"When I were a lad", etc.
Part of the problem for me is my age (in more ways than one).
I only really became "aware" of my club in 1973/4. As a 8-year old I was taken to Wembley to see us collect the League Cup, then it was just a pretty much continual march to promotion, gradual improvement in Div 1 generally year on year (76/77 in particular was simply wonderful), leading on to becoming champions of England, then Europe.
I lived opposite and down the road from - and regularly talked with - some truly great players. I got taken to the players changing room before a match by a player who my Dad knew, and another time was taken to Bodymoor Heath by the club's leading hero of the time. Now the players live in gated mansions and they are (largely) too "precious" to mix with us "nobodies". I get the impression that we're just an irritant to them now.
When this happens in your formative years, you believe that it will always be this way - onwards and upwards, with the players with their feet on the ground and being "one of us". What actually happened was decades of underperformance and gradual decline (with occasional, and now long-distant blips) while the money grew and grew. The players (even the shit ones) are now richer than the average supporter's wildest dreams and generally have zero time for us, without whom they'd actually have sod all. Once they reach a certain level, it's as if they even get handsomely rewarded for failure. it's all terribly lop-sided.
Psychologically, I am battered by this experience.
See you on (wtf?) Sunday 11th at (blasted) 1.15pm, to see Aston Villa Football Corporation.
Sigh.