Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: Leighton on March 08, 2012, 12:31:17 AM
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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.
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I don't think I ve ever read a post on here that I agree with so much and sums up perfectly my thought process over the last few seasons. I had a season ticket in Mon's last season but decided the poor stuff I was watching at vp ( we drew lots then too) meant I wouldn't renew.
Went to a few games last season but had lost the love a little. This season, I wouldn't go if I had a free ticket. Does make me a bad fan ? Yes, probably it does to my shame. But I don't miss going and have more important things in my life. Even my girlfriend is now more important than Villa !! That is a first !!! Although she doesn't seem as honoured by that as I thought she might be
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Fucking girlfriends more important than the Villa - I've heard it all now. Haven't you had many?
I wouldn't mind all this incessant whingeing if it didn't come across like a campaign to get us all to join them traipsing round the shops with a bird or whatever the fuck it is they do that's so much more exciting than being with their mates cheering the Villa.
They'll be back again when we don't need them.
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Sounds like you just want someone to convince you that everything will be hunky-dory as we're just on the cusp of greatness, well it won't, its Villa, average is what we do best.
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Lost my love for it a few seasons ago, just been drifting ever since.
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Lost my love for it a few seasons ago, just been drifting ever since.
Mine is certainly on the downward slope, and I have not been to a game this season. 2 small children to entertain at weekends are much better.
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I simply have a feeling of apathy towards it at the moment.
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I drifted off from football completely in about 1990 for getting on for 10 years. I was out of work for about 18 months, and then when I did get a job it was shifts. I was actually at work on Trinity Road on the last day of the old Holte End, watching everyone go by. To be fair though, my work situation wasn't the central reason, it just gave me the excuse I was looking for. I'd got fed up with knowing that every favourite player would inevitably leave and I would have to then begin the task again of investing my hero worship in another one.
I actually reached the point of not even knowing who we were playing most of the time, let alone how we'd got on. If I turned on the telly during anything football related, I would cringe at the whole "Giggsy/Scholesy" blokey mateyness of it all and wonder why I'd ever been interested. However, I did get to at least one match with my Dad in all but one of my missing seasons - and I think it might have been the shock of getting to the end of one particular season and realising that I hadn't been at all that started to pull me back.
I don't know when I started to listen out for our scores again, and then start to have a match commentary on, but I do remember one Saturday morning looking in my purse and thinking I had enough money to go, and just setting off for Villa Park. We played Spurs I think - it was the day of the £ protest, and it was the beginning of a journey back that led to me ending up with a season ticket again from 2002.
I'd like to say that those who are disenchanted now will also drift back in again at some point, but football has changed a lot, only the turnover of favourite players remains the same as ever! It can only now be a game of who's got the most money, and I don't even want to win like that. So, if I drifted off again, football would have to implode before I'd be back.
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Fucking girlfriends more important than the Villa - I've heard it all now. Haven't you had many?
I wouldn't mind all this incessant whingeing if it didn't come across like a campaign to get us all to join them traipsing round the shops with a bird or whatever the fuck it is they do that's so much more exciting than being with their mates cheering the Villa.
They'll be back again when we don't need them.
im bored of the moaning too!
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Fucking girlfriends more important than the Villa
Couldn't agree more.
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Nah Fletch, I'd have to have some kind of erectile dysfunction that meant I could only get wood while the Villa were playing. Even then I'd just take one with me and do it at half-time.
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I have lost my love for Villa at the moment, had for a few seasons but I still go, it just means I turn up later and more drunk than I used to.
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Been fed up for a while, I still go but I think that is more due to misguided loyalty, I prefer away games, I went to Wigan & Blackburn, My mate tried to get me to go to Fulham but I said 3 weeks in a row is too much, Plus I really hate home games I aint been to Villa Park since Bolton in the cup
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Can't stand the home games anymore really, but it may be because I can't have a pint before and after the game like I'd like too. That may make the whole experience a little more bareable.
