What's the point?

[villa `cross the mersey]

Great Article but am I alone thinking  those shins put a damper on the season, for me it had become an extra worry, with loss of form and teams doubling up, A bit of me thinks maybe we got a good deal,and we have seen him at his very best.

I tend to agree with this Tony ……..A very good article and I am surprised that Citeh paid so much for Jack bearing in mind his "injury issues" over the past 12 months or so. I find it incredible that he "passed" the medical - I would love to ascertain how much his insurance policy is costing Citeh.
Personally I do not wish Jack any ill will - if I was the same age as he and I was offered an almost guaranteed opportunity to win medals /cups etc whilst potentially increasing my income (including vastly increasing income from image rights) I would jump at the opportunity  - We have been far too reliant on Jack over the past couple of seasons and we now need to build a team rather than a team built around an individual - one injury puts paid to that type of reliance on just one player - I wish him well but I hope that Villa move on from this and become a stronger team     

[Drummond]

A great piece that. And Brian is absolutely right too. He is thick, he is also young and naive.

However, it's the thick people, often with money, who don't understand consequence, who don't realise what they could have had, and therefore have no real regrets in life.

This clearly wasn't about the money, because he was being more than adequately rewarded. It's a shame really, but there you go. I'm sad about it too, there's no point in being angry.

He's the sort of lad that always has someone around to bail him out, of course he's amazingly talented, but the wheels will come off. He loves the bling, the attention etc, but when Kane joins for more money, or when another player is brought in as the next big thing, and he's not the top lad any more, then we'll see his true colours come through. I fear it won't be pretty.

[Grande Pablo]

I think most of us are over 'him' already, & he will get a good reception on his first return to VP.

[brian green]

I have some nice cabbages coming on.

[DYWTBAU?]

None of his expected City trophies (and to date, despite all of the money spent, they still have one less European Cup than us) will ever mean as much as just one would have done with us. My hope is he'll realise that one day, perhaps when he sees his/our Villa win another trophy. Feels like we're heading towards that again, which is what makes the decision and timing so poor, especially as Captain. Nice article, thanks!

[JD]

Great article Alex. Sums up my feelings as well.

[Kate Kelly]

What a beautiful piece, like some of the other posters Andy Gray’s departure was my first experience of this as a fan.

[TheMalandro]

Brilliant. I'm not sure how, but you nailed it.

[Beard82]

Beautifully put, nail on the head

[Gaztonniller]

The Jack Grealish transfer made me sad. Obviously there are a million things to be sad about these days, but as a man in his thirties I’m a little ashamed to admit that a man moving from one football team to another made me sad. I would be lying if I told you I haven’t thought. “If a club like us can’t keep a player like him, what’s the point?”

As Villa fans, we’ve danced this dance many times. I remember crying as a six year old when david Platt went, and then there was Yorke, Barry, Milner, Young (whatever happened to him?) Benteke, Delph… They all hurt, and I would love to say that it gets easier with each passing one, but it really doesn’t. The Delph one was a particularly personal one for me - he announced that he was staying during our wedding reception, it got a round of applause from all of the guests. Five days later I woke up in New York on our honeymoon to find out he’d gone. Our wedding book, crammed with messages about him, out of date less than a week into our marriage!

In every case above, my reaction was triggered by my worry about the implications for our team - how would we survive without them. I was also angry that they could turn their back on us, and jealous of the team that they were going to - what made them more attractive than us?

This time, that’s just not the case. I’m not angry. I probably should be, but I just can’t muster that feeling of rage. And I’m certainly not jealous of Manchester City and their fans. I’m just sad.

The lack of anger is not because I understand Jack’s decision. I don’t, at all - the most sympathetic I can get is to tell myself that maybe it’s his injury record that has made him act now. Does he worry that it’s now or never? Or does he think he can no longer play every week, so needs to go to a club that can afford to rotate him?

