An actual clean sheet today. The performances aren't there yet and am still hoping Pepe comes good but we are chugging along.
An actual clean sheet today. The performances aren't there yet and am still hoping Pepe comes good but we are chugging along.
Everton, Man United and Man City
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Oh and of course Spurs
Newastle are pretty poor but there is something in the pace they have on the counter that could worry teams. The laughable thing is United created next to nothing. I quite like Almiron, think confidence is hurt but there's a player in there.
Frank doing well with Chelsea. I don't think they'll win the league but honest to god getting an identity and seeing the labour of the academy is what that club needs. Think it'll be transformative for them.
I am getting a bit worried about Liverpool. With every Man City title win you can shrug that off with the oil money built off the back of slave labour.
Liverpool look like a) they could be champions and b) could go unbeaten which would be unbearable.
We'll beat 'em.
Liverpool will drop points soon. They are overperforming in both goals scored and goals conceded. A true reflection of where they should be points wise is about 17. Both Southampton and Chelsea should've taken something from them.
As mentioned, we will beat them.
If United cant get up for that game then Ole should genuinely go. They look devoid of ideas or a plan. Clearly midfield is just not working so will he change it. Will he push Pogba up as a 10 for example and look to the ball to him quicker
If United get smashed I can see him being sacked. They badly need at least a good performance in this game.
See you on the 2nd of next month.Originally Posted by The Rosk
ROONEY ROONEY ROONEY!
Remember when the Bulgarian manager laughed at the notion of a racism problem in the country.
Good of the travelling England fans to take a break from singing 'I'd rather be a Paki' to dig out Bulgarians for being racist. #Solidarity
I have never sang that, You are a weird man.
He said travelling fans..
I know, But he seems to be implying that all travelling fans are massive racists
I'm saying that England fans have a long track record of being hostile to the people in nations they travel to, and the form this takes is often implicitly or explicitly racist.
I guarantee there were people in that crowd singing 'You racist bastards, you know what you are' who are then using pejorative language about Eastern Europeans.
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As an aside, I think Greg Clarke is a PR disaster for the FA. Pretty mealy mouthed stuff.
Well yeh probably right on that, I mean I saw a vid of Forest fans trying to burn a England flag because it was from Derby fans, A lot of them are fucking morons for sure.
Do you travel with England? I didn't know you did that's why I was surprised you took it so personally and were talking about you never singing the songI know, But he seems to be implying that all travelling fans are massive racists
So proud of Tyrone Mings. We are very lucky to have him.
Poor bastard. Makes his England debut, wins 6-0 and stakes his claim well and these dickheads dominate things.
I genuinely don't think Mings is that good. I'm not sure he's much better than Michael Keane tbh. Will happily be proven wrong but Joe Gomez looks to be Englands best centre back and genuinely is the only one who right now is close to Jonny Evans.
It's a shame that Gomez has lost his club place.
I too felt really sorry for Tyrone Mings last night. Should have been the highlight of his career so far.
Agreed. We should be playing Gomez and Stones as often as possible.
Sadly this is a problem in Eastern Europe particularly. Balakov is a particular wanker by trying to deny it happened. What did he think the stoppages were for?Remember when the Bulgarian manager laughed at the notion of a racism problem in the country.
And the announcements? Is he deaf as well?
What leads you to this opinion?
Yeah, all the travelling England fans. Every one of them.
Don't emulate Peter Griffin, nobody wants to see that.
If I said 'the Bulgarian fans last night were a disgrace', would you be here going 'YEAH, EVERY BULGARIAN FAN'? No, so use your brain.
Don't think he's good enough with the ball mainly and seems liable to losing concentration and making a fuck up.
Gomez looks very accomplished in those areas to me.
I'm not saying Mings is shit I just don't think he's better than a good premier league defender
Go on mate, tell us how much you hate James Mclean spending money with the queen's face on.
What are you on about?
Give us your 'all northerners have bad teeth' routine.
You've lost the plot.
Are you honestly that dim that you need me to specify that not all England fans would sing racist songs? The point I was making was perfectly clear - you and Peter Griffin so far have somehow managed to take offence to it; lofty company indeed.