Away games however are completely the opposite, I'm actually gutted that there's still over two weeks to go until Arsenal. I expect all that more hovers around the 'away day' rather than actually going to watch Villa play though.
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I simply have a feeling of apathy towards it at the moment.
Yeah same here, I wasn't remotely surprised or angry when Blackburn equalised at the weekend. There was a time when I'd have been in a rage all evening.
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The love's still there and always will be but me and the Villa have reached that stage in our relationship where we take each other for granted and it feels like the spark is going out. It's like I've got the seven-year-itch nearly 40 years too late.
If Villa aint careful I might get the wandering eye and have an affair with Arsenal or some other stunner who knows how to treat their man real good.
But I'll come back. I always do....
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I think `love' is the wrong word. Love is for your wife and your kids. My feelings for the Villa are a bit more complicated than that.
It's more a kind of all-consuming death-struggle.
Me as Holmes and the Villa as Moriarty, rolling round on the ledge of the Reichenbach Falls, our fingers locked in each other's throats.
I might kill him and he might kill me. But without him, what have I got to live for?
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I was only saying the other day at work I only have two things in my life in my middle age that I am not either relaxed about or in control of. The first (I was at work) was clients for one reason or another not paying their accounts and the second is the Villa.
Both have driven me to ranting despair at one time or another. But the feeling when the Big Cheque that buys all sorts of lifes pleasures clears and when Villa score that last minute winner make it worthwhile, otherwise I wouldn't do it.
I think on balance we do OK as Villa fans.For every jammy deflected late winner from that lanky sack of shite bluenose twat centre forward last season there is a couple of late Gabby winners and 5-1, 3-1 thrashings etc.
We aren't man city, we have to enjoy the good moments when they come and roll with the punches as we are now.
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I think `love' is the wrong word. Love is for your wife and your kids.
Spot on.
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Villa score that last minute winner make it worthwhile
Haven't felt that euphoria for a while
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I have been a Villa fan since the 60's and have a very strong passion for Aston Villa which over the years has been the cause of a mixture of emotions like enthusiasm, anger etc and it doesn't particularly get any better with age!
If Villa win my week-end has always been better with a spring in my heels. I wish it wasn't like that but that's just me and always will be I guess.
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To lose the love of football as it stands at the moment a corporate sport full of overpaid/priced prima donnas' is understandable. To lose the love of the Villa.....Never!
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I was wondering how this issue affects this website. Are there fewer posts than in previous seasons?
Is the love lost for Villa a wider feeling that includes football in general?
The whole racism thing this season has also "tested" my interest in football..
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been going to the villa since the late sixties when my old dad first took me,hav,nt been this season yet. but have tickets for saturday,and i must admit i,m not over excited about going. but i still keep looking at the time as it moves round to k.o time on a saturday..iv,e had highs and lots of lows with the villa and my mates.....lose my love for villa...never.
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You seem to be reflecting on the simple fact of age. A lot of people go to every game when they are younger, but then move on to different stages of life: partners, marriage, kids, jobs, divorce, redundancy...
And less disposable income, which means that the privileged people who play or work for Premier League clubs must work harder to earn our five pound notes. Except they are shielded from that by the ludicrous sums paid to them thanks to TV rights.
Even if Villa did the simple things well, we would all be happy with them. The excrutiating tedium of simply surviving in mid-table and never winning any cups is better than getting relegated, but only just.
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I have been a Villa fan since the 60's and have a very strong passion for Aston Villa which over the years has been the cause of a mixture of emotions like enthusiasm, anger etc and it doesn't particularly get any better with age!
If Villa win my week-end has always been better with a spring in my heels. I wish it wasn't like that but that's just me and always will be I guess.
That's how I feel.
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The villa to me at the moment are like a wife who cannot divorce due to sentiment and lack of money!
