juanpablosaliceband

Just now, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Is there a chance that subconsciously this is what they have their eyes on a and heads in?

Not saying purposely so ( neglecting the Conference League ) somewhat.

Possibly. I definitely thought it was a factor away at Lille before the Bournemouth game. 

12 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

I don’t have any fury but seeing the shite other players get after 1 bad game and Luiz has been shit pretty much for a calendar year, yet gets apology after apology. Don’t get it. 

I think the opposite. It took fans four years before they’d even sing his name. Out of some shocking performances tonight, he’s clearly being targeted. And has been previously too. Criticising is fine but when a player has had a particularly rough night and is feeling it, the last thing they need is everyone piling in. 

2 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Why is Tielemans able to come straight in and do that job and Luiz isn’t? The apologism is just infuriating. 

How can you have such fury against a player who’s been great for us? He’s not playing well but he’s given his all for five years now. He was our player of the season last season and probably the first half of this season. Utterly bizarre behaviour. Get behind the players. 

Just now, StefanAVFC said:

 Nah. He’s been atrocious for weeks. How much longer can we go easy on someone who doesn’t give a shit?

He does give a shit. Always has. We had other terrible performances. I’m amazed how quickly fans have turned on him. 

Go easy on Doug. You could see the disappointment on his face missing the penalty. He had some bad moments but he wasn’t noticeably worse than anyone else. Our defence was awful tonight. 

I don’t see how this rule change can be bad for Villa in the long run. The 70% Europe versus 85% non Europe cap was already in place as far as I know so no new downside there. Smaller clubs might have a chance to make up ground in the short term but this change should ultimately improve our chances of catching the top clubs. A levelling of the financial playing field should benefit the traditional big clubs with strong fanbases in my opinion, such as Villa, Man United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Everton, Spurs, Newcastle. As things were before money became the dominant factor. Good ownership, management, scouting, coaching, youth, infrastructure, etc. would be the other differentiators. I think we are well set up to benefit from this long term. I’m conscious we seem to have voted against it though so curious to hear more. 

3 hours ago, TRO said:

Are we ready for Champions league?.....missing out on the Europa, is a huge step up.

Don't get me wrong, I want to achieve it, but I wonder, if we are actually ready for it.

That depends on what ready even means. Ready to win the champions league? I’d say probably not. Ready to compete and have fun? Absolutely. We won’t be the weakest team in the competition if we qualify. Far from it. AEK Athens, Sturm Graz, Stade Bertois, Stuttgart, Bologna, Girona, Sparta Prague, Bodo, Galatasaray, Fenerbahce, Crvena Zvezda, Lille, Feyenord, Shakhtar Donetsk, Brugge, Atalanta. All teams projected to qualify. None of them world beaters. In fact, a lot of those teams are weaker than the better teams that will qualify for the Europa league. I’d be very surprised if we didn’t comfortably get to the last 24 play off round. 

13 hours ago, S-Platt said:

The fizzy drink bottles seem to have had a bottle top change now in that they twist and flip rather than come off at least the ones I buy in meal deals at supermarkets anyway!

Interesting how that plays out at Villa.

The lids of the bottles they were selling on Saturday didn’t come off. I asked the steward in the stand if I could take it back to the seat and it was fine. I think I was stopped previously. Exciting Monday night conversation!

Sky sports just now. Good news for Villa and spurs as the two clubs chasing them for European spots, Newcastle and man united, are both losing. We are 16 points ahead of them. 16. I can’t believe my ears. We have as good a chance of winning the league as they had to finish above us before tonight. 

I got that email too. On a side note, I was already set up for auto renew last year and received notifications that a payment will be taken in one month, two weeks, etc. But some time later, I realised that my membership had expired and the money never left my account. So I went in and paid manually to renew. Seemed like a poor system and costly for the club if that was happening en masse. 

I never thought I’d say this but he reminded me of my favourite player of all time today, Brazilian Ronaldo. Obviously not as good, but the way he comes short, turns, runs with it, lays it off, his movement. I was stunned by that second half performance, especially after the exerts at Lille on Thursday. I was always impressed by the way he could hold up the ball with his back to goal and defenders on top of him. On top of that, he’s now turning with the ball and running through the heart of the opposition defence. Incredible the level he’s gone to. I thought Luiz was a shoe in for our player of the season again before Christmas but Watkins has been a sensation. 

32 minutes ago, Tayls said:

Very tricky. As I thought we looked flat as hell against Lille. 

Even trickier thought… how does Kamara fit into all of this?! Recent performances and progress makes me think we actually only need one of Luiz or Kamara…. 

I think that’s a big statement. We had 38 points from our first 17 games when they were pretty much ever present. I felt like they were our engine during that time. We’ve only got 28 points from our next 17. We have had a few good results recently but we haven’t progressed from the first half of the season. Strictly speaking, we’ve regressed as might have been expected. I think losing that partnership has been hugely disruptive. We’ve done ok at times but without the duo but at others we’ve struggled. Great as today even was, I felt like we really missed them both at times, particularly in the first half when Bournemouth were getting into dangerous areas quite easily. 

For top 4, my view is that we need to match or better Spurs’ four difficult games in our four remaining games, taking a worst case scenario that they beat Burnley and Sheffield. So still plenty of work to do. 

Superb. Brilliant second half performance particularly. Watkins out of this world. Got better as the game went on. Such a complete player now. I don’t know where he gets such energy. The first half was a bit worrying. They seemed capable of attacking us quite easily but we took total control in the second half. Rogers, Diaby and Bailey the other stand outs for me. Everyone put in a huge shift. Tielemans made a big interception tracking back in the second half. Incredible effort. Well done lads. 

Incredible second half performance. Watkins, Bailey, Diaby, Rogers and others all stepping up like big time players.  

Brilliant tracking back by Diaby. Class by Bailey and Morgan. Come on now. 

2 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Literally how we beat arsenal. It’s a legit strategy. 

I know but everything has a limit. Some of the passing around our own box is crazy. 

The goal was coming. We haven’ been good enough. Playing the ball to marked players around our own box eventually cost us. 

Playing ourselves into trouble. 

Excluding the relegation games a few years ago, when was the last time we had a bigger league game at the upper end of the table. This, and the next few games, must be the biggest in over 20 years. We’ve never been this close to the champions league this late in the season. 

We are playing like a team with two eyes on the league. 

2 hours ago, CVByrne said:

We're 1/2 or 1.5 in betting which is a 67% chance. 

Are you getting a probability from Opta or implied by betting odds?

I originally said 66% based on 1/2 or 4/9 betting odds. But then saw Opta have us at 75%.

17 minutes ago, duke313 said:

England were over 75% to secure an extra CL spot at one point.  A lot can change, I wouldn't lean too much on those %.

That’s true. Things can go wrong. But it takes a lot to go wrong when the odds are stacked in your favour initially. Almost everything had to go right for Germany, while the English teams had a horror show. 

9 hours ago, paul514 said:

i couldnt give a shiny shite what the bookies think.

We are actually 75% for top 4. Not 66. And definitely not 51. 

14 minutes ago, paul514 said:

Win the next two I’ll be super confident but right now it’s all 49/51 in our favour

We are 1/2 for top four with the bookies so it’s actually 67/33 in our favour right now. 

1 minute ago, rodders129 said:

So glad all this neurotic coefficient rubbish finishes now. People were focusing on it more than our own actual games ffs. We either get UCL on merit or not which is fine. Attention now turns to tomorrow nights massive game

Not finished until those plucky hammers and rolled over! There could be another 24 hours of it at least.