I'd broadly agree with sof, for England's purposes the likes of Mings, Keane, Dunk, Lascelles, Coady, Tarkowski etc all fall into the same bracket ie. decent players, fine for qualifiers, but if any of them are needed in a World Cup knockout game against a good team we are fucked. Gomez is the only top class centre back England have - Maguire is just decent, Stones has all the tools but is still making the same stupid mistakes. And Gomez is injured half the time anyway. So we're really relying on one of the younger ones (Tomori, Tuanzebe, Holding) to develop well, and none of them to me look like they're going to be the next Ferdinand or Terry.
Yeah, England have their share of racist dickhead fans, as do fans of some English clubs (Chelsea, Millwall etc), but that doesn't mean that you can't condemn Bulgaria fans doing Nazi salutes ffs!
Don't take from the Daily Mail comments section and then take this stance, it doesn't work.
Honestly I find those points a little odd. His passing is really quite strong. He's got the most completed passes of any Villa player this year, including the likes of Grealish and McGinn who ave played every game. He has the most blocks this season of any Premier League player, the most clearances of any Premier League player.
There's an obvious bias here but, from my perspective as a Villa fan, he's been pretty much untouchable: he was the first person in years to make an Aston Villa defence worth anything by getting us promoted from midtable in four months, then has had a strong start to the season in the Premier League, and now looks extremely comfortable in the England backline. It seems the only thing going against him here is his lack of long-term proven success at the top league. Keep going as he is, and we'll be staring at a big bid from some cunts in 1-2 years.
Just to clarify again, Michael Keane is shite.
Mings has made a case to at least be in the squad next summer.
Maguire
Gomez
Stones
Mings
Keane should be nowhere near the England team.
Actually, yes it does. If you are the sort of person who sings about pakis, or screams 'black cunt' at Raheem Sterling, or lobs banana peels at black players, it actually does preclude you from acting like you have the moral high ground and are some kind of liberating force.
I've no idea what Alex is talking about, it's like he's talking another language.
Dont worry lads, Rob Holding will save the day.
There is no racism on football. There is only racism in society.
Deep that.
Tell that to Sol Campbell.
Fuck Sol Campbell.
Back to Premier League football anyway.
Villa vs Brighton on Saturday. After demolishing Norwich last week I am obviously hoping we can carry on our form, but Brighton did just smash the shit out of Spurs. The crowd will hopefully keep up their mentalness again. I'd forgotten how ludicrous it is in the bottom half of the table, where a couple of losses make you properly shit yourselves. A win this weekend would hopefully give us a bit of confidennce and breathing space ahead of Man City (A) Liverpool (H) Wolves (A).
How bloody good is John McGinn. The new Dele Alli.
He’s fucking great. Never known anyone to have the engine he does.
I said it last week - I honestly felt Villa were going to batter someone soon as we could feasibly have won every game we’ve played this season, but with so many recruits it was always going to take some time. By no means am I saying we’re ansolutely fine now. However, the team seems relatively settled at the moment now that Targett is in at left back (considerably better than Taylor going forward), Marvelous has come in and been a real Kante-esque rock and Grealish is being played further up. El Ghazi and Hourihane are the ones who could jump out of the side any minute with Luiz and Trezeguet waiting in the wings as quality players, but they’ve stepped up well this past few games.
You are getting confused with a few dickhead England fans and everyone else who is condemning it.
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Next Everton manager.
Bulgarian FA chief has resigned. Good.
Fantastic glad thats the racism sorted then
I was a bit surprised at everyone patting England on the back for their fantastic response yesterday...isn't "staying on the pitch and doing exactly as FIFA suggest" basically a non-response? Not that I'm against them deciding to carry on, but I don't really see how what they did was especially laudable, it was just a choice they made - and a fairly easy one at that. Right or wrong, refusing to continue would have been a much braver move that would have been deserving of praise if they felt it was the right thing to do.
IMO the biggest disgrace last night was Bulgaria's coach. As terrible as the behaviour of the fans was, there's only so much you can do to stop a gang of people deciding en masse to chant racist songs etc, and to be fair the main group were turfed out relatively quickly...the Bulgaria coach refusing to even acknowledge the issue let alone condemn it was far more damning in terms of the Bulgarian authorities' atittude. He should be sacked on the spot by whoever is in charge of stopping racism in their country.