Early years of enjoyment , reasonable middle of 10 years of average happiness, a real lull in our relationship and then 4 years of hope and now it has faded into lack of interest , looks have sagged and really she needs a make over to get me interested again.
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There are fleeting moments in every Villa fan's life, when the euphoria will consume the years of pain and despair. It will happen again.
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I wouldn't say I love the Villa - as said above, love is for something more personal than that.
I have had a passion for Villa since first watching them in the late 1960's and I regard them as a signifcant anchor in my life; one of the fundamentals that defines who I am.
They will always be that even if - as at the moment - the whole football thing is tarnished by money, egos, TV, FIFA, etc.
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It's more a kind of all-consuming death-struggle.
Me as Holmes and the Villa as Moriarty, rolling round on the ledge of the Reichenbach Falls, our fingers locked in each other's throats.
I might kill him and he might kill me. But without him, what have I got to live for?
Damon, you are wasted at ITN you should apply for Poet Laureate. This sums up perfectly how I feel about Villa at the moment.
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My wife said to me once. "You think more about the Villa than you do me"
she wasn't best pleased when I told her I think more about the Blues than I do her.
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I think I am like a lot of the posters on here, in that I am wondering has my intense dislike of all things associated with modern day Football, outweighed my passion for my Football club?.
A strange thing happened to me at Ewood Park last Saturday. I was sat, yes sat, in the Upper Tier. There weren't many of us and I took the opportunity to rest my legs over the back of the seat in front of me. When Nzogbia lashed in our goal, all I did was raise my hands in the air, I couldn't even be arsed to stand up, let alone jump around like a lunatic. This is the first time I can ever remember "non celebrating" a goal at the match, if that makes sense?.
The question is why did feel like this?. Is it because there wasn't that much on the game and that I think we are probably safe or is it something deeper?. Maybe I will find out if we score this weekend.
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Rich and Bren - brilliant.
Rich your description is perfect for me, and Bren, I would not admit to yours to my wife, although I am sure she knows it to be true....
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I struggle to get excited about things at the moment, but I know it won't take much (change of manager or a new owner for example) for me to get excited again, and full of blind optimism.
I would find it hard to stop going, due to the (completely misguided) possibility that we may become good and start winning things as soon as I stop going. I know deep down this is highly unlikely, however the prospect of sticking with it all through the crap years, and stopping going just as we get good again, keeps me going!
Its a bit like England, I followed them home and away, and attended every tournament between 1996-2006 but was scared that as soon as I stopped following, they would go and win something! I actually stopped enjoying England games a few years ago, so that, coupled with financial reasons, meant I stopped going to England games and I haven't missed it at all. And the England team remain as far away as ever from winning anything.
However, it's just not that easy to stop watching the Villa for me.
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My love for Villa faded when O’Leary was at the helm and that’s when I gave up my season ticket, before that I had held one for 18 season on the bounce and attended as many away games as I could, and I can honestly say I never missed it.
By the time O’Neill and Lerner arrived I had a baby daughter and a new house so going to villa park was still sacrificed until the following season when I started coming back to villa park on a semi regular basis as well as the occasional away game but still did not get a season ticket. During O’Neill’s last season and the one season under Houllier I went to about 10+ home league games a season plus all cup games and as many away games as possible and really started loving going back down.
I’d already decided to get a new season ticket before the arrival of McLeish and although I thought twice after the appointment I still decided to get one and I don’t regret it at all, even after some poor results and dour football.
I will renew next season and I can’t see me giving it up again because my love for villa never died it just faded for a while and I live in hope McLeish will be gone sooner rather than later.
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Forget all the doom & gloom - the club have been recognised by no other than the legendary Lord Herman Ouseley-
Apparently we have been awarded the Advanced Level of the Equality Standard for our diversity policy and community work-
It's got me thinking what have I been doing and thinking for 55 years following Aston Villa ? - perhaps I am naive in the belief
it was about the ups downs and more downs, the relegations, promotions and trophies I have witnessed..............
