Whats the point ?

[Lastfootstamper]

This is the first summer to be excited about in a long time. £9 million on a midfielder, £10 million on the next French left back; genuine ambition in our targets, back room staff to ensure the mistakes of the past aren't repeated.

Every club loses players, even their best ones. If Man United can have them taken, so can we. This isn't a phenomena of the modern game either.

I have a belief that we will quite comfortably replace Delph, while if we get even half the player of Benteke, our scouts will have worked some magic.

I share your sentiment Ads

Me too. We're Aston Villa, let's fookin 'ave at it.

[Skerra]

The Delph situation just doesn't add up. All the players are so committed to the Villa until season ticket sales have been made. Suddenly it all changes from "I decided to stay at Villa because I am proud to captain the team of this great club" to "Man.City sign Delph on a 5 year deal." It seems that the Club and Delph were in league all the way along. Say the right things and, once we have enough season ticket sales you can go with our blessing. In any other walk of life you could demand a full refund and, probably, a bit of compensation as well for being misled!!

So, what do we have at this moment in time, our only 2 players that other clubs wanted are gone whereas we have been linked with about half the players in Ligue 1 and, how many of those have we actually signed - none!! Also other players we were on the cusp of signing suddenly make a deal at Newcastle, Southampton etc.- Villa however, nowhere. I had not had a season ticket for some years but, believed in TS's vision so, got season ticket early but, just now feeling shafted by the Club and players like Delph and wish I hadn't bothered. Our problem chaps is, that once you support a Club they know that's it until you die. Delph going doesn't bother me half as much as Benteke as, I really feel he won't get much game time at Citeh and, will do his England career no good at all. Alas, the poor lad is not half as good as he thinks he is. Great player for Villa, bit player for Citeh!!
Amen.

[Matt Collins]

Holy shit I've just realised the season starts in three weeks

I just can't see us being anywhere near ready for it. I'm just running through our best eleven in my mind. I'm refusing to write it down.

[Ron Manager]

Good morning everyone.I wake up to find that our new free transfer signing Richards did have something to do with Delphs exit.Richards told  him that Man City were
the greatest club in the world and he loved his time there.Now that is not what Richards should have said as an employee of our Club...but he did.

Richards is either mentally thick or couldn't care less that we have signed an injury ravaged player and may be paying him 65,000 a week to play for a lesser club than ManCity

I will say it again......Modern football is rubbish!

[Le Lapin]

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.

Well said, my sentiments exactly.  We are year on year heading in the wrong direction.

[curlytailavfc]

the quicker the whole football scene goes tits up the better its managed by utter twats

[Tony Erdington]

Some good posts above, Skerra and Ron Manager in particular.

So I now have the feeling that we are a stepping stone club, well its been apparent for years, but for a player to do what "its" done shows absolutely no class no feelings for the club, no thought of his own career, and just a show me the money kind of guy.

The only people that care about this club are the fans, to everyone else its just another gig.

For how much longer will this gig PAY???

[Steve kirk]

There is even more of a point at times like these, I remember early in the 79/80 season when Gray and Gidman upped and left, it made me want to get behind the club and players even more, I know we had a much better team then and they were very different times but I kind of feel the same now that Judas Delph and Benteke are fucking off, fuck them, fuck Radio WM in fact fuck everybody who is not Villa, I have a feeling that Sherwood will be even more determined now to show the football world that he is the real deal and push us on to better times.
And its Aston Villa Aston Villa F C, you all know the rest, keep strong keep the faith.

[aj2k77]

It will help if we unveil some signings next week. A rabbit out of the hat would go a way to brightening the mood too, an attacking player with a good reputation, someone we can get behind, a new hero.

[Steve kirk]

It will help if we unveil some signings next week. A rabbit out of the hat would go a way to brightening the mood too, an attacking player with a good reputation, someone we can get behind, a new hero.

Agreed 100%

[Clampy]

Its at times like these I appreciate the Steve Bulls, Steven Gerards, Ian Taylor's, gabby Agbonlahors of this world.
And for all gabbys bad points, at least he has stood in the holte as a young lad, and stayed committed to the cause.

You really think the first and third of those would have stayed loyal now, when they could double their wages with one signature?

I think Steve Bull had actually packed his bags ready to move to us but the deal fell through.

[Clampy]

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!

"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.

Agreed. We lost big players way before Randy Lerner turned up.

[PaulWinch again]

To be honest I find the whole game pretty boring now. I don't really watch anything outside Villa games and major international tournaments. If it wasn't the fact that I've supported Villa for years I don't think I'd have much interest now. It's anticompetetive and just a case of whoever has the most money wins. The disdain of the media for any club outside the European elite is also disgraceful.

[Gregorys Boy]

The irony about the whole Delph transfer is that if he had gone a week ago which was first hinted at then not many of us would have harbored hard feelings towards him but it is the sudden U-Turn which has pissed many people off.

Anyway, yes Football at the top level at least is pretty much dead, like most things of its nature it has been straggled by the extreme side of capitalism.  I still love the game in its purest form, and there are still interesting football going on elsewhere....

In somewhere or another I will always support Aston Villa, just because they have always been my team and have a proud history and it is just about doing your bit as a supporter.  But at the moment things are looking more and more hopeless and they could stay that way for awhile.  So what I see myself doing in the coming years is enjoying more Championship and lower league football (yes insert your own Villa related gag here!), and to support the ever growing Women's game etc..

[ktvillan]

Football has been pointless for all but the monied and favoured elite for years. Ever since Blatter, Scudamore, Murdoch and other greed mongers cottoned on that it was a marketing and sponsorship goldmine waiting to be tapped.  It's long been a designer industry geared up to perpetuate the success of a few elite clubs and countries, in order to maximise marketing and TV subscription income.  The rest of us just make up the numbers in return for a large but pointless bag of cash, if you are lucky enough to be in the top division.   The players and agents, not to mention officials,  have merely set themselves up to leech off this industry and get their cut of the gravy train.  You can't really blame them, and only a fool would believe a word that comes out of their mouths.  Since Football sold its soul it's only my long standing love of the Villa and the old game I remember (with tackling allowed) that keeps me going, albeit rarely, these days. And I have absolutely no intention of getting my kids interested in something that takes so much in terms of money, time, emotion, loyalty etc. and now offers so little in return -  unless of course you turn glory-hunter and hitch your emotional waqgon to one of the elite.