This is the season...

[SoccerHQ]

Well parachute payments give you a clear advantage over most teams down there.

You can also use the loan system pretty well, we'd still be a big name down there so players at that level could be attracted, you can make loan signings on the day of a game aswell so retro feeling turning up to a night game and seeing a player we've just signed that afternoon.

[myf]

Why is everyone getting so worked up. If you've followed the Villa for 50 years you will know we have our good times and our bad times.  It's time for a dip again but we always come back for our next adventure. In resigned to Champ football already and quite honestly looking forward to it. Might not be pretty but hey i remember 2 years in the third division and actually I really enjoyed it. It's the fans that make AV great and always will. We will never be small town ever....

But its a completely different game now. I hate the bloated prem but if we're in it we've got a chance. Dropping at this point could mean obscurity for decades.

[myf]

Well parachute payments give you a clear advantage over most teams down there.

You can also use the loan system pretty well, we'd still be a big name down there so players at that level could be attracted, you can make loan signings on the day of a game aswell so retro feeling turning up to a night game and seeing a player we've just signed that afternoon.

I always thought you get the final payout for 3 years running but it seems the final payout is spread out over the 3 years? And from next year its over 2 years it seems. No doubt tom fox will be pouring over the details this weekend

[olaftab]

Obscurity  for years.....how?

[myf]

Obscurity  for years.....how?

£

If we didnt bounce back first time we'd be screwed financially and unable to compete.

Get used to seeing red shirts round brum. Its already bad enough but we'd lose lots if fans with a few years in the chumps

[SteveN]

Watching the Champoinship on Channel 5 to see what we can expect.  Some decent teams in the top 6 with a lot of our ex-players on show.

[Jimbo]

If I wasn't a Villa fan, I would be absolutely delighted to see us go down.

We have stunk out this league for five years now, just about getting away with it year after year. Along the way, we've played some of the most dire football in our history.

Yeah, we can tell everyone we won the European Cup and what-not, but these days it counts for jack shit. We have become a by-word for unambitious, do-the-absolute-minimum football all in the name of clinging on for the money. We are embarrassing.

The sooner this chairman manages to sell us on to someone who gives a shit, the better. The meek acceptance of mediocrity starts at the top and trickles down.

If this club over the last five years were a horse, it'd be a mangy old knacker good for the glue factory.

I've accepted we are fucked now. You can't just routinely lose at home to shit like Watford like we have repeatedly for several years and stay up. You can't go season after season notching up 4 or 5 home wins all year and stay up. You can't defend like we do and stay up.

Lerner has been a disaster. He is a well meaning idiot, absolutely clueless.

Of course, the ultimate disaster is yet to come, because we have managed to create a situation where the year we finally do get what we deserve and drop down to mooking about with the shit in the Championship is the very same year that the PL television money goes stratospheric.

Good work, Randy, good work.

I can't say I disagree with this, except for the bit about mediocrity. Mediocrity would see us safe. What we've accepted is failure. Abject failure. And it's been brought about by sheer complacency, we-know-best arrogance and pig-headedness, and utter, utter stupidity. We are the masters of our own undoing, and will deserve relegation as much as any club that's ever suffered the drop. Perversely, after five years of crap, it will come as a relief.

If it wasn't irretrievably floating high above the clouds, Randy Lerner's head should be hanging in shame.

[Jon Crofts]

If I wasn't a Villa fan, I would be absolutely delighted to see us go down.

We have stunk out this league for five years now, just about getting away with it year after year. Along the way, we've played some of the most dire football in our history.

Yeah, we can tell everyone we won the European Cup and what-not, but these days it counts for jack shit. We have become a by-word for unambitious, do-the-absolute-minimum football all in the name of clinging on for the money. We are embarrassing.

The sooner this chairman manages to sell us on to someone who gives a shit, the better. The meek acceptance of mediocrity starts at the top and trickles down.

If this club over the last five years were a horse, it'd be a mangy old knacker good for the glue factory.

