Other Villa stuff

[Somniloquism]

Chelsea charged by the FA for the water bottle thrown at our bench at the end of the match.

"It is alleged that the club failed to ensure its players and/or other relevant personnel positioned around the technical area after the final whistle did not behave in an improper and/or provocative and/or abusive way," an FA statement read.

Surprisingly Chelsea's investigation announced straight after the match didn't manage to turn up who the culprit was.

[DB]

I was watching highlights of us beating Liverpool 1-2 in 1993 at Anfield (goals from Parker & Saunders), and could hear the Villa fans singing ‘the bells are ringing’. Shame that has died out (the song, not the forum), I always like that song.

[thick_mike]

Me too. The original version was a favourite song of mine as a toddler. Dad had it on an LP of old show tunes.

[Percy McCarthy]

I was watching highlights of us beating Liverpool 1-2 in 1993 at Anfield (goals from Parker & Saunders), and could hear the Villa fans singing ‘the bells are ringing’. Shame that has died out (the song, not the forum), I always like that song.

There’s never been anything like it when belted out by a big away end. Nobody who was at the Norwich League Cup quarter-final will ever forget it.

[PeterWithesShin]

Former Premier League goalkeeper Shay Given has "unreservedly" apologised for describing Wilfried Nancy's short time as Celtic manager as an "absolute Holocaust" live on BBC show Final Score.

Given, 49, was asked to give his thoughts on Nancy's sacking after just 33 days and eight games in charge of the Scottish champions.

The ex-Republic of Ireland international said the tenure "was terrible from start to finish", before using insensitive language to describe 48-year-old Nancy's first week in the role.

Posting on X,, external Given said he used a word he "didn't fully understand the meaning of, and certainly won't ever use again".

He added: "We all have areas of ignorance in our knowledge, and I hope to use this as an opportunity to become better educated going forward.

"I am genuinely mortified and apologise unreservedly to everyone offended, and will be donating my fee from today's show to the Holocaust Educational Trust."

Final Score presenter Jason Mohammad apologised later in the show for the "inappropriate language" used.

Frenchman Nancy was sacked last week following Celtic's 3-1 defeat by Rangers - his sixth loss as manager in just eight games.

His 33-day stint as Celtic boss was the shortest reign in the club's history.

The Holocaust, carried out by Nazi Germany during World War Two, claimed the lives of an estimated six million Jews.

[PeterWithesShin]

Tottenham Hotspur and Aston Villa have been charged with misconduct by the Football Association following a melee at the conclusion of their FA Cup match on Saturday.

Players from both sides were involved in a confrontation shortly after Villa's 2-1 win in the third round at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

The clubs are accused of having "failed to ensure their players and/or officials did not behave in an improper and/or provocative way after the final whistle".

Both have until Friday to respond.

Goals from Emiliano Buendia and Morgan Rogers put Villa into a 2-0 lead at half-time. Although Wilson Odobert replied for Spurs after the break, Thomas Frank's side were unable to avoid an early exit.

Villa, who sit third in the Premier League, will host fellow top-flight side Newcastle United in round four.

[AGRIPPA]

Deleted

[Brend'Watkins]

At least it will give the club the opportunity to inform the FA that it’s all the fault of the referee for not punishing their players for dirty play throughout the game. Had he reffed the game properly Palinha wouldn’t have finished the game and as a result no confrontation would have taken place.

[Dave]

Here seemed as appropriate as any.

That xG silliness. I know, paul and others that it is a useful metric for data analysis that stupid people use badly to make points that they don't understand etc.

But to demonstrate how silly it is when used badly:

Newcastle apparently had 2.5 xG on Sunday. 1.3 of those expected goals were that cross from Trippier which two of their players got a slight touch to, but it wasn't a good enough cross for either of them to score from.

So because player (a) would have scored from that position in the six yard box 70% of the time and player (b) would have scored 60% of the time, for these internet dickbags, that's 1.3 goals that Newcastle *should* have scored from two chances 0.01 seconds apart.

Had the 70% chance been converted, it's pretty easy to work out how many goals would have come from the remaining 0.3 of that 1.3 xG.

[cdbearsfan]

Yeah, that's silly. I had wondered before how it works when you get multiple chances in same attack, now I know. In a foolish manner, is the answer.

[Toronto Villa]

I’m all for statistics to help understand or improve performance. But there comes a point where it doesn’t. Or has diminishing returns. It tries to provide sophistication and KPIs where none needs to exist. It’s a little like VAR being so specific to a hairs width. It’s counter productive and doesn’t actually provide what it’s designed to deliver. Does xg consider who the chance falls to for example? No. Because if it’s Harry Kane or Mbappe then I would argue the xg is higher than if it falls to Francis Jeffers in exactly the same spot. But that’s not considered. And specific to us our xg for long range shots should be higher than for other clubs but xg is xg and we treated the same that its a low % opportunity. So the science doesn’t quite tell the actual story and some cases it just doesn’t add up.

[paul_e]

Yeah, that's exactly why it's pointless to use as "higher xG means you should've won" and also why it's never going to tell you everything. Again though, over the course of a season it can be a useful way to determine how many decent chances you're creating, how well your players are getting on the end of things, etc.

The other huge weakness of it is that if you have a good cross in but no gets a toe to it it's completely ignored because nothing gets calculated until there's a 'shot'. Every fan who's watched a reasonable amount of football knows what a good cross looks like but yet that Trippier one scores 1.3 and one that angles across the 6 yard box and just needs any touch is nothing. I think the main reason people don't like xG is that in games like that it doesn't represent the match they watched but they get told by people who read the stats and watched MotD that we were lucky to get the win.

[eamonn]

I also feel that an attacking team getting in behind a defence but not getting a shot away is under-valued - it is a sign of effective attacking play. In games where you "didn't work their keeper" but actually breach their defence only for a last-gasp challenge or mislaid pass, it's got to have some merit in these metrics.