Only2McInallys

The break came at a good time for us.The last minute goal we conceded against Tottenham would have damaged confidence a lot.There has been a few last minute goals which have had long term affects on us Liverpool this season and Leeds last season and hopefully the long break may have given players time to forget.

Sheffield were on a fantastic run and would not have wanted to stop so this is a good opportunity.

Set pieces for me are absolutely crucial-if we keep conceding at corners we are going to be relegated.

It feels like the start of a new season maybe why I feel slightly optimistic before actually seeing us play.

Just now, HanoiVillan said:

Not sure how you've taken that from what I said.

What I am saying is he did some very good things but he also said and believed some wrong things .Some people will look at his good things and regard him as a hero whilst others will want to tear his statue down.It is not always clear what the right answer is .And to be honest I don’t know what the answer is.

This has no relation to the other statues being attacked ,

25 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Seems best to me to judge him both by the standards of the time *and* the standards of today, and surely that's what most of us do anyway? Ditto Churchill and any other historical figure.

So should we be destroying statues of Abraham Lincoln?

26 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

Not sure how I feel about the historical standards argument. In a sense I understand it, but racism and slavery were just as wrong then as they are now, and there were plenty of people who believed this at the time, not least those on the receiving end of them. Like Churchill as an example from this thread. His racism directly led to the death of millions, and I'm not going to ignore that because there was a larger proportion of people who thought like him during his time.

I wouldn’t disagree about Churchill but someone mentioned Lincoln’s statue being attacked and if we look at some of Lincoln’s views now we would find them wrong but for his time he was advancing ideas that led to the abolition of slavery.Is he to be judged by the standards now or then?

4 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

I personally think Winston Churchill’s statue was vandalised by mindless thugs but I get how it can be seen a racially motivated.

But can anyone explain to me why Abraham Lincoln’s statue was vandalised? 

The funny thing about Lincoln is he originally didn’t oppose slavery where it already existed in 1850’s ,he was opposed to it expanding. In great debates in 1858-9 he actually said a a lot of racist things which were regarded as accepted for the time.

In the civil war he only decided to abolish slavery because he thought it would help the war effort 

He is one of those people who people might idolise but when you dig a bit deeper you discover things that are unpleasant.I often think it is wrong to judge historical people by standards which are accepted now. For that time he was advanced compared to many others.

Yes saw that documentary about prison riot years ago ...unforgettable.

I think they used a phrase that it “was like opening the bowels of hell”

Germany has much lower infection rates,deaths and has much stricter guidelines for players.A player is not allowed to leave his house for any reason apart from playing football and training.This is going to minimise the risk of transmissions.

We on the other hand are going about it in a poorly managed way as has been typical of the whole Covid response.

I don’t think football should be resuming now but if it is why not have all players from each team stay in a hotel for 6 weeks and that reduces chance of spreading it to family members.

Peter Crouch never really settled fans got on his back Bought for 7 million,sold to Portsmouth for 2 million year later joins Liverppool for 12 million.Good business by Villa.

Heskey

Tony Cascarino ?Was he any good anywhere?

Just reminded me we were lucky to get past WBA.Their team was effectively a premier league team that finished 10th the  year before.

I think a combination of Gayle  and Brunt getting sent off and sacking their manager and not replacing him  really helped us.When you think about it Leeds getting knocked out was also lucky for us maybe we are paying for that luck this season.

I thought Steers penalty saves were fantastic especially the second one.

Jedinak stare unforgettable.

12 hours ago, KentVillan said:

We weren't in a "predicament" last summer. Attracting a fading (but still useful) pro for a final pay day in the Premier League isn't especially hard. Loads of promoted clubs have done it. There must have been options. It would have been good for the dressing room to have a proper success story there to set the right tone, even if he only lasted 1 or 2 seasons.

Agree.I think our transfer policy became obsessed with having sell on value and any player in their late 20s or early 30s was not considered because you wouldn’t get the transfer fee back.

Purslow also said he was against loan players because it was bad business to improve another teams player.If you look at Tuanzebe he was brilliant for us and helped us to get promoted but yes we improved him and his value went up but we gained more through promotion.

It reminds me a bit like when we were relegated in 2016.We signed  a lot of good players but not a team.They were all bought with sell on value in mind and many have gone on to better things but what we needed the. like we need now is an experienced,strong ,physical presence,who can hold onto the ball in the middle of the park.

2 hours ago, useless said:

I'm still wondering whether all these stories of 'project restart' are all talk just so they can turn around to the TV companies and say that they did all they could to get it going again, but behind the scenes they know it's likely to be cancelled, then it will just be a question of how they decide to settle everything.

I wonder if this is also required to counteract any legal actions any club may make against them being relegated or not getting promoted.

