The_Rev

They’ll just buy weapons from France or China instead. The sad truth is that wheels need to be greased and sport is one of the most visible components.

Some mental gymnastics going on there. Lineker once turned up to MotD in his boxer shorts.

Saw the replay. That’s on Lindelof.

He’s not gonna want to pull a hamstring six weeks before he’s due to fly out to Munich.

Ramsdale won't say anything because he's not stupid but there's a story out there and a thirst for endless content, especially at a club like Arsenal (who have 8-10 times as many followers on social media than we do, and their match highlights have 4x as many views as ours on YouTube) so the simple truth is it exists because people click on it.

That would probably be just picking up returns. But yeah, I’m happy to go to some of the ‘lesser’ fixtures. Denmark vs Austria in the groups or something. I’ll start laying groundwork now though.

Taking this off topic on the first page, but I just realised I might need to do some homework if I want to get to Euro 2028 matches. Last time I went to a tournament was Euro 96, only did one game (Scotland 0-0 Netherlands at Villa Park) but it was possible just to buy tickets from Villa Park a week or two before the game. What's the procedure these days? I'll bet I've not been to an England game in ten years but I'm more than happy just to do the games at Villa Park in the Euros regardless of who is playing.

Yeah, but that’s just TalkSport’s business model. In fact it’s the current business model for anybody who gets rewarded by social media algorithms for ‘engagement’ as pissing people off generates more engagement and spreads your content further than insightful or informative stuff. TalkSport have been doing this since the 90s when Kelvin Mackenzie realised that more idiots would phone the station on premium rate phone numbers to tell the presenters why they were wrong if they were trolling than would phone in if they were having a sensible discussion. I still find the Even Ferguson thing amusing for reasons stated above.

I’m saying I find the reaction amusing when Ireland’s modus operandi for the past 35 years was finding anybody who might technically be eligible and asking first.

Pro: it means our midfield plays 15-20 yards closer to goal than they used to and that’s why Dougie and McGinn are scoring more goals than they did under previous managers.

Took my camera to the AZ game and glad I managed to capture this moment.

Every time I read this thread I wonder why people listen to Talksport.

Kamara's went out for a corner.

It is funny to see the Irish reaction when the shoe is on the other foot.

Routine home win really. They had a good spell either side of our goal in the second half when Iwobi was getting the better of McGinn and they seemed to be overloading down our left but another routine home win where the game was over after an hour. We keep doing this at Villa Park and I don't know if I'm reading too much into things elsewhere in the league but one of the reasons we don't seem to be getting the sort of injuries that, say, Newcastle are suffering right now is because we don't have to play high intensity football every week just to stay on top. Felt the referee was a bit too fussy. I'll give him the penalty, I was in the Holte and was convinced it was a handball but as soon as he got called over by the VAR team it was obvious that it wasn't going to be awarded. I felt Tielemans had a good game, he's played his way into the team now after the performances here and against AZ, he's got the ability to hurt opposition defences and open up new angles of attack. Someone earlier questioned why Moreno wasn't getting on the pitch, a lot of that is because we've got the luxury of not needing to rush him back so he can stay fresh until we really do need him. Digne was OK today, he still gets caught napping too often for my liking and I wish he'd play the ball in first time more often as the extra touch he needs to take to set himself does cost us a lot of openings.

It was the studs down the shin step/stamp thing that’s not a million miles away from the one Rashford got sent off for in the Champions League. I’ve seen worse challenges but it was absolutely a straight red.

A lot of their bad results have been in the Champions League, in the Premier League they are a bit like us in that they don’t do draws which means there’ll be racking up the points even if they lose more often then you’d expect. If they see it out today then they’ll be on 7 wins in the Premier League which is the same as us and Liverpool and more than Newcastle.

Two more today and it’s only half time.

We kinda had to buy what was available at the time, and that wasn’t much. Ben Mee destroying Wesley’s career a couple of weeks previously left us in a desperate situation with extreme time pressure to get it sorted.

The whole debate around the Lenglet goal is yet another example of the law just being an arse. It's like a couple of years ago when PGMOL or whoever calls the shots decided that the ball clipping the back of a players sleeve was handball and a penalty.

I didn’t see it at full time but I’d put money on it just being a cordon which would mean Villa fans in the Doug Ellis or Holte heading towards Witton station would have to go via Trinity Road even if it meant going all the way round the outside of Villa Park. Same thing tends to happen when we play the Blues. AZ Fans were fine of course. I know the Dutch have a bit of a reputation but the whole thing seems to be a dress rehearsal for the Legia Warsaw game where the police have genuine concerns.

Watkins said it should have counted in his post game interview. The offside should have reset after they cleared it off the line. I was right by the players tunnel tonight and caught McPhee grilling the 4th official at full time so I’m guessing that’s what they were trying to clarify. I think it’s a much easier night if we score first, they’d have to come out of their shell and we’d have cantered to victory. In some ways I’m glad it panned out how it did because we were given a test tonight and we are going to see a lot more opposition sides coming to Villa Park and do the same and we’ve got to learn how to deal with it.

Channeling his inner Jason Statham these days:

It's probably just that Opta started recording Champions League data from 2003/04 onwards. They were only founded as a company in the late 90s and were a small company who only had the manpower to Premier League stats back then.