Turning points ?

[Somniloquism]

Yes, I remember walking away from the ground and hearing so many snatches of conversations like 'I knew it would happen' and 'we always throw it away'.

Number of points lost from a winning position up to that point that season? None.

But how many late goals had we let in. Middlesborough home was one, Stoke away another and obviously Everton away (although with Leeg away I can say we obviously had the last laugh in that game without fear of some Video being shown). Even with some of the wins, we had let in late goals. Citeh first match being definitely one of them.

[Deano's Mullet]

It didnt really go sour for me until after the Carling Cup Final. I came out of the FA Cup replay with Palace feeling as optimistic and excited as i had ever been as a Villa fan - even though i persoanlly couldnt go, it was next stop Wembley - and was absolutely desperate for us to win the cup but of course reality soon bit in. Man Utd's eventual superiority plus the usual crappy biased ref meant it all went flat after that. The Chelsea semi-final was all too predictable as we huffed and puffed before they eventually raised it a gear and blew us away - again, benefiting from some biased reffing. The final home match with Blackburn may have meant nothing in terms of league placing etc but the defeat and typical  MON home performance meant i went home incredibly depressed even though the season on the whole was easily one of the best in recent memory.
Its been downhill ever since, particularly with the apparent lowering of ambitions from the owners and the selling of some of our better players. At the moment i am just trying to take each game at a time but its definitely gone sour for me as far as football is concerned. Its a closed shop now for all but 2-3 clubs followed by glory hunting bastards all over the world who come into the work the next day who dont know their team's own score from the previous day but will give you shit the minute the do find out.

[curiousorange]

I tend to think it was the Everton FA Cup game before the Stoke result. The Stoke one was hurtful and did everything to our confidence as others say, but I always thought CL qualification was a massive leap of faith and wasn't hugely shocked we didn't get it. The way Everton took us apart at Goodison, however, made me realise just how brittle we were heading into the back end of the season.

As an aside, I recall coming back from the Chelsea semi defeat and thinking it was the end of an era. There was just something in the atmosphere that felt like we all knew we'd never be good enough. I stood outside Chap's Pizza next to Witton station at ten that evening eating some horrible cheese burger and felt utterly despondent.

[IFWaters]

25 years of watching Aston Villa allow me to express optimism as a mathematical formula thus =

OPT = (Feeling about ENVIRONMENT X STATUS OF CLUB X MANAGER X SQUAD STRENGTH X FORM)
Where,
STATUS OF CLUB /4; CONTENDERS=4; MID-TABLE =3; AT RISK = 2;  GOING DOWN = 1 ; CURRENT = 3
MANAGER/3 ; CURRENT = 2 (UNPROVEN)
SQUAD/3 ; CURRENT = 2 ; AVERAGE
FORM/3 ; CURRENT = 2

OUR SCORE = 24 / 108. ie our chance of CL qualification approx 20 %

[Holtenderinthesky]

25 years of watching Aston Villa allow me to express optimism as a mathematical formula thus =

OPT = (Feeling about ENVIRONMENT X STATUS OF CLUB X MANAGER X SQUAD STRENGTH X FORM)
Where,
STATUS OF CLUB /4; CONTENDERS=4; MID-TABLE =3; AT RISK = 2;  GOING DOWN = 1 ; CURRENT = 3
MANAGER/3 ; CURRENT = 2 (UNPROVEN)
SQUAD/3 ; CURRENT = 2 ; AVERAGE
FORM/3 ; CURRENT = 2

OUR SCORE = 24 / 108. ie our chance of CL qualification approx 20 %

Erm...... Que?

[JJ-AV]

Someone had a list of forwards that moved at the same time we signed Harewood and Heskey before. Some of the names on there were crazy.

[JJ-AV]

All moved the Summer we signed Harewood (to Clubs we realistically could compete with)

Roque Santa Cruz
Yakubu
Diomansy Kamara
Valeri Bojinov 
Geovanni
Tuncay Sanli
Mark Viduka
Giussepe Rossi
Darren Bent

[DeKuip]

Moscow

Why, where you off to?

[D.boy]

25 years of watching Aston Villa allow me to express optimism as a mathematical formula thus =

OPT = (Feeling about ENVIRONMENT X STATUS OF CLUB X MANAGER X SQUAD STRENGTH X FORM)
Where,
STATUS OF CLUB /4; CONTENDERS=4; MID-TABLE =3; AT RISK = 2;  GOING DOWN = 1 ; CURRENT = 3
MANAGER/3 ; CURRENT = 2 (UNPROVEN)
SQUAD/3 ; CURRENT = 2 ; AVERAGE
FORM/3 ; CURRENT = 2

OUR SCORE = 24 / 108. ie our chance of CL qualification approx 20 %

You are Pythagoras and I claim my prize.

[Rigadon]

WHat will the next turning point be I wonder?  I'd like to think a heavy beating of Wolves will be the day the not-sures would start get behind AM and a return of quiet optimism.