Even if that is the case, I don’t really understand it. I think he is an idiot - but I have thought that for a very long time. A good natured idiot, but an idiot nevertheless. The amount of trouble he’s got himself into over the years (and I’m sure not all of it has been made public) may well outweigh the genuinely nice things he’s done for fans and the community (and I’m sure not all of it has been made public) - I don’t know. I’m not sure who gets the final decision on these matters, but I imagine they’re probably on Twitter.

It’s all linked into why I’m not worried about what this is going to do to Villa - we’re going to be fine. With him, we were perhaps going to really challenge at the top of the league this season, and that is why so many people are angry with him, and why I don’t understand why he has left. His ‘dream’ of playing for Villa at the very top has never seemed more achievable - with one last push, maybe we could have got there. Like I said - he’s an idiot.

Do I dislike him like some of the others? I don’t know. I guess the next few months will probably inform that. If we get off to a flyer, I’ll certainly care much less about him. When we play Manchester City in November will tell us a lot as well. Any Dwight Yorke style badge-kissing and it will be difficult to forgive him ever.

That’s the crux of all this isn’t it - he portrayed himself as a Villa fan. I’m certain he was and there are plenty of things to support this that can’t be faked. The risk is though, if you cultivate that, which he certainly did, you have to expect a backlash when you leave. One of the central components that make up a fan is a deep rooted faith in your club, and he has shown that his faith in Villa no longer exists at his core.

There are countless comparisons that are made between our careers as ‘normal’ people. “You telling me you wouldn’t leave your job if you were offered more money…” and so on. These are as lazy as the mindset that a true fan would play for their club no matter what. The truth obviously lies in the middle somewhere, but it does pose the question: can a professional footballer really be a proper fan of a club? These days, it might be something else that only applies to the teams that get into Europe regularly - the ones that could offer them everything anyway, so what does their loyalty matter?

Which leads me on to Manchester City. In all honesty, every season I think to myself that if Villa can’t win it, I hope they do. Please don't stop reading at this point, because I can promise you that this is not down to any sort of affection for them.

Basically, I want every other club to fail - I’m sure I’m not alone in that. All that matters is Villa. I don’t want to see other fans happy, I want them to lose every single week. The reality is, of course, that someone has to win the league while we’re taking a 40+ year break from doing it ourselves. In which case, I want winning the league to mean as little as possible. I want it to be almost meaningless. And nothing is more meaningless than winning a trophy like Manchester City have been winning trophies. How they haven’t won every single competition for the last eight years can only be down to some kind of monumental incompetence, given the amount of money they have spent and the players at their disposal.

That’s why, with regards to their fans, I feel more pity than jealousy. I promise you, this isn’t some childish reaction to losing a player I loved, a desperate attempt to gain the higher ground - I mean it. Failure isn’t just not an option for Man City, it’s not a possibility. Finish fourth in the league - never mind, chuck another £200 million at it and it will probably be alright again.

Imagine trying to be passionate about a club like that? Imagine if the lowest you felt as a football fan was losing a final, having already won two trophies in the last few months?! Imagine knowing that every single victory, every single goal, is a direct result of a business transaction in 2008. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it was great for the first few years, and the last-minute win to pip your rivals to the league would have been particularly sweet, but what do they hope for now? What is your dream as a Manchester City fan? What keeps you going back every week? While I never want us to get relegated again, I’m not sure how I would feel if it could never happen in a million years.

People call it fantasy football, but I really don’t think this is any real football fan’s fantasy.

The year we came up from the Championship remains one of my favourites. I’ve seen us play with some brilliant players and won a couple of trophies, but the squad that involved Neil Taylor, Glenn Whelan and Tommy Elphick produced some of my happiest memories. The idea that everyone wants to watch the best players play for their club is slightly misleading, and surely just something cultivated by Sky (et al) to appeal to fans of football, rather than football fans. (Incidentally - who are these people?!? I rarely watch any match that doesn’t directly influence Villa, I can’t imagine ever watching football without caring who wins)

I sometimes worry about it myself, for Villa. We are certainly on an upward trajectory at the moment, and, similar to Man City, as a direct result of getting new owners. What would happen if we suddenly started winning everything every year