How many of you have lost the love like me?

[Walmley_Villa]

I still look forward to games but came to the conclusion many years ago that I would only see 2 or 3 crackers a season with another 4 or 5 being ok. The rest a mix if dull or poor/appalling. Over the last 2 seasons there has been the odd cracker such as Man City and Man Utd at home last year and Arsenal this. There are still a couple due this year and today could be one of them!
I understand people being unhappy but I support Aston Villa, the team and dare I say manager in charge even if flawed. I could never not want us to win.

[Holte L2]

21 consecutive years so far and I still love it. I'm starting to become more and more miserable as the seasons evolve, but for me going to watch your football team is still the greatest thing going. I feel proud and fortunate to be able to go every week and I wouldn't change it for the world.

[Rancid custard]

I normally go to Villa park 3 times a season, and go to see them whenever they're in my neck of the woods (London), finances allowing. Every time I used to step up on the concourses and see the stadium and pitch open up to me I would get a chill down my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck would stand up, a euphoric feeling of being home and being on hallowed ground would strike me. For the first time in my life I never got that feeling When we played Man Utd at home back in December. Worrying times indeed.

[supertom]

I've totally lost the love of the game in nuetral terms. I can't find the enthusiasm to watch anything that doesn't involve the Villa. I might flick through the channels and stumble on a game now and then and keep it on if it's entertaining but that's about it.
As for the Villa, these last two seasons have been bitter to say the least. It's looked a bit clueless from top to bottom, from on and off the pitch. I thought we really did well under O Neill and pushed on very well.

I know people regard league position as paramount but we garnered 64 points that season as well as two Wembley trips. Just in terms of points tallies, obviously, the more points you've got the more games you've won. It goes hand in hand and winning games is good. That season we also had Carew with 17, Gabby with 16 and Milner with 12 goals, Ash with 9, so we were scoring frequently. We could still entertain as well. But I'm not having a pro-O Neill rant here, and I'll stop, but the fall since, it's hard to take.

48 points under GH was poor and uninspiring, but this season will be worse. I think we'll struggle to get much further than 40. Not only that, the football has been insipid.

[PeterWithe]

This thread has made me want to go and buy a ticket. Thats the weird way that Villa affects you.

[Walmley_Villa]

Always think that the next game could be one of the best you have seen, it would be a shame to miss it. (it won't be but helps me get through the hard times)

[Dave Clark Five]

These sort of threads always appear when the team is doing sh#t. If we were flying high no one would be on here telling us all they've "lost the love".

Didn't you know that this is the only season that we have been shit? None of us have ever experienced this before.

[eastie]

These sort of threads always appear when the team is doing sh#t. If we were flying high no one would be on here telling us all they've "lost the love".

Didn't you know that this is the only season that we have been shit? None of us have ever experienced this before.

Well its our longest run without a home win since 1921 and i dont think any of us were around back then .

[Dave Clark Five]

These sort of threads always appear when the team is doing sh#t. If we were flying high no one would be on here telling us all they've "lost the love".

Didn't you know that this is the only season that we have been shit? None of us have ever experienced this before.

Well its our longest run without a home win since 1921 and i dont think any of us were around back then .

How about 85-86? We beat Oxford on Nov 2 and the next home win was against West Ham on Mar 19. We beat Norwich on Nov 5. It is now Mar 10. Doesn't make the current situation right but dispels another urban myth. Cup matches not counted in either 20-21 or 85-86 as we won in Jan in both of them.

[eastie]

Lets hope we win today then !

[rutski]

i hope the tossers who booed the substitution of the zog for our goalscorer and match winner andi weimann were long gone down the fucking road talking negative shit and didnt get to feel the euphoria that i felt with my 2 young boys as we celebrated like maniacs!
but like i keep hearing everyone say, we have the right to moan! well bet you were cheering at the end! and to the wanker in the lower holte shouting that the campaign to get mcleish out will not be derailed just because of this win, well you are the biggest tosser i have ever met in my life!!!!!

[PeterWithesShin]

The feeling when Weimann scored is why we put ourselves through it week after week. It's also a feeling no plastic will ever get.

[Jimmy Smash]

To be honest I think that people booed because NZog was being taken off not because Weimann coming on.

[Walmley_Villa]

Feels good a last minute winner, doesn't it?

[Villanation]

My brother was the first to take me to the Villa, in the mid eighties. He would go everywhere with them, home and away. I enjoyed ten years of his company on the Holte End, getting my terrace education and watching a game that was not yet swamped with player power and agents. My brother is a lot older than I am and during his mid thirties, just as things were looking up under Big Ron, and I was in my late teens, he just stopped going. It did not make sense; I used to tease him saying that he is not a real fan, that no way would I ever stop going to watch the Villa. I remember quite clearly he told me that one day it may happen to me, and once I stop going- as he did- it becomes an easy habit to get into. I did not believe him, he was talking nonsense!

So forward twenty and a bit years…I am the one now in my mid thirties and the old fart is the wrong side of fifty.  He came out of Villa retirement when Mon arrived and it was as if he had never been away. Nevertheless, during the last few seasons under Mon, I began to get increasingly more bored and fed-up of match days and even more questionable of the Premier League and all of the over the top hype that surrounds it. Granted, I was not Mon’s biggest fan during his last few seasons and thought that it may well have been for that reason why my enjoyment was diminishing. I made my mind up before the end of his last season not to renew my season ticket.

True to my word, last season under Houllier I did not have a season ticket though I did attend a decent amount of games, many of them at the tail end of the season. Yet with each game I was attending, I was finding myself becoming even more bored and my mind was wandering off during the match. Not even the pre match banter felt the same. The same old routine was becoming a chore. It just got in the way. It was just too much hassle.

My mind was set, I was packing up. Nothing would tempt me back, not even the promise of a big name manager or big new signings. Obviously neither of these two things happened anyway! Though again, I have been true to my word. This season I have been to exactly ZERO games. What’s more, I have not felt at any time that I am missing anything. This has absolutely nothing to do with the current state of the club, or who our manager is, the type of football that we play etc...

I’m not really that sure if I want anything to reignite my interest to the levels it used to be, because I’m quite enjoying life without having to worry about the Villa (saying that out loud still feels all very peculiar and alien to me, yet at the same time I say it with genuine honesty).

I am not sure whether it is just a phase. Maybe I will get a sudden urge one day to get back down there, just as my brother did after over a decade and a half away. What it will take only time will tell, if it happens at all that is. Football is a game that I love but one that I am beginning to loathe.  Aston Villa is the club that I still love, but no longer really care for as much as I would like to.

It is a shame, I was a good fan.

My first game was back in the early seventies a League cup semi v Man Utd, the Man Utd side that had the very best out there, all the great legends from Best to Charlton, Paddy Crerand, and many more, I was a little kid, being held up and standing among countless thousands of Villa fans in the days when way more where in the ground than is even allowed now, when we scored the whole end surged forward and backwards, forwards again, it was fantastic, and I watched a team full of fight and spirit and players ready to die for the fans, for the club and for the cause, its was a bitter cold and magnificent night ( that's why I have not time for anybody that gives unwarranted criticism to Gabby as a player and fan, because that's the closest we will have to that kind of thing). Later I played at Villa park, played for a Villa nursery team, Stanley Star and although I was eventually on the books of another midland side, played against Villa beating Villa.

Mate of mine is one of the lads from the eighties squad, could never lose the fact I am a Villa fan, can't get there anything like as much as I used to because of both distance and business, but that's life, nope Villa now and always will be.