Maybe it's all been a dream and I have just woken up and reality is sinking in -
As to whether I have 'lost the love' ...........no trips to Old Trafford Anfield Emirates in the next few weeks with a man leading us who believes we have lost before a ball is kicked...........McLeish has succeeded where others like Billy McNeil failed
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Doesn't this thread crop up every week?
I haven't had the 'love' for a long time, my other half mentioned the other day she could always tell how Villa had done by my mood, nowadays a last minute winner or defeat doesn't make the slightest difference to me. Granted i'm a miserable bugger most of the time but it's nothing to do with Villa and more to do with being a Yorkshireman.
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On the plus side, I've only watched MOTD half-a-dozen times this season. And needing to smash things to tiny pieces around 5pm most Saturdays means I've got quite a lot of firewood split.
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On the plus side, I've only watched MOTD half-a-dozen times this season.
That's a positive i take, too. I doubt i've even seen it half a dozen times in the last two years.
I have also been avoiding sports sections of newspapers for a while (this season and last).
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On the plus side, I've only watched MOTD half-a-dozen times this season.
That's a positive i take, too. I doubt i've even seen it half a dozen times in the last two years.
I have also been avoiding sports sections of newspapers for a while (this season and last).
In the space of a week that's the Villa, MOTD, sports sections of papers and pubs you've told us you do less of than you used to. Apart from telling us on here, what else do you do with all that spare time?
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On the plus side, I've only watched MOTD half-a-dozen times this season.
That's a positive i take, too. I doubt i've even seen it half a dozen times in the last two years.
I have also been avoiding sports sections of newspapers for a while (this season and last).
In the space of a week that's the Villa, MOTD, sports sections of papers and pubs you've told us you do less of than you used to. Apart from telling us on here, what else do you do with all that spare time?
I still watch the games, I've just managed to extract the non Villa bit of football from my routine.
I used to watch that thing on Sky, Sunday Supplement, when we were doing well, and even then, it managed to annoy me deeply.
Don't worry, I don't tend to do anything constructive with the extra time.
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I too have stopped watching Sunday Supplement as it gets my back up more than anything else in football. What a bunch of humorless twats they are. Trying to be so scientific about everything, trying to make out that every utterance which is mostly speculation is the most important revelation ever to be broadcasted. The show should be dumped or renamed 'Sky 4 and Tottenham discussion'.
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A friend of mine used to be a producer at Setanta and has some delicious stories of wanker football pundits being wankers.
Though my favourite was the time Kenny Sansom got a bollocking for turning up in a yellow and brown striped shirt. He explained that his wife had just thrown him out, and it was all he could find. He was on the verge of tears, apparently
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I think you are getting 'Sunday Supplement' mixed up with 'Goals on Sunday' Damon.
Sunday Supplement is 4 of your profession on the footballing side sitting around a table for an hour or so blethering on about Tottenham and Harry mainly.
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I too have stopped watching Sunday Supplement as it gets my back up more than anything else in football. What a bunch of humorless twats they are. Trying to be so scientific about everything, trying to make out that every utterance which is mostly speculation is the most important revelation ever to be broadcasted. The show should be dumped or renamed 'Sky 4 and Tottenham discussion'.
...and Man City.
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Though my favourite was the time Kenny Sansom got a bollocking for turning up in a yellow and brown striped shirt. He explained that his wife had just thrown him out, and it was all he could find. He was on the verge of tears, apparently
You don't want to fuck Kenny Sansom around though. Wasn't his dad an armed robber and suspected by the police of being involved in the Great Train Robbery?
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On the plus side, I've only watched MOTD half-a-dozen times this season. And needing to smash things to tiny pieces around 5pm most Saturdays means I've got quite a lot of firewood split.
I used to watch MOTD every week, read the match report of every game covered in The Times and watched loads of neutral games. I've knocked the first two on the head and only have neutral games on as background noise.
Still locked in that death struggle with the Villa mind.