They will say in their defence they did everything they could to restart.

14 hours ago, KentVillan said:

The same arguments have been made and refuted over and over again over 100s of pages of this thread. Some of them are just opinions, but a few are just factually wrong, and it's frustrating to see them trotted out as if they're gospel.

Defensive football wins the Championship: I'd say 4 sides in the last 5 seasons (Norwich, Wolves, Bournemouth, Watford) have finished top 2 largely on the strength of their attacking football. There's no iron law that says you only go up by following the Warnock playbook.

Smith's stats are bad when I need them to be, inconclusive when I don't: It's hypocritical to say Smith's record speaks for itself and then deny significant parts of that record because "small sample" or "Grealish" or whatever other excuse.

We'll be garbage without Grealish: don't get me wrong, Jack leaving Villa will be a very sad day. He's one of the best players of his generation. But the logical fallacy is the idea that Villa without Grealish will be the 2019/20 squad minus Grealish. That's clearly untrue - we would reinvest that money. In Championship terms it would get us some real quality players across the park. So when people keep banging on about how we played when Grealish was injured last season, what is the relevance?

A lot of points here I would agree with.To get into automatic promotion spots you need to win games,getting draws is a waste of time .This why Bruce with us and Pulis with Middlesbororugh failed.

But keeping things tight at the back ,being good at set pieces ,grinding out draws are essential for premier league survival.This is why Newcastle appear to be safe and Bruce style football works.

Smith needs to change some of his philosophy.When we lose the ball in attack teams seem to get to our defence with ease.

.Our problems at set pieces are inexcusable(I believe we have conceded more from corners than any other team)You would think this could sorted out on the training ground.

The question is can he make us stronger defensively without too much affect on our attacking play.

Positives this season: someone suggested there were none.

Jack

Mcginn was dipping before he got injured needed a rest

Heaton

Engels, Luiz and Nakamba - I think there are good players in there and with time perform more consistently (Luiz is 22 years old)

Targett good attacking .

All players now have premier league experience 

Samatta looks like he could be a real asset.

Fantastic home support

I wonder if relegation will be reduced to 2 clubs if games can’t be played.

It will make the vote easier to pass the 14 clubs needed.

The championship has 2 teams way ahead of the rest.It is easy to say they deserve promotion.

How are they going to settle who the 3rd club promoted as there is no clear candidate.Play offs etc seems too complicated in current circumstances.

Maybe as sweetener they give relegated clubs higher parachute payments that would have gone to third club.

30 minutes ago, Xela said:

That's fair enough, people will have different opinions on it and that's cool. You' d pay for it and by the sound of it, you'd pay more than £160 per year. I wouldn't. The TV they make is ok. Agreed some great dramas every now and again (love Luther, Line of Duty and Sherlock). Comedy? The odd gem here and there, plenty of shit made as well.

I'm not fussed on the radio side as I never listen to it. Most of its primetime TV shows are just dross like Strictly, the Voice and other z-listers trying to boost their own profile or endless repeats of quiz shows like Pointless. If it went to voluntary subscription, i'd dip in and out it every few months like I do with other services. 

How much would you pay a year for it? 

 

I listen to BBC radio all day at work -local radio,radio 5,bbc 6 music  bit of radio 2.

The prime time shows you mention I would agree with you, are not my cup of tea.

But you just have to look at a channel like ITV-how much rubbish on there ?They used to have some gambling programme on around 11.30 what was that all about?Making money.I don’t want BBC to have to do similar.

Then you look at SKY how many decent programmes do they make -very few.Whats their cost ?£600 a year ?The sport is there main pulling power

I personally would pay £250-300 for the radio stations mainly

But in a funny way it reminds me of the NHS-something we pay for without our choice but is beneficial to everybody especially when you compare it to other countries.

If restart doesn’t happen what do they do about relegation?

Will other clubs vote against us?

The more I think about it clubs like Brighton,Burnley etc won't want to agree to it because this could easily happen again in the future if virus reappears and it sets a precedent that may lead to them being relegated in the future.

5 hours ago, The_Steve said:

Away from politics, David Cameron is privately delighted that he's saved his two favourite teams from relegation.

The worst thing about him mixing up the two clubs is the fact his uncle Sir William Dugdale was actually Aston Villa chairman from 1975-82.Obviously when your uncle is chairman of a club who wins the league and European cup you would think you would remember it.

Obviously he didn’t give a toss about football but was trying to appear to be a man of the people.

Clubs are going to vote for things that benefit them.

West Ham ,Brighton etc who are not relegation spots will not want to play games .They are safe if league is voided.

Villa are in relegation zone.If league is voided and PPG is used we get relegated.

