It's Your Round

New book for Christmas, The Curry Bible. So spent yesterday procuring a fantastic array of spices and whipped up a nice turkey jalfrezi last night. There’s some brilliant recipes in it, street food, classic curries and British Indian restaurant dishes. I’ve made up 3 litres of base sauce and a tub of special spice mix, ready to try a plethora of dishes. My wife will be pleased that her sense of smell still hasn’t returned

I’m loving the fact we’re playing again so soon after Boxing Day. Of course it helps that we’re in good form. I’ve accepted that it’s likely we won’t win this one, but I’m still kind of hopeful that we will. Chelsea won’t have the easy ride they enjoyed at Villa Park last season, where they passed us off the park with ease. We should give them much more of a game today. We’re a very dangerous side in attack and we’re tougher to break down. Hopefully Konsa and Hause can handle whatever Chelsea come up with. My prediction, 3-1 or 1-3. Hope Watkins gets his goal today.

It’s on after Celebrity Kung Fu Gruffalo on Ice, I think.

I’m still technically working, if occasionally checking my work phone counts as work. Got the mulled wine warming on the hob, presents dropped off with family and a belly full of mince pies. Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you all have a nice time.

Same here, I’m the only one in my team that used my annual leave up before the first lockdown. Which on the face of it sounds sad, but I’m working from home and the majority of people are off. As long as I’ve got my phone on, I can pretty much do whatever I want.

Thanks for sharing that. I watched the Planet of the Humans film and found it quite depressing, I suspected that it wasn’t all as it seemed seeing as Michael Moore was involved. This one provides some hope, although I still don’t believe it will be enough. Too little too late IMHO.

I was thinking about this earlier. It’s nice to be getting back towards Villa being the top dogs again.

I’m still really annoyed by that offside decision, but there’s sod all we can do about it. It’s just how football is now, unfortunately. I’ve been impressed with Watkins so far, he’s already been a huge improvement on Wesley, Davis and Sammatta. He’s got so many positive attributes, power, pace, finishing, attitude and energy. He will only get better. The best for me is that his presence up front has enabled Smith to play the football that he wants, we sorely missed that dynamic forward last season and you can see the difference in our attacks now. So much more fluid and unpredictable.

I’m really pleased for El Ghazi, he’s taken a battering from fans and his confidence has been smashed. He’s always had the ability but like all wingers, bar the very best, he’s struggled with consistency. The chances he missed against Burnley could have derailed his confidence but he came back and didn’t give up. His two goals last night should give him a huge boost. It’s great to see the players rally round him with support too, the team spirit is abundant. He may not keep his place when Barkley’s back, as you’d expect Jack back on the left. But at least we now have a viable option from the bench that can change a game.

I’m happy with that so far. Livermore looked set on trying to end Grealish’s career, deserved the red. We’ve been in control, but we need a second goal because they will get another chance at some point. Watkins is looking isolated again, I hope we see McGinn push forward more in the second half. We dangerous on the wings but not playing much through the middle.

We really need to win this one. West Brom are down at the bottom for a reason, they’ve not been good enough. The new manager bounce thing is a bit of a myth, but I’m still expecting fat Sam to have galvanised them a bit and they will make it hard for us. Please just win it Villa, we want the points, the bragging rights, and we don’t want to be witness to the world and his dog praising fat Sam for a whole week.

Leeds getting dicked. Ha!

Have I read correctly this morning that communal religious gatherings are allowed to continue in Tier 4 areas?! No household mixing, all essential business’ are closed, you can only meet one other person outside, but feel free to get yourself down to the church, mosque or synagogue and mix with hundreds of people, the majority of whom are of an at risk, ageing demographic. Of all the things that are essential, imaginary savours are not one.

Just to add some balance to the thread, rhubarb is amazing and celery is perfectly acceptable to eat raw, with some primula or other such squeezy cheese. It’s also a must for a bolognese sauce, but it’s got to be softened as it’s no good crunchy. Anyway, merry Christmas

Wish I’d seen this thread before buying this for my daughter, I’m assuming as she’s got an Xbox One that the game will be mostly useless? I’m not really au fait with modern gaming but it seems ridiculous that they can sell a game that doesn’t work on most consoles.

That’s a bit of a coup @omariqy!

Just tried it with Mrs IYR, just had to change the care worker drop down. It said there’s between 0 and 50378 people in the queue, and she can expect the vaccine between the 18th and 22nd December... Considering it’s the 18th today and her care home have heard nothing at all from the local authority, I would have to conclude that it’s a load of bollocks.

I got the same estimate. I’ll be booking three months off work in case they call me in.

I’ve been watching this, got the last part to watch tonight. Like you, I knew a bit about him, but there is so much more that I didn’t know. Like how intent the police and media were to make it just about prostitutes. The assumption that the first victim was a prostitute, with no evidence of her being so. The contrast in the way they described the victims was shocking. Non-prossies were innocent victims, while the others were basically asking for it. I know it was different times back then, but the sexism looks unbelievable in 2020. I also knew the Sutcliffe killed his victims with a claw hammer, but didn’t know about the mutilations or him revisiting the bodies to move them into more visible positions. It’s a good documentary, captures the time well IMO.

Usually when I’ve missed a few days of VT, I’ll go back and read a few pages to catch up on the convo... Today, in this thread, I learnt never to do that again.

After a good five minutes of zoomed in searching, I saw precisely zero naked ladies in those buildings. Seems a pointless invention tbh.

Let’s see this frustration explode all over fat Sam’s band of gypos. There’s no way we don’t beat these. 3-0 Villa.

FFS mate.

Before this season started I’d have been quite happy with 11th after 11 games, especially with two in hand. A mid table finish is what most people wanted, and mid table finishes do involve frustrating draws. We need to follow this up by smashing the Albion now.

I thought the fringe players that came in did well. Elmo had a really good game, Nakamba didn’t score an own goal and Hause was dominant. Just so, so, so frustrating to not have won. It was one of those days but we really need to find a way to score on nights like this.