Teale's 'tache

I read when Bayern loaned him it was around £7m, so you'd think similar to that

I read recently that Torres has covid and is carrying an injury, and so Barca are in no particular rush to register him. Of course that could just be a load of old pony they came up with to deflect that they are in no position to register him at the moment anyway...

I agree. Do we know what percentage of his wage Bayern paid? I'd assume not full amount as I don't remember too many loans where that happens. I see no reason why Barca would try and demand we pay the lot now that they are in an even weaker negotiating position than when they loaned him to Bayern.

It's kind of like mental masochism isn't it?

Or they could be excited they get to train with such a big name player and see the club as going places? I see your point, he'd be taking up time on the pitch from Chuk and with his contract situation that could cause issues. I'm just not sure we should turn down players of Coutinho's stature just because it could upset a kid who might come good in the future.

I mean it's a loan right? What's the worst that can happen? If he's not very good we don't have to play him and we lose a bit of cash, been there done that with Drinkwater and Barkley already. If we want to have next level players, to begin with at least, we are going to have to take some risks. This feels like a reasonably sensible risk to me.

That second Brentford goal was absolute clown shoes from start to finish.

I believe his national team coach gave the game away when he told the media Marv was going for a scan on his knee, so after that there's not much point in carrying on with the cloak and daggers. As for not naming the who's got the 'rona I can see how it would be an advantage for the opposition not to know, but in this case I'd imagine Smith has plenty of contacts at BMH and probably knows already.

I'm not sure this is just because it's Steven Gerrard, because it was a thing with Conte when he came in at Spurs as well, and I'm pretty sure it was thing with Capello when he was England manager. It seems to be a go to question for any manager seen to be a disciplinarian. Such a weird thing to focus on and recycle.

I find the whole coverage of the diet stuff really odd, what is the media obsession with ketchup? All of this has come from a throwaway answer Gerrard gave to some 'journalist' who thought it would be incredibly smart to ask if he was going to ban ketchup like Conte. After pausing to process why any 'journalist' would ask something so daft, he dodged the question by saying that his staff had already put his rules on diet in place before he'd even met any players or something to that effect. I'd be amazed if both Spurs and Villa haven't had strict dietary rules in place for years and are only occasionally tweaked when a new manager comes in or new data appears that suggests a change is necessary. It's just so depressing that most of the British media appear to be stuck in the 70's and trying to drag younger generations down to their level.

I actually had this thought myself and looked up his date of birth, thankfully I'm safe, but only by a matter of months. Condolences my friend.

I notice Grealish said it's 'the worst and most one sided article I've ever seen...' and not 'the worst and most one sided article I've ever read...' because well, y'know...

I've a lot of Wolves supporting friends and they are all seething. They have 3 designated midfielders in their entire first team squad, one of those is often used as a center back and another of them is is 35 years old. They knew the weaknesses before the window and failed to do anything about it. Oh and they were bidding for Kieffer 'smegging' Moore in the last hours of the window, doesn't scream great transfer window to me. They are a couple of injuries away from really struggling this year.

I'm just gutted for Ollie, I'm sure he and all the players are desperate to play in front of a full house at Villa park again, or in many cases for the first time. The lad was sensational for us last season and it would of been nice to be able to show our appreciation for that. Hopefully he'll be back for Brentford at the very least. Ings is no mug, losing Ollie for a game or two is not the end of the world, which it would of been last season. Having some squad depth is something we are all going to have to get used to.

Whichever way you look at it this is not good news. We've already lost big characters from the squad and backroom team, and this is another blow. We benefitted from a settled dressing room last year, a lot of upheaval means we'll have no such benefits this time around. Deano and Shakes have a lot of work on their hands. Hope he's okay, seems a top bloke.

This season is such a difficult one to call. We've had quite a disrupted pre-season, as have many teams, which is not ideal. Another concern for me is that we've lost some important characters in the dressing room and it's going to take a while for a new dynamic to appear. We've lost Terry who you'd think was a big voice in the dressing room and a link between the players and Smith, Grealish the same, and also we've lost experienced pro's like Taylor, Elmo and Heaton. Last season we saw the benefit of having a settled dressing room with new signings being able to integrate quickly and hit the ground running. The environment must be somewhat less stable now with so much upheaval, although we still have some big characters and the addition of Young should help. Because of all the changes in personnel and the need to adjust our setup/tactics accordingly I think it's fair to expect a bit of inconsistency at the start of the season, there's going to have to be some patience required. Other clubs have issues too though (ignoring the top 4), Spurs have a new manager and may lose Kane, Wolves a new (and fairly unknown) manager and little investment, Leeds little investment, Palace New manager and plenty of player turnover, Everton new manager and weird recruitment, Newcastle no investment, West Ham little investment, Southampton little investment and lost their best striker. To me there are very few teams starting from a solid base. Even if some of those teams invest before the end of the window, there's no time to integrate those players. So I feel there's an opportunity for anyone who can find some consistency in the first half of the season to set themselves up for a European run. I think we could finish anywhere between 6th-12th, if I had to narrow it down I'd say 8th-9th, and that would be progress once more. However, we really need European football sooner than later if we want to continue to progress.

It's a good shout but there's very little about him online, from what I can glean from a few places he was at Villa around 74/75, but the only place I can find his international record has a gap between August 1973 and March 1977. So for the time being I'll leave him out, but I'll keep looking and see if I can dig anything else up.

Yeah it's hard to know where is most reliable, I'll try and use multiple sources if there's any doubt going forward.

https://www.avfchistory.co.uk/player/dariusz-kubicki says he joined 01/08/1991 this is the site I've used for some of the data, thought I'd try and corroborate with a second source just in case... https://www.transfermarkt.com/dariusz-kubicki/stationen/trainer/1039 says he joined 28/08/1991 so still within the window for this list, interesting the dates are different though.

Good shout, he certainly did, I've added him to the list!

Awesome job! I've been putting together a Google sheet, got a list of countries, added the players I could think of, the dates they were at the club and the date/opponent of their first cap whilst with us. You can view it in the link below if it helps with your data, anybody else if you question the data or know of somebody to add just let me know: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GBfU2CkzzJKAfyetY35K3ZXQkIZtqXcnKZSDj2mhGrc/edit?usp=sharing @cyrusr with regards to Savo, I have him listed under Yugoslavia which obviously no longer exists, but he went on to play for Serbia and Montenegro and then finally Serbia, not sure how that effects your map. For anybody interested I got my data from a combination of https://www.avfchistory.co.uk/ and https://www.11v11.com/ neither claim their data to be absolute. Some surprising omissions are Kiraly(Hungary), Six (France), Beye(Senegal), all capped but not whilst playing with us.

I've done a bit of digging and it seems Didier Six joined us on 1 October 1984, but his final cap for France was on 23 June 1984, therefore he wasn't capped whilst being at Villa. These are the best sources I've found on it. https://www.avfchistory.co.uk/player/didier-six https://www.11v11.com/players/didier-six-28867/

Pretty sure Chris Herd was capped for Oz with us too