It depends on whether other clubs will support us.Not sure who would vote against PPG apart from 3 relegated clubs.

I think we would prefer BCD to automatic relegation.Our 1 trump card is our game in hand ,if we had all played the same number of games I think we would struggle to argue against relegation.

So is this proposal to play games our best chance of not getting relegated?

I may be talking about an old show but have been watching The Missing/Baptiste recently .

All the series are really good but the second series of The Missing is the best.Its on IPlayer or Netflix at the moment.

Can anyone recommend something similar ?

49 minutes ago, sidcow said:

There was nothing wrong with the MMR vaccine.   Nothing at all.  A crackpot doctor* said it was dangerous and the press latched onto it and kept repeating the story and asking questions of the Government. It was like the biggest disinformation case before social media took bullshit to a whole new level. 

And now diseases like measels are actually making a comeback because so many people believed the story. 

* I watched a program recently about an anti vaccine movement which is getting big in America and guess who was at the centre of it all providing the "scientific" case? The same doctor who was scaremongering about MMR in the 90s.  He's basically a medical version of David Ike and it's tragic the press latched onto him and gave him oxygen. His misinformation is obviously still alive and kicking. 

His name is Andrew Wakefield. Go take a look at his Wikipedia page, it's quite shocking. 

I totally agree with you there is nothing wrong with it but at least scientists had mass statatistics to prove it ,with this “new vaccine”they won’t have had time to fully test it.Sosome people will say it can harm you.

The biggest difficulty is going to be any affect it may or may not have on pregnant women.That is going to take years to find out if can affect a foetus in any way.If there is a doubt you won’t be able to give it to any woman 16-45 in case they might be pregnant.

I need this vaccine to be able to go back to work so I hope I am wrong with these negative thoughts.

16 minutes ago, Jareth said:

1) They are not manufacturing the Oxford vaccine

2) I'm relatively sure the clever bods who made a vaccine are going to target frontline health/care workers when they test it out - as those are the most likely to confront the virus

3) There has been huge effort, especially by Oxford, to ensure that the whole operation is done at cost during the current pandemic and that all low to middle wealth countries will be able to have it. There will be a back end where of course profits will come, but those are to be reinvested in vaccine research for future pandemics. 

But it all means nothing if it doesn't work. They are going to have hundreds of thousands of doses made in advance of knowing this.  

Does anyone remember the MMR scandal?Many people thought these vaccine caused medical problems.

These were vaccine that had been developed over many years been tested thoroughly in mass clinical trials and still people thought they had side effects.

To do a mass clinical trial will need 20,000 people .How long is it going to take to see if it works,has no side effects etc

After that they will need to manufacture it in mass quantities .All those things will take longer than 6 months

No one is going introduce something at huge cost and expense unless they are sure it works and has no side effects

On top of that there is no proof if you get it you can’t catch it again.

Sorry if I am glass half empty guy

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

I hope I don't get into trouble for this because I always seem to get a warning and I never know what I do wrong, but from the BBC website which follows the same theme as all other news outlets:

The partnership with AstraZeneca aims to build capacity to produce tens of millions of doses by the end of the year, if the treatment is effective.

"Our manufacturing capacity in the UK for vaccines isn't where it needs to be, and we're going to work together with AstraZeneca to improve that considerably," Prof Bell added.

 

GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi 2 biggest vaccine makers in the world made a statement saying they expect a vaccine to be ready in 12 to 18 months.

If you can’t directly expose someone to the virus to see if the vaccine works how long are clinical trials going to take ?

Remember Drug companies are in this to make a profit and they have shareholders and shares go up if a new medicine has been discovered or published .

Vaccine stories can be used by people to give hope .

Much more likely is treatment for most seriously affected

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

1) yes you can if the Government relaxes social distancing rules which they will eventually

2) A vaccine will probably be ready end of September hopefully and into mass manufacturing by the end of the year now with AstraZeneca in partnership with Oxford University.  This has been so well reported there is no way you are not aware of this. 

Absolutely no way will they forgo next seasons £1.5bn or whatever is is just to play this seasons 10 games at any cost to recover £100m or whatever lower than quoted figure they eventually reach a deal for.

God forgive me for replying though, I know you're on the wind up. 

The quickest time any vaccine has been produced until now has been over 2. years.

The many problems they have when they start mass testing is they can’t expose someone to the virus on purpose because the chance of serious consequences is high. Therefore it is going to take a long time before they know whether it works.

It will need to be tested if it will have any effect on pregnant women or nursing mothers this is going to take a long time.

It will need to be tested if it reacts with other medications or other serious illnesses etc.

The Oxford University vaccine is more about funding.To do mass testing is very expensive and they are trying to get the government to pay towards it.

I don’t expect to see a vaccine this year.