Enda

Anyone noticed there's 5 former Villa players in the Stoke squad?

When you account for injuries and the bomb squad, we've improved in just about every area compared to last season. Full backs in: Hutton, Cissokho Full backs out: Luna Centre halves in: Senderos Center halves out: none Wide midfielders in: N'Zogbia, Grealish, Richardson Wide midfielders out: Albrighton Central midfielders in: Sanchez, Cole Central midfielders out: Sylla, Carruthers Forwards in: Bent Forwards out: Helenius, Bowery Assistant managers out: Culverhouse, Karsa Assistant managers in: Keane Great business on a shoe-string, in fairness. Think we're a good 6-8 points better than were last year. Last bit of business is hopefully a little bit more of an attacking threat, and I think we're in about as good a shape as we could be on paper. Hopefully things are working on the training ground as well.

Worth mentioning that out of their 20 predictions, they only got Arsenal (4th) spot on. Some were close (e.g. Man City were predicted to come 2nd, ended up 1st), some were miles off (Stoke predicted to come 17th, ended up 9th). On average, they were about 3 positions out. Not bad, but not amazing either. Definitely think we're better than they're giving us credit for.

To be clear: I think we're still a bit crap, but I think we'll get a good 6 points or so more than we did last year. That'd put us comfortably mid-table going by Opta's fancy guess-work.

That's because most people just tend to look at the last few games. It's why Phil McNulty (who has a massive hard-on for Man United, hence why he has them finishing 3rd) thinks we'll finish 17th but Sunderland, who were absolutely terrible for pretty much the entirety of last season barring those last couple of months, will finish 10th. It's not just the pundits - Bloomberg just released a simulation with Opta (running each game 100,000 times) for next season. More info on how they got their numbers on their site. Not pretty reading... Yeah, but still only 3 points away from 12th. We finished with 38 points last season. Think we're worth much more than 1 extra point this year.

I want to see improvement on the post-match press conferences.

Lads, it certainly looks like Darren Bent was in London today. That doesn't mean he's signing for Palace ffs.

Using Comcast in the US here, so really doubt it was a BT problem.

I'm on the other side of the ocean. Maybe routed through a BT server, of course. To make it even stranger, the pings had 0% loss.

3G. Yeah it's a strange one alright. I'm back at the house now and it's fine. It was strange. Checked downforeveryoneorjustme.com and it was fine, but couldn't connect even after a reboot. Grand on the phone, even in full site mode. Thought it was just me, so didn't mention it until I saw this thread.

Had a similar problem this morning. Could connect on my phone, but not laptop on Chrome or Firefox. Able to connect here from work no problem on Chrome. Typed in the URL in all cases.

The new J Masic stuff is wonderful. https://soundcloud.com/subpop/j-mascis-wide-awake/

Well it is and it isn't. I mean it is just a big bowl with seats. It looks a shallow rake with only 1 tier and there is no cover. Still it is massively big. I am sure Simon Inglis could give you chapter and verse on stadium design though if anybody is interested in that sort of thing. Not that shallow. The steps aren't much smaller than at VP. No cover because it's not needed.The season is August/September to November, when it's a mixture of summer and autumn.

Biggest stadium in the western world. But it's not Detroit, it's Ann Arbor. You can see my back garden in that picture.

He promised sweat. The players sweat. He promised tears. The fans shed tears. The only thing that's left is blood. Maybe he's been reading that thread about offering Darren Bent as a sacrificial lamb?

"Club is for sale and as far as I know there is nothing imminent in terms of new ownership" "The squad requires strengthening, that's self-evident, and it won't be easy within the current circumstances." Balls. No owner lined up, and no major investment. Balls.

They're not banned, briny, but pages of the things don't help people reading on small phones and the app. Same as massive nested quotes. Most threads are fine, but there's so many pages so quickly that scrolling through pages full of puns to get to some "news" is annoying for many posters. We're just trying to keep the site useable for everyone. Hopefully people understand why. See, this is exactly the sort of negative tactics that we've seen too much of in the past two seasons here on VT. Any sign of trouble, just hoof it away. Completely lacking in any guile or modern style. This old school modding just doesn't cut it in the modern web. It's the sort of thing that has seen the site constantly battle with relegation to the second page on Google. This isn't some small Heath Ledger fansite, this is Villa Talk. We practically founded football forums and were one of the biggest forums in England. And it's not just the moderation tactics. We've had some absolutely useless new additions to this site as well. There's been a serious lack of investment in the past couple of years. We've got in the likes of Mendi, whose grammatical positioning is all over the place. Couldn't defend an argument to save his life. This is Villa Talk. We used to have posters like GaztonVilla. We should be looking at quality posters from the Netherlands and France, like your man with the Lego. Seen a few clips of him on YouTube and he is class. It's not good enough to be getting in cheap second division posters like Mendi. BLANDY OUT.

Lads, stop giving him such a hard time. He's expressing his right to free speech, as enshrined in the the First Amendiment.

You could: 1) Read this thread 2) Check Google 3) Not ask questions you already know the answer to

Kwan ya dig it? Yes you kwan.

I can only hope you are joking.

Rumour has it that Trent is the same person as Admin on TBAR, and he's only gone set the whole thing up to make VT look more reliable. Read it on Twitter, I did.

I'm having my egg scrambled in the morning, I suspect others will be having theirs on their faces. "How do you like your eggs: poached, or fertilized?"

Well I've heard they're not going to throw the kitchen sink at him, but will smash a few fancy delph plates against him.

Agreed. We should dolphinately stop with the puns now. Nah, I can see this going on for quite a whale.