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I can't get Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes 'The love I lost' out of my head.
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I can't get Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes 'The love I lost' out of my head.
Consider yourself lucky. I've had 'Rockabilly Rebel' going round in my head all bastard day.
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I can't get Harold Melvin and The Blue Notes 'The love I lost' out of my head.
Consider yourself lucky. I've had 'Rockabilly Rebel' going round in my head all bastard day.
AHHH those bastards.
Matchbox.
The lead singer looked about 60.
1980?
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Round about then I think.
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On the plus side, I've only watched MOTD half-a-dozen times this season.
That's a positive i take, too. I doubt i've even seen it half a dozen times in the last two years.
I have also been avoiding sports sections of newspapers for a while (this season and last).
In the space of a week that's the Villa, MOTD, sports sections of papers and pubs you've told us you do less of than you used to. Apart from telling us on here, what else do you do with all that spare time?
I still watch the games, I've just managed to extract the non Villa bit of football from my routine.
I used to watch that thing on Sky, Sunday Supplement, when we were doing well, and even then, it managed to annoy me deeply.
Don't worry, I don't tend to do anything constructive with the extra time.
Small children have gazumped the time I used to spend watching hours and hours of football.
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I'm just the opposite. I moved to London when I finished school in the late 80's and the year I was going to work down there to save enough money for college turned into just over 20 years including a bit overseas and I've only just come back. I used to go to all the games in London and Villa became a really important link back to the Midlands and home. Now i sit bouncing my baby boy on my knee and I'm positively misty eyed at being able to take him to the Villa in a few years and the fact that I live only 30 minutes drive away from VP fills my soul with joy.
As much as I love the club it takes on a different feeling over time. For me it affects my mood less on a day to day basis the older I get but it grows in my heart every year. I love going to a game and enjoying the VP community - makes me feel like I'm home. Wish we'd win a fu**ing game now and again though ;D
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I don't think i'll ever fall out of love with the Villa (well i hope not anyway) but if we lose, it dose'nt ruin my weekend. Nowadays it's a case of chat about it over a pint after the game or on the way back from wherever we've played away, then move on to the next one. Maybe it's me getting older, but i prefer it that way.
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I don't fall out of love with them. And with respect I do not think any of you do either. You have lost your ability to get angry with them. It will come back.
The worse they get and the more stupid the things done in the name of Aston Villa the more angry they make me. That anger has to find a way out and it does by going to a game. For a while I am calm until it starts to build up again.
I am addicted to Aston Villa and have been since that day in 1947 when I walked from Greet to Villa Park to see my first game. My oldest brother who is 87 stormed out of Villa Park when we lost 3-0 at home to Port Vale in 1957. He'll be back.
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I don't fall out of love with them. And with respect I do not think any of you do either. You have lost your ability to get angry with them. It will come back.
The worse they get and the more stupid the things done in the name of Aston Villa the more angry they make me. That anger has to find a way out and it does by going to a game. For a while I am calm until it starts to build up again.
I am addicted to Aston Villa and have been since that day in 1947 when I walked from Greet to Villa Park to see my first game. My oldest brother who is 87 stormed out of Villa Park when we lost 3-0 at home to Port Vale in 1957. He'll be back.
This.
I love this club. Born in Aston and always loved the Villa.
When we lose/play badly it upsets me for days and days and keeps me awake. Stupid I know but that's the way it is. At 57 years of age I'm still waiting to grow out of it!
Bugger!
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Although this and last season has knocked the stuffing out of me the Villa is still a massive part of my life, I dont go down as much now but when I do the walk to the ground after parking the car is still exciting, stopping off for a fanzine, having a look at my late Dads paver, and the biggest buzz of all is walking up the steps and seeing the stadium come into view, what happens after that is not quite so exciting but that is something we will have to live with for a while yet, I love them as much now as when I first fell in love with them in the 1960s, my love for non Villa related football matters has dipped but nothing changes regarding our wonderul VILLA.
