Aston Villa v Newcastle United Post-Match Thread

[PeterWithesShin]

Looking it up like I did is an easy way to see that they don't.

We do have an anomaly where our attendances often improve through a season regardless of how good or shit we are, but I don't accept our fans on holiday as a reason why when no other club in the region or country seems to have thousands on holiday. Which is my point as I can't see why only Villa fans are away.

[Toronto Villa]

43k at Sunderland today

[PeterWithesShin]

Not being a Bookie I will offer you a straight £10 bet that it won't be 0-0 and another tenner that it will be over 30K?

So I can bet you a £10 to win a £10 or I can put that bet with a bookie who will pay me £90 when it ends 0-0. Erm let me think about that .

Why not do both if you are so confident?

Conversely if Aftab is so confident he could offer bookies odds as it is free money. Works both ways.

[kippaxvilla2]

I am pretty sure Sunderland give away thousands of tickets each week to local schools etc.

[olaftab]

Conversely if Aftab is so confident he could offer bookies odds as it is free money. Works both ways.

I didn't get mediocrely wealthy by offering those sorts of odds to any Tom, Dick or Harjinder!

[PeterWithesShin]

Conversely if Aftab is so confident he could offer bookies odds as it is free money. Works both ways.

I didn't get mediocrely wealthy by offering those sorts of odds to any Tom, Dick or Harjinder!

Who gets the vig?

[olaftab]

Vig is added to my overdraft!

[pauliewalnuts]

I think our overall match day fan base is poor. Even when we were skirting around 3/4 mid seasons in 2007/8/9 we didn't sell out other than when GH's turned up. That's the most disappointing thing about our city.

It isn't all about full houses, during that period we would get 40k plus against the likes of West Ham or Newcastle. In fact, in 2008/9 we got a full house against Newcastle.

Yesterday we just scraped 30,000. That's an awful crowd, even compared to attendances last season, and let's not forget, Newcastle brought 3,000 fans with them, a lot of clubs will not.

I think this season we'll have less than 30k for a number of matches. I don't blame anyone for not bothering these days. Why should the fans bother when the owner quite clearly doesn't give much of a shit, and clearly hasn't for two or three years now?

People aren't stupid. They can sniff out a lack of ambition a mile off.

[silhillvilla]

Not being a Bookie I will offer you a straight £10 bet that it won't be 0-0 and another tenner that it will be over 30K?

So I can bet you a £10 to win a £10 or I can put that bet with a bookie who will pay me £90 when it ends 0-0. Erm let me think about that .

Why not do both if you are so confident?

No problem if the odds are ok but it's not evens . I will accept 6's possibly 5's.

[Toronto Villa]

I think our overall match day fan base is poor. Even when we were skirting around 3/4 mid seasons in 2007/8/9 we didn't sell out other than when GH's turned up. That's the most disappointing thing about our city.

It isn't all about full houses, during that period we would get 40k plus against the likes of West Ham or Newcastle. In fact, in 2008/9 we got a full house against Newcastle.

Yesterday we just scraped 30,000. That's an awful crowd, even compared to attendances last season, and let's not forget, Newcastle brought 3,000 fans with them, a lot of clubs will not.

I think this season we'll have less than 30k for a number of matches. I don't blame anyone for not bothering these days. Why should the fans bother when the owner quite clearly doesn't give much of a shit, and clearly hasn't for two or three years now?

People aren't stupid. They can sniff out a lack of ambition a mile off.

Owners, managers, players come and go. It's our club and we should support it. Newcastle have had worse than us in terms of success, owners, managers etc across their history yet their fans still show up in huge numbers. I can understand people being fed up but they would have been fed up last season when things were properly in the toilet and then never. It's deeper than it just being the owner. I wonder if people have just lost interest.

[pauliewalnuts]

The statistics do not lie. In the last three years, this is our home record.

Played 57
Won 15
Drew 15
Lost 27

Scored 65
Conceded 82

Points available: 171.
Points won: 60.

You don't have to be wearing a deerstalker hat and have a friend called Watson to figure out why crowds are taking a hit, given that.

Is there another club which has been in the top flight all that time and has a worse home record than that? I doubt it.

[pauliewalnuts]

I think our overall match day fan base is poor. Even when we were skirting around 3/4 mid seasons in 2007/8/9 we didn't sell out other than when GH's turned up. That's the most disappointing thing about our city.

It isn't all about full houses, during that period we would get 40k plus against the likes of West Ham or Newcastle. In fact, in 2008/9 we got a full house against Newcastle.

Yesterday we just scraped 30,000. That's an awful crowd, even compared to attendances last season, and let's not forget, Newcastle brought 3,000 fans with them, a lot of clubs will not.

