benteke vs bent eke

otm cept we're prob, as a board, rooting for villa's youth experiment.

Also, idk if d bent has been 'first choice' for nine seasonx tbfttl

you may be right. but prior to his coming to villa we're talking 36, 32, 27, 33, 38 games in a league season for each of his clubs. Only 20 in his last one at Sunderland, admittedly. But if those numbers don't qualify as first choice each season then they can't be far off. (tbf I should also qualify this by stating that I don't know how many of these appearances were from the bench, but I'm a pretty bad sufferer with vertigo and right now this horse I'm on is far too high for me to even consider climbing down.

On your other point, there seems to be a degree of in and out running re: the Villa experiment round these parts right now. It's all fun and games when we're somewhat unsportingly pumping Norwich in the cup, and Bentekkers is Strictly-Ballroom-Dancing his way through Skrtel and Agger / giving Chris Smalling the monster truck treatment. But there's been a level of venom coming our way for these past few games which seems rather unwarranted considering that what you've got here is a team of apparently likeable and essentially untalented young hopefuls being ritually disembowelled in front of millions of viewers, firstly by a disgusting vanity project riding the back of the combined forces of grasping capitalism / shady organised crime in one week, then by tag team exertions of TinTin Boy Reporter and Tom fuckin Daley the next. More than a whiff of Baldrick and Lieutenant George being sent over the top at the end of Blackadder about recent Villa games, yet apparently we are "painful to watch" / "almost a whole team of craig gardners" etc.

Im sure in the cold sober light of day I'll read this back and shake my head ruefully, but right now when I read shit like that ^^^^^ about this team of poor misguided chumps I feel rather as I imagine the person would feel who's been out walking the dog in the park and has just seen some cruel heartless bastard kicking their adorably simple little puppy into the fucking pond.

if i;m getting carried away and need to rein it in, tell me. getting to that stage now where i could just keep on going otherwise

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wouldnt dream of it

We're all about venom here tho, you want to get used to that. I'm not sure that yr quoted evidence of ilf contempt for the villa qualifies as anything more than a light brush at best. I'd advise you to ride out the bumps involved in breaching the interface of wider consciousness, it's toxicon the other side but reasonably smooth ime

Yeah alright, I accept that these were pretty sweeping statements to make on limited evidence, no doubt about it. These were overall impressions formed, probably erroneously, off the back of a number of comments many of which I almost certainly inflated beyond their intended or appropriate significance.

Don;t wanna give the impression that I'm butthurt about people taking potshots at my team, nor that I'm incapable of rolling with the punches. THis wasn't intended as a "oh everyone stop being nasty about Aston Villa", more as a vehicle for me to vent my current affection for/exasperation with this Villa side. For that reason I did leave an open invitation on the main Prem thread, a kind of "would you like to take this outside?", if you like. Just thought it needed pointing out that for all that we might not be fun to watch at times, we are at least trying to do things "the right way". Whatever the fuck that might mean.

i don't hate villa cuz they're shit, i hate them because they have too many british players

you'll be cheering with the rest when Baker and Herd lead England to World Cup glory in 2018

wait, herd' s aussie isn't he? fuck that then

they have too many australian players too

that much we agree upon. at least 2 too many

there is some residual sympathy for westwood from crewe because he looked made up on transfer deadline day when being interviewed through a car window en route from villa's training ground

naturally this is misguided sympathy: he too must be destroyed

Something infinitely more likeable about Lowton and Bennett than there was about Warnock and Hutton

woah sorry but you've overstepped the mark there

x-post - n'awwww, that's the sort of shit i'm talking about. there's something so doe-eyed about them right now. it's like baker and herd, with that ridiculous hipster haircut, naively assuming that they can get away with just stepping up and heedlessly sticking a foot in every time an opponent gets the ball in and around our area. i'm trying to enjoy it while it lasts, because pretty soon the glitz and glamour of the premier league will drag them right down and they'll all be wearing leather and smoking like olivia newton-john at the end of grease, and they'll be demanding vast sums of money to do it.

Stephen Warnock was taken to the 2010 world cup. Mindboggling.

England's 2010 World Cup squad was a round on Pointless a while back. I think Warnock was a pointless answer.

My comment on the Prem thread about Villa being painful to watch cos they give the ball away so much was not meant to be a general comment about this Villa team ( I've barely watched them this season) but about the particular game I was watching y'day vs Spurs. Sorry if I caused offence.

Oh and Warnock is terrible, his one shining moment was presenting Chris with a prize iirc.

jesus christ you can't pander to em like that pandemic (pandervmic?) they'll learn nothing.

Haha, who was asking for apologies?! I was spoiling for a fight, not a handshake. Unsurprised to find that people don't actually care about Villa as much as I had drunkenly assumed after reading 2 or 3 derogatory comments about them.

Anyhow, as predicted I wake up sober and read this back with a rueful shake of the head. End-of-the-night, corner-of-the-pub stuff. Yikes.

bollocks to that, more of it please.

i'll fight you away, but i was after a long drive tbh and i've actually got a soft spot for this villa outfit (based on little more, i admit, than your argued case above of they're young and cheap and not very good but let's see how that works out)

but by all means say something i disagree with and let's go punk

Professional wrestling is a legitimate art form and ought to be recognised as such.

SAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMM

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£18m and off to Brighton on loan.

this is a decline so steep that even i am wondering if he is really that bad now

did he lose all of his pace? he is still only 30

also in steep declines, sylvan ebanks-blake, 28, scored 14 in the champo two seasons ago and now a free agent

the most pronounced one-man team in recent epl memory?

Benteke is with Rooney at DC United now, lol

ben teke

OMG Christian Benteke bicycle kick. 😱🚲 #VamosUnited

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Ben Tekkers