Teale's 'tache

Balls to that, lock him up until he signs a lifetime contract. If he really loves us he'll sign it and he'll never leave...

For those wondering how the new Betano logo would look on a shirt...

Plenty of clubs change their crest, probably more often than you think, usually though, it's just tweaks or refinements that a lot of people, especially those not associated with the club don't notice. As a case in point, the refinements made to the original Lerner design were barely noticed by the wider football community, indeed some places still use the original design with no idea it was updated ages ago. It's easy to say 'let's just stick with something', but you have to have something worth sticking to first. The clubs that don't change are those that have solid designs. Our problem is we've never really had a design worth keeping, and so we keep changing and will continue to do so until we bite the bullet and create a genuinely good design. How possible that is with the amount of fan consultation demanded is another matter of course.

Just to clarify it is Kaizen Gaming website that is using the new crest, not the Villa website. Chris Heck and the AVFC Official accounts have tweeted out the exact same graphic, but with the Lerner crest, which is likely correct according to our branding as it is right now. I would guess we've sent Kaizen two graphics, one with the Lerner crest to be used now and one with the new crest to be used later, once the new crest has been launched, but Kaizen have uploaded the wrong one to their website. That is just a guess though based on the graphics looking otherwise identical. This is the problem with keeping everything 'on brand' you have to rely on other people to do their jobs correctly. If we just had one crest this kind of thing wouldn't happen.

I've been looking at the same area thinking it does look about the right size, and obviously right next to where we are now, but there's an awful lot of people that would have to be moved, as well as a school potentially. Not going to be cheap or easy to get hold of that many properties.

This crossed my mind as well, I can't remember exactly what happened with the Emirates, but I think there was something about some of those Highbury apartments being used to sweeten the deal for residents who needed moving for the new stadium to be built, I may be misremembering, but if we were looking at buying say everything in the area between Witton Lane and the railway, then temporarily rehousing many of those people somewhere with the promise of eventual apartments built on the current site could make it more of a possibility. This would also allow us to use Villa Park whilst building a new stadium 'next door' on a bigger site essentially, and then the old ground gets converted into apartments like Highbury and the old residents move back into shiny new apartments. It's a more morally acceptable way of moving some people than the way Liverpool handled it, but not perfect for everyone I'd imagine I'm just spitballing obviously, no idea what the plans are going to be, but it's good fun guessing.

In my experience getting new tools and borrowing some more still leaves plenty of room for procrastination and the project being delayed until next bank holiday, let's hope Villa are much more efficient than me when it comes to DIY!

Well, this is all very interesting and exciting. It seems Heck is off the hook for the North Stand 'pause', considering the people and investment being brought in close to the owners, it seems very unlikely he'd be the driving force behind it and not the owners themselves. Certainly looks like we have grander plans now, whether that is on the current site or elsewhere. That decision might not even have been made yet, we may be looking at building multiple business cases for both. My gut feeling is they want to stay on or near the current site, but a lot depends on how much room their plans will need and how much of that we can get at a reasonable price. I think the main thing to take from this is that our owner's ambitions aren't limited to just on the pitch, they mean business.

I like the guy, he's got something about him. Given how the loan had gone up until about a month ago, and the stuff that has came out regarding his life off the field, it would have been easy for him to just see out this season and start making plans to go home. Plenty of loans have gone that way before. But he's not done that, he's got his head down, he's worked hard, and he's made some contributions when we've needed it. He still wants it to work, he's still fighting for it and you've got to respect that. I don't think we've seen the best of him, but yesterday he was excellent. I don't know if we'll make it permanent, that's for the Mister to decide, but I do think he's due a bit of respect. He's with us until the end of the season and he has more contributions to make, so let's give him some love.

I think the point is it shouldn't be either/or, those that want a beer should be able to get one without missing any of the game. I'm sure we'd sell a lot more food and drinks at games if it didn't take so long. If we want to maximise revenues at Villa Park then the service is one of many things that need to improve.

