Ginko

To the day? That's a bit spooky. Also I just cried watching that

I finally have better internet now @lapal_fan, no more dial up for me. Like to see you run me over now.

I often get dragged into Wikipedia black holes, too. Can’t resist a good hyperlink to help me better understand the original article, but twenty minutes later and you’re so far removed from what you initially started to read. I love it. Remember before when all we had was Encarta? Even that was mindblowing to my child brain at the time.

Feel better @Xela

We got a Switch on Black Friday and the girlfriend and I have been having a blast on Mario Kart too. Apart from that I only have Zelda: BotW which I already played after borrowing my mate’s Wii U when it first came out, but it’s still great fun to play. As for Warframe, I take it it’s the same one that’s been on PS4 for a while, right? Haven’t played it much but it was fun. Not the easiest of games to get into though, I found. It wasn’t very clear what I had to do. I had to watch a number of the YouTube videos they had just to figure out how to get going.

Running out of Likes due to this thread I’ve always been quite the farter, and I’ve always found it hilarious. My thinking is thus: The human body is such a complex system made up of a plethora () of organs working together in harmony. If we didn’t release build ups of gas, we would die. It’s a serious and necessary bodily function, but all those hilarious sounds you can make... Nature has quite the sense of humour.

Anyone get the Skysports highlights to work? I couldn’t watch the game and now the damn highlights won’t load for me!

Looks like an Oni (demon) mask from Japan.

Last few posts remind me of that time someone asked for a photo of Villa Park and everyone photoshopped it in different ways Surely that thread must be in the Halll of Fame?

At the risk of sounding like I'm rehashing an old VT in-joke... it's good, but I think it would have been even better without the caption at the bottom. Let people figure it out.

Does TCS really make that much of a difference? I’ve only played around with it set very low once or twice and I found it very difficult to control. I’ll practice more with it.

It really does! It’s a tight track and I tried being as clean as I could. The third place guy bashed me as he overtook me on the first lap. Aside from that I had a bit of a coming together with the lead car as I overtook him on the inside which was admittedly a bit tight, but oh well.

Won my first online race tonight. I’ve only done nine of them in total, but I’ve barely qualified halfway up the pack and the highest I’d finished before tonight was about 6th, I never got anywhere near the leaders. Just decided to give it a go tonight as I bought a new controller and my R2 works properly now. Did the TT race around Tokyo Expressway and qualified 2nd much to my delight. Managed to get in the lead at the start of the second lap and lead comfortably for the rest of the race. Uploaded a video for anyone who might be interested, though it wasn’t the most exciting of races and I definitely made mistakes. I sometimes get distracted by other players, thinking they know better than I do and lose my racing line, instead adopting a similar one to the cars in front, meaning I make the same silly mistakes they do. Managed to snap out of it on this one though. Silly how nervous I was to hold on to the win!

You’re probably right. What player wouldn’t play in the Prem with a famous club like Manure, but that interview was by manutd.com and the question they asked him referred to coming back so he was hardly going to say, ‘Actually I’m going to stay here at Villa.’ was he? Given the chance he’d stay, but I’m not sure he’ll be good enough for them.

His career in management so far: - Spurs manager, finished 6th, sacked after six months. - Villa manager, left us in 19th position in the Prem, sacked after 9 months (still way too long). - Swindon Town Director of Football, they got relegated to League Two, sacked after 8 months. You’re entitled to your opinion, of course, but I’m not sure what it’s based on. He’s the ultimate charlatan in football. Looks the part with his designer stubble and the ‘Sherwood gilet’ and his cheeky confidence was infectious to the point he sounded like he knew what he was talking about. He doesn’t have a clue.

Perhaps, but since all the talk from Purslow has been about changing the philosophy and infrastructure of the club and changing the way we play to be attacking and entertaining football, you’d think they’d realise this doesn’t happen overnight. I imagine they also take into account that we can’t afford to keep chopping and changing managers and paying out huge sums to get the old one out and the new one in. I think Smith is the perfect candidate for the board right now and they will give him time. I also think the fact he’s relatively young, comes off the back of a very impressive stint at Brentford and that he has the Villa connection will give him a bit of extra leeway, not just with the owners but with the fans too. Yes, football is a results business, but surely anyone with a lick of sense can see that our frantic attempts at short term gain by changing the manager so frequently just isn’t working. The infrastructure needs to change and I think we finally have owners that realise that and (hopefully) have the sense to understand this will take more than a few weeks to implement.