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I've tried everything.
Getting new hobbies, leaving the country, moving to the other side of the world, the lot.
Didn't work.
If anything, it made me even more obsessive.
Maybe I'm just like one of those gullible, servile wags. Putting up with all manner of disappointment and bad behaviour and coming back for more. Only I don't get asked to design a fashion range for Asda.
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I love the Villa so much and still am glued to the footy news whenever I get the chance but like the love of your life, you go through ups and downs. The last two years and the foreseeable future are the equivilent to not talking to her for a few days, in the grand scheme of things. I still love her but i'm really pissed off with her at the moment.
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All the above.
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Having been taken to my first game as a five year old it's really part of my identity, it's part of who I am. That can never leave me and moving away has only made me realise this even more.
However, Brian is spot on, I find it harder to get angry about them now - I've accepted our fate as an also ran - that's the pity. Maybe it's part of the mellowing that getting older gives you.
I'm so bloody proud of our Club though. Whatever happens in our future we are the Villa and our history and traditions are set in stone.
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The game has just changed so much in the past decade and we have struggled to keep up, first under Doug and now with Randy.
Growing up, our last major trophies in 1994 and 1996 were always fresh in the memory and I felt we'd manage another before long. Now though, those successes are 18 and 16 years ago and it's hard to see us winning a trophy any time soon. It's just getting harder and harder to compete and its more difficult to find common cause with aveerage players who earn £60,000 a week.
Last season was supposed to be a transitional season towards finding players with the 'right' attitude etc. This season has been a retreat to the mid 1980s.
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I suppose the worst thing is my weekend is never ruined now when we lose, whereas it always used to be!
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I used to go to games with hope and belief that we'd win. I go to games now expecting not to win and to come away disappointed. I don't want these feelings anymore, I've been going 18 years, I think I need a break from it.
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Like lots have said, a few years back if we lost i would be so angry and upset for a good couple of days, now i just don't care. After the cup game v that lot last season i even had a good chat after the game with my best mate(a nose). I used to love going to Villa park, everything from the smell of the onions outside to watching good football played by 11 players who cared. It just isn't like that anymore. I would rather go to away games. I still take a lot of pride from the Villa, watching my 6 year old daughter at football training in her Villa kit fills me with pride, talking about the Villa to people down here who don't have a clue about football also makes me very proud. But the club as a whole have done nothing in the last couple of years to make me part with hard earned cash to go and watch them. However, have i lost the love? Nope, Villa till i diel.
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Though my favourite was the time Kenny Sansom got a bollocking for turning up in a yellow and brown striped shirt. He explained that his wife had just thrown him out, and it was all he could find. He was on the verge of tears, apparently
You don't want to fuck Kenny Sansom around though. Wasn't his dad an armed robber and suspected by the police of being involved in the Great Train Robbery?
Chico, I am pretty certain he was from a family of well known south London villains (small v in villains of course). Allegedly, legal disclaimer, etc.
My love for the Villa remains intact but it is easy to stay in a relationship when you are 5000 miles away and the only chance of a fling on the side is with the corrupt locals who make Chelsea and Emirates City look like the Corinthians.
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I love the Villa so much and still am glued to the footy news whenever I get the chance but like the love of your life, you go through ups and downs. The last two years and the foreseeable future are the equivilent to not talking to her for a few days, in the grand scheme of things. I still love her but i'm really pissed off with her at the moment.
well said that man....
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Sounds like you just want someone to convince you that everything will be hunky-dory as we're just on the cusp of greatness, well it won't,
its Villa, average is what we do best.
I think the last line should be our new club motto.
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Despite giving up the season ticket for next season, I still fully intend to get my Son down there and indoctrinate him in all ways Villa.
Poor sod.
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Despite giving up the season ticket for next season, I still fully intend to get my Son down there and indoctrinate him in all ways Villa.
Poor sod.
