manzo

We've been happy to go long on occasion, so it's not all little passes.

No, *you're* bricking it right now...

For staters, the stats come from fivethirtyeight.com, not The Athletic. Secondly, their model gives Leeds a 50% chance of beating us, with us having a 25% chance of winning. With Leeds being projected to finish 4 points ahead of us, I imagine that beating them would improve our odds in their model significantly. As with the hilarious debates about xG and other stats, you don't have to take this model seriously. However, if you were to say to me that you thought we were twice as likely to be relegated as stay up, I'd probably bite your hand off for those odds, given that we felt nailed-on for relegation under our previous messiah.

Are you saying that we're playing aggressively and on the front-foot?

The Guardian reporter certainly thinks it should have been a red, and looking at the photo, I can't disagree! https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2023/feb/18/nottingham-forest-manchester-city-everton-leeds-and-more-clockwatch-live?page=with:block-63f0e9298f0892f0cefe79b1#block-63f0e9298f0892f0cefe79b1

My understanding of it is that a player deliberately making a pass (or heading the ball) starts the next phase of play, whereas a deflection is deemed part of the original phase, as there was no intent to play the ball where it went (they're attempting to block it). To be honest, given that I think the rules should be changed so that goals like Salah's are given as offside, I have no problem with our one being chalked off.

Matt Elliot chose Leicester over us when moving from Oxford United, I remember that being annoying at the time.

Is it alright to have the opinion that both Adams and Armstrong will be bloody disappointed with their shots yesterday? And that Stephens will be livid with his mistake for the first goal, Salisu extremely disappointed to give away a totally needless penalty, and Forster annoyed at not saving the penalty (the least worse mistake out of the lot, to be fair). I have to admit that I've not played football at a professional level. Or amateur much. I did once play a half at The Dell though, if that counts? In the wrong position, mind.

I'm going to bring this up every time someone says this: we found ridiculous ways to not score the chances we created, so you can't just extrapolate from that stat to "We played boring football". Then our confidence completely left us, and that's when we went into our shells and started playing safe and boring football. And, frankly, even his boring football was a load better to watch than what we had to suffer under the next two managers.

I'd recommend going to the Purecraft Bar (https://www.purecraftbars.com/); really good beers (a lot of them, too, so you should be able to find one you like), and the food is really good pub food. It's less than a five minute walk from New Street Station.

I preferred to drink at a decent place in town, get a nice lunch, then get the train over to Villa about 2-ish.

I go to Witton. There are queues, but it's never taken too long to get on a train.

How about Fudge Tunnel's version of it then?

My main memory of Puel was the ridiculous ways we found to *not* score at the start of our run of poor form, which I'm not really sure how you can blame that on him. I wasn't fussed about him going, to be honest, but wouldn't have been upset if he'd stayed. However, how anyone could rank the performances under him were worse than those under his two successors is beyond me.

Sorry, brain is struggling today, I forgot it was percentage of profit. Still not convinced that the sell-on fee translates into a discount for Chelsea though!

I keep seeing this mentioned, are you sure this is correct? I've always considered the two options as completely separate; we have to accept an offer of £50m from Chelsea, but if we accept an offer from anyone else, we have to pay Chelsea 24% of that fee (if your figures are correct, though that seems like a strange sell-on fee percentage).

Ah, so we're going down the "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" route. Cool.

I also asked a simple question, and it seems to have triggered you, so what's your point? Also, when did asking a question count as being triggered? What do you even mean by triggered?

I just find it interesting that someone who purports to just be interested in people being free to say what they want without it being policed (and apologies if I'm mis-characterising your views) seems to be the first to question the motives of anything that might be construed as woke.

Why? Does it offend you?

They signed him from West Brom when he was 11, so he's from somewhere in the West Midlands (he hasn't lost the accent).

Bertrand tested positive for Covid, Vest injured his knee in training.

Not in this case though, surely? He turned down their contract offer, so they sold him before they lost him for a development fee, no?

Pro tip: whenever you hear "woke" or "virtue signalling", replace them with "Don't be a c*nt to other people". If you're still angry after that, you might want to ask yourself some questions...

Have a word with yourself, will you?