a place called Alton just ten miles away, seems close enough to me.

Yes, not the result I wanted for personal reasons but probably a better result for Villa.

Hear **** hear.

This isn't actually true, he did offer a list of alternative candidates, including such overlooked picks as Hiddink and Van Gaal.

I'm sure all that's true, but of course we don't need Bentley to be 'as good as Hart', we need him to be 'better than Guzan' which is a fairly cavernous difference.

Well, a] he wasn't, he scored 17 goals for Boro, and b] Robinson was 'bang shit' on loan for Preston, so even if Bamford were average he'd still be a massive improvement.

I think there's something to your theory. Football certainly did exist in many incarnations, and crowds of any significant size could only be provided by industrial workers. More importantly perhaps, the age of communication and travel brought about by railways must have made it easier for a codified game to catch on in multiple places, with standardised rules, thus making leagues a possibility. In agricultural Britain of yore, every village had its own different sporting traditions.

If we receive a £30-£40m investment in the squad, and appoint a decent manager, both of which are supposedly on the cards, then mid table would be a massive under-performance. If those things don't happen, then of course all bets are off.

Re the spread of football, is it something to do with the nationality of railway workers? Football was spread around the world by British and Irish railway workers, or at least that was how it was spread into South America anyway. Maybe the Indians built their own railways? I'm just thinking out loud, obviously.

His wages have been automatically reduced as a result of relegation, and we could afford to pay him next season. He won't need to be in 'the shop window'. As you say, a club will be prepared to pay the relegation release clause this summer. So in reality, for him to go on loan elsewhere, we would need to receive an offer, be forced to accept it, he would need to evaluate it, then say 'no thanks, I'd rather stay at Villa' and then we'd need to say well, no Gana, thanks but no thanks, why don't you play in Greece for a year or something. It just doesn't benefit us in any way.