Whats the point ?

[dave.woodhall]

I take it nobody bemoaning the current situation wants us taken over by a zillionaire.

[Richard E]

I take it nobody bemoaning the current situation wants us taken over by a zillionaire.

I'd be happy for us to be taken over by an ISIS/Nazi Party joint consortium if they win us the FA Cup.

[Dave Pountney]

"Youre talking crap mate

Agree re Mcleish but we all wanted Lambert at the time. Randy was fleeced by Pube head  and rightly has reigned in the spending. We would have been bust otherwise.

The Delph issue is down to the player himself. The club are blameless"

You don't get it, do you? Delph is no better or worse a person than your average Premiership player. In fact, he comes over as a likeable and genuine bloke whenever I've heard him speak. He just didn't want to carry on playing for the Villa and somebody made him a better offer. The same can be said of Milner, Barry, Cahill, Young and Downing. Benteke will be next out of the door too, although I suspect he's one of your more typical big time Charlie footballers who senses greener grass elsewhere wherever he plies his trade. Two good seasons at Liverpool and he and his agent will convince themselves that Barcelona is the next logical step. He'd have gone from the Villa two years ago if he hadn't picked up a serious injury. Let's just be thankful we had him long enough to keep us up and we've made £25 million out of him.

Well run clubs would be able to keep Delph and have persuaded him to stay. If you can't see that the Villa have become a shambles under Lerner, where the hell have you been these last five years. Forget the clowns like Falkner, McLeish, Lambert etc who've come and gone; Lerner is the common thread that runs through the club's disastrous decline into irrelevance.

[Hopadop]

One day the sun will consume the solar system and none of it will matter.

Three nanoseconds before we win the FA cup.

No chance. The sun thing is due in about 7.5 billion years' time which is way too early to expect us to be on the cusp of winning the FA Cup.

By which time I expect we'll be in space, observing the incineration of our planet. The destruction of all we hold dear, all we ever cherished. An anguished moment in time stretching through countless aeons as the very fabric of space and time is rent asunder.

Just like Spurs away under McLeish.

[paulcomben]

We are being screwed over beyond precedent. Even our esteemed leader must wonder why the fuck anyone would buy a season ticket for this level of pure reaming.

[Jimbo]

We are being screwed over beyond precedent. Even our esteemed leader must wonder why the fuck anyone would buy a season ticket for this level of pure reaming.

Right now supporting Villa is like being endlessly reamed by a randy bull elephant. Eventually the beast tires, but then you realise his mate is waiting to take over.

[dave.woodhall]

We are being screwed over beyond precedent. Even our esteemed leader must wonder why the fuck anyone would buy a season ticket for this level of pure reaming.

Right now supporting Villa is like being endlessly reamed by a randy bull elephant. Eventually the beast tires, but then you realise his mate is waiting to take over.

No hyperbole there, oh no.

[Madferret62]

One day the sun will consume the solar system and none of it will matter.

Three nanoseconds before we win the FA cup.

No chance. The sun thing is due in about 7.5 billion years' time which is way too early to expect us to be on the cusp of winning the FA Cup.

By which time I expect we'll be in space, observing the incineration of our planet. The destruction of all we hold dear, all we ever cherished. An anguished moment in time stretching through countless aeons as the very fabric of space and time is rent asunder.

Just like Spurs away under McLeish.

We'll be watching highlights of Mars Megoliths v Cenus' Volcanoes in the semi-final of the Earth memorial cup. The Tories will have redrawn the celestial boundaries and declared new fixed term parkiaments of 1000 Plutonian years. Bruce Forsyth will be presenting Match of the Day and Sky will have changed Villa's fixtures to be played every other year at midnight ib three feet of snow. On the olus side Delph will re-sign for us.

[saunders_heroes]

Another Villa shambles, laced with the usual mix of incompetence and lies. I agree with all the sentiments expressed about the state of the English game, and its money obsessed lack of morality, but ask yourselves this question; why does this sort of thing keep happening to the Villa? The club is dying through serial mis-management. We've got a hopeless and semi-detached owner who can't even sell the club in a semi-competent way. Every transfer we try and undertake is nearly always botched or takes five weeks to complete. We can't seem to negotiate contracts with our better players without them and their agents inserting release and escape clauses. We can't get rid of the dross, players bought for ludicrous transfer fees and put on ridiculous long term and lucrative contracts, and we can't attract quality players. Every close season is a fiasco with all the talk concentrated on who's leaving. We never get on the front foot, it's always negative and defensive fire-fighting. Utterly hopeless, and before we round on Delph and Benteke, the real culprit, the almost impossibly useless Randy Lerner, sits in his faraway mansion fiddling while his club burns.