I'm reporting you to the RSPCC
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I simply have a feeling of apathy towards it at the moment.
Yeah same here, I wasn't remotely surprised or angry when Blackburn equalised at the weekend. There was a time when I'd have been in a rage all evening.
Yep , it used to ruin my weekend when we lost and stop me sleeping but the last 2 seasons have been utterly depressing culminating in the farcical way the club is being run by randy , faulkner and mcleish- i pray my pleasure at watching villa will return soon after these clowns have departed .
Until then i will watch on villa streams from the warmth of my living room .
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I simply have a feeling of apathy towards it at the moment.
Yeah same here, I wasn't remotely surprised or angry when Blackburn equalised at the weekend. There was a time when I'd have been in a rage all evening.
Yep , it used to ruin my weekend when we lost and stop me sleeping but the last 2 seasons have been utterly depressing culminating in the farcical way the club is being run by randy , faulkner and mcleish- i pray my pleasure at watching villa will return soon after these clowns have departed .
Until then i will watch on villa streams from the warmth of my living room .
I'm in awe at your fanatical, Villa Till I Die, devotion.
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Yes, it's a miracle we ever filled Jeff Taylor's coach for night games at Norwich in the mid-eighties.
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Yes, it's a miracle we ever filled Jeff Taylor's coach for night games at Norwich in the mid-eighties.
I was there through the glory and pain of the 80s and 90s but even after relegation never felt remotely as depressed about the club as i do now- then we had graham taylor arrive and a fresh start but now things just seem to be drifting aimlessly with little hope of improvement.
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You've stopped getting upset about it but this is the most depressed you've felt about the club?
Isn't that a bit of a contradiction in terms?
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You've stopped getting upset about it but this is the most depressed you've felt about the club?
Isn't that a bit of a contradiction in terms?
Never said ive stopped getting upset about it, but id rather pay £2 and be pissed off than £30 and be pissed off- of course im hurting at the state of the club but football is not the game i grew up loving , the game has changed for the worse and my weekends are no longer ruined if we lose- my expectations have dropped massively over the last 2 years .
The year we spent in the old 2nd division brings many fond memories and memorable days but this season has been dreadful and the football absolutely awful.
To those still going to the games this season i have the greatest respect for you and hope that tomorrow brings that much needed win we so need.
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I really couldnt give too much of a shit any more. Gambling is virtually the only pleasure i get from football these days.
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I simply have a feeling of apathy towards it at the moment.
Yeah same here, I wasn't remotely surprised or angry when Blackburn equalised at the weekend. There was a time when I'd have been in a rage all evening.
Yep , it used to ruin my weekend when we lost and stop me sleeping but the last 2 seasons have been utterly depressing culminating in the farcical way the club is being run by randy , faulkner and mcleish- i pray my pleasure at watching villa will return soon after these clowns have departed .
Until then i will watch on villa streams from the warmth of my living room .
Don't forget to turn the central heating down when the good times roll around again will you?
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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".
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Oh I don't know. If the Qataris rock up in May and say there's £300m for our new manager Guardiola to spend in the transfer window, I'm sure there'd be umpteen threads complaining 'it's all about money these days and the Villa are ruining football'.
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Oh I don't know. If the Qataris rock up in May and say there's £300m for our new manager Guardiola to spend in the transfer window, I'm sure there'd be umpteen threads complaining 'it's all about money these days and the Villa are ruining football'.
Not "if" the Qataris rock up in May, Perc, "when".
Oh yes.
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It's called "getting on" old son.
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the one good thing is that with all the negative responses on here most wont be there tomorrow and can keep their negativity to the confines of their own world instead of transferring it to a team that is short of confidence and doesnt want tossers booing their every mistake!,
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I still look forward to every game. I just read the post above and got an excited twinge in my stomach. It also makes and breaks my mood on a Saturday night.
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Tomorrow is another match day. No need to drum up negative support. We now seem to have a large group who seem to have a strange agenda.
