First up is an article that suggests that Tommy Elphick might be off to Turkey, via newly promoted to the Super Lig club Goztepe;
I can’t say I’ve heard of the club, let alone the site reporting it, so who knows if there’s any truth in it?
All I can say is that I personally think that while he’s not everyone’s cup of tea, Elphick is at least half decent back-up centreback for a defence that might well struggle in the depths of winter.
If the worst happens and Terry and Samba both get injured, selling Baker will look a daft move, which might be compounded by us releasing Elphick too.
Unless you have plenty of faith in our young defenders, of course.
It’s not that I don’t have faith in the kids, but more that if we’re pushing at the top end of the table, it seems you’re putting a lot of pressure on them.
Still, I’ve always thought that if you’re good enough, age doesn’t matter.
I’ll worry about it if it arises, I suppose.
Then there were Wyness’ comments about the club looking to expand the stadium to a 60,000 capacity, which drew howls of criticism from some Villa fans, with the suggestion that we ought to get promoted first before thinking about that kind of stuff.
I have to say that my immediate thought was very similar. When we’ve had to close the top tier of the Trinity road, thoughts of increasing capacity do seem a bit daft.
But at the same time, it makes sense that if the board are ambitious, so they have to think ahead, which is fair enough. Clubs consistently at the top of the Premier league table have to get top crowds, if they’re to compete.
But a 60k crowd down the Villa has to be pushing it some.
We’re capable of it, in my opinion, but even the Martin O’Neil period gave little to suggest that that sort of capacity would be needed.
It would take years of consistently challenging and I find it difficult to argue that the announcement seems a bit premature.
That said, I wonder if Wyness knew that Birmingham was going to be the preferred UK bidder for the 2022 Commonwealth games? You’d expect so, as the timing’s just perfect, isn’t it?
Of course, the best news is that the proper footy is back in a couple of days.
Yes, it’s nice to see England win, but I’m sure I’m not alone in not really caring two hoots about the qualifiers.
VP would host the rugby sevens, if Birmingham was to win the Commonwealth games.
Shame we’re currently not big enough to get 60k in.
We got 60k in in the old third division Badger and have got near that a few times in 70s. Remember if we got a crowd of 500000 villa would declare it as 40k fir tax reasons. We all knew it was a lie as we could barely breathe in the Holte at some gamers. We got a lot of 42k under Mon so your only looking at 18k extra with a decent team playing attacking football. We’ve also got the Asian community on the doorstep that predominantly support Utd or Liverpool we need to start targeting these people to encourage them to come. We must have at least 20 k plus armchair fans as well. If we got just 10k that would do it