Aston Villa are the jammiest club of all? The angry fan response is here…

Aston Villa supporters are sick of being told that one technology error in a game four years ago has ultimately led to their current success.

Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com.

Whisper it
Liverpool should be looking at moving Alisson for over $50m with a view to letting Kelleher fight it out with Mamardashvili next season.  Alisson is elite, but now injury prone while Kelleher can be elite and lets us focus funding on weaker areas.
Niall, Annapolis

Calm Liverpool
For the first time in years I am calm watching Liverpool play. Even my wife has noticed it. Yes Klopp might feel a bit itchy seeing us now but have you noticed the team isn’t running around as much nor getting as many injuries from fatigue?  It’s still early days and yes we are not as exciting but at the end of the day defence wins titles.

Derek, LFC.

Jammy?
Hi,

In response to E W, Sussex and Villa being the ‘jammiest’ club.

There is no single incident that causes a club to go down. Jammy decision or not it was not the deciding factor. How could it be? Who is to say we don’t come back and beat Sheffield Utd 2-1? The goal giving Villa a kick up the arse to give another 5%? You don’t know, I don’t know. What about the subsequent games, like the last one, we knew a draw would make us pretty much safe. Perhaps we go all out to win instead. It is sheer hyperbole to say a single incident completely decides a title or relegation. Football is far too riven with chaos to suggest it does.

Lastly, why you want to piss on Villa’s chips right now is a bit baffling. We are having enormous fun (apart from the eye watering ticket prices for Champions League that I am not paying for. Not out of protest but cannot afford it) so leave us in our fleeting trip in Nirvana.
Funstar (Emery for Primeminister) Andy

Dear E W of Sussex (no mention of a team but geographically, I guess it makes you a Man U fan),

You claim that Villa are the team that has benefitted the most from the utter incompetence of referees and cite the game against Sheffield United ending 0-0 due to someone forgetting to turn on the Hawkeye system.  Is that the referee’s responsibility? I’ve never seen a referee go and click a switch on the goal post before a match kicks off so I’d hazard a guess that this is someone else’s job, so explain to me how that’s us benefitting from referee incompetence?

I’d also like to suggest that we could have gone on to win the rest of the matches remaining in the season and stay up anyway – let’s not gloss over the fact that we beat Arsenal at Villa Park in our penultimate game of that season, who saw that coming??? To say that one result in one match in a season that hadn’t yet finished was the reason we stayed up is quite the shark jump.

You then go on to say that we stayed up at Bournemouth’s expense and Grealish gets sold for £100m instead of the £40m he would have gone for.  Errrrr, no.  We never wanted to sell Grealish in the first place and stuck a £100m release clause in the new contract he signed in the following season in an attempt to ward off any potentially interested clubs, along with the sub condition that any club bidding for him had to be participating in a European competition (which is what Jack wanted).  Cue Man City and their bottomless pot of cash coming over the horizon to tempt him away, ultimately turning him into a shadow of the player we know he can be and leaving him on the bench for most games (for the record, I’d still have him back in a Villa shirt without a second thought).

If you want to talk about Villa benefitting from poor referee decisions, maybe you should watch Bayern Munich defender Upamecano carrying out an assault on Ollie Watkins not once, but twice AND only seeing a yellow card for it despite him being the last man back in our recent CL match against them.

The bottom line is all teams suffer from poor refereeing decisions, we are no different to any other team.  Now give your head a wobble and go about the rest of your day unless you’ve got some proper facts to back up your argument.
Jeff G, West Brom Villan
(As much as Arsenal fans moaning about referees is grating, I’ll admit it’s proper boiling my piss at how many players are still kicking the ball away after the whistle has been blown and NOT getting booked for it.  Either do it for all or do it for none, FFS.)

If there’s one thing that unites the Aston Villa fanbase as much as their collective love for Unai Emery, it’s having to deal with the tedious myth that one technology error in the first half of a game (with a further 9 games remaining) once somehow magically saved them from relegation.

I’d refer anyone who still believes it 4 years later to watch this:

This refereeing decision earlier in the same season cost Villa a draw against Crystal Palace (90+6 minutes when Grealish got his booking so I think it’s fair to state that as fact – it’s not like Palace would have had an entire second half to score another goal or anything)

No matter what anyone thinks about Grealish and his reputation, I think any rational football fan who watches the clip would agree that a goal should have been given, and that the referee made a huge mistake (despite Dermot Gallagher’s best efforts to defend him)

So if we’re keeping score that’s +1 point vs Palace, -1 point vs Sheffield United – no change. Move on people…Villa have anyway.
David Horgan, Dublin

Why do people think villa have been jammy because of 1 bad decision made over 4 years ago. That was also the season of bruno Fernandes’ ridiculous penalty against us as well as Henri Lansburys goal being disallowed for the most ridiculous refereeing decision for some time.

This season we’ve had 2 penalties vs West ham and Fulham given against us which a majority of people disagree with. Ipswich should have been given a 2nd yellow yard against us at 2-1. Even in the champ league Bayern should have been down to 10men and we had a perfectly good goal disallowed against Young boys.

We’re where we are on merit. If anything we should be doing even better since man City. Arsenal and Liverpool won’t have the above 5 decisions go against them.
Daniel

E W, SUSSEX yes we got lucky. But in a previous game we should have had a peno.

It also happened in the first half so the whole game would have changed and could well have gone for it and got the draw anyway.

As the old saying goes…..if only my mother had knickers.
Paul 

I’ve just read E W, Sussex’s comment about Villa being jammy in 2020 due to incompetent referees.

For a start, it was the goal line technology at fault, not the ref. And it clearly wasn’t over the line anyway.
Iain, Worcestershire

Formatting problems
There’s been a lot of backlash over the new UCL format, and honestly, it’s justified. The league stage is practically meaningless because the majority of top teams are cruising into the knockout rounds without even trying. The real flaw with the UCL—both in the old format and the new—is the weird blend of knockout stages and leagues.

What makes competitions like the EPL or La Liga so compelling is that every single game counts. To win, you’ve got to consistently outperform your rivals week in, week out. The magic of the FA Cup or Copa del Rey lies in their pure knockout nature—it’s do or die from the start. The UCL? It fails on both fronts. When 24 of 36 teams make it to the knockouts, there’s no real difference between finishing 9th or 24th. What’s the point?

Ideally, the UCL would be knockout all the way, but let’s be real—that’s not going to happen because it means fewer games (and less money). So why not lean into the league aspect fully? Make it a true Champions League—24 teams, 23 games each, and keep a final for drama. Maybe teams finishing 2nd and 3rd could battle it out for a spot in the final against the 1st place team. That way, every game means something, and we’d finally have a format worthy of Europe’s best.
Oliver, London

UEFA have f***ed it – There was a lot of moaning previously about the old CL format and how it seeded clubs to separate the “big” teams until later in the competition. In the last couple of days we have seen Bayern get tonked by Barca, Real madrid come back from 2 down to win 5-2 and Juve lose at home at Stuttgart. In match day 3.

Stop your bloody whining. The new format is great, and for sure many people are watching. @Ironsman, try telling the Lille fans that the Champions League doesn’t matter. Shut up and eff off.

Another bug bear of mine is when people write in saying “…those same fans…”. An example: “All Man U fans want ETH gone. While those same fans were lovingly munching his googlies after the FA cup win.” No, just, no. I immediately skip any email that says those words. Unless you submit a minimum of three examples, naming the senders and dates then you have no right to come here and tell us “those same fans.” Shut up and eff off.

Finlay x asks “Does this mean the game is getting better, or did all those mails a number of years ago put people off having kids?” – Really, mate? One person out of 8 billion humans sent an email and it’s prompted you to question worldwide appetites for having families? Or maybe the “game is getting better”? Yes, definitely it is one of those. Your personal observation on a perceived trend in the Mailbox couldn’t possibly be rationalized any other way. Shut up and eff off.
Hesh, LFC, [my mum just had a cancer diagnosis which is messing with my head a bit, so shut up and eff off]

Is anyone watching the new Champions League? Yes I am and I saw a great game watching Villa play Bologna.

Madrid- Dortmund wasn’t bad either. If you seriously believe Madrid is the only team that can win I wish you a nice winter until the final in May.
Tony

The Swiss model
For the third time, here is an estimate of what the fourth round of fixtures would look like, if the Champions League was actually using a real “Swiss Model” to pair similar-level teams each round:

Monaco vs Aston Villa
Brest vs Liverpool
Leverkusen vs Manchester City
Sporting Lisbon vs Inter Milan
Barcelona vs Arsenal
Benfica vs Dortmund
Juventus vs Real Madrid
Feyenoord vs Lille
Stuttgart vs Atalanta
Celtic vs PSG
Dinamo Zagreb vs Sparta Prague
Girona vs Bayern Munich
Brugge vs Milan
PSV vs Atlético Madrid
Bologna vs Shakhtar
Redstar Belgrade vs Salzburg
Bratislava vs Young Boys

(I’m doing this as much out of my own interest, as I am for the purpose of writing in to the Mailbox).

This is assuming that clubs from the same country cannot face each other in the group stages, otherwise we would be getting Liverpool vs Aston Villa next, etc.

The above paints a picture of the advantages a real “Swiss Model” would offer, but the contrast is not nearly as stark as it would be if so many of the ‘top’ sides were not stumbling through the group stage due to no real risk of finishing 25th through 32nd, and no real difference between finishing 9th and 24th.
Oliver Dziggel, Geneva Switzerland

READ NEXT: How does the new Champions League ‘Swiss model’ format for 24/25 work?

Haaland volley was actually nothing special
Agree with AD on Robert, maybe my favourite non-Arsenal player of the 00s, everything he did on MOTD when I was younger looked so cool.

On the Haaland volley, I’d go even further, it’s nothing special at all. It’s not technique, he’s just getting anything he can on it. Fair, it is cooler because he tries it and going in is what matters, but there are so many volleys that are more impressive, ingenious or display better technique. People calling it a wondergoal need to spend more time on Youtube watching volley compilations to readjust their expectations.
Tom, Leyton

Bill and Bob
Dear Ed

A while back I wrote in saying after Shankly must come Paisley.

Shankly was a hero of the people, he gave us identity, he brought us all together and laid the foundations. He was probably a hugger.

Paisley was stern, a tactical mind who sorted out the kinks and took us to the next level, in the process bringing silverware aplenty. He was probably not a hugger.

Klopp was Shankly. By the looks of it, Slot is Paisley.

Best,
Wik, Pretoria, (season still long but we look great, even the kit is finding its place in my heart), LFC

Joe Gomez’s debut album
Hi there,

Anyone else ever think that Joe Gomez looks like he should be releasing a seminal, instant classic, soul album?

The uninitiated might call it ‘retro soul’, but this is no pastiche.

Think Curtis Mayfield meets Shuggie Otis, with the Brooklyn Soul Revival production nous of Gabriel Roth and Daptone Records.

A meisterwerk.

A ‘one-and-done’, no need for a follow up.

A pure mic drop with a fat full stop.

Nothing more to say.

I took the liberty of making a cover for this LP.

Maybe you will enjoy!

Cheers,
Brian