Jonesy7211

If the PL and FA were to provide greater financial packages for the lower leagues then this wouldn't be an issue. If the PL clubs want this then they should have to pay for it. But they already don't want to give them any more money anyway, so this idea is a non-starter.

It's the epitome of having their cake and eating it too.

I don't agree with the comments about him not being so good for the second half of the season. His worst run of form has coincided with a positional change to account for the Kamara injury. We all saw his best form when he can play slightly further forward. Whenever Kamara is back, or if we sign a good DM in the summer, I fully expect Dougie's form to improve again.

Still a top player, Emery obviously trusts him, and the persistent Arsenal rumours show he must at least be a very decent player.

That being said, I do think that Tielemans was signed last summer in case Luiz left, and even if he did leave this summer a midfield 3 of Youri, Kamara, and McGinn is still very good.

I may be jumping the gun, but at the end of this evening's football we're going to be the only English club still in a European competition. We've come a long way baby.

As great as the result was last night, they're never going away whilst they've got the backing of an oil state. I really hope the 115 charges are enough for them to back out, but that's the naive optimist in me. The reality is they're going to spend a whole heap of money improving their squad in the summer so next season's PL is a one horse race. They'll be in and around the CL latter stages again too.

It's so depressing.

There's no way the ref won't send a PSG player off now. Barca players will be hitting the deck constantly.

Obviously not yet our most successful manager, but in terms of the standard of football, I really do think this season is the highest level of performance we've consistently played in comparison to possibly any Villa team of the past, with the exception of 81/82.

An absolutely world class manager this guy. I wouldn't swap him for anyone else.

Masterclass after masterclass.

There's more pressure on Arsenal than us today. We'll see if they've got the mentality to go all the way for the title. We're at the stage of the season where you can see the end in sight, and for Arsenal that means the title.

Vanilier, lots of letters from Villa in the name.

The wife chose Mr. Incredible, but I think she was having a dig at me by choosing that.

On 11/04/2024 at 08:47, Wainy316 said:

AEW went from being the cool fresh wrestling product to year 2000 WCW pretty quickly didn't it.

They'd kill to be 2000 WCW, Punk's interview with Ariel Helwani gave a real insight as to how they operate. They're not bothered about selling tickets or making money.

The footage and response to the backstage All In footage now shows that even though he's left, AEW's biggest star is still CM Punk.

In the TalkShite video in the last page, Wagner makes a comment about being a top 10 club in the Prem, and later on Simon Jordan makes a comment about Man U laughing at Man City when they were in league 1. Both seem to be forgetting the financial landscape of modern football. FFP and PSR will stop another Man City arriving. Look at Newcastle as the example, they've not been able to spend billions on players, even with the dodgy sponsorships. They're even having to sell players in the summer.

You then look at the parachute payments from the Prem. Teams receiving this tend to do much better in the championship, especially once they organize themselves properly.

Blues can build the 60k stadium, they can build the training pitches, and invite the NFL and Ed Sheeran. They'll never get to the top 10 of the Prem consistently because of the financial challenges facing small clubs is too great. They don't have a big fan base, they don't have any presence or support from overseas, and they don't have sponsors beating down their doors to be associated with them. If they had any of this they wouldn't be playing in a broken stadium in the championship with so many empty seats.

We're going to be facing similar challenges to sustain a top 6 finish over the next few years. As much as I hate the blues, football is broken and only sustains the more powerful clubs in relativity to their own position. The Sky 6 don't want us and Newcastle pushing them, the same way the bottom half of the Prem and the championship yo-yo clubs won't want Blues threatening their status.

Even if they stay up, we'll still get loads of entertainment when they release the "staying up" dvd.

Think of all the sisters/wives/daughters (same person) saved too.

34 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

Telephony is widely seen as broadly positive privatisation.  It opened up the market for new competitors and technology. All of the third-term Maggie privatisation like the water and energy utilities and then later the railways under Major have widely been seen as poor policy.

Ironically Labour started the first privisation of BP before Thatcher.

The BT network is hugely problematic and "legacy" in comparison to the infrastructure of other countries. The routing features available on the BT cable infrastructure and exchanges are light years behind the USA.

BT have had a monopoly on this for years, even with the creation of Openreach as a separate entity.

Where the Telco's have been wildly successful have been through the resellers and designers of services using this infrastructure, but even this industry has shrunk by a third over the last few years.

Also BT pay is crap. I've never worked for them, but I work in the industry and know loads of people who have and still do. The wages the techies and engineers get paid is insulting compared to the private sector. One of my friends is one of the union bosses for them, and there's still uproar of profits and pay rises for the senior managers, where the plebs have had nothing.

