We have gone from being a respected club of note with the name of a children's hospice on our shirt to being a complete basket case which promotes a chinese gambling organization
so the bard should have seen it coming!
... so the bard should have seen it coming!
Quoteso the bard should have seen it coming!Shakespeare Out!
It is almost impossible to overstate the damage done to Aston Villa in the last 21 months.During the time I have been following the Villa there have been terrible blows we have had to suffer but there has been nothing which compares with the series of hits we have taken recently. We have gone from being a respected club of note with the name of a children's hospice on our shirt to being a complete basket case which promotes a chinese gambling organization.The first blow was the departure of O'Neill. My own personal opinion is that it was premeditated and timed to cause the club as much damage as possible. O'Neill is not the sort of man to do things on a whim. I believe that there must have been clear signals that all was not well with him and the directors failed to pick up any of the storm warnings. Doug Ellis's spies would have had HDE informed of every straw in the wind. Our directors were either naive or incompetent or both.The second blow was that the club had to take a very large, undisclosed financial hit for its treatment of O'Neill without any public word ever being uttered in defence of the club. Of all the hits, this is the one which pains me most. The club was made to look ridiculous and toothless.The third blow was the loss of Houllier. The appointment of a man with heart problems into a massively stressful situation exacerbated by rampant player power disruption left behind O'Neill's tenure was a ticking timebomb which duly exploded.The fourth hit was the decision by the owner that the books had to be balanced. No harm in that. Money is money. The damage was caused by the instant change from big spending club with aging players on huge wages and very long contracts to cheap and cheerful club reliant upon cheap home grown players thrown into the deep end prematurely.The fifth torpedo amidships was the absurd pantomime of attempts to find a replacement for Houllier. It was a public relations cock up of monumental proportions and because it was such a shambles it led to -Disaster number six namely the appointment of Alex McLeish whose shortcomings and failings have been too well documented for me to elaborate upon them.The net result of these six whammies is the complete breakdown of trust between the club and its fanbase. The fans have been disregarded on an almost weekly basis and I think it will take years for that trust to be restored.No more free flags and scarves. Give us proper, open communication about what the club is doing and why it is doing it. If you want to keep the fans, trust them.If the club can once again start to treat the fans as intelligent responsible adults the healing process can begin. If it is more "Dunne Says Lay Off McLeish" PR bullshit things will never be the same again.
Well said my friend but be careful as to what you put on here as if you upset "certain people" they hold it against you.
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Topic: Six Whammies (Read 9647 times)
