PS Mr Lerner

[KevinGage]

Im absolutely shocked by this reaction! We are in a seriously dangerous position in the Premiership. The majority of our run in is against teams in the same situation, that most of you think are gimmes.  If we lose 6 of these, we then have to beat Arsenal away and Liverpool on the last day. If we lose 6 of these we will go down. We have a squad of players who our manager can select a starting XI from. Villa fans as a whole bemoaned the previous manager for burnout in March, and being so rigid in selection and formation. Our current manager is confident enought to change things every game. The game last night was lost in the first 4 minutes after an unfortunate mistake by Clark, not by the managers selection of International players. I think we played ok as a whole, we didnt create many chances granted, but City are a class act.
To react the way most of you are today, shows that you are fickle and can't really see whats staring you in the face, which is relegation.
Get ten points on the boards and things will look better, last night just came at the wrong time.

Wow.  Don't think I've seen a post so wide off the mark as this one. Have a read over it and think again. You can start with a dictionary definition of f!ickle, as you obviously don't know what it means. In keeping with most of the dounghnuts who try to brandish it about as some kind of insult.

If you had just been able to include 'so called Villa fans' in there somewhere, you'd have the cherry on the icing on the cake.

[KevinGage]

And just how many of you "proud" fans would be at the away game v Brighton next season?

...Close enough, I suppose.

[eastie]

This is the lowest feeling I remember in over 30 yrs, I can take being beaten and thrashed but being beaten before kick off with such a weakened team has now left me in a state of shock, I never saw it coming, I thought we had turned a corner and would give city a tough game with our strongest team , now I feel empty and I hope my appetite for the game returns by Saturday- the game as we knew it in the 70s and 80s has gone and it's all about money now- so very sad.

[Dave Cooper please]

We wont get relegated .............

That's what you keep saying, the reality is.....we might.

We won't though.

[DBTW]

It looks like your curly mop is covering your eys in this one Gagey, I think my point will be proven when Blues go down this season having won a trophy as a distraction.

I use the word fickle as a generalisation, and we inherited many a "modern day fan" (see what I did there? ) when Randy and MON first took over who seem to have huge expectations that had to achieved pretty much instantly. The older heads amongst us know that things don't work like that. Some saw the billionaire takeover and jumped to the conclusion that Aston Villa were going to oust Manchester United, Chelsea et al as the biggest spending power, and it became easy to pick Villa to follow. Now we're in transition, things aren't so easy going, and the negativity bandwagon is all to easy to jump on.

We need to give this manager time to change things, he is doing well, and behind the scenes things are so much different that when he took over, and all for the better.

[martyn ellis]

This is really an addition to my 'What is the point?' post on the post-match thread, but I think it is relevant here. Bringing in one or two new faces to suit tactics or to replace a jaded player within the same structure can definitely freshen up a team. Houllier has proved that he has the ability and willingness to do that several times this season. But making wholesale changes to the entire team never works, not for the newbies who 'get the chance to shine', not for the seniors left to get cold on the bench, nor for the fans who (if I take myself as an example) get that 'tingle' of anticipation before the game that something may just happen - only to be slapped down as the teamsheet comes through on the mobile. I can tell you I gave up caring as soon as I saw the team. If they want a practice game to try out the second string, then don't have it in the 5th round of the cup at Eastlands. As I said on the other thread, playing your strongest team on the back of a good result, of renewed belief, of a bit of continuity, can ensure a much better end to the season than the demoralisation and defeatism exhibited last night.

[Can Gana Be Bettered!?!?]

We wont get relegated .............

That's what you keep saying, the reality is.....we might.

We won't though.

Why not?

[Can Gana Be Bettered!?!?]

We had more chance of winning the Cup, had we put out a decent team, than we had of being relegated.

More chance of winning the cup? Chances are in the cup we'd have to play Man Utd or Arsenal (OK, Blues beat Arsenal, but 99 times out of 100 they would have lost) to win it and have beaten Man City, who we may well have lost to even if we'd played a proper team.

