The_Rev

7 hours ago, BleedClaretAndBlue said:

Which was worse? Ollie’s yesterday or Kamara vs. Alkmaar 

Kamara's went out for a corner. 

14 hours ago, GingerCollins29 said:

Possibly the worst thing i've seen all year in terms of journalism. Of course it comes from talkshite. 

This is the same bloke who broke the news we were about to sign oxlade chamberlain.

Well done to evan for showing a look of disgust

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.   

12 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Viera straight red for Arsenal, nasty challenge apparently. 

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. 

23 minutes ago, TheMightyVillans said:

utd just 1 point behind us after such a poor season. Have to win tomorrow

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.  

13 minutes ago, Louis said:

What was the reason behind the security restrictions down Witton Lane? Does anyone know?

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.  

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. 

He's just seen the highlights from last night. 

Just now, Genie said:

Not if we spent the money on expensive players on 5 year contracts. It would set us back imo.

That's a big if isn't it?  The club aren't stupid, or at least they aren't that stupid.   The standard model for Champions League remuneration to players is a +% bonus for being in it, not pretending you didn't notice what happened to Leeds United in the 00s. 

3 hours ago, Genie said:

We aren’t ready for it yet, we’ll just lose our games and then bow out. Scraping in because of the 5th place would be a mistake imo.

Hopefully we go deep (kw) into the Europa flavours a few times first and then make the step up.

I get what you are saying but losing our games and bowing out while collecting the money and status that comes with being a Champions League club is better than not being there at all.  The simple truth is that being in the big cup opens up a whole new world of revenue streams, sponsorship deals and transfer targets that simply aren't interested in anything else.  Look at the rise of Spurs over the past 10-15 years for example, they've hardly been operating on a shoestring but most of the good things which have happened to them have been predicated by good business in the transfer market and half a dozen Champions League campaigns.  It's better to get in and use that as a springboard than wait for a day (where you go in with a competitive side) that may never come.  

31 minutes ago, Genie said:

Villa should be in no rush for the CL.

Why not?  Don’t you want us to qualify for it in case it messes up our chances of qualifying for it? 

He’ll not keep up this insane rate for the season but unless he gets injured then 50 in all competitions has got to be feasible. 

edit: last six weeks on Whoscored.com's  "latest matches" form guide: 

Yeah, he'd still do a job for us.  I think Guardiola want's to keep him for now though.  The ball for Foden's goal last night was absolutely delicious.  

The term is borrowed from cricket (it’s taking three wickets in three balls, apparently the first time it happened in a competitive game some people in the crowd were so impressed they bought the bowler a new hat.  ) but it would have almost certainly been used for football in the UK first. 

We are losing every 50-50. 

1 hour ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Never heard of that before 

Germans are weird.  But really I was hoping someone would bite so I could do my crappy visual  dad joke.  

Still hasn’t scored a hat trick if you go by the weird German definition that all goals need to be scored in the same half.