I like him and I particularly liked how he played down the fact he was a fan as a kid. Yes it’s a nice story with a tinge of romance but what we need right now is a professional who has a plan and can get to work, and that’s exactly the impression I got from him in the press conference and the interview on the OS. We’ve needed this sort of appointment for the longest time now and what particularly fills me with hope is that it goes further than a change of manager. We have a plan in place and a brand of football we’re aiming for. I hope Smith works out and I think he will, but it’s comforting to know that even if he were to go we have identified a system we want to adopt which makes the process of filling that role that much more focused. This also means the necessary changes can occur but the core philosophy remains the same and trickles all the way down from the first team through to the schoolboys. Much better than the aimless appointments of god knows how long now. It may take some time but I think Smith was absolutely the correct choice and I think he’ll be good for us.

Well he announced his retirement from playing a day or two ago and we made the announcement he’s on our coaching staff so I wouldn’t hold your breath, unfortunately.

I’m happy with this appointment and the news that we appear to be restructuring the club in a more modern way is very welcome since we’ve been crying out for it for years now. However, if we ever needed a bit of patience and to get behind the new management and coaching setup, this is that time. As much as we’d all love an instantaneous effect on the pitch, implementing Smith’s methods and the infrastructure above is going to take time. I don’t believe we’ll be going up this year, but I do believe we’ll see improvement towards the latter half of the season which will give us hope for next season. I think we all need to remember that this is a necessary change. We were never going to go up and stay up with Bruce. We should have restructured the club as soon as Xia bought us, hell, as soon as we got relegated really. Finally it seems the new owners have the right idea. I’d love us to immediately start dominating other teams and go for promotion, don’t get me wrong, but if it doesn’t go that way we all need to realise the bigger picture. As long as Smith doesn’t make daft, inexplicable decisions like previous managers and we appear to be moving in the right direction, I’ll be happy. I can’t pretend that I was bowled over when I read the news last night, though I had been travelling for near 24 hours back home from Tokyo so maybe put some of that down to exhaustion. However, given some time to think, this just feels right, and I haven’t had that feeling for a very long time. Fingers crossed and good luck to the new setup. Let’s get right behind them. UTV.

John Thierry?

Surely you’d think the new owners would see this as an opportunity to change the philosophy of the club and emulate Wolves last season (god I hate saying that) by going for a young coach rather than appointing an ‘old boy’ with experience. Plenty of time for that if the next appointment were to fail and we were at risk of relegation. Now is the time for a complete overhaul in the club’s infrastructure and to get everything in place to mount a challenge next season, realistically, though if we were to respond to the new approach well theres nothing to say this season is a write-off just yet.

On holiday in Tokyo right now. It’s 2am and I don’t know if it made the news back home, but we were rudely awoken by a severe earthquake alert at midnight which terrified the crap out of everyone, though we didn’t feel any tremors. My lady and I searched online for news and contacted the hotel reception. Apparently it was reported as being a lot higher on the scale than it really was and it was off the coast a little away from the city. All seems to be well. The one bonus of this whole ordeal (aside from there not being anything to worry about ‘quake-wise, of course) is that I’m awake to learn of Bruce’s departure. I’m not entirely sure the earthquake and the termination of his contract are related. Thanks for trying Steve. He sounds like a nice bloke and I wish him well, but he was never my choice and I never saw us going up and staying up under his management. Now’s the perfect time to change the club’s approach completely. If we can appoint a forward-thinking man higher up and get a younger more tactically astute coach in to get us playing good football, we’ll be on our way.

I think you’re confusing ‘young and good looking’ with a new generation of managers who are naturally going to be younger, a number of them being very driven ex-professionals. Being ex-players of the generation where peak physical fitness really came to the fore, many will naturally abide by the lifestyle of modern footballers by eating well and exercisng regularly, realising that a healthy body and healthy mind go hand-in-hand. They will also have grown up in the era where the modern game was conceived and therefore will be far more tactically astute, head coaches rather than managers. Look at the successful teams and you’ll see the common denominator in many of these is this philosophy. Naturally you’re still have a number of older managers who paved the way for the modern game, but they are few and far between and chances are we could not attract or even afford a big name with that kind of experience. As for your defence of Bruce, that’s your own opinion, but I can’t understand how anyone can see the dire football we’ve played under him since the beginning and realise that’s acceptable for a club of our resources in the league that we’re in. A number of ex-Championship clubs now promoted to the Premier League have shown the way forward, and whereas it’s certainly not impossible to get promoted under Bruce, it’s not a sustainable brand of football if we want to go up and stay up.

Is that a Brummie thing? My uni mates took the piss out of me incessantly for my overpronounced ‘ings’. I’m from Lichfield and don’t have a Brummie accent but most of my family do so I guess it’s the one thing I must have picked up. Thanks! Been wondering about that for years. Thought it was just me.

You’ll always be a D in my eyes, Stef ? Did my first couple of online races yesterday afternoon. In my first one I came 5th starting from right at the back in 15th, then my second one I started 9th and wound up 7th, though I was 4th until I went off on a corner halfway through and then 1-6th were so far ahead they were impossible to catch. Nice to know those instructional videos really work. Had some German guy try to ram me off the road on the second corner of my first race.