Mark Albrighton

40 minutes ago, BOF said:

There's a story I won't be researching on the company internet.

Haha that name was common place in various parts of the UK for a while. I believe the one in Shrewsbury is the only street/alley name in the country that retains the “grope” part (I might be wrong). Over the centuries a lot of other places have changed to the more sanitised “Grape Lane”.

There is the suggestion that in Shrewsbury’s case because it’s a narrow, crooked alleyway, people would “grope” their way to make their way through. I am slightly sceptical of this reason. Having walked down it plenty of times I do get the sense that it was probably a suitable location to tout for business of a certain type. 

There’s a Harry Potter gift shop there now, which is one of the places my daughter likes me to spend my money.

3 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

I'm not sure why, but I thought the fan made badges would stop once the official badge was released.

 

I think there would have been more chance of fan designs ceasing if the club had produced a badge design which didn’t closely resemble a version of the Lerner badge supporters have been critical of for over ten years.

Out of interest, has anyone changed their mind over the past year? 

You might have wanted him to return but now you don’t, or you were still unhappy about his departure and have since mellowed and a return wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world…anyone at all changed their mind or are each of us still of the view that they pretty much have been?

I ask the question but I’m a bit of a hypocrite because I haven’t. I’m not 100% for or against the idea and haven’t ever felt so either way. I never thought I’d like to see Ashley Young in a Villa shirt again, but that changed. I’m mostly of the view that the timing and the cost of a theoretical deal doesn’t/will not align with where he is in his career and where we are/aiming to be.

I basically think that £50m and 250/300k worth of weekly wages probably could be better spent elsewhere.

21 minutes ago, CarryOnVilla said:

Nothing subtle about it, there’s loads of fans just only care about the football aspects. And that’s about it. 

Yes, I was making light of the fact you weren’t being subtle. 

I guess I was being too subtle.

7 minutes ago, CarryOnVilla said:

 

 

The vast majority of villa fans are 

“where’s Barkley” “where’s Mbeppe”

If that’s your oh so subtle way of saying that supporters care more about the on field stuff rather than stuff like this, then yes, of course they do.

Doesn’t mean off the field stuff doesn’t matter. If I see someone complaining about the trains coming back from games I’ll be sure to point them to your “Where’s Mbappe?” response to help them realise what’s important to focus on.

On the subject of the badge, because that’s what this thread is about - not Barkley, or any transfer wishlist player - my view is that supporters don’t care for it. My view is it’s really not well liked.

27 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

In fairness, I think we always make the mistake of assuming opinion is mirrored everywhere outside our own little Forum and social media bubbles.

My perception is that it’s not particularly well loved outside of VT either and my suspicion is the club are aware of this hence the relatively subdued release.

4 minutes ago, Pongo Waring said:

The old badge was so dark, dull, and a chelsea copycat. It just wasn't Villa.
New badge is bright and clear. Now none villa fans can easily identify its Villa by the yellow lion and blue. The older badge did not do that.

Leaving aside the idea that a yellow lion on a light blue background is “clear”…how important is it that non Villa fans can identify the badge as belonging to the club.

I don’t care what non Villa supporters think about our badge. Why would I?

And if it’s to entice new fans, I believe the amount of people who begin their support on the basis of the aesthetic of the club badge is negligible.

4 hours ago, Keyblade said:

You ever just go down a rabbit hole of watching highlights from our promotion season? Especially in the 10 game winning run, we were absolutely brilliant. Can't believe we were playing that kind of football in the Championship. Will be forever grateful to Smith for bringing back my love for football and my belief that we could actually achieve something. Almost a decade of turgid football and I had just about to start losing hope.

There’s a very real chance that the 2018/19 season will ultimately prove to be my favourite while following them.

I’ve seen them win a couple of trophies with better players before, and I hope to see them win trophies with better players in the future.

But the way that season played out, it’s going to take some doing to displace it.

