juanpablosaliceband

Waiting five minutes just to send the ref over. Absolute joke. 

This ref is a farce. Luiz yellow for absolutely nothing. 

What the hell is Torres doing. That’s dreadful. 

How many times have we gifted possession to them. 

23 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Yes I would prefer we qualified on our own merit. Since I am not English and I don't subscribe to the Premier League is the almighty theory then yes I would prefer the other English teams to lose and embarrassingly if they could. West Ham is a scum team too

The only English team except us I respect is Brighton and they are pretty much out

It would be based on merit. That’s the whole idea of the coefficient. It’s a merit based qualification system. It’s not like they’d pull our name out of a raffle. 

Im not English either which backs up why I couldn’t care less whether other English teams win or lose, even if I don’t particularly like some of them. We’ve been complaining about the odds being stacked in favour of the top 6 teams for years now so it seems foolish to pass up a chance for Villa to qualify for the champions league out of spite. The places are going somewhere so better Villa than some random Spanish or German team. 

11 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Cheering on the scum 6 in Europe so one of the non scum 6 clubs can get a Champions League spot is the ultimate mission of the failed Super League to show how needed they are

I find it shameful people cheering these scumbags on in case we get 5th

What a load of absolute and utter nonsense. Villa, Brighton and West Ham are hardly part of the scum six and they’re three of the teams you’d be shaming people for cheering on. Man United and Spurs are the two teams currently most likely to benefit from England getting fifth place so you’ve got the whole thing backwards here. I don’t know what any of this has to do with the super league. It’s a qualifying system to allow for the expanded champions league  

Are you really that begrudging of other English teams that you would prefer see them lose games that have no impact on Villa than see Villa qualify for the champions league? It’s ridiculous. We would be guaranteed eight champions league games against eight different teams if we qualify, including two against the elite teams. It would be incredible to qualify. 

22 minutes ago, omariqy said:

2 for a win, 1 for a draw and 1 for round progression. Those points then divided by the number of teams from your country that were originally in the various tournaments. So for England it’s divided by 8 and for Germany it’s divided by 7. 

The only quirk is that the conference league only gets the progression point for quarter to semi and semi to final. So Villa can only get 0.25 this week. The UECL games have been less valuable unfortunately. 

Disappointed with our approach to the game today. Our setup and application looked like a plucky underdog trying to play for a draw away from home. Ultimately, you limit your chance of winning and set yourself up to be beaten. A big club mentality would have been to sniff an eight point cushion and attack to win the game. 

Let’s go for the kill!

Referee just bottled a clear penalty to West Ham. 

Martinez, Konsa, Torres, Kamara, Luiz and Watkins. That’s our spine. We need to keep them all at all costs in my opinion. If Bailey keeps up this form, he could go in there too. We have plenty of other saleable players who could bring in good money without damaging us the way selling from the list above would. People rave about the Man City squad but they weren’t the same without de Bruyne and Haaland. Any team will struggle without its best players. Luiz and Watkins are that for us in my opinion. It’s extremely difficult to replace that core without being weakened. 

4 minutes ago, duke313 said:

England should rise in the ranking this week and next.  We were actually disadvantaged by having the English teams top the Europa groups, as it meant none of them played in the playoff round, and despite that we're still in in touching distance of 2nd.  I can't see how we don't get at least 2nd, unless all teams bomb out this round.

Wasn’t there bonus points for topping the group and going through to compensate for the points other teams could pick up in the play offs?

But yes, let’s hope so. Fifth place being secure could relieve some tension from the run in, albeit we still want to finish as high as we can. 

2 hours ago, Okonokos said:

Haven't really been keeping up with the 5th spot rules. Can anybody summarise them? Are we basically hoping English clubs do better than German clubs? When will we know for sure what 5th place gets?

If you have Twitter, there’s a page called Football Rankings which summarises everything really well and keeps tabs on a daily basis. They have England at 80% probability for fifth place to take a spot, with Germany at 20%. Italy are 90% likely to take the other of the two spots. Bayern Munich going out tonight would be a good start. We could have a clearer picture after this week’s European games but it all depends on results. A team gets two points for a match win, one point for a draw and one point for advancing to the next round (this point only applies to the semi and final for the conference). Points are divided by the number of teams each country entered into Europe. So 8 for England and 7 for Germany. 

