MrBlack

Probably, although publicly he's always been a more reserved character than his brother or his dad. He does "appear" to be a far more philanthropic genuine character than either. They must be throwing some mega mega money at some of these players. I do wonder how much the likes of Firminho and the lesser players are on. With Ronaldo on £173m a year imagine some of those lesser names are on at least £100m

Alex Scott - decent pundit, doesn't offend the whole working class with furlough comments. Eni Aluko - shit pundit, also makes up stories for effect and accuses people of being racist for criticising said made up stories. Andy gray - shit pundit, massively bigoted views, racist, sexist dickhead Thierry Henry - decent pundit, likes to cheat to win but generally OK. It's not racist to criticise Eni aluko. Doesn't mean some of the people doing it aren't racist, but to call them that straight up is weird. She should not be in the public eye if she can't control her outbursts. Similarly Andy Gray should be given no airtime, but has found a country that shares his backwards views and now makes a living from it. Interestingly, writing those summaries made me really have to think of a decent male pundit to contrast Gray with. There really aren't many about...

Where would we play while it's knocked down and rebuilt? There's not a Wembley stadium just down the road for us to play at. Not to mention spurs could do most of their prep work next to their current stadium thanks to the space they had and only needed one season away. We'd need 2 full seasons away I'm sure. We're not knocking down villa park to stay on site.

Strange how my brain read this at the time and assumed it was suggesting the tests would be on Monday. Clearly says this week...,and I guess that could mean the end of the week. If he's back from his honeymoon anytime this week I'd be surprised...pretty short break really.

To add to what OBE said above, the transport situation is better than most football stadiums around the country. The poor experience the transport situation lends itself to will also potentially solve itself if we host Euro 2028. Space is most definitely a major issue with respect to all standa bar the North, which is a big part of why they've started there first. That and it being the worst stand we had.

Indeed. Do we have any information from the club on the thoughts for phase 2 and how that might achieve nearly 10k more seats through just trinity development?

Hottest worldwide day ever in the history of global records two days ago. Without getting into an evironmental debate, you may be right that these supposed targets become more rigid ones, and maybe things will move quicker than I expect. I hope they do.

Compulsory purchase for that aim I would support. But purely for stadium expansion desires I wouldn't. If, as a by product, it means land becomes available for other purposes that we can put forward a genuine "this benefits villa, the community, and saves the tax payer money" then great. Maybe common sense will prevail, but makes me wonder how many decades will pass before any movement is actually seen.

But that needs the compulsory purchase of houses on holte road/mcgregor close. Its not happening. Edit: the shadow the stadium would cast over those houses means it won't get through planning unless those houses aren't there. More likely we could buy some of the grounds of the Aston Hall Estate to further expand the trinity, but suspect there's something in the way of that too.

Bring back Luke... could get something like this

Am I missing a joke here? The badge is sewn on isn't it? Edit: apparently not... sewn badge but glued on to the kit. Madness

Absolutely. The area needs significant gentrification, but not the kind that forcibly, and completely, displaces those currently living there. Some balance needs to be reached, but who's going to pay for it. The issue being that the stadium does need more room if it wants to exceed 50k capacity. Building a taller block of spacious apartments, with a communal outdoor area, in order to move a couple of roads worth of tenants, might be palatable to some of them. Getting a new home that doesn't cost a fortune to heat, in the same area... will appeal to some. But ultimately there will always be some for whom it is a family home that they will never voluntarily leave, and I would never support compulsory purchase for something like this. This is why the rumblings of a move are happening... but I just see the solution as being one where we stop at around 50k, and live with it.

Before "Prepared" our badge motto was "Forward". We could bring that back for some history

Good shout, didn't spot the home is the same. Still, what don't you like about it?

Not the wrong badge, just no badge ..

I thought that looked fine.... but it's almost certainly not the genuine away kit anyway, pretty sure it had the old badge on it

Yes that was what she said. She would persuade a rival team to bid for a player her team was interested in. The idea being that the owner of her club would then be forced to increase their offer if they wanted the player. Quite why she thinks it's a good idea to declare this (clearly made up) activity she does is beyond me. No one will hire her again. And the fact is a rival would never do that to help you sign a player. It's so weird. In the later video she backtracked and said she only called them to find out what their max offer would be and that she didn't mean what she said before. Again, her back track position is even more farcical because a rival will never tell you what they're willing to sign a player for. Not sure what planet she's living in, but it isn't ours

There's every chance a club in the championship might try and persuade him to take over assuming he doesn't flop over there. They won't be paying anywhere near as much as Saudi arabia are though. I very much doubt he'd take it anyway, as I suspect he may have had some options this season that were below his self-perceived status. So not sure what hes expecting to get off the back of it. It definitely won't be a PL job.

So you put in relegation wage drop clause. Maybe Nakamba won't agree to one and would rather see out the last year at villa then move somewhere on a free. Can't say I blame him given he's got a pretty reliable injury record, Luton are almost certainly getting relegated and the wage drop means he's better off getting a new contract elsewhere in a years time where he'll get a signing on fee as no transfer fee is attached.

It's a win for us if we get a fee that covers the remaining amortised ffp cost of his purchase price + the salary we owe him. The remaining book value is 2.2m. The salary we owe him is about £1.8m. So presumably we're looking for at least a 4m fee. Given Nakamba is going to get most/all of that 1.8m by way of loyalty fee for not submitting a transfer request, surely he'd accept whatever salary they're offering him on top. And presumably they're offering a reasonable amount even if it isn't normal PL wages. Maybe his expectations are misaligned because of when he signed for us.

This is weird. She's now saying that she didn't ask them to make a fictional bid, but merely asked them what they were going to bid. So everyone calling her out on her bizarre comments before was right. She was talking bollocks before. It never made sense in the first place because I don't see how asking a rival to bid for a player they don't want helps you get a deal over the line with your club for the same player. Not least because why would the rival help you, but mainly because they're not going to waste their time on something that doesn't benefit them. Now if she'd said "City will bid, with no intention of actually signing Rice, but just to try and get Arsenal to spend more"... then maybe that would make sense. City doing that off their own back and trying to shaft arsenal in the process (either by making them outbid City or actually ending up getting the player that Arsenal really wanted).

It's forever the Tommy Johnson kit for me. Loved that kit.

I knew it wouldn't be exact, but was quite surprised how far off it was. I won't try using one again that's for sure. There obviously is an rgb equivalent of what that colour appears like on my screen but the converter doesn't get close to it. I used the colour picker in pocket paint and it's 120:61:67 for reference. So quite different really. I assume that we provide that holte claret cmyk reference to out kit designers anyway, but what we end up with is at their whim and then impacted by whatever material it gets printed on

I agree that the whole football world is morally bankrupt. I don't agree that we can't call out the most egregious examples of shit happening in the game. Self-funding owners that circumvent the rules the rest of the league comply with go beyond morale issues, and make the game a complete non-sporting event. It's quite possibly going to end up the straw that broke the camels back.

Agreed, there's a difference between that and being schooled though. Not that he was, but would that even have been a bad thing? Young was probably the most experienced wingback he faced and defies all logic regarding his pace and stamina for his age. To struggle against Ashley Young is hardly a stick to beat him with.