Mark Albrighton

Yep, I guess it would be sort of like quibbling over half a million/million quid in the late 90’s, early 00’s. And we know full well what it was like with an owner quibbling over that sort of figure around the turn of the century.

Just caught the first five minutes of “I’ll get this”. Not quite sure what it is. Celebrities having a meal. Anyway, I think it was @bickster who began a thread naming who your biggest word removed is. Well, Janet Street Porter being on the show was the main reason I stopped after 5 minutes. And I maintain my stance in my one and only post to Bicks’ thread.

Loved it when I was a teenager, thought it was one of the cleverest shows around. Having seen a few back years later....well they’re not as clever as I remembered. Some real moments where dramatic license is utilised. The less said about the newer episodes, the better (although I do like Sarah Alexander). But they’re a bit of daft fun. The one thing that still holds up rather well is the chemistry between Alan Davies and Caroline Quentin.

I expect all clubs have had some sort of committee when deciding transfers and have done for a while. How that responsibility is divided up is of course anyone’s guess. I would think it varies from club to club, manager to manager. Although I can imagine that someone like Bruce coming with a certain “old school” reputation of championship experience would be given more leeway or have more sway over transfers...than say someone like Sherwood who you’d think wouldn’t be allowed to have his training wheels removed at any point. Just my guess, but that’s how I could see it. And it’s not something I’d disagree with. I know if I was running a football club, particularly a Championship club, I’d like to believe I could trust someone like Bruce’s opinion more than someone like Sherwood’s.

Blimey, was that from one of the later editions of A.A. Milne?

Think that’s debatable mate. By my reckoning we’ve improved on Adomah with Jota (I think). No idea on whether Wes is better than Tammy, although I’m feeling hopeful that he’ll be a smart signing. El Ghazi in for El Ghazi. I’m not too worried, I think they’ll all flood in soon.

Well I haven’t, it’s not significant or expensive enough to do so, just organised by alphabet then chronologically by release date. Soundtracks and compilations at the end. Singles kept separately. But I can see that cataloguing it would lead to wider questioning of how the collection is ordered.

No, not really.

I think I have Bob Marley & the Wailers under “M”. Although I suppose some would argue it should go under “B”. Siouxsie & the Banshees would obviously go under “S” but say if it was Siouxsie Ballion & the Banshees, using my Bob Marley example, I don’t think it would look right going under “B” for Ballion.

No, I don’t think so either.

I think there has been a suggestion that we’ve paid a bit extra to help get past the work permit hurdle. Edit that’s not to say he’s worth £15m, more that we’ve gone a touch further in order to make sure it gets through.

Yes fair enough. I suppose it perhaps boils down to whether Bruce wanted (or felt he needed) to loan Steer out. We obviously didn’t need to from a financial point of view, we ended the season with four senior keepers on our books. So maybe Jed wanted to go out on loan. Looking back it just seems odd that Bunn was perhaps originally viewed by Bruce as his fourth best keeper (hence why he didn’t start against Hull), but he ended up being the number one for Bruce’s final game. The problems of the back four is a far bigger issue to level against him, I’m really just pondering/nit picking some of the reasoning that went on.

But if Steer isn’t in his immediate plans, why select him? First game of the season, away at your former club, live on telly. Nyland was signed a day later, Steer loaned out four days later. Why not play Moreira whom had been brought in? Why not play Bunn who would be around the squad for the remainder of the season? I don’t wanna get hung up on that too much, we won the game after all (the last reasonably convincing win under Bruce I would say). But like I say, these little decisions, little inconsistencies, individually they weren’t a big deal, but across his time here they chipped away at the idea he knew what he was doing. For me anyway.

Are all the “The...” bands being entered in the spreadsheet as such, or are you dropping the “The”? (That question really belongs in the boring thread but hey ho)

We had Axel of course, but Steve felt he was better deployed elsewhere...(that’s another discussion which has been had, I’m sure it will be had again). Why do you think he started Steer ahead of Bunn in the first game of the season? I don’t disagree that Bruce saw Jed as (ultimately) fourth choice, but I don’t get why he’d start him ahead of Bunn (who by the end of his tenure he appeared to be favouring). These inconsistent, sometimes downright illogical selections which peppered his time here were one of the reasons he lost a lot of support I feel.

It was on the Villa View podcast where they were saying this has felt like three separate seasons rolled into one. They’re not wrong. That Preston game at Villa Park seems like a lifetime ago. It was the Saturday when we played Sheffield Wednesday that made me really start to believe this was swinging in our favour. Losing away to our former manager, getting back in the game, conceding a penalty only for Steer to save it. Meanwhile Bristol City beating Wigan, Derby leading 3-2 in a topsy turvy game away at Brentford. I think at that point we would have been out of the play offs having played a game more. Then the final 5-10 minutes, everything just seemed to go right for us. I can’t think of many occasions when multiple results have turned in our favour in such a short space of time. I know others will have equally valid moments they will point to, but it was then that it felt different for me. Like it was all aligning for us. The 18/19 season has been one to remember.

It’s a problem these days, how much involvement to assign to managers for certain signings. For what it’s worth, from my understanding you can probably say McGinn, Tammy, JT....most likely Bruce was heavily involved with those. A few good ones there, some more I haven’t listed. We all know the bad ones. Based on that previous link that @useless posted and from what @TrentVilla has said, he probably didn’t have much to do with El Ghazi. On the flip side, the same can be said with Moreira I’d suspect. Because of our 3 year old link to Kalinic, I can imagine that Smith was as “involved” with that one as Bruce was with El Ghazi/Moreira, for instance. All broadly speaking (and guessing) of course.

Yeah but “Moraes” sounds a bit like “morals”. ”Gómez” is not even close.

No, I’d rather keep my limbs. But if you’re asking which I’d pick if I had to....leg I think.

I kinda get it to an extent with Steer, he’d been sent out on loan regularly before. Bringing in two keepers though, clearly he didn’t think Jed was up to much, even as a sub, despite weirdly starting him in the first game of the season over Bunn (whom found himself regularly on the bench). It was Bunn in goal for Bruce’s final game, Nyland on the bench. I can’t remember if that was partly down to injury or just Bruce having lost faith in Nyland. Moreira nowhere to be seen anyway. Elphick going out on loan, the reason Alex Bruce gave was FFP, to save on Tommy’s wages. To my mind that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny for a few reasons. My guess (and it is a guess) is it was down to a personality clash.

I think there’s an element of that, yeah. I would say Sheffield Wednesday and I quite like the Wednesday supporter that posts on here occasionally, but I’m not sure the Bruce thread needs the additional traffic frankly Truth be told, I don’t massively care as long as we’re playing next season’s promoted clubs the following season.

So were we (are we) interested in Etheridge or was that lazy journalism?