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A win would help my mood towards them, not seeing one for four months isn't good and breeds all this negativity.
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the one good thing is that with all the negative responses on here most wont be there tomorrow and can keep their negativity to the confines of their own world instead of transferring it to a team that is short of confidence and doesnt want tossers booing their every mistake!,
Great post!
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My late brother was an avid supporter in late 60's onwards. Missed 4 games in two seasons when we were in the third division, home and away. Yet when we won the league division one, he only went to a handful of games as was bored with the modern day game at that time lol. He got his passion back a few years later and was a season ticket holder for another 15 years before he passed away. I love the club, but dont have the same passion as years ago and actually prefer watchign my 19 year old lad play on a Saturday now, but keep in touch with the score and get to the odd game
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the one good thing is that with all the negative responses on here most wont be there tomorrow and can keep their negativity to the confines of their own world instead of transferring it to a team that is short of confidence and doesnt want tossers booing their every mistake!,
Great post!
Just because some people have lost faith in the owner and manager does not make them tossers who boo their own players for every mistake - the last player i booed in a villa shirt was steve hodge , yes there is a lot of negativity but dont blame the fans for that , blame the men in charge !
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Tomorrow is another match day. No need to drum up negative support. We now seem to have a large group who seem to have a strange agenda.
Strange agenda or wanting whats best for their club? You seem happy with mcleish which is fair enough , but many others are not happy with the owner and manager and they are perfectly entitled to air their concerns- nothing strange about that , we all love the club and want aston villa to be successful .
Players wages and ticket prices mean that people have the right to expect better value for money than the product being delivered at home in particular this season and many have had enough of the drab negative stifling football on offer right now.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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This thread has made me want to go and buy a ticket. Thats the weird way that Villa affects you.
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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)
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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.
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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 .
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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.
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Lets hope we win today then !
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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!!!!!
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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.
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To be honest I think that people booed because NZog was being taken off not because Weimann coming on.
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Feels good a last minute winner, doesn't it?
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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.
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Fucking girlfriends more important than the Villa - I've heard it all now. Haven't you had many?
I wouldn't mind all this incessant whingeing if it didn't come across like a campaign to get us all to join them traipsing round the shops with a bird or whatever the fuck it is they do that's so much more exciting than being with their mates cheering the Villa.
They'll be back again when we don't need them.
Percy
I ve had lots. Some good some bad. Current one very decent. It pains me that I feel this way, but it's how it is. I was going to watch today ( not go) but went to the pub instead. I feel disloyal even saying that, but I m just being honest. I can't even get excited that we won today. I m truly gutted/ashamed about it but that's just how I feel :(
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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.
They can fake it but it has to be in the blood. That was a great moment.
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To be honest I think that people booed because NZog was being taken off not because Weimann coming on.
yep but the gaffer decision was right wasn't it
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To be honest I think that people booed because NZog was being taken off not because Weimann coming on.
yep but the gaffer decision was right wasn't it
Yes I agree. And I never boo incidentally.
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It's been a long time coming that feeling of victory. It feels good. To be honest it felt even better than the Chelsea win. That may well be because it was a slog and we won in the last minute, and indeed going so long without a win.
How good would it be to beat Bolton and win two on the bounce?
But as we know...Villa is a cruel mistress.
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I lost my love for it, when it became obvious that the rich men's playthings were killing US as a feeder club to them.
Man City was the final straw to me, in turning my back on the game. I could live with Man Utd and Chelsea, but not another team buying success.
Every time we'd get a young star to hope that we could build our team around, then the Barry/Milner/Young situation would arise again.
Soul destroying to see it happen annually.
This happened before the recent managerial debacles at Villa Park, which only serve to compound my judgement even more. Now I spend that money elsewhere on my familys enjoyment.
This comes with a heavy heart too. I loved going up every game.
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I just don't seem to be as passionate, win lose or draw I very rarely watch football first or MOTD.