Quote from: itbrvilla on July 06, 2017, 07:10:45 AMQuote from: anton hillman on July 06, 2017, 12:28:22 AMAVFC are no longer a serious football club having signed this arsehole. After over fifty years of supporting the Villa I now feel like giving up.We've not been a serious football club for a while.As for the "I'm not supporting Villa any more" lot, they remind me of the "I'm leaving Twitter/H&V" dolts. Really, you can just go. You don't need to announce it and flounce off to the sound of trumpets in a puff of smoke. The truth is nobody will miss you, whatever your reasons are for bailing.
Quote from: anton hillman on July 06, 2017, 12:28:22 AMAVFC are no longer a serious football club having signed this arsehole. After over fifty years of supporting the Villa I now feel like giving up.We've not been a serious football club for a while.
AVFC are no longer a serious football club having signed this arsehole. After over fifty years of supporting the Villa I now feel like giving up.
Quote from: anton hillman on July 06, 2017, 12:28:22 AMAVFC are no longer a serious football club having signed this arsehole. After over fifty years of supporting the Villa I now feel like giving up.This is what I don't understand. I know that I said everyone's line in the sand is different, but in the past fifty years football-wise we've been relegated three times and almost gone down on numerous other occasions. We've suffered record defeats and worst-ever humiliations. We've had a string of deadbeats and piss takers on the books. When it comes to morality we've had a woman-beater, numerous drink-drivers, drug addicts and assorted hell-raisers. We had a chairman who pissed on the memory of the man who gave us our greatest achievement and our last two owners have made their fortunes in less than ethically-pure circumstances. We've taken money from gambling firms, sweatshop owners and trophy hunters. And somehow, signing one of the biggest names in English football, the biggest name this league has had since it adopted its current ridiculous and commerce-orientated name, means we can't be taken seriously anymore?
Well it certainly hasn't been all about silverware, not for a generation in any case. We all have different ideas of what Aston Villa represents in our heads, but the idea that there's some philosophy underpinning the club is a bit fanciful. We're a business. We sell tracksuit tops for £100 and shit beer for the best part of a fiver. We don't play to a set code. There isn't a 'Villa way'. We're not Corinthian FC. If you want to compete with the rest of the pack, you have to be as good as them and at least as bad. Our deep attachment to the club is sewn into our very identities, but the corporate machine has unpicked that thread and spun it into something quite unrecognisable from the Villa of my childhood fantasies. I don't look to Villa for role models any more. Does anyone, seriously? But if you no longer want to support the club it's a personal thing, and you're entitled to exercise your right.Corruption and immorality is ingrained in football as it is in society. The grand wide streets and fine buildings of our capital are built largely on the proceeds of imperialism, slavery, exploitation and empire. Do we boycott London? If we were all dedicated exemplars of morality and righteousness, we'd never step foot outside the house.
Quote from: Jimbo on July 06, 2017, 09:56:02 AMWell it certainly hasn't been all about silverware, not for a generation in any case. We all have different ideas of what Aston Villa represents in our heads, but the idea that there's some philosophy underpinning the club is a bit fanciful. We're a business. We sell tracksuit tops for £100 and shit beer for the best part of a fiver. We don't play to a set code. There isn't a 'Villa way'. We're not Corinthian FC. If you want to compete with the rest of the pack, you have to be as good as them and at least as bad. Our deep attachment to the club is sewn into our very identities, but the corporate machine has unpicked that thread and spun it into something quite unrecognisable from the Villa of my childhood fantasies. I don't look to Villa for role models any more. Does anyone, seriously? But if you no longer want to support the club it's a personal thing, and you're entitled to exercise your right.Corruption and immorality is ingrained in football as it is in society. The grand wide streets and fine buildings of our capital are built largely on the proceeds of imperialism, slavery, exploitation and empire. Do we boycott London? If we were all dedicated exemplars of morality and righteousness, we'd never step foot outside the house. The bold bit just isn't true. There is very much a Villa way, in the same way that every club has certain things that are core to them.The Villa way is, unfortunately, to play ourselves down. We sign Terry (admittedly a big name for this league) and some fans are acting as if he's the biggest name ever. We get linked with Joe Hart and most fans reaction is 'why would he come here?'That same reaction holds true regardless of where we are at the time. When we were pushing around the top 4 and you had people thinking Wesley Sneijder was far too big a name for us.Have we ever signed a genuine international superstar, despite being one of the biggest clubs in the biggest league in the world (until recently) I honestly can't think of us ever picking up a genuinely top player at his peak, we got people on the way up or down a few times and we've signed a few that are a step or 2 down the ladder but never the really top players. This is something I've said before, we're comfortably the biggest club in this league but last summer and in January instead of getting players who were too good for the league we got players who were used to it and went back to our normal mode of operation of picking up the better players from the clubs below us.It's an extension of the Birmingham way, we know we're big but we don't want people to pay too much attention to us so we play it down but then get pissed off when tinpot shithouses like Tottenham Hotspur or Manchester get talked up as if they're more important than we are.If Xia really wants to make the club into a champion league super club then the biggest task he has is to change that mentality. As much as I've been opposed to signing Terry (because of his age alone) he's the right type of signing at least and is an indication that we're looking in the right direction, Hart would be another nod that way, Whelan, not so much.
I agree with much of that, but I don't think anyone is saying that Terry is anything other than a short-term fix. He'll be the biggest name in the league but nowhere near the biggest we've had even in the past decade.
I think the only time we have consistently acted like a heavyweight football club was under BFR. Perhaps to a lesser extent under Little and Gregory.
I meant 'Villa way' in terms of a philosophy, not as a pervading attitude. Something like that's been with us a long, long time. On one hand we talk about our illustrious history and traditions and impeccable standing in the game, on the other we meekly accept defeat and failure to the point of surrender.It might have something to do with the wider Birmingham attitude. We like to think we're the second city of the 5th largest economy in the world, but almost never act like it.