He should be sacked for being hammered 0-6 on their own turf too, to be fair.
Totally agree. If the coach is going to wilfully turn a blind eye to it, they've no chance of combatting it in the stands. What a piece of shit.
Couldn't be any worse than the last couple of jokers.
Actually I would still play him ahead of Keane.
They have got no chance anyway.
Stopping a racist football fan from attending a football game doesn't stop a racist being a racist. It just stops him being racist in a football ground.
People looking at eradicating it in football are looking in the wrong place.
I agree, and believe me I am all for addressing the core, societal issues at the root of the problem. I'm definitely not saying football is the only, or even the foremost, place to take action - however, football is an incredibly popular and visible activity.
But a) That doesn't mean we shouldn't seek to stamp it out in every public area possible, and b) Extremists need a platform in order to reach their intended audience. Make it less and less visible, the less people get the opportunity to see it and become interested.
It obviously will not change the mind of someone who gets banned (in fact I suspect in many cases it may entrench it), but ultimately the message being sent is that the behaviour will not be tolerated and they will be shunned and ultimately cut off from public life.
True, but it's going to take a very long time to get anywhere with racism in society, and in the short-term you still need to protect the people who are getting abuse.
Its a tough one. Obviously it needs eradicating from the game, it can be done as it was happening week in week out here 30 years ago (not that it will ever be totally got rid of but its better to have a few idiots rather than it being an accepted norm of the game).
Football can certainly set examples by standing up against it, players speaking out against it etc, both teams coming off the pitch if it happens. A ban will do nothing though but punish the wrong people (ie the players, the every day fan who is not a racist tosser etc.)
Thinking about it, they should have come off the pitch. It would have made a much bigger statement. Harry Kane should have just picked up the ball and walked off.
I don't understand this line of thinking. They should have done whatever the players wanted to do, particularly the players who were being abused. If they decided they wanted to play on and not give them the satisfaction of walking off then that is the right thing to do. Similar if they wanted to walk off they should be supported. All this talk that the FA or Southgate should have taken them off is nonsense.
I'm not sure how it's a bigger statement at all. They stayed on showed the insults had no effect on their game and battered Bulgaria on their home soil. Feels like a pretty big statement to me.
Honestly some of the comments on this and the sort of thing TalkSport were going on about feels like people are more concerned that the 'English Football Team' suffered abuse rather than the players who were actually targetted. Let's listen to them and what they want to do rather than.
I start to have an unhealthy admiration toward a Villa player and you guys pop up with a conversation saying he's not actually that much cop.
Maybe Mings isn't actually that good when compared to other English defenders. I'd question that, especially given the general standard of performance of our defensive players so far this season, but perhaps things will equalise towards the end of the season.
Regardless, if fit, I think he's almost certainly played himself into starting line up for the next couple of qualifiers. Under the circumstances, it was one of the most impressive England debuts I can recall. Yes, the opposition was woeful, but you can only play what's up against you, and the composure he showed on and off the ball contrasted brilliantly with what we saw on Friday. To play as well as he did on his England debut would be impressive enough, to play that well with all that shit going on around him, I think, indicates a strength of mindset not generally found in abundance in our Centre Backs.
Every time he's stepped up the football ladder, he's got better. I suspect, if he ever leaves Villa for a club higher in the league, we'd see another bump in his development.
So the white captain should have gone against the wishes of his black teammates?
They discussed it beforehand, he is the captain. So what if they go and thrash the, 6-0. What does it change?
You didn't answer the question.
Should the white captain ignore the wishes of his black and mixed race teammates, all of whom wanted to stay on the pitch, when they're the ones subject to the racist abuse?
They couldn't help themselves JP. They needed to be shown how to help.
Some Sky journalist reported that the reason step 2 (leaving field for 10 minutes) wasn't implemented was because it was so close to half time, so they made the decision to stay out.
I did answer it, I said it was discussed beforehand.
Bulgaria, along with the rest of Eastern Europe, is just a backward place. This isn't news. All racism and overly distressed denim. A few fines and half full stadiums won't change this. UEFA will never take drastic enough action to make these idiots stop, so it will continue. But let's face it, the racism does create a hell of an atmosphere.