If you take that approach, there's no point trying to win the Cup, as you'd always have to play a decent side.

it's hard to see how, had we overcome City last night (and let's not forget - no Dzeko, no Johnson, no Milner, no Kompany themselves), we'd be in this position:

Birmingham v Bolton
Man Utd v Arsenal
Stoke v West Ham
Villa v Reading

Had we won last night, we'd be creaming our pants at that line up, but we gave up before we kicked a ball, so it's obviously time to downplay it.

Incidentally. Four days after Blues win a trophy against a better side than Man City, and look at them in the QF draw against fucking Bolton at home.

You missed my point. I think it's equally probable that we can qualify for Europe through the league as we could've won the cup. Call me an optimist, but that's what I think. Obviously you will eventually play a decent team (as we did last night, which people seem to forget) and you should always play your best team to try and beat them. I just think we've got as good a chance of finishing 6th. Last season we played one decent team in the FA Cup and lost, we also played one decent team in the Carling Cup, and lost. We qualified for Europe in the league. It's easier for us to qualify for Europe than win a cup.

What's the point in qualifying for Europe, though?

How seriously do we take that? If we'd been playing a Europa League match last night, what would we have done?

So then let's give up (if we haven't already).

[KevinGage]

This is really an addition to my 'What is the point?' post on the post-match thread, but I think it is relevant here. Bringing in one or two new faces to suit tactics or to replace a jaded player within the same structure can definitely freshen up a team. Houllier has proved that he has the ability and willingness to do that several times this season. But making wholesale changes to the entire team never works, not for the newbies who 'get the chance to shine', not for the seniors left to get cold on the bench, nor for the fans who (if I take myself as an example) get that 'tingle' of anticipation before the game that something may just happen - only to be slapped down as the teamsheet comes through on the mobile. I can tell you I gave up caring as soon as I saw the team. If they want a practice game to try out the second string, then don't have it in the 5th round of the cup at Eastlands. As I said on the other thread, playing your strongest team on the back of a good result, of renewed belief, of a bit of continuity, can ensure a much better end to the season than the demoralisation and defeatism exhibited last night.

Exactly Martyn.

Last night's surrender might actually harm our chances in the league. We didn't need a further dent to morale when it looked like we had just started to gain a bit of momentum, and a self inflicted one at that.

[Can Gana Be Bettered!?!?]

We're currently on 33 points with 10 games left.  Win them ALL and we finish on 63, which is more or less top 6 vacinity.

Unfortunately, we're NOT going to win all our remaining games hence we won't be 6th.

Fair enough, but the other teams vying for that position will also NOT win all their games. Lvierpool lose to Man Utd and we win, we're 3 points behind, we then beat Liverpool, we're 3 points behind, and that's just two games.

The bottom up will have more points than usual and the top down will have less than usual.

[DB]

And just how many of you "proud" fans would be at the away game v Brighton next season?

...Close enough, I suppose.

Hmmm, it's a bit extremem to presume that if we had played our 1st choice team last night we may be playing Brighton.  With the chance of winning the FA cup, I would have expected us to play our best players, even with a slight chance 1 of them could have got injured last night.

As for the fans, it's not just last night GH pissed off, what about the rest that attended earlier rounds? If we new he doesn't give a f*ck about the FA cup this season, then I wouldn't have paid to watch B-burn.

[DBTW]

Maybe i'm the lone nutter here, but i've been to every round of the cup this season and understand what GH did last night.

They aren't bad players, they are all good players and deserved the chance.

[Meanwood Villa]

What Houllier did was unforgiveable and anyone defending it, well I'm baffled. Does not being in the cup mean you're suddenly relegation-proof? Look how well we maintained our position in the Champions League places after our surrender in Moscow. A run like that and we will go down.

[Concrete John]

It's not matter of understanding it, it's a matter of agreeing with it.

It's not that the players were bad, it's that there were better ones on the bench.

It's not that we lost, it's that he didn't give us a fighting chance of winning.

[usav]

It's not matter of understanding it, it's a matter of agreeing with it.

It's not that the players were bad, it's that there were better ones on the bench.

It's not that we lost, it's that he didn't give us a fighting chance of winning.

The better ones on the bench would not have prevented the first goal, but it's hard to say how the game would have panned out after that.

The point is, he put a team out that he was hoping would sneak a result, it backfired, badly.   I can see why he did it, I don't like it or agree with it, but on another day they might have grabbed a draw and things would be completely different here today.