Supporter behaviour towards own players

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Last night one thing really caught my attention. Benteke failed to control a ball around the half way line and there was a huge collective groan from the Villa fans. Thinking about it, I'd say we've been doing it for ever. I guess it's just a 'Villa thing'.

[Zakk Fatt]

I love the Villa and support the club through all the good and bad times, I start every game positive with a clean slate and look forward to seeing the lads try their very best to win every ball and die out there for my beloved club.

But they don't, so I start to see the failings and the gaps, the inept nature of the tactics and the things the players should be doing but are incapable or even worse are not interested in trying.

If you play for or manage Aston Villa we deserve the following four things:

1. You have to be good enough to face any team in the world and give a decent account of yourself.
2. You need to be fearless.
3. You need to believe completely in the ability of yourself and your team mates to win the game for 95 minutes.
4. You have to be willing to kill yourself trying.

Any player or manager showing these four traits can miskick a ball, make mistakes, have a couple of bad games and generally be seen as a decent human being with all the courtesy and respect that deserves.

Anyone else not showing these traits should not be playing for Aston Villa and deserves nothing from me and if they are out there and being utter rubbish then I will let them know what I think, I'm helping to pay their wages and they take my money and spunk it on flash cars, big houses and page 3 girls, they owe me, it isn't the other way around.  They owe me big time.

They owe you too so sit silent if you want and whince when the fans around you turn negative and hostile but remember these people love the Villa just as much (or maybe more than) you do. 

It isnt about power it is about frustration, passion and love for our once great club that is now a rich Yanks deductable tax loss system and a laughing stock to anyone who understands British football.

[aj2k77]

To be fair in the last 2 years we've seen 6 home wins in 30 games and only 28 goals. There aren't many other teams in the whole league with a worse home record than this, add it to players wages rising, ticket prices rising and supporters generally facing wage freezes or job losses then you're building up a lot of frustration.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

It's nothing new, our home form has been poor for so long, it's surprising so many still turn up.

I put together the stats here: http://www.heroesandvillains.info/forumv3/index.php?topic=44478.0

[Fin Feds Dad]

Add to that record defeat -  followed by most embarrassing defeats in our 139 year history , they aint getting half the shit they should be.

Gutless bunch of wankers.

[royvilla949]

i have supperted villa over 60 years we have always had a moan we pay our money so we are entitled to moan by the way this is one of the worst sides i have seen at villa park for many a year

[Ron Manager]

I agree it used to go on back then, but it seems so much worse these days.

Perhaps it just seems worse because there's no getting away from it in all-seated grounds or, like has been pointed out, the gulf between players and fans is now bigger than ever and so any negative feeling is magnified.

Have we ever been this bad before though? Even in 86-87 I don't remember us being this appalling.

We spent two years in division three in the 70s, we've been much worse. We've got the basis of a half decent side but they desperately need some help.

In the year that we were relegated to Division 3 we were far worse than we are now and I don't recall players being overly abused, or if they were it was in a slightly good natured way since they had been crap for such a long time that we were well past anger, and it was more like just stating the bleeding obvious. It was probably because we had been appalling for such a long time that those of us supporters who were still left had a black but sort of good humoured air of resignation about events. In fact, so much so that I bought my first season ticket the following season. (I was young and optimistic then - although it did turn out that I was right to be)

It's also fortunate that those who complain today about lack of communication from the club weren't around then, since communication with fans hadn't been invented then, apart from some poor hack from the Birmingham Mail who had to find stories every week from somewhere.

Yes we had to rely on Dennis Shaw to find out what was going on at the Club.

[Pete3206]

i have supperted villa over 60 years we have always had a moan we pay our money so we are entitled to moan by the way this is one of the worst sides i have seen at villa park for many a year

I agree. We have a Chairman that's nowhere to be seen, a manager with seemingly no tactical idea, a club free falling into relegation and no chance of strengthening the squad that's desperately short on quality in midfield and defence. Add to that, several players with big time Charlie attitudes, that aren't fit to wear the shirt, earning vasts amounts of money and taking the piss out supporters that continue to shell out a small fortune in the vain hope that things are going to improve.

Fans are getting very angry.

[danlanza]

i have supperted villa over 60 years we have always had a moan we pay our money so we are entitled to moan by the way this is one of the worst sides i have seen at villa park for many a year

I agree. We have a Chairman that's nowhere to be seen, a manager with seemingly no tactical idea, a club free falling into relegation and no chance of strengthening the squad that's desperately short on quality in midfield and defence. Add to that, several players with big time Charlie attitudes, that aren't fit to wear the shirt, earning vasts amounts of money and taking the piss out supporters that continue to shell out a small fortune in the vain hope that things are going to improve.

Fans are getting very angry.

And rightly so. You ask a Family who go to every home game, travel,tickets,shirts,programs and refreshments what percentage of their disposable income is spent watching the crap they are having to endure. People tend to react when they have to pay to have the piss taken out of them week after week. Do the players give a shit ? On the whole, i think not. And as for the Chairman, well, not a lot to say on that. It is bloody obvious.

[Witton Warrior]

The Villa were, for a time, the closest thing I had to a family in the late 70's and I have always felt my affiliation to this team more strongly than to most of my relations. This is a ridiculous state of affairs for a grown man but there it is.

To experience the year-on-year let down and decline; the loss of hope however ill-placed and devoid of a basis in reality; to finally have the finances to allow my son and myself to enjoy time together and to be served up with this junk makes me sick.

Shout at them? They should consider themselves lucky to be shouted at by me and thousands of others paying to watch them live out their dream of being a "professional" footballer earning a couple of years salary for the average person in a week.

Fuck 'em

[Zakk Fatt]

Yeah F%ck 'em, see on Tuesday in the Holtel fella and we'll do it all again. x

[SoccerHQ]

The atmosphere sounded great last night on the whole.

You'll always get idiots in the crowd who seem to have a crusade against individual players, it's the same in any large crowd.

[PeterWithe]

For all the stick Bannan got last night we looked a darn sight poorer after he went off. One of my criticisms of PL in the pub after was that he reacted to the crowds feeling toward Bannan and Bennett, took them off and destroyed any chance we had of gettin the ball to the shed load of forwards he now had on the field.

[Billy Walker]

Something that arised out of last night's game for me, and to be fair has been bugging me for a while now.

Is the era of fans being complete arseholes to their own players during a game a relatively new thing or has it always gone on? It certainly seems much worse these days than it ever used to be. I'm all for giving players the bird at full time but during a game it seems counter-productive.

I'm particularly interested in the opinions of those who would use the seats even pre-Taylor report, back as far as when I first started going to games regularly in the mid-1980s.

There's not a game that goes by it seems when someone is barking abuse at our own players. The three arseholes in the row behind me last night seemed to be particularly targetting Bannan, Ireland and N'Zogbia. In the past, in the days of terracing it would be possible to move away, but thats not the case now, hence my interest in answers from people who've always used seats.

The scapegoating, the finger pointing, the barracking of our own players, it's always been the way at Villa Park when things seriously don't go our way.  I can't stand it to be honest and fear it could destroy some of our younger players.  I suppose the other way of looking at it is that it sifts out the weak from the mentally strong but it doesn't half make Villa Park a wretched, poisonous place to visit.  Imagine trying to play football with a baying mob on your back? 

[Billy Walker]

Have a look at Dave Woodhall's book that mentions the vile abuse that Joe Mercer received, not to mention being pelted with rubbish.

I didn't know about this.  I often wonder what Villa fans of that generation thought when genial Joe led Man City to the league title and so on not so long after his Villa stint?