The most important thing is the 3 points. Not a few heckles from the crowd.
Racism adds to the atmosphere riiiiiiight.
I said creates.
I think both sets of fans embarrassed themselves with their racism, but we know this is what Eastern European fans and travelling English fans do. I'm not sure why this is really news.
You make it sound like a positive, which is definitely isn't.
Oh right - you misunderstood, and took hell-like atmosphere as a positive. No worries.
Have a great day.
Misunderstood. Ok m8.
The most important thing is Clubs tonight.
Yes...the atmosphere of hell. In my religion, we say Jahannam but I believe they are both considered bad places.
Like I could say Romford is a hell hole or a hell of a place. That's not spinning it in a positive vibe, and it's been shit since Time & Envy changed name.
You made a mistake. Let's move on. Where was we? You suggested Harry Kane give away a free kick and run off with the ball, I believe. Please continue.
Clubs.
Nothing to continue with. You said it was a hell of an atmosphere which was a positive comment. You're welcome
So when you say it was discussed before do you mean Tammy Abraham saying he would walk off and Trent Alexander Arnold basically saying if 1 wants to go we all go?
Or are you insinuating that Harry Kane pulled rank and forced them to stay out there? You say thrashing them 6-0 does nothing and changes nothing do you honestly think having the game abandoned fixes racism in Bulgaria?
Obviously it doesn't fix racism but I think the moment a team leaves the pitch and refuses to come back on, it forces the governing body to take it more seriously. As long as people adhere to protocol UEFA can claim to be doing something while doing nothing.
If England had walked off, suddenly UEFA have a decision to make - punish England for going against the protocol and refusing to play? That would destroy their reputation as far as combating racism goes, I don't think they would dare because there would be such a huge outcry, and it would make a mockery of their claims to be proactively combating racism. But at the same time they will need to show a reaction of some sort to prevent it happening again and causing disruption to their tournaments. Logically to me that would mean coming down harder on the countries that are racist. It would force the hand of the national FAs involved to do more, or risk being thrown out of competition.
They can ban Bulgaria now if they want to though. They've also abandoned other games over fan trouble before (more violence than racism) and I don't think it's really stopped anything.
They haven't been able to do much at Club level yet either look at what's happening to Lazio. They claim they are doing what they can and will take action against people who have done it but claim it's nearly impossible to stop them from doing it in first place. Now is that true? They could be doing more but maybe UEFA need to introduce formal expectations of what clubs and countries have to do. Whether it's registering seats to ids or something else I dunno or policing levels and if so who pays for it? Then you can at least say to Bulgaria you've not done everything that's expected of you as a match host. Here's a points deduction.
What's the tipping point as well? Do we just walk off for racist abuse? What about if it's homophobic? What if it's throwing objects?
Nice to see @Grimario come round mine to play a few of the first games in the Pro Clubs session last night. Couldn’t believe he found the time to get round and see @Winkle van Tinkle for the second half of the session, what a guy.
Countries are not racist though, it's people from those countries being racist. What can a national FA actually do to stop people doing it other than banning anyone caught doing it and trying to re-educate at all levels of the game.
A ban would maybe effect the racist fans but it would also punish the non racist fans and the players who have done nothing wrong. Fining a national FA won't stop people being racist.
Happy Darren Bent day.
So instead we should punish the players by subjecting them to racist abuse and making them listen to it?
The ban on English teams in Europe following Heysel impacted every football fan in the country regardless of guilt or innocence. Maybe that was a little heavy handed, but it also worked.
Tell me about it
My lag is so bad that I am only just seeing this now.
Did it?
You don't have to remind me about Heysel... an instance where we got punished for absolutely nothing.
Things changed because they started to treat football fans like human beings instead of cattle and by the time we were allowed back in to Europe the game and indeed society had changed. Even then there are still instances of trouble it just happens away from the ground more. It did not stop trouble makers going to football games, they just caused their trouble elsewhere.
See this right here is the problem. Everything is so black and white (ironically enough...).
Bulgaria have got some black players too, so let them hear the abuse AND ban them from playing football in one go. Either way you are going to be punishing innocent people and it doesn't have to be one thing or the other.