So the players were always good and they were not giving it their all but simultaneously they were also sufficiently shit enough that Chelsea should wipe the floor with us, in the words of born winner Stevie.

I detect a degree of inconsistency. 

The original tweet is a few years old but made me smile.

Funnily enough, this looks like it was done back in February.

Quote

In a famous Yes, Prime Minister episode Sir Humphrey Appleby once explained to Bernard Woolley how you could get contradictory polling results on the same topic – in this case the reintroduction of national service – by asking a series of leading questions beforehand and asking the key question you want to know about in a certain way. 

But what would happen if we asked Sir Humphrey's questions today? To find out we asked 1,000 British adults the first set of questions that were positive about national service and 1,000 British adults the second set that were negative. Below is a comparison of the results. You can see that it is indeed true that you get different results on the level of support for the reintroduction of national service based on the way you ask the question and the questions you ask before it.

Ipsos link

Quote

The Labour Party has extended its lead over the Conservatives, according to the first exclusive YouGov poll of the campaign for Sky News.

One week into the race for Number 10, Labour is 27 points ahead of the Tories - erasing a small drop in the lead recorded at the end of last week.

The Great Britain poll - conducted on Monday and Tuesday this week - puts Labour on 47%, the Tories on 20%, Reform on 12%, the Liberal Democrats on 9% and Greens on 7%.

Sky news link

1 hour ago, Follyfoot said:

Or take it at face value as a joke…

Tony beat you to the punch with the meme in the GE thread on Saturday.

No further action being taken regarding Rayner and her house sale. 

It’ll probably be a mixture, one glamour opponent, one solid opponent and a less eye catching but still tricky opponent.

I wonder where we are in the minds of opponents, are we closer to being the team from our pot that teams don’t wanna face or are we more like “Ah, Aston Villa, that’s a blast from the past! Come on, let’s go, we’ve been meaning to for a while…”.

I didn’t vote, but I feel inclined towards Barca or Inter. Inter for nostalgic reasons, Barca just because they’re a big ‘un and I don’t particularly care for Real Madrid. 

The only thing I know about Iron Butterfly is that thing about their one time bass player who disappeared but before doing so made frantic phone calls to family and the police in part to claim OJ was innocent.

They found his remains four years after he was last seen. 

The badge looks alright in the Unai tweet. Just alright, don’t love it, don’t hate it.

When they go to the yellow lion it’ll be a problem.

It appears that Steve Baker is on the campaign trail, knocking on doors in Greece.

My daughter is 8 and this still happens. It’s not a complete mess like when she was 3 or 4, but typically needs cleaning up. She’ll have Nutella or something and get it on her finger then touch her forehead…

One day it will just stop and I might not notice immediately but after a while it’ll dawn on me that haven’t had to do get her to wipe her face for months. 

It was the same when she was baby/toddler age and throwing food on the floor. I distinctly remember thinking at the time that this was awful and it wouldn’t end. But of course it does. I couldn’t tell you when she stopped, just eventually noticed that cleaning up wasn’t necessary anymore.

Lucy Allan suspended for endorsing a reform candidate to succeed her seat.

Utter ditz that she may be, I can see why people like Stacey Solomon. Girl-next-door-done-good kinda vibe. I think she probably is a nice person so while I don’t watch anything she’s in, her being successful doesn’t bother me.

There are plenty of others who I’d sooner not be aware of.

13 minutes ago, Wainy316 said:

You clearly don’t have hayfever

When I do sneeze, it’s 3 or 4 at a time. But yeah it’s rare, I think I’m more bothered by dust than hay fever.

17 minutes ago, Wainy316 said:

Why does nobody ever sneeze when delivering a speech, presenting live TV or doing football punditry etc?

I feel like I have seen this happen on tv. A very rare occurrence though.

I suppose I might counter it by asking how often does the average person sneeze? I know it seems commonplace but I can’t remember the last time I did, maybe once in the last week or two?