KentVillan

I like all the ones I've heard of here so will give the others a go. Jimmy Carr is very talented, but he enjoys getting cheap laughs from simpletons and words removed a bit too much. Feel like he dumbs down a lot of his material so he can sell out Whopperton Assembly Hall on a Wednesday. Some of his conversations with other comedians are amazing, though. I loved this one: As for Russell Howard, I know it's fashionable to pick on various comedians, but his success really baffles me. His jokes are basically... shout loudly about a topical issue from a Guardian reader perspective... do a thick Bristol accent... throw in a tame wank / sex joke. Laugh with the audience. Throw in an unexpectedly poignant story. Seems like a nice enough person, so whatever. I like comedians who have funny bones. Just naturally funny whenever they say anything. Think Kevin Bridges and James Acaster are the best ones from the new generation.

Hope today gave him a massive confidence boost.

I never really got the logic of the Ings signing at the time, and I think it *was* a panic buy. I’ve always rated him as a player, but didn’t think he was the right player for this club. Pleased to see Unai has worked out how to fit him in. And @Demitri_Cis right, neither of those goals was anything special. Ings was really good in general play, and had an excellent game, but I wouldn’t get too carried away with those goals as examples of his killer finishing.

I mean it’s obvious from just watching one game under Smith or Gerrard. Or the fact that he thrived in a front 2 with a quick strike partner at Southampton. Or just seeing his technical quality when he drops deep. I think Smith actually did recognise this too, hence the 3-5-2 experiment, but he couldn’t really get it to work with the other players he had. Gerrard seemingly never knew what to do with most of his players.

I think there were 6 sub breaks (a couple of them were double subs) so that’s usually 30 seconds each = 3 mins. Goal is usually 30-60 seconds? = 3:30 - 4 mins total Buendia injury + Martinez “injury” = ??? Maybe brings you up to 5:30 mins? Lots of fouls & free kicks, slow goal kicks and throw ins. 8 mins was maybe a bit excessive but it wasn’t far off that. Problem is refs generally don’t add enough time on unless Man Utd are losing, so we’re used to it being less.

The other thing I like about him is how he thinks about his individual players’ strengths and tweaks the system for that. He said in his post match that he recognises that Ings plays best when he has people running off him, so he adapted the shape slightly to allow that. I always felt Ings was a bad signing because he didn’t suit our squad and typical shape, but now we have a manager who is good enough to fit him in. He’s even worked out how to use McGinn properly. That’s the kind of manager that players will die for. Rather than one (cough, Stevie, cough, Sir Gareth, cough) who bangs on about his philosophy the whole time and then tries to fit square pegs into round holes.

He has a thick accent, but his English is actually very good. Certainly better than plenty of foreign coaches who have been lauded as geniuses in the Premier League (Poch, Bielsa, Conte, etc). His problem is he took on Arsenal at a very difficult time, had a fanbase with wildly unrealistic expectations, and a squad of overpaid wasters. I think at Villa we (the fans and the players) appreciate the opportunity. In a way, Gerrard has been the palate cleanser… any residual loyalty to Smith has gone, and everyone was ready for Gerrard to go. It’s a perfect time to join. Decent squad of players, underperforming, but plenty of solid personalities in the dressing room who want the team to do well. And a lot of these players will be feeling that Emery can make them reach their potential. He’ll be a hero here. He already is tbh.

I don’t think this is a “new manager bounce”. Sure, there are a few players enjoying a fresh start, and as the season wears on, you’ll start to get one or two players feeling frustrated and souring the mood. But there are so many obvious improvements in team organisation, reactivity to the opponents’ tactics, use of subs, etc that it’s clearly a consequence of just having a better, more experience coach. He’s a better tactician, coach and man manager than his predecessors, and he can mix up how we play from game to game in a coherent way that the players seem to understand. That’s a talent.

He has been practising his “good evening”! He’s just a class act tbh. He combines Smith’s positivity and belief in the importance of the fans and the club, with the obsessive tactical knowledge and coaching skills of an elite manager. I feel like he could really be here for the long haul, because we have the money and the high ceiling to let him achieve pretty much whatever he wants to achieve over a 5 year period.

I think when you’re away from home with a hostile crowd and it’s a tight game, it’s kind of par for the course. Very annoying when you’re on the receiving end of it, but these are vital points in a mid table six pointer that sets us up for the post World Cup run in, and you take the yellows for the cause. Is it sportsmanlike? No. And tbh it’s good that the ref added time on appropriately. The more refs recognise it, the less teams benefit from it. A lot of refs don’t add enough time on, which is why it happens.

Game is 90 mins!

The level of global importance of Twitter and the wealth & profile of the people who use it is a bit different from VT, surely? Unless Prince William lurks here

I wonder if Twitter could have gone down the Wikipedia route of asking for donations, maybe getting funding from some big foundations, etc. It sits more in that space IMO than in the ad-fuelled FB / Insta type market. Too late now, anyway, surely. Musk has ruined it.

Twitter was very profitable for the guys who sold it to Musk

Testing whether wank is a banned word before posting something

Another good thread

I really like Twitter, and thought it had actually got a lot better as it started to clamp down on misinformation - precisely the so-called "censorship" that drove Musk to do this. It's been particularly good for stuff like Ukraine, where if you follow the right accounts you generally get much more up-to-date and reliable coverage than any English-language media outlets. I don't think there's any 4D chess angle to what Musk is doing. We're just watching hubris play out on a vast scale. It happens.

Yeah but there's something up with his fitness. It's bizarre. He looks like he needs to go on a diet. I'm not saying he'd be a world beater, but he could definitely be better than he is at the moment. Something's gone wrong.

Calm down

Bruno Fernandes has the most annoying face in world football

Fucksake

One of the worst things is when you say, “I don’t really like Coldplay” (or whatever) and someone says, “oh are they too POPULAR for you, sorry I’m not cool enough to listen to your music [etc]”. And then you know you have nothing in common with her. As you dance to Coldplay at her parents’ house at Christmas. In your Coldplay pyjamas.

Slightly unlucky slip there, but that one will go in the Mings Mistake Boring Twitter Banter collection

He looks unfit and slightly overweight. Wondering what the issue is. He’s definitely a better player than his form suggests, hope he can fix it