The Bulgaria FA (or any sports team/organization) is not totally responsible for the actions of its fans (though they have not covered themselves in glory to be fair either), there is a much wider issue there.
Something needs to be done of course it does but banning a team from playing does nothing at all to fix the problem of racism. Its a societal problem not a sporting one. Playing behind closed doors would negate the issue in terms of hiding the issue from the public view but it still does not fix people being racist and thinking it is OK to be so.
There is no easy fix or answer, these things take time and massive reforms in society as a whole. Stopping Boris from Plovdiv going to watch his team wont stop him having racist tendencies. Surely that is the issue that needs to be fixed rather than hiding racism from the game of football and pretending it doesn't exist.
Football can be pretty powerful in terms of society but it cant fix everything.
It's not about pretending racism doesn't exist, it's about protecting the players from having to experience it so viscerally. Mings and Sterling aren't stupid, they know that racism exists whether they are targeted or not, but I'm sure that doesn't make it any easier to deal with monkey noises being aimed at them.
There needs to be long-term, systemic work done to eradicate racism, but at the same time there should be short-term measures in place to reduce the harm it can cause when it comes up. It needs to be both, because the long-term approach doesn't help the players in the short term.
How do you know it won't? It hasn't been tried before, so what indicates it would be an entirely wasted effort, as you think would?
Perhaps not, but (and I'm including banning nations from tournaments in this) it would prevent others having to witness his ignorance and, much more importantly, prevent BAME players from being subject to that kind of abuse.
Nobody is claiming that throwing nations out of competitions will act as a fix all cure, but it would show that UEFA may finally be stepping up to try and combat the problem properly. It would be a move away from what amount to near token level fines and shutting sections of the stadium, to a defined, impactful punishment process which may actually act as a deterrent.
Football isn't some kind of magical entity though that exists on its own.
I have suffered racism myself before in school on a football field funnily enough. It was only one lad but him and all of his mates on his side where put on detention. It didn't stop the racism (he is still a prick to this day but in a less obvious way) but it sure as hell caused more resentment.
Banning a nation or club is not combating the problem though. It is throwing a blanket over the problem and taking out people who are not responsible. Of course the fines are ludicrous but even if the fines were massive, what difference does that make to the people in the crowd who are racist? Nothing. All it does is take money away from an FA who could maybe use that money to get some schemes in place to combat the issue (they wont of course...)
England had a big race problem at grounds well into the early 90s, it was not fixed by banning clubs, it got there over time (though will never fully go of course) as society changed here. There is still a decent way to go in many parts of the world.
National FAs can not force supporters to not be racist. It would be great if they could but it's pointing at the wrong targets. In an ideal world UEFA works alongside the Bulgarian FA and Kick it Out etc in this instance and creates a united stance, saying its unacceptable and try to work on the people who are culpable either by banning the offenders totally or educating them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50082517
Amazon move Leic/Liverpool to 8pm on boxing day
Why’s that funny?
Well its not funny in a ha ha way but in the daftness of it. From what I read, As its boxing day away fans are going to have major problems with transport.
I'm really tempted to go through this thread every now and then and look at some horrendous calls that we made over the years. First 20 pages have a few good uns:
David Bentley England’s right wing back.
Glad you were so excited about Ashley.Freddy Shepherd has agreed to sell his shares to Mike Ashley. Yessssssssssssssssssssss.Means he now has 70% of the club - the other 30% seems pretty inevitable from here.
Out future is actually looking good for once, after all the shit of recent years.Viduka and Barton supposedly done, and hopefully Ben Heim will follow. And all 3 are covered by Parker leavings transfer fee (cept wages of course). Apparantly Ashleys giving Allardyce a £40m budget this summer. Its gonne be fun.
Went on to play for a further 12 years for Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.
That was some bold management from TraXX. Maybe we should all pick a random block of five pages and find the most outlandish bollocks possible in that block. I seem to remember infuriating KMH by saying there were some situations where picking Park over Ronaldo would be a good shout. Absolute nonsense really.
Hey, 3-5-2 worked for us last year...
I forgot that the switch to WvT was originally accompanied by this mental Dutch gimmick. Fantastic.
Wosky, has Barry Bannan won his Ballon D'or yet?
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