Naysonymous

Aye. Injuries can be the difference between staying up and going down. We lost John McGinn for 4 months in December and then Tom Heaton and Wesley for the season away at Burnley (we've not had a recognised striker in the team for four games now) so I was shitting it. Some new guy called Mbwana Samatta has signed subject to work permit so hopefully he'll be in the team for our trip to Bournemouth as that's another six pointer for us.

Huge win for Villa. Just wish I'd been there to ask Troy Deeney what the score was.

AA replay of basically the entire fight. The shoulder to the nose won the fight. How do you counter that? Keep your head pressed against his neck to prevent him getting any distance?

Streamable video of the incident. I had to watch it a couple of times to see what happened, but the tip of the corner flag definitely nails the bald fella right in the balls.

Hat trick on his debut. Erling Haaland is that rare example of a footballer with a famous dad being better than his old man was. Augsburg did make it very easy though, that high line.

Where the hell would Villa be without Jack Grealish? (I mean the answer is obviously "in the Championship" but he's legitimately a fantastic player. He's got to go to the Euros.)

Does xG still not account for player ability? I remember reading a while ago that a free kick 25 yards from goal is afforded the same xG whether Leo Messi is standing over it or Dominic Solanke. I know clubs get more detailed and different data to what Opta dish out to the public (and some clubs have their own in house data gathering teams) and playing the percentages is becoming increasingly common but we are still in the very early days of data analysis. Models will continue to be refined for years to come and it's going to have a massive effect in ten or twenty years time when the people who grew up with this are suddenly in charge of football. I suspect that the tweet above is an indication of xG, but obviously there's no way to prove it.

Why the fuck didn't Anwar shout "NEXT GOAL WINS!" before the penalty?

It's all for charity you know.

Okay. Manchester City are better at football than we are. It's a good job they haven't got anyone decent on the bench for the second half, right?

Probably when the unbeaten record goes. Club record is next, 29 games from the opening day in 1987/88.

Pepe Reina is in at Villa, subject to medical, on loan until the end of the season. I'm really not sure on this one. He did well at Napoli as far as I'm aware but he's been sat on the bench at Milan for 18 months. I get that he's not going to start ahead of Donnarumma (how is he still only 20 btw? it feels like he's been around forever!) but I just wonder what Villa are getting out of this. Yes, Heaton is out for the season and I guess the club want an experienced keeper but I feel bad for Orjan Nyland who has really won me over recently. He had a bad time last year, but then he was playing behind a centre half partnership of an injured James Chester and Mile Jedinak who was an ageing central midfielder. He looks decent when he's actually got a couple of fit centre halves in front of him but it seems he's back on the bench now. I hope Reina does well, don't get me wrong, but I just wonder if the money we are spending on him could be better used in the search for a centre forward.

As a card carrying Villa fan I don't get it at all. Most of us seem to be well aware that Benteke is a shadow of the player we sold to Liverpool, but he was absolutely phenomenal for us during his time at Villa Park (49 in 101 for us, and he played half of 2013/14 with an injury) so people are expecting to see that again despite all the evidence showing that the current iteration of Christian Benteke couldn't hit a cows arse with a banjo. We desperately need a striker. We needed a striker before Wesley got injured and now it's almost at crisis point, but c'mon, surely we can do better than Benteke?

Douglas Luiz up to his usual tricks though. He's done that too many times this season.

Leicester’s first XI vs a Villa team with Neil Taylor in midfield and Anwar El Ghazi at centre forward. Let’s just say I’m not confident.