I leave you with this thought. What decision or action has Lerner taken these last five disastrous years that has proved to be a good and insightful one and that has benefited our club? This is the man who gave us McLeish and Lambert ,remember, and has presided over the most calamitous run of results in the history of the club. Not one bad year, five dreadful ones on the trot. Nothing remotely good will happen at the Villa until the worst owner and Chairman we've ever had lets the club out of his death grip.

The Delph fiasco is typical of the club that Lerner has tragically allowed the Villa to become.

Hear hear!

[amfy]

"Youre talking crap mate

Agree re Mcleish but we all wanted Lambert at the time. Randy was fleeced by Pube head  and rightly has reigned in the spending. We would have been bust otherwise.

The Delph issue is down to the player himself. The club are blameless"

You don't get it, do you? Delph is no better or worse a person than your average Premiership player. In fact, he comes over as a likeable and genuine bloke whenever I've heard him speak. He just didn't want to carry on playing for the Villa and somebody made him a better offer.


Lerner is the common thread that runs through the club's disastrous decline into irrelevance.

On the first point I've highlighted, I would say that it seems to me that he DID want to carry on playing for Villa BUT someone made him a better offer.


On the second point I've highlighted, you seem to have forgotten that we were a pretty disastrous irrelevance just before Lerner got here. In fact, the summer before he arrived I was was certain we were to be relegated the following season. A certainty that I am strangely nowhere near feeling now. i'm not saying we won't get relegated, but the idea this is a Lerner based phenomenon is completely false. We were in decline well before he got here. The illusion that we weren't is only created by the fact that he reversed it for a while.

[saunders_heroes]

So in a roundabout way you're blaming Doug for the mess we're in?
Jesus wept.

[phantom limb]

We are being screwed over beyond precedent. Even our esteemed leader must wonder why the fuck anyone would buy a season ticket for this level of pure reaming.

Right now supporting Villa is like being endlessly reamed by a randy bull elephant. Eventually the beast tires, but then you realise his mate is waiting to take over.

Hey, we've all been there right guys?

Guys?

[Kingthing]

Some people talk like they're surprised, its been many years, apart from the odd exception, since footballers were loyal. If you were offered a better job you'd walk, obviously handled badly by someone but fuck em, players come players go.

I watched dross for 95% of the season then had the time of my life at Baggies quarter final, Semi final and (despite the result) the Cup final and played with Nigel Spink on Villa Park in a supporters club match after the Burnley game, that why I keep coming back.   

[curiousorange]

I assumed I'd always be a Villa fan, but I also assumed there would be a period of my life where I would start to take it all less seriously and try and be more objective about football in general. But moments like this make me realise that outside of Aston Villa, I genuinely despise the way football is dictated by finance. It may be relative - I'm sure secretly there are Noses who would jump at the chance for us to trade owners, status, stadia - but we can't buy our way into competitiveness, and the Delph and Benteke thing sure as shit teach us that the slow and steady building project is doomed from the off.

My dream was that we would lift that Cup in May and we would close a door on a recent past that has been miserable. The fact we were looking at a hiding from about two minutes in disappointed me, but the whole experience, from fans fighting fans, to five pound lager, to three hours trying to keep warm outside the Wembley Shopping Extravaganza or whatever it was called, finally drilled it in to me that I'm supporting a club in the footballing equivalent of an Ice Age. It's all razzmatazz, hype and bullshit where money is king and romance is dead. I'm not naive - I can see why Delph went, for example - but in sport you have to have faith, otherwise there's nothing to keep you from wandering off when times are tough.

I must admit to going through that crisis. It sounds dramatic, but that FA Cup Final caused a shift in a cornerstone of my life, which was my unconditional support of this club. For the first time in years, maybe ever, I'm not fussed about missing games. I'm not bothered about players we sign or the fact I'm away for the opening fixtures. It all just seems like a gigantic waste of time, and this week has added another couple of entries to the negatives pile. I expect at some point I'll get excited by it all again, but for now, I think I'll just be prepared to be disappointed.

[newtonsballs]

I've had a season ticket on and off since the 1960s and my son joined me in 1990. This season we haven't  renewed. I have no faith/belief in the stewardship of Randy and his management team. The leadership skills at the Club, seemingly at all levels, are non-existent: in fact it reminds me of the classic appraisal comments about an army officer, "His men follow him more out of curiosity than necessity."

However, I will book a guided tour of Villa Park for myself, my son, his girlfriend and her little sister. It will remind me of what a wonderful stadium and history the Villa has. We'll try and get a couple of games in this season but they will have to be at 3.00pm on Saturday.

Oh and the Premier League, the media, the Delphs of this world, the gormless FA, can all Foxtrot Oscar - See Abdul the taxidermist - Go forth and multiply.