I've accepted we are fucked now. You can't just routinely lose at home to shit like Watford like we have repeatedly for several years and stay up. You can't go season after season notching up 4 or 5 home wins all year and stay up. You can't defend like we do and stay up.

Lerner has been a disaster. He is a well meaning idiot, absolutely clueless.

Of course, the ultimate disaster is yet to come, because we have managed to create a situation where the year we finally do get what we deserve and drop down to mooking about with the shit in the Championship is the very same year that the PL television money goes stratospheric.

Good work, Randy, good work.

I can't say I disagree with this, except for the bit about mediocrity. Mediocrity would see us safe. What we've accepted is failure. Abject failure. And it's been brought about by sheer complacency, we-know-best arrogance and pig-headedness, and utter, utter stupidity. We are the masters of our own undoing, and will deserve relegation as much as any club that's ever suffered the drop. Perversely, after five years of crap, it will come as a relief.

If it wasn't irretrievably floating high above the clouds, Randy Lerner's head should be hanging in shame.

I'd prefer it on a spiked railing at the back of the Holte End car park. 

[SoccerHQ]

Watching the Champoinship on Channel 5 to see what we can expect.  Some decent teams in the top 6 with a lot of our ex-players on show.

SHA have seemingly been in the last play off spot for weeks without actually winning a game. Just checked and they've won once in six games.

They've also won only 3 out of 9 home games so don't get too exciting thinking we'll suddenly win a lot more home games but then again you don't need to win every week in that league to be in contention.

[rob_bridge]

 Decline set in a long time ago as somebody pointed out we played Stoke in autumn 2010 and our newly hired semi retired manager was seeing out the last few days of his old part time job whilst the Stoke manager turned up at half time from his Mother's funeral.

[Phil from the upper holte]

If I wasn't a Villa fan, I would be absolutely delighted to see us go down.

We have stunk out this league for five years now, just about getting away with it year after year. Along the way, we've played some of the most dire football in our history.

Yeah, we can tell everyone we won the European Cup and what-not, but these days it counts for jack shit. We have become a by-word for unambitious, do-the-absolute-minimum football all in the name of clinging on for the money. We are embarrassing.

The sooner this chairman manages to sell us on to someone who gives a shit, the better. The meek acceptance of mediocrity starts at the top and trickles down.

If this club over the last five years were a horse, it'd be a mangy old knacker good for the glue factory.

I've accepted we are fucked now. You can't just routinely lose at home to shit like Watford like we have repeatedly for several years and stay up. You can't go season after season notching up 4 or 5 home wins all year and stay up. You can't defend like we do and stay up.

Lerner has been a disaster. He is a well meaning idiot, absolutely clueless.

Of course, the ultimate disaster is yet to come, because we have managed to create a situation where the year we finally do get what we deserve and drop down to mooking about with the shit in the Championship is the very same year that the PL television money goes stratospheric.

Good work, Randy, good work.

Sums it up perfectly

[andyh]

It the continual hoping that 'this week we'll better, go on a run, and everything will be ok.'
It hasn't happened and just isn't going to happen.

Once you accept we are done for, and embrace it, the thought of going down isn't so bad.

Today, I accepted we are going down. This team is just not good enough for the prem.
It really is a simple as that.

[Ads]

I would expect us to win every single game in the Mickley Mouse league and take no pleasure in any of it. It would be a shameful experience, but one that should last 9 months. We would be the biggest club to shame themselves in the second division since 1986 and given the disparity in size and resources over ever other team bar say Newcastle, it would be beyond comprehension to spend a game longer than 46 in there.

[aj2k77]

When you bring up stats like not winning 3 league games in a row since April 2010, that's 5 and a half years ago... you realise how long we've stunk the place out for.

[saunders_heroes]

When you bring up stats like not winning 3 league games in a row since April 2010, that's 5 and a half years ago... you realise how long we've stunk the place out for.

Christ now that is a scary stat.