1 hour ago, markavfc40 said:

It is Mark Regan (ex radio WM). I think he is very good but he is a Sha fan so I don't know if that dampens his enthusiasm at times.

Well he did a very good Villa fan impression after that Digne goal last night!

2 minutes ago, Jas10 said:

 

Definitely. I just saw the Villa TV clip of the Digne goal. Our commentator absolutely and utterly lost it. I’ve never heard him like that. That was huge. 

7 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

Think it may be a matter of chance whether I have a stroke  or Villa seal a CL slot first. These last two matches have sent my blood pressure into new uncharted territory.

Sublime first half but I would like to know if Emery instructs them to play slow, passive football at the start of each second half or if the players have made this up by themselves. It just invites teams to score against us. 

Great performances from Watkins and McGinn, OK from everyone else, think Emery should have taken Moreno off sooner, he isn’t made for an ultra defensive game.

Worst performance from a referee I have seen in a long time.

Why didn’t Barkley ever play like that for us?

Ah it’s terrible. My watch does be asking why my heart rate is so high when I’m not exercising. 

Performances can come and go but lost points are irretrievable. Terrible second half but a huge three points. Supporting Villa will be the end of me. 

Forest only have themselves to blame. Cruising but decide to camp out in their own box for the last two minutes and let liverpool attack them. I can never understand it. You won’t last five minutes without conceding when you do that. 

Condolences to his family. May he rest in peace. 

I was just watching the end of the Carling Cup final and commentary mentioned that it was the latest goal in a league cup final since Brian Little in 1977. So I pulled up the highlights on YouTube. Villa were 1-0 down late on when we equalised through one of the best goals from distance I’ve ever seen. The scorer was no. 5, Chris Nicholl. Embarrassingly, I’d never heard of him. About an hour later, I see a post from the club that he’s just passed away. How strange. It’s a reminder to do more homework on our past players. 

44 minutes ago, chips'ngravy said:

Disagree with Emery when he said we controlled the transition. I thought that was where we were at our most vulnerable. 17 shots from them seems evidence enough that we got caught time and again.

Also, is it me or has the meticulous line drawing for offsides suddenly disappeared? I thought there was a chance their winner might be chalked off when the ball was played through to Mainoo (I think) who then knocked it back for Dalot to cross. 

I thought that pass to Mainoo was definitely offside. No mention of it and whether VAR checked it. 

We can’t start using tiredness as an excuse already. We have had a good break since Christmas. The squad has been well rotated all season. We may not have huge quality in depth but we do have depth and numbers. Most players have had time out with a combination of injury, suspension or squad rotation. Konsa, Luiz, McGinn, Kamara and Watkins are probably our most used players. Konsa now has a good break. Luiz had a short suspension. Kamara had a long suspension. None of them play international games other than McGinn. The rest of our squad should have a full tank of fuel. I’d be surprised if any of our players have played significantly more minutes than any of the top six, in spite of their deeper squads. 

Giving Tim and Zaniolo three minutes. What’s the point?

1 minute ago, rodders0223 said:

Konsa screaming lining prone holding his knee. Physios come on and work his knee joint for 2 minutes.

Don Goodman "I don't think Trusty caught his face."

Man is the thickest word removed alive

And then calls him Bailey. 

28 minutes ago, Don_Simon said:

"Great" is doing some very heavy lifting here.

I think he’s actually one of the worst players I’ve ever seen play for Villa. Had the mobility of a bag of sand and regularly got skinned by poor championship players. Couldn’t pass the ball five yards. He may have been a better player earlier in his career but he was incredibly limited at Villa. Signing players like him and Glenn Whelan kept us in the championship longer than we should have been in my opinion. He seems to have a cult hero status for having a beard, winning headers, being good at taking penalties and for being a decent guy, but I thought he was bloody awful as a player.