Rolta

This comment just reminded me that we signed him in my dream last night. So take of that as you will.

He kicked it in the net after harder and better work by better players. His goals might have kept us up, but also having him as one of our main wingers was part of the reason we were at risk of being relegated. His goals can't cover up he did pretty much literally nothing else positive of note and gave the ball away all the time. He and Samatta in attack was a shortcut to giving the opposition the ball. He tried hard though, and I respect that. And the goals.

I'd be more like, 'We even let that guy score. We must be shit!' He's not once looked good enough for this league as anything other than an uber defensive winger. If he can show otherwise under Gerrard, then great, but for me it appears that he's not quick enough nor good enough and gives the ball away too much.

The player I most link to languid (I think he was called it a lot) was Berbatov. I even think I learnt the word in relation to him.

Doooo it. Doooo it.

The Christmas Vacation theme tune. This was a new one for me last year, but it's pretty enjoyable. I'm surprised the song isn't a bigger deal. The film is good too!

What a turnaround. He looked great.

He's been a massive part of the team for the last three games. He's finally impressed me in a Villa shirt. I'm surprised people are having a go tbh.

Surely it's Chukwumeka. It makes sense after what he said after the City game (I think he pretty much confirmed the rumours of Chuk rejecting the contract).

I think the City game was his best game for us so far. He was transformed. He even looked pretty quick.

They both played in his first game.

Clearly a deceptacon. I thought this too. I was wondering if they had given it a too-epic name.

I don't imagine they feel too hard done by nor bothered by us at the moment! We hardly got one over on them.

Flattening the curve should come before a drop in numbers, but that hasn't happened in the UK since it went up in June. I look at the UK and see those numbers, and I don't see that as successful. In Spain there hasn't been a lockdown since the end of the first one in June 2020, we've had schools open since then, been able to play football and so on all the time, can see doctors and dentists and so on, no discernable differences in the 'opening up of the country', and the numbers have been much lower, with some waves here and there. And really the big difference seems to be that we've been made to wear masks and there have been much fewer last minute decisions too. There were restrictions on numbers last Christmas, but no bubbles and nothing else I can remember. Oh, and deaths are half of the UK's even though Spain was ahead of the UK in getting the pandemic. Sure there might be differences in testing numbers. Madrid will also be a bit different to the rest of Spain too as the rules are regionalised.

Bailey's attempt at a block is pretty pathetic to be fair! I'm not jumping on his back, but it wasn't great.

He's trying to header it! His head wasn't in the direct path.

Did he start on the left? That's pretty big if so. He had a good game against one of the best teams in the league in a position are desperate for someone to come in and own. Plus there was some encouraging and nice linkup with Dougie in that video in the Gerrard thread. Who'd have imagined those two combining in attack on the left a few weeks ago? I like it.

UnHerd...I wonder how many people follow that.

Until the last two games I wasn't sure he was a footballer. But he's now shown glimpses of what he can do and has had some good moments. There is a good player in there clearly. He made one obvious miscall and I think, for me, people are too keen to take that one instance and expand it as all the evidence they need to write him off and cast judgement on him. On Saturday it was Watkins getting the same treatment. It's been others before. Looks like recency bias mixed with a bit of kneejerk to me. Hopefully the injury isn't too bad, and hopefully he gets over these niggles.

Yeah the graph in the UK has been consistently at 40k for months. There are lots of up and downs so it would be a push to say the UK is on a downward trend as far as I can see. It's par for the course that it'll go down a bit then up a bit. It more seems as if the other countries in Europe are joining the UK in coronaville to various different degrees, but the numbers are still high and have been very high in the UK for months. Also see deaths have been sky high in the UK. Over double Spain. (This bit here is more a response to when you said the UK's numbers are high because of more testing.) I don't know. You wonder how much testing the UK is doing in comparison to Spain...it's an interesting idea. We do testing here too though. We've also worn masks for months. I have no answer though. But we haven't shut schools or had a lockdown since June 2020. But trend wise, yes, it's definitely going up. If I'm reading too much subtext into what you're saying forgive me! I'm still smarting over how ridiculous City are.

30th November... UK new cases: 39,716 Spain: 10,261 You made me go look with the statement 'the rest of Europe'! Did you mean 'some bits of Europe'? Germany is pretty high but I'm shocked that the UK has been averaging about 40,000 new cases since July! It makes a difference looking at those numbers that Germany has only been so high for a month. I didn't look anywhere else. I was just intrigued.

These guys...what the actual ****!!

The point you might be missing is that a lot of the men are rubbish commentators. I have to tune out Andy Townsend for example. They're not commentators for their commentating ability. She wasn't bad at all. There were definitely a couple of things she said that I disagreed with but it doesn't feel enough to shake my fists at the modern world.

Wait till you hear some of the men!

He might be getting tempted into a move somewhere like Germany. It's the only way the comments would make sense.