I think this season we'll have less than 30k for a number of matches. I don't blame anyone for not bothering these days. Why should the fans bother when the owner quite clearly doesn't give much of a shit, and clearly hasn't for two or three years now?

People aren't stupid. They can sniff out a lack of ambition a mile off.

Owners, managers, players come and go. It's our club and we should support it. Newcastle have had worse than us in terms of success, owners, managers etc across their history yet their fans still show up in huge numbers. I can understand people being fed up but they would have been fed up last season when things were properly in the toilet and then never. It's deeper than it just being the owner. I wonder if people have just lost interest.

Newcastle are an oddity. Although they haven't had the sort of record we have over the last three years.

It isn't just the owner, and I wouldn't suggest it is, but if people are losing interest, is anyone surprised, given the fact the owner has also lost it?

We've spent, what, 6.5m or so this window. We've signed Senderos and Cole on frees, Richardson on a nominal fee, Sanchez for 4.5 or so and Cissokho for 2 ish.

Regardless of how they've done over an extremely small sample of two matches, how many of us, back in May when the last season ended, would have thought that that would be enough?

And what's more, how many of us really think the club is ambitious? Do any of us think the home record this season is going to be markedly different this season?

There isn't even any talk of ambition from the top any more, let alone evidence of it. Who can blame people for not bothering?

We are slightly lifted at the moment as we've paid money for a couple of players, but it looks suspiciously like the ambition of the club consists of staying up and not a lot more than that.

[Richard E]

Does this make 25% of our support glory-hunters?

[Toronto Villa]

are you suggesting there is a direct correlation between money spent and ambition? Because I'm not sure any club outside the top 5 to 6 have ambitions much beyond staying in the PL irrespective of what they spend or what they might say. In fact it would be interesting to know what say Newcastle or Sunderland as examples consider their goals and ambitions to be. I've never heard their boards publicly state their ambitions. Is there are charter or something on their OS that tells fans what their ambition is going into a season? And even those clubs that do get to 6th or 7th really don't want to be there because it is no man's land and what they are left with is a good season, a good position and the prospect of the Europa League the year after that they try and eliminate themselves from as soon as possible by playing weakened line ups. Does any club publicly state they want to finish 6th or 7th?

It's plain for all to see that we have a terrible home record over the past few seasons and that our net spend has not been what any of us had hoped, but does that translate to our ambition relative to those around us being any different? I think more depressingly it is a statement on football as it is today at this level than about ambition, which for me is the same for all clubs outside the obvious few.

[pauliewalnuts]

are you suggesting there is a direct correlation between money spent and ambition? Because I'm not sure any club outside the top 5 to 6 have ambitions much beyond staying in the PL irrespective of what they spend or what they might say. In fact it would be interesting to know what say Newcastle or Sunderland as examples consider their goals and ambitions to be. I've never heard their boards publicly state their ambitions. Is there are charter or something on their OS that tells fans what their ambition is going into a season? And even those clubs that do get to 6th or 7th really don't want to be there because it is no man's land and what they are left with is a good season, a good position and the prospect of the Europa League the year after that they try and eliminate themselves from as soon as possible by playing weakened line ups. Does any club publicly state they want to finish 6th or 7th?

It's plain for all to see that we have a terrible home record over the past few seasons and that our net spend has not been what any of us had hoped, but does that translate to our ambition relative to those around us being any different? I think more depressingly it is a statement on football as it is today at this level than about ambition, which for me is the same for all clubs outside the obvious few.

if it is a statement about football in general, how come everyone else didn't record an abysmal crowd yesterday?

What tells me there isn't any ambition is the fact that for three years we've signed almost exclusively cheap, young players, who have proved to be not up for it, and are currently in another summer of not spending much money (the constant refrain 'it's about the wage bill' is never far away).

I appreciate you like to put a glossy sheen on things, but I fail to see how anyone can think we have much in the way of ambition any more. The club have stopped talking about it, and have stopped acting like we have any.

Of course there is a link between spending an ambition - it is certainly very hard to suggest you are ambitious when you don't spend money. I don't care what the club does or does not say, the proof of the pudding is how we act, and our actions of the last three years have been of significant financial cut backs and scrimping.

Also, for us, in the background, the owner has said he's lost interest and wants to sell.

I don't think it can be any clearer. That's a bit part of the reason we just scraped 30k in our first home game of the season against a club who brought 3k with them yesterday.

Why do you think we've spent 6-7m this summer, despite the huge amount of telly money incoming? Why do you think we've signed a 33 year old Joe Cole? What do you think that says about where we're aiming in the wider scheme of things?

For three years, it has been about our chairman slowly backing his way out of the door. I understand the reasons why he has done / is doing it, but the flip side of that is that I am not going to pretend it isn't happening. It quite clearly is.