Staffs Fox

Yeah to have the title and relegation sorted with a month to spare to not a good look for the PL however that shouldn’t take anything away from Liverpool’s title win. They’re on course for 90 points which is a great achievement worthy of winning any league. The main problem is obviously down the bottom. If a team can get established in the PL (Bournemouth, Fulham, Brentford etc) the money they get widens the gap beyond all reasonable competition and since PSR has reared its ugly head it’s just made matters 10x worse. Gone are the days of 6/7 sides realistically in danger of relegation. In the recent past you had sides like Burnley, Norwich, Swansea, West Brom in the Premier League who all operated on shoestring budgets but managed to stay up some seasons so the promoted had a bit of realistic competition. Now look who are 16th and 17th, West Ham and Spurs! One could argue they’re just underperforming but another way of looking at it is that just shows how strong the leagues has gotten but the quality is more spread around. West Ham have Jarrod Bowen, Kudus, Pacqueta, spent £40m+ on Kilman. Spurs spent £60m on Solanke, have a squad where practically every player cost £40m+ and this is meant to be our nearest competition?! Our record signing, wouldnt break the top 5 of either of those clubs and was from 6 years ago! In fact only 3 of our top 10 record signings still play for us and only one is a regular (BEK). He cost £19m! That doesn’t get you a back up goalkeeper these days and this is who the likes of us, Southampton, Sheffield United are meant to go toe to toe with. Don’t get me wrong it’s self sabotage to an extent because we should never have gotten relegated in 2023 with that squad but it doesn’t discount how impossible it is to be competitive in this league

Carragher hit the nail on the head. This isn’t a Ruud or current crop of players who are to blame, this is board level and goes back years. For a club to go from European Football to relegation in 2 years is inexcusable

This isn’t sour grapes or wishful thinking but I genuinely do believe Forest finish 6th this season and do what we did in 2020 and 2021. Newcastle look formidable, Man City will find a way to get enough points. Then I think now Villa are out of Europe they can put their foot down and catch the 3 points up to Forest. That said, the next two games for Villa are huge. Chelsea are Chelsea and **** knows what they’re doing

2 years ago Tamworth were playing Coalville, Barwell and others in the Southern Central Premier Division now they’re 3 points outside the playoffs in the National League for potential promotion to League Two. Regardless of what happens between now and the end of the season that’s a remarkable effort

It’s not actually watching Leicester but about 7 years ago I went to watch Hertha Berlin vs Dortmund in Berlin in January and the game got moved to Friday night and it was by far the coldest I’ve ever been in my life! I couldn’t wait for the game to finish. I think it was around -8

It’s really difficult to say without knowing all the stuff that goes on in the background. I remember when we won the FA Cup, Top was on the pitch with Rodgers and Ian Wright was saying how amazing it is to have such amazing owners and he’s jealous (I think he was referring to Arsenal and Kronke). On the surface he was right. We’d won our second major trophy in 5 years. Built a really good side based on great recruitment and looked a club on the up. However what was happening on the pitch was clearly papering over what was happening off it. Despite regular top half finishes, European campaigns and selling key players at a premium our finances were ****ed. Our clubs commercial deals and revenue was dwarfed by our competitors, even those not from the so called Big 6. Our disastrous 21/22 transfer window where we signed Daka, Soumare, Vestergaard and Bertrand whilst not selling anyone can be pointed at but a club should be allowed to have one poor window without having to fall apart, however due to the rot which had set in behind the scenes we were not allowed this luxury. Alarms bells starting ringing, the following summer when we didn’t sign Lookman and only signed Faes as an emergency after we got an offer for Fofana we couldn’t refuse. I get they probably didn’t think a team consisting of Tielemans, Maddison, Barnes, Vardy, Castagne, Evans, Soyuncu etc should be relegated and we’d just build again the following summer but therein lies the problem, half of those listed were out of contract the following summer and were preparing to down tools and the other half couldn’t carry them. That said, the single biggest mistake was selling Kasper and thinking Ward could take his place. If Kasper was in goal we’d have had at least another 5/6 points and would have stayed up. I’d bet my mortgage on it. Despite these glaring on field mistakes, it’s the off field mismanagement which has lead to us having one of the worst Premier League teams in history. What makes matters worse is it’s been happening since 2018 and it’s the being done by the same people who are in charge now. It’s shameful that the only accountability seems to be the Managers when when people above hide away

I don’t think Javier Zanetti could make it so they got the next best thing😁

Said that exact same thing to a couple of my Villa supporting mates. He’s absolutely brilliant when things are going well but when the going gets tough he goes missing. He was exactly what we didn’t need in that relegation season. It didn’t help that his contract was running out so he knew he was off anyway but his performances were abysmal and he should have been taken out of the team but we kept clinging to the hope he’d recapture some sort of form. I fully expect his form to drop at some point soon as the minutes catch up with him

It’s certainly not inevitable, we’re 2 points from safety with 13 games to play however it is looking very likely. We cannot downplay how massive this Friday’s game is. Brentford are a very good team but currently are bottom half and are much better at home. We absolutely need to get something. If (and it’s a big if) we manage a win, we’ll be out of the relegation zone going into the weekend fixtures. Don’t get me wrong, I look at Wolves team and they have a lot more quality but you just never know. I thought we were doomed in 14/15 and look what happened

Absolutely the same for me. I usually never watch MOTD when we lose but I did this weekend out of morbid curiosity I think. What has happened to this club over the past 3 years has numbed me and I just don’t feel the same as I once did. Why should we as fans care when clearly the Board and most the players do not.

As others have said I just don’t know why we’ve not even tried 3-5-2. It’s well known Coady and Vestergaard are much better in a back three and I think it compliments Justin and Kristianson as well. Personally I’d go with the below, let’s face it it can’t be worse than it is currently! Mads Okoli. Coady. Vestergaard Justin. Kristiansen Soumare. Winks El-Khannouss. Bounanotte Vardy

They’ve not even announced the March TV fixtures yet, so we might be waiting a while!

As much as I’m frustrated and frankly completely done with this season. This mess is not on RVN. He hasn’t helped himself with some team selections and subs but **** me, what a squad he’s inherited! The problem we’re in lies squarely with the Board and Owners. We’ve sold big players for big money, been an established PL team with European football and yet we’re now feeding off scraps Ipswich wouldn’t even touch, scared to spend money refilling coffee machine at the training ground for fear of FFP! It’s a joke what has happened in the past 4 years, yet no one above appears to be being made accountable

Loads by me left very early yesterday and by the time the 2nd went in the vast majority were heading for the exits. Each to their own and all that but my opinion is every now and again it’s ok to leave early (you’ve got somewhere you need to be or we’re 4-0 down with 10 mins to go etc) but if you’re doing it every week regardless , then you really need to plan better. Yesterday me and the Mrs were going to leave about the 88th minute when it went 2-0 so we could try and get the 4.20 train but when Vardy scored that plan went out the window and we ended up getting the 5.20. Some people don’t have that flexibility but like I say maybe they need to come up with alternative arrangements if they need to leave early regardless of scoreline

Sort of yeah. Tamworth v Burton had Extended Highlights in the last round which surprised me a little as I thought that’d be a certain tv pick given there’s only 15 miles or so between the towns. That said, it would mean Tamworth would be picked for rounds 1, 2 and 3 had that happened! They show about 20 mins of the game. The program was about 6pm Sunday for the last round