Where Bailey and Torres are concerned, we don't know what kind of injuries they are carrying or how close to the 'red line' they may have been, in Torres case certainly we seem to be managing him since his last spell out, so I don't think whatever that injury was has fully cleared, and it probably won't until it can be properly rested over the summer. So we are going to have to manage him carefully. I think Unai probably thought a draw was possible if not overly likely with the team he picked and the subs he intended to make in the second half, he believes in the players he put out there, unfortunately, losing Martinez was a big blow to our plans (though Olsen did great, it's the presence and organisation we missed), and we conceded at bad times (just before half-time, just before making the subs), all of that took the wind out of our sails and the machine that is Man City smelt blood, it happens. The scoreline was not ideal, and he won't be happy with the goals conceded, but getting minutes to some that needed it is good, good showings from Iroegbunam, Duran, Rogers and Zaniolo are encouraging, and Olsen too. At some point, we really need to rest Dougie, but Kamara's injury and McGinn's suspension have made it very difficult to do so. It will be interesting to see how Emery approaches that going forward. Nobody likes to lose, Unai especially, but he's realistic enough to know it can happen against very good teams when we aren't anywhere near full strength.

Agree with this, certain things need to fall in place for a team like us to beat City, such is the gulf in quality and depth. They need to have a bad day, they didn't You need to have your best team available, we didn't You need the referee to be brave enough not to give them everything - Meh ref wasn't the worst, or the main problem last night, but he wasn't much help either. We simply didn't have the personnel available and it was a bad time to be playing them after the Arsenal performance. It is all about perspective, we might not win against Brentford but we undoubtedly have much chance than we ever did against City and keeping players fresher can only help.

That's my understanding as well, I think most clubs use the stats/data to narrow down quickly where to look, but you still have to go and look to validate and to find out the intangibles that the data can't give you. Data alone isn't enough, and going searching without the data isn't going to be anywhere near as productive. Data will also be used to track our own players as you say, both in terms of performance and fitness, during training and matches, and their nutrition probably as well. As the likes of Brighton and Brentford have shown, data and how you use it can give you an edge over those who are lagging behind in those fields, with the need for value in the transfer market becoming only greater with FFP issues it would be very foolish not to be collecting and using huge amounts of data in recruitment and other areas.

To me, Konsa picking up 5 yellows in 11 fouls does kind of make sense. He doesn't make a lot of fouls, in fact, he only fouls when he has to, which is why the ratio is so high. When he fouls, it's usually of the professional, definitely going to be yellow-carded, kind. Which is not a bad thing at all, it shows how in control he usually is of his emotions and his awareness of game situations. On a broader scale, I don't think there's any conspiracy going on, the bigger teams get a bit more leeway, always have and always will and that's as much down to human nature than anything more spurious. For the rest of us, it seems pretty random. That's why it is so difficult to take any of these stats all that seriously, referees are not consistent in-game for the same team, let alone from team to team, game to game, or referee to referee. It's all so wildly inconsistent it's difficult to know what really constitutes a booking anymore. The whole Tonali and Paqueta sagas do make you wonder if there's a bit of spot-fixing involved on the player side, and who's to say a ref hasn't been given a quota of cards to be given out in a game, it's happened in other countries, there's no reason it couldn't happen here. I don't think we are particularly dirty, or clumsy (though tiredness of so many games may excuse it). We are an easy target in many ways as we don't seem to try and pressure referees as much as some other teams/players, but I'd imagine that partly comes from Emery and his no-excuse culture. Our players aren't allowed to use poor referees as an excuse. I'd rather play that way than have a team of Odegaards/Hendersons endlessly harassing a referee. We try to let our football do the talking and that is fine by me. I just think the standard of refereeing, in general, is awful and getting worse, and VAR is not helping, it's only shining a light on just how bad it is.

That Atletico Miniero kit with the Betano sponsor a few pages back brought back memories of one of my old favourite away tops, so thought I'd chuck together a mock-up for it...

Hmmm... that black and red third kit looks awfully familiar...

https://www.birmingham2022.com/venues/the-nec That's a lot of events and a lot of visitors. If anything the competition the NEC would represent to a multi-use stadium is more of a reason not to go ahead than to say there are not enough events.

Honestly not that long, the pitch at the Bernabeu takes 6 hours to retract which can be done overnight, then you have the entire day to set up a stage, everything else is pretty much in place. Then the next day take it down and bring the pitch back out again. Granted motor cross, American football, baseball or things that require that level of set-up would be restricted to summer months, but concerts, conventions, comedy gigs, basketball, tennis, and plenty of other events should be hostable in a reasonable time as long as the stadium is designed for multi-use.

