Rayvin

I don't even know what Villa fans thought they were getting with Gerrard. He's a 'Liverpool of decades past' tribute act based on who he bought for them - no one particularly decent and plenty quite old. That said mind, that's entirely the sort of club Villa set themselves up to be. They're a club of wannabes and for all they might level that at us as well, we at least had a period of relative dominance in the Premier League whereas they have always, always been an makeweight. No club of Villa's stature ever becomes good through buying the way they have - they're a poor man's Man Utd. Sit down and shut up, Gerrard's level is your level, Villa.

Agreed, I think he's going to be an incredible player - I just don't think he'll be here all that long before he heads to Madrid.

It'll be his fleet of Roombas.

I think we need to quite quickly and urgently come up with some genuinely creative solutions around this before winter or people are going to die. Medium to long term we need to invest heavily into renewables and get as close to self sustaining as we can - not sure where that percentage hovers around at the moment but still.

Yeah, no getting surly.

Lost some weight maybe?

I think we've missed our main targets in this respect and we're now looking for a reasonable cover option for a bit of depth. This means our main problem of linking up in the final third doesn't get resolved this window. Honestly I think that's fine. Get the cover in, we're more than good enough to get top ten - hold what we've got and go again in January or next summer. 5-10 years we were told to actually win the thing, we don't need to be in Europe on year 1.

I understand where this thinking is coming from tbh but I also think it's fair to say that the owners and management team at the club have done more scenario planning, strategic thinking, player expectation alignment and general management of the situation and likely outcomes for the season than most of our fans have probably ever done over anything in their entire lives. Do we think they are incompetent, or competent? If it's the latter, then we have to trust that they have weighed what you have just said already, and are operating in the club's best interests across the balance of that situation. If it's the former, then you're right to mention it but honestly we have bigger problems than just who signs...

IMO his game wasn't as bad as people might think - the temptation is to think he was passing to no one a few times because... I mean he was. But 3 separate occasions in there, he carried the ball into the box and passed to midbox where a theoretical onrushing midfielder might be, and no one was there. Now, yes, maybe he should put his head up and check for that. But equally, if someone had made that run all three times I'm pretty sure we would have gotten something from it. Starting to think he relies on where he thinks people should be, more than where they are.

Yep, take that for sure. Clean sheet suggests we're getting things right in that department, just need to fix the disconnect in the final third. Which, tbf, is squarely what the club are focused on.

Too wasteful with some of these passes.

Wood and Longstaff as coached and developed by Howe though, in his systems. We don't have superstar depth yet, fair enough, but that can't be news to you just off the back of this teamsheet man

The bench has options for left back though so Howe hasn't been forced into selecting Burn here, he's chosen it. We should take some comfort from that IMO.

Manquillo on the bench. Not trusted over Burn I suppose.

Cheers for the missing context

If it's not already an incredibly impressive marketing stunt, they should fucking hire whoever is behind toonpolls

WTF. Some account called ToonPolls is behind it and... has somehow persuaded several large international companies to tweet his name?? Why

I will always appreciate that phrase

Fucking hell man The word 'cringe' is currently an internet slang term for 'uncool' or 'lame' and in this case fully captures, across all meanings, Pearson's persona. At this rate it'll not be long before someone 'yeets' him into the sea.

Reading that has literally cheered my whole day up Renton, just seeing you bounce back to some positivity after all that shit. It didn't kill you, so it will make you stronger. Good luck with all of it.

I assume there's an intermediate step where it travels from Lyon to Newcastle, why is that not the one to focus on? Or is that one off the radar?

I think this should be a question on the next leadership debate.

Nice to see YouGov asking the important questions there. That's caused a storm in the twitter comments mind you, people really trying to justify that it has two holes. One person even noting that it's two holes connected together Surely at that point you could also say it's a million holes connected together?

Thank you for clarifying this because I read this tweet and assumed I must have been phrasing it incorrectly my whole life, and had intended to change to this version