Villa Park

[dave.woodhall]

Dullard that I am I have worked out that the 16K game v Man Utd in 1958 took place on a Monday, not a Bank Holiday either. Presumably re-arranged in the wake of Munich.

Possibly, or it could have been re-arranged due to cup commitments, or even postponed because of the weather. I don;t know why we played our midweek games on Mondays, but I know a man who almost certainly does.

[Witton Warrior]

Similarly, there was a game against - I think - Bolton in - I think - the first MON season, think it was a Saturday night match, shit sub 30k crowd, and there were some blokes in that funny executive bit between the Trinity and Holte who started acting as cheerleaders to get some atmosphere going.

Those were Steamers and Hardcore weren't they?
Having a day out in the community ;-)

[robbo1874]

This could be part of the reason:

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/oct/29/pochettino-pitch-size-does-matter

There was a list in the Mail the other day that had us, Man. City and Man. United as the three biggest pitches in the league. The likes of Chelsea and Spurs had pitches that were 3-5 yards smaller in area than we did.

I don't see it as an advantage to have a big pitch when we're horrible in possession and don't really play with wingers anymore like in the MON days. We weren't great at home back then either but at least we did batter a few teams a season, Bolton used to annually come here and plant their defence on the halfway line for some bizzare reason.

Danny Murphy said on MOTD last season when asked about our poor home form he always like playing at VP due to the big pitch. Dean Ashton on Talksport the other night was talking about the size aswell.

Other than that it's what others are saying, opposition teams like playing here. Man. United, Liverpool and Arsenal have ridiculous longstanding winning records here so they never are fearful of defeat when they turn up here as long as they play properly unlike saying going to somewhere like Stoke.

That and we never believe we're going to win at home with any regularity, even after 4 points from Newcastle and Hull which was a decent start we just can't build on it and get some momentum going.

Stoke and West Ham both lost their first two home games this season. Stoke responded with 7 points from 9 and West Ham have won their last three, both will be close to 10 home wins this season.

if the size of the pitch is such a problem we can always make it smaller. You can't make it bigger, but you can bring in the touch lines if you want to make it smaller ffs.