I think a lot would depend on how 'multi-use' it would be, if you had a retractable pitch and roof like the Bernabau, then that window of opportunity just grew to every time we aren't playing a game, and not just for concerts but any kind of event you could imagine. There are plenty of events going on in Birmingham pretty much every single day of the year, having another large arena is only going to attract more. If anything it's the competition from current venues in Birmingham that would be more of a problem. I take the point that London/Manchester is ahead of Birmingham in terms of attracting the biggest events, but if Birmingham is ever going to catch up then it needs more high-quality venues to accommodate them. For what it is worth I don't think it's going to happen, I just don't think it's completely fantastical. Real Madrid has proven it is possible with enough vision and investment.

Might, but it is very very far from definite. Is there any harm in looking to see if there's anything better? Where there's more room to expand and a council more sympathetic to our needs? It might not even exist, but we'll certainly never find it if we never look. So others with new grounds haven't dealt with the traffic/travel issues very well, it doesn't mean we won't. We might do better. Surely we all want the best for the club and the fans? If our site is holding us back why not look to see if there's anything better? Or you know, we could try and fix the problems with the current site instead of just accepting them because other places might have similar issues. I don't see the point in ruling out either option.

The club has tried to address this multiple times over a long period of time, but dealing with councils, especially ones that are now broke is not as simple or easy a solution as it sounds. If it was that easy, it would have been done a long time ago. I'm not sure where we are at now with the Witton Station refurb or how much difference it is going to make I'm not saying other grounds don't have similar issues, or that a different site won't have the same or other issues. What I'm ultimately confused by is that I want to find solutions to these issues so that we can stay on the current site, but the people who want to stay at Villa Park seem to be the ones who want to ignore them, and just say everything is fine when it quite clearly isn't. We can't keep increasing the attendance with things as they are, the matchday experience will become ruined for everyone eventually if we do. We aren't going to sell corporate seats if it takes hours to get to and from the ground, sitting in traffic is not an experience people pay for, and we aren't going to able to update the ground to 50/60k if we can barely handle the 42k people we are getting in now. I don't care what Spurs have or haven't done, I don't care if other stadiums have similar issues, I just want a better experience for everyone who goes to our ground and I am exasperated that others don't seem to see it. I'm no town planner, but having some police directing traffic, shuttle busses (for a reasonable fee) from the city center, making some streets one way on matchday, there has to be ways of fixing it in the short term, but also longer-term finding ways of investing in the area to create more safe parking etc. even buy some a bit away and tram people in, stick a helipad on top of a stand... I don't bloody know... put a metro station under the ground that goes straight into town... just something! Sorry, I'm having a bad day... I just want to be able to take my Dad or my kids to a game and it be a nice experience for them, I think that should be the minimum requirement, and the traffic/travel issues around our ground really do put that in jeopardy.

I don't believe a 'goldilocks' location exists either, but then I don't believe Villa Park has perfect transport links, again you're glossing over the difficulties between those links and the stadium and indeed every point I've been trying to make. Have a good day, I'm going to go and shout into a void for a bit.

I mean, well done to them... I didn't say a new stadium would fix these problems, or that another site might be better, or indeed that I want a new stadium. In fact, it seems like you didn't read my post at all. I'm simply stating the site we are on isn't perfect. Burying your head in the sand and dismissing this isn't going to help to move along the conversation. Having good transport links is pointless if they can't be used correctly. Increasing the capacity on the current site with these problems still existing is only going to make matters worse. It heavily limits what we can do with the site we are on. What we need are solutions to these problems, not people saying 'Well there are good transport links so everything is fine'. It is not that black and white, things rarely are.

In theory, there are good travel connections, but in practice it doesn't work. Having three train stations close by is great, but they aren't big enough to support the demand, there are not nearly enough trains servicing them on matchdays and those that are running don't have enough carriages, hence long waits at any of those stations for people trying to get away from the ground. Motorway connections are also great if you can get to them in a reasonable time, but there are several bottlenecks around the ground and between the ground and the motorway connections, no real parking means cars parked everywhere they shouldn't be, which only makes the bottlenecks worse. Buses, taxis, Ubers, are great but they can't get anywhere near the ground and even if they can it takes forever to get in and out. There are reasons people leave early, for anyone out in the shires you can spend as long getting home from the game as you do watching it. I've mentioned before my father is disabled and I find it very difficult to get him to a game without arriving several hours early and hanging around for hours afterwards to let the traffic clear, it takes up the entire day to watch 90 minutes of football. I'm torn on any possibility of a new stadium, but I'm not about to pretend we are on the perfect site when it just isn't the case, the site has multiple issues, the area has multiple issues. I'm under no illusions that these issues are difficult to solve, and other sites may have the same or different issues. Simply, if the Villa Park site was perfect, this thread wouldn't exist.