I don't understand why their investor owners are interested in them as a club, but also in regenerating the area. The West Midlands is one of the poorest areas in the country. So many of the sporting attractions we have do not sell out, or have even been close. Off the top of my head it's only us and Wolves who sell out, or consistently come close to it. We've lost dog racing tracks, we don't have a major rugby team in the area any longer (and even then the Ricoh was very rarely more than half full for a Wasps game, and that was only ever against Leicester Tigers),  Edgbaston only sells out for England games, (although attendances do increase for the T20). Realistically, the blues will forever be in our shadow in terms of support. I'm not being biased, it's just fact. I just don't get why they're doing it. If they do go down, and if we can maintain our relative success, this gap is only going to increase with the next generation of locals latching onto us.

Other than for housing, I don't see what benefit building all this will have for the investors. The council is skint too, they're not going to be investing in Birmingham for a long while.

8 minutes ago, Dodgyknees said:

Can I get this on my fire stick?

It used to be BT sports. It's available on most illegitimate streaming devices. I get it on mine. Some of the fire sticks and streaming apps have on demand TV shows and movies on. By lunch time tomorrow Raw will be on there if you don't fancy staying up.

6 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

In response to that spoiler

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I do agree Austin would have been better, but I've seen people saying Taker made no sense.
But I think with The Rock's current persona and Taker's perception of being like the godfather of the locker room, protecting what's right and also with his legendary status around Mania it did totally work. 

It also kind of countered the "Final Boss" stuff that The Rock has been pushing. It's Wrestlemania. The Rock isn't the final boss, the Undertaker is.

 

Conflicted over this mania. I really liked the ending, but without spoiling anything I would have liked to have seen one major change.

I do think this was a three match mania. Other than the two main events, the only other match with a meaningful build was Drew v Seth.

Really enjoyed both nights, I just didn't care enough about the other matches.

Good to hear them moving away from the Pg era too, and back towards professional wrestling.

3 hours ago, Dodgyknees said:

I am watching Stand and Deliver, and also set to watch WM on both nights.

Predictions

Cody Rhodes

I'm not sure he's going to win this one the traditional way of pinning Roman. The build up to mania has been good, but Roman has been sidelined by The Rock. The Rock v Cody is the match people want now. I'm expecting some kind of swerve.

I stole an Easter egg from my kids and played dumb when they noticed it had gone. My wife shared it with me though. Demolished with a cup of tea whilst we watched an episode of Shogun.

Full disclosure, we do this every year, and at Christmas.

I feel more guilty this year, it was a good egg. It was a maltesers one with the biscuit inside.

6 minutes ago, theboyangel said:

I heard a rumour that Fincher was considering finally doing the third season.

I hope you're right, but he'd previously said it was Netflix not moving forward with it due to the special effects costs. There's a lot more CGI and special effects than you might think, and Fincher was very heavily involved in all of them, increasing the costs. Apparently not enough people watched it to justify the budget?!

How is woke defined? It's something I've never really understood. I understand it to be a term that defines someone as socially conscious, opposed to inequality, and generally not excluding people based on their circumstances. If I'm wrong, please enlighten me.

I think the people that use the term as a negative have a very different idea of what it is, but I don't understand that. 

1 hour ago, turvontour said:

Is it really. That's crazy how much that has caught up to a lot of jobs that used to be close to double minimum wage.

I think it says more about wage stagnation in this country in relation to rising prices. The minimum wage has had to go up, but most people's wages haven't risen anywhere near the same. I also think the minimum wage is still crap when compared to the actual cost of living. The line about wages pushing up inflation is BS too, it's all about shareholder profits.

His overall win record is padded out as well because we play many more lower ranked teams than we ever used to, especially at the major tournaments. There are more teams at the World Cups and Euros than there have ever been. Both were competitions that were for elite national teams until Fifa and Uefa greed took priority over the football. Not taking anything away from the lower ranked teams that do qualify, we just play more of them now.

His record against the top teams is what he should be judged on, and this is fairly awful considering the players we have. We're only a centre half and goalie away from having one of the strongest first XI's in international football.

1 minute ago, HanoiVillan said:

However irritable you feel about it, it's just unfortunately true that an accusation that named individuals have essentially falsified accounts over a ten-year time span is much harder to prove to a legally watertight standard than a self-reported number in a club's accounts. 

But that's not that all the 115 charges relate to. There's proof they've been paying staff and players two salaries, and a lot of these are no longer with the club. Surely they don't have to wait till all claims have been proved substantial? You wouldn't let a mass murderer walk free because you couldn't yet prove they didn't murder 1 of their victims 15 years ago. You'd try them on what you have then take them back to court later on.

12 hours ago, turnbull said:

Oh. My. God.

No word's.

I wonder if they paid extra for the apostrophes? "Right mate, can do you a sweet little deal on apostrophes"... "Shut up and take my money".

2 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Obviously Man City have been *charged*, that's how we know there are 115 charges. There isn't a *verdict*, because the case is massively bigger and harder to prove. 

By the same token the charges go back further than the other clubs that have been charged. They've had far longer to prove this.