The_Rev

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.

RIP Benjamin. Saw him in the wild once, somewhere on the Kings Road in Chelsea and I’ll admit to being a tiny bit starstruck.

He, um, had a good World Cup.

What if he was the one who took the photo?

Just because I’m a nerd, scheduled trains to Birmingham New Street from: Witton: 19:23, 19:34, 19:43, 19:53, 20:04, 20:23, 20:34 Aston: 19:27, 19:32, 19:40, 19:57, 20:02, 20:12, 20:27, 20:32, 20:38 Some trains from Witton won’t call at Aston because they are booked to pass through the station without stopping or they are routed into New Street via Perry Barr. Some trains from Aston won’t have called at Witton because they’ve come down on the line from Sutton Coldfield. The ones that do call at both I’ve marked in italics obvious caveat: it’s a Saturday evening on the run up Christmas during a week when ASLEF have been taking industrial action and the Villa are at home so don’t expect a largely Birmingham based group of drivers to be queuing up to do overtime. You should also be able to get the number 7 bus to Snow Hill from Witton Road (link)

Away form as it stands after the Bournemouth game. We've been to Liverpool and Newcastle who are top of the home form table (we've got games in hand at home if you were wondering). Today was a decent point. Bournemouth's last game was a stroll in the park against Sheffield United. That was the day before we played Spurs and obviously they didn't play in midweek when we did. Their next fixture is against Palace. I think it's fair to say that they were going to come into this game fresher than we were and they'd be able to expend more energy over the 90 minutes. I'll consider this a point earned.

I'll take a point there. We were very good for the first half hour and the last ten minutes, out done by a lot of running in-between. We missed Kamara, Zaniolo just doesn't look up to it and the right hand side needs looking at as it's weak when we rotate. Positives? Kept ourselves in the game when we could have folded. Decent point considering.

That had been coming. We were not at all phased by conceding first.

Suicidal.

That’s assuming Kane would have turned down Bayern to go to Manchester United. I don’t think that was ever likely to happen.

For most of the 2010s I figured HSV were Aston Villa. I guess they just had their Peter Enkelman moment.

Anyone got the two minute version of what’s happening in the away end? I’m right in the corner of the Doug Ellis and the Holte and can’t see it.

The names of the panel have been leaked: Noel Gallagher. Ricky Hatton. Shaun Goater. Mayor Andy Burnham. Curly Watts from Corrie.

For countries it's based on how many clubs they have competing in the competition. England have 8, so our score is divided by 8. AIUI it's there to provide an "average" for the country which can then be given to a club, like Aston Villa, who haven't played in Europe for a while and therefore haven't built up their own coefficient. Basically it's complicated and boring and we probably don't need to worry about it until March or April.