Relegation Possibility

[Ads]

Relegation would be a disaster that would take us a generation to recover from. The idea of it is vomit inducing.

[PaulWinch again]

I can see both sides of the relegation argument, but I think in the end it would be a disaster for us to go down. Under the current leadership we'd end up like Forest or Sheff Wed rather than say Newcastle. We need to stay up and then the board need to wake up and come up with a proper plan, realise how lucky we were to survive and how close we came. They need to sack Mcleish, and get in a manager who can unite the club and fans. 

[richard moore]

Relegation would be a disaster that would take us a generation to recover from. The idea of it is vomit inducing.

I agree in many ways but so, quite frankly, is the thought of wallowing around in about 14th place in the Premier League in front of 28,000 fans and a half-empty ground, that twat as our manager and watching journeymen pros such as Warnock and Collins being paid thousands when they can barely kick a ball straight over a distance of about 20 yards. An equally vomit inducing thought as far as I am concerned...

[brian green]

Thank you for your kind comments.

The worst thing about relegation I dreamed last night.   I woke up screaming at my wardrobe.

If we are relegated, within minutes of the final whistle of whichever game seals our fate a microphone will be thrust in front of O'Neill and his words will be "I get no satisfaction from the relegation of Aston Villa....."

[NeilH]

Relegation would be a disaster that would take us a generation to recover from. The idea of it is vomit inducing.

This, 100 times over.

[Ads]

It's better to be shit in the top flight than to be a total non-entity in the forgotten swamps of the football league.

[NeilH]

If we are relegated, within minutes of the final whistle of whichever game seals our fate a microphone will be thrust in front of O'Neill and his words will be "I get no satisfaction from the relegation of Aston Villa....."

That's possibly the most sobering comment about relegation I've read so far. I get a knot in my stomach just thinking about that scenario.

[Clampy]

If we were to get relegated, the last thought on my my mind would be what Martin O'Neil would have to say, i really could'nt give a shit.

[itbrvilla]

I do not want to see Villa relegated.   The pain would be unbearable.   In addition my age makes it more than likely I shall never see them back in the top half dozen teams in the land.

However, I am coming closer and closer to the opinion that it will take relegation to have a sufficiently drastic effect on the governance of the club to cure us of the sickness which grips us.

What is happening to us is what is happening to top level football in the country generally but writ large.   We have ceased to be a football club and have become a product.

As football moves further and further away from its cultural and geographic roots and seeks to become part of the entertainment industry, more and more clubs are being run along contemporary business lines which dictate that they have to be "marketed".

That is the canker which has eaten away at our club.   We have a naive owner who has never really understood the way we feel about our clubs in this country.   He has appointed directors who have no feel for or understanding of the fact that football does not obey the conventions of business.  Why else would so many of us have paid Doug Ellis £11 each for shares in Villa which were not worth a fifth of that sum?   Neither do the directors have any football nous.  The owner does not believe that they need any.   They are in place to run a business.

They and the owner have squandered twelve millions pounds in pursuit of a replacement for O'Neill but neither they, nor the current man of their choice is held to account for their monumental blundering.

As I said in another thread, because the directors and the owner absorb their knowledge of what is happening to Villa via the media the comment in yesterday's Daily Mirror that the fans (implying all the fans all the time) have been on McLeish's back since he arrived,   that media lie and all the others like it will carry much more weight in the Villa boardroom than anything we say or do.   

The manager is what he is, a man of unimpressive record completely out of his depth in the premiership.   He stays in place because the media says we the fans hate him for where he came from and because the owner was personally involved in appointing him.

If the club is to be re-born, it has to be utterly purged of the concept that it is a product to be sold and that the loyal fans are nothing more than a crop to be harvested.   Such has to be the depth of the purge that we have to get back to the basics of taking into consideration whether a player like Emile Heskey should be signed when he has always been a figure of contempt and ridicule by the fans.   In the new dawn which may or may not break through the Astonian Gloom (epic couplet) if say, Craig Gardner was available in the summer whoever is in charge has to consider if that player's provocative and hostile comments about Aston Villa make him a suitable player to wear the shirt.   To ignore such implications is to perpetuate the concept that the fans will turn up however they are treated.   To respect the fact that the bedrock fans have expectations of behaviour and loyalty from players paid such obscene sums of money is where the rebuilding must begin.

I think we may just scrape out of the bottom three this season but that in itself will only make matters worse if the sickness which ails our club is carried into next season.   I see Sid and KMac being in charge by Christmas, nearly two years too late.

spot on Brian. The board never had a plan, just spend till we ended up in a mess.

[ktvillan]

I know what you mean Paul but I'd guess the Newcastle fans thought the same about Ashton, that they would sink like a stone under his stewardship.

[Legion]

Excellent Brian.

[bertlambshank]

Difference is Ashton has worked for his money.All Randy has done is lose it big.

[Steve67]

Football has always been a business.  Ellis took loads out of the club without putting a great deal back in.  Randy has put some of his own money in but has also set up loan accounts so he gets his cash back.  I doubt many people on here thought about the business side of things when MON was forking out shitloads for a pile of old crap.  Unfortunately, due to Randy's poor handling of affairs in the early days of hs tenure, the business element of football has become polarised.

That said, Randy might actually start making some money against by sacking McLeish as I think this will galvanise the fans and re-ignite the interest that has been lost.

[Toronto Villa]

Brian, as much as I agree with a lot of that, I have to take you up on giving the fans too much say. If for example you signed players always taking into consideration the opinion of fans, then the question needs to be asked "which fans?". How do you get an adequate sample size to assume you have captured the pulse. Take your Craig Gardner as an example. Now I think he's a decent squad player who might add 5-8 goals a season. There are others who think like me. Then there are those that don't rate him at all. Then there are those who think he is a 'nose wanker. Who's opinion is correct? How can the board/manager ever know if the player they are after will receive universal approval. If we know anything, there is no way to ever know that. The theory of fan inclusion in ultimately what is a business decision to, one would hope, better the team/squad can only have marginal fan input otherwise we'd never sign anyone.

I think as fans we have been forgotten, which is exactly the opposite of what they set out to do. Our questions are genuine, the answers are canned and deliberate. I've forgotten what it is like to listen to my manager knowing he has a fire in his belly that transmits itself to the players. Saturday comes and I'm walking around with a permanent shrug that as much as I hate us losing, they've made not really give a shit anymore. Because the give that impression too. I don't want to support a team that every season sets it's stall out to be ok. To float and bob along as big ships and sometimes little ones pass by and we just get a gob full of spray in their wake. That's how it feels right now. I want to hear my manager say "we're going out to win every game" as opposed to "we can't compete with xxxxx" or "we'll give it our best shot" Fuck off with comments like that. Lie to me even. Just don't make me not want you any more.

[mal]

It's better to be shit in the top flight than to be a total non-entity in the forgotten swamps of the football league.

Anyone who was Villa in the seventies would have to disagree with this. That said, the ever present tag is something to be proud of if we can hold on to it for long enough...