The_Rev

Media 101: more people will click on a headline if it's intriguing. It's not a slight on you, us as a club or anything else.

I missed the last 20 minutes. Did anything interesting happen?

Moreno has got to do better with the goal. It was a half hearted attempt at clearing the ball. I don’t think it happens if he’s not just coming back from a long injury but the sloppiness is killing us. Big half time team talk coming up because we can win this.

The thing with Manchester City is that they are perfectly capable of winning something like 15 of their next 16 games, being four points clear as April turns into May and having everybody forget that they had a bit of a wobble before Christmas.

I’ve always liked whoever the ref in the Manchester City vs Palace game is.

Had an hour or so to ponder on the game and I'm not sure what conclusions can be drawn that we didn't know going in. It was always going to be a bit after the Lord Mayor's Show, last week was huge for the team and AFAIK Unai gave them all two days off which meant they came back to Bodymoor on Tuesday and travelled Wednesday. The game itself seemed like an afterthought in all of this. Zrinjski didn't offer much, five at the back and two DM's screening really killed the game as a spectacle as there was just no room to play football once we were 30 yards from their goal. The players were cruising through it but it was good to see people who needed minutes get minutes, pleased for the debutants and nice for Zaniolo to get his first goal. All we needed was to get through the 90 minutes and win the group and that's mission accomplished. Won the group, avoided the playoffs so we can put Europe to bed until March and we will get a favourable draw too. Not going to remember much about this game, but job done.

Nice to see Tommi get a run out. Saw him bossing it in the Birmingham Senior Cup at Nuneaton this time last year.

There’s very little space. Just like in the first leg Zrinjski have often had seven players defending in the box. We need to learn to deal with these ultra low blocks but a back five with two DMs screening will suck the life out of pretty much any game.

No. If we keep a clean sheet we’ve won the group.

I think it was Taylor Swift. Full frontal , did a cartwheel in the centre circle. It’s why Matty Cash has looked so distracted all night.

Did they mention the streaker on the radio?

He’s always struck me as a guy who is great to have in the trenches but when you’re on the front foot his limitations are obvious.

Cash isn’t having a great game.

Another Catalan club too. Girona is nowhere near as big a city as Barcelona, but it can probably consider a million people to be in it's catchment area and a lot of those would historically be Barca fans. It's not a romantic story if Girona win the league obviously, but it's an interesting one. Also: Bellingham keeps scoring. It's absurd just how prolific he's been this season: 12 goals in 14 appearances in La Liga. 4 in 4 in the Champions League. 16 in 18 for Real Madrid overall, with 4 assists. He's 20 years old.

I’m not sure how we are winning at half time, I think Emery needs to do something about the shape as Saliba has Ollie Watkins in his pocket so far that it’s almost like we are playing with ten men. There’s no out ball so we’ve started going long and it just keeps coming back. I’d just keep telling Arsenal to keep doing what they are doing if I were Artera, I’m not sure what I’d say if I were Emery

15? Are you sure about that?

TBF he is collecting them at the speed which most Blues fans are capable of counting.

Table since Rooney took the manager's job.

Ricky van Wolfswinkel. Dutch striker who famously couldn't hit a Koeienkont with a banjo after a big money move to Norwich has just popped up with a goal tonight. He's now 34 years of age.

I think they did his agent dirty as they aren't in the Champions League they are in the Championship*. *That's the Dutch Championship**. ** It's actually called the Eerste Divisie but that ruins the gag.

Juninho Bacuna who is Leandro's kid brother. Leandro is playing in the Dutch second division with Groningen, who are the club we signed him from back in the day.

It's telling because all it really shows is that they both wish they were playing us instead. However: Villa old boy Callum O'Hare has opened the scoring and put another nail in Rooney's coffin. Nice work.

You look at the dressing room at the time, it was a toxic place. Dean Smith coming as in saved Grealish from being the next wasted talent.

The easy way out would have been to leave after we were relegated, instead he stayed for three seasons in The Championship. I'm sure there were a couple of times when he was close to leaving but he stayed when we needed him and if truth be told the "one more year" thing we had going on with Jack ended up being about five more years. The guy must have been looking at players like Wilf Zaha at Palace who spent a lot of his career in the same situation then all of a sudden he was 29 and the interest from Champions League clubs (that aren't based in Istanbul) dried up. I get why Jack left, he was one of the best players in the world who had never played Champions League football and as being a footballer is a short career I'm sure he didn't want to regret passing up on opportunities that weren't going to be around once he stop fitting the age profile that Uberclubs are willing to spunk obscene transfer fees on. He's done well at Manchester CIty too, obviously he's not the main man there but he was never supposed to be. He was however a key player in a team that won the Treble and nobody can take that away from him. He can still be a massive Villa fan but he had to do what was right for him in the moment. The thing is we've moved on too. We don't miss Jack at all. It would be incredible if the 24 year old version of Grealish was in the current Villa squad but timing is everything in football and this one didn't line up for us. However, we got a lot of money for him and while it's possible to have a conversation about how that money was spent, two years later we find that we've got a much better team than any of the sides Grealish played in. I'm sure he's happy to see us doing well. What I don't want is us signing him on a Bosman when he's 32 and out of contract because sentimentality, but I don't think the current owners work like that. As it stands the Grealish departure kinda worked out for everybody.

Maybe the running at a thousand miles an hour into every tackle thing doesn’t work as well beyond October when the opposition aren’t Dundee and Motherwell.