Supporting Aston Villa declared ‘f***ing amazing’ as Arsenal tipped for 25/26 title

Aston Villa are the best team to support right now, while Arsenal fans insist that they have their feet on the ground.

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Up the Villa
Aston Villa Football Club.

That is all.
Paul

…I’ve seen too much Aston Villa in my life to know this is not the default. I know it’s going to crumble and wither at some point. Eventually we’ll be back to aiming for 12th and hoping to keep some of our best players every window. Gravity always wins.

But Christ on a bike. Supporting Villa at the moment is f***ing amazing. I can understand why Big Club fans are all so unhinged if they just live on a diet of this all the time.
Neil Raines

READ: Aston Villa expose Newcastle mistakes as Rogers personifies rapid rise for Emery’s CL table-toppers

Champions League not dull at all
At what point do the missives about how this new CL format will only produce duds start looking daft?

I feel like us supporters/optimists on the new format had to sledge uphill to make points that a) everyone (especially players) absolutely love European football and never phone it in, b) big clubs snooze at their peril and two extra games with weighting/seeding could see a couple of big names binned off early and c) chaos is underrated.

Thank you Dortmund, Villa, PSV, Monaco etc for making our job easier.
Tom (still too many games for players, 100% on board with that as the key drag/issue) Leyton

(To be fair, that Real Madrid game was okay – Ed)

Arsenal no match for Klopp’s Liverpool
“Over the last few months there has been a narrative that suggests what Arsenal have achieved over the last couple of years is similar to that which Liverpool did a few years earlier.”

Why do people just create their own narratives and get offended by them? Literally nobody thinks this. The only similarities are is that Arsenal are the second best team in the league. Arsenal fans and everyone else is aware Liverpool were better under Klopp. People have put Klopp beside Wenger in terms of best ever PL managers. They’ve put Salah, VVD, Trent and Allison in debates amongst the greats.

People are not doing that with Arsenal players. We haven’t won anything yet. The aim is to overachieve like Liverpool did but I very much doubt we will achieve what they did.
Dion

…My namesake wrote in suggesting there’s a narrative that we have achieved similarly to over the last few years as Liverpool did under Klopp.

From who? Where? The click-bait articles from certain journalists? Some rage-bait on Twitter?

Come on man. No sane Arsenal fan, or football fan, thinks we have achieved anything remotely comparable to Klopp’s success at Liverpool. They won a Premier League and a Champions League, we have won nada. Conversation over. Is it impressive that Arsenal have pushed City close 2 seasons in a row? Yes, very and we should get plaudits for that. Is it hard to keep going and keep pushing without reward? Yes, this should also be commended, as was Liverpool at the time. Is it in any way comparable to Klopps success, emphasis on the success? The f*** it is.

I hate this idea that a few articles and a few tweets builds a narrative. No, there is not a conspiracy against Arsenal by the refs. Do we get disproportionately more reds? Yes, the way we play and some ill discipline means we play on the edge and some refs are happy to oblige. Do you know what builds bulls*** narratives? Keep talking about the Arsenal “fans” on twitter posting 30 angles of Salibas red when everyone can see it was red all day long.

Joe, AFC, has it right. Defeat hurts more now because 1 less defeat last season and we win our first title in 2 decades. I don’t know why we all get boxed up as some sort of raving looneys when most fans I know are perfectly sane (mostly). I guess this is the consequence of having a very high social media presence when things can get wildly blown out of proportion in a second and outlets like Sky are more than happy to lap it up and feed the machine.

I wish we had more articles about how Bournemouth were excellent against us even before we went down to 10 instead of the bait articles (please)
Rob A (maybe I need to stay in more and get on Twitter to see what the “real” fans are saying…) AFC

Arsenal will win the league next season
There I’ve said it.

Why I hear you ask and it’s because of an impending rule change. I watched the Neville/Webb podcast, well as much as I could stand, and Darth Vader said “we are aware that the six second law is still in existence, WE JUST DON’T APPLY IT”, so referees are in fact influencing games by NOT applying the laws, who’d have guessed.

He went on to say that in the Premier League 2, they are experimenting with awarding a corner rather than a free kick when the law is broken. If introduced it will give Arsenal a massive advantage due to their current expertise at living on the edge during corners. Man City (who else) would also appear to have embraced this potential change so will once again challenge.

My other prediction and this will happen much sooner, is that the referee’s will more and more be directed to the monitor and will stand by their original decision. This is the PGMOL PR machine in full swing, they’ll defend their inconsistency/incompetency by stating that “we heard what you said and look, we do it more often now” and come up with some totally irrelevant statistic to support this.

I would love to write an e-mail about something other than officials but they do boil…
Howard Jones

How VAR works
So Joe, AFC, East Sussex wants to know why only one of the Saliba/Tosin incidents went to VAR. The simple answer is that they both did, as the whole game is monitored by VAR, not just specific incidents.

What I guess he means is why didn’t the VAR recommend that the referee reviewed the Tosin incident on the pitch-side monitor. Because they didn’t believe that a mistake had been made (and for what it’s worth I agree).

It’s a very simple process, whether you agree with the final decisions or not.
A, LFC, Montreal

How DOGSO works
In today’s edition of “ELI5 the rules of the game” Howard (Johnny Brooks is a Joke) Jones asks why Raya got a Yellow for the Bournemouth penalty and Fraser gets a red for the Leicester one.

Previously (up to and including the 21/22 season), both would be a red but from 22/23 an extra caveat was added to the Laws Of The Game stating that a Denial Of Goal Scoring Opportunity is only a yellow if there is a genuine attempt to play for, or challenge for the ball – something that doesn’t include a jersey pull.

A vast improvement to the DOGSO rules if you ask me, which is surprisingly went under a lot of people’s the radar. The tin-foil hat side of me believes that Sky and BT purposefully don’t pull up their analysts when they are blatantly wrong about this and other rules to fuel more controversy debate (probably because of woke and/or that they are lizard people.)
Big D, Luxembourg

Optimistic about Spurs actually
I thought I would write in and mention that Tottenham actually won a game of football on Saturday while playing some good football against a London rival. You wouldn’t have known it reading the media. No mention in Winners and Losers and in your opinion piece by Matt Stead is more focused on “Of course subs matter MATE” and how abysmal West Ham were.

These are not huge things, worthy of getting irritated about, but I found myself wondering: Is this really how other supporters see our club now? As a crisis club just waiting for the wheels to come off? F365 wrote after the loss to Brighton that it ended “the most unconvincing 5-win run of all time”, that this was a return to the norm of some sorts. I do feel the narrative is more than a bit unfair to my beloved Spurs these days so let me tell you how I feel about the club (Mate)

We are never dull (That is actually a plus after about 5 years of dross). We always attack and we almost always score. Our defense has not been great (to say the least) but it is slowly coming together in these last 7-8 games. If you do watch us week in – week out, you really can see the change. The team presses as one now making it way harder for opponents to whip a ball into space behind the defense and resulting in fewer fast breaks and fewer goals conceded.

Then we are onto the set-piece-crisis. Sorry, what set-piece crisis is that? The one where we have conceded 1 set piece in the league this season? Also, that was against Arsenal, and they seem to score from one vs everyone.

I admit that we are still prone to the occasional brainfarts from our defenders (mainly Romero) but given time I think it can be coached out of them.

The midfield is really starting to gel now with either Bentancur or Biss in the number 6 role and dual 8’s of Maddison and the ginger prince Kulusevski or if we need more steel/running power we swap Madders for Pape Sarr. I really like this way of different approach for different opposition but with quality players which we have lacked for the last few years

In attack, we have really flourished lately with Brennan adding goals and Solanke linking play and keeping the ball and drawing fouls when we need it. With those two so dangerous it really affords Son some time on the ball as opposition defenders can’t double or triple on him anymore.

Overall, I really like this young, dynamic team and I think we are being slightly underestimated by everyone now just because of the slow start to the season.

Up the Spurs!
Sibbi, Iceland

Follow-up to A Lovely Newcastle Mail
I arrived home last night after visiting Newcastle for Saturday’s Brighton match. My sons and nephew fell in love with the city and the Geordies, every one of whom (excepting occasional overworked barmaids) was as friendly and welcoming as could ever be hoped. The youngsters’ grins grew broader with every Geordie who stopped and asked “What? You flew from America to see the match? That’s brilliant! Whyever did you choose to support Newcastle?”

Geordie Ray — whom I referenced in my last mail — and his missus took a train up to meet us on Friday and cared for my nephew and younger son while the older boy and I got our club crest tattoos then took us all on a fantastic pub crawl that started with Stack (his first visit) and concluded in the Strawberry, where I was enormously amused to find a drawing of Peter Reid as a chimp in a Sunderland shirt still on one of the chalkboards above the bar.

Sadly, we were a day late to have our Broon Ales bought by Anthony Gordon, who had left money behind the bar to buy pints in gratitude for their support following his missed penalty against Everton.

On matchday, we had fun in the hospitality suite above Shearer’s. It was great to meet Keith Gillespie, with whom I share a birthday. As expected, I got emotional when I stepped out into the stands and saw the pitch. Happily, my older lad had packed Kleenex for just such an event. The result was a shame, and so was the twisted-up Magpie banner from Wor Flags, but the experience was everything I could have hoped for…bar missing the crowd’s roar for a goal.

We returned to SJP on Sunday for the tour of the ground, and that was also a great experience, and a real bargain at 20 quid. My favorite parts were the home and visitors’ changing rooms, where we got stories of the dirty tricks played by home teams, and the tour of the director’s box, where by pure chance, my nephew and I happened to sit down in the seats reserved for Sir Bobby until his death, and now for his family. If they don’t attend, the seats are left empty out of respect. Sir Bobby was the absolute focus of the tour, and that felt right.

Afterwards, we went to Stack for a bite and a pint, and a club owner and SJP box holder named Gav Dylan walked up to compliment my RealDealBrazil tarpaulin hat. We got to talking, and it was exactly like when I first met Geordie Ray. He thought it was brilliant that I’d fly to Newcastle to see a match, and even more brilliant that I’d bring the lads. And when Eli and I showed him our tattoos, he lost his mind. He insisted on buying us double Jamesons before we headed back to the hotel for our airport taxi, and demanded that I contact him on my next trip so he could treat me like a king at his clubs and use his box for the match. As I’ve maintained since I met Ray, the Geordies are just the best folks in the world.

Sadly, our Sunday night flight from Newcastle to Heathrow was canceled. My older son got rerouted via a morning flight to Paris — his first solo travel, and it involved four airports in three countries, making for some anxiety on my part (and his, though he concealed it). The rest of us had to take a 445 AM train down to King’s Cross. I left my backpack, which held a lot of expensive electronics as well as my passport, on the train, discovering it only when we arrived at Paddington Station via taxi to catch the Heathrow Express. We arrived at Heathrow just in time to get my younger son checked in and into security.

I expected to have a bad experience visiting the US Embassy to request an emergency passport and arriving home too late to meet this week’s work obligations, but a US consular official stepped in and okayed me to board the flight within moments. I had to beg my way to the front of the security line (bless all those kind people), but to my younger son’s surprise and delight, I made the flight with seconds to spare. We’re all home safe, now. And heck, maybe I’ll even get my bag back from LNER.
Chris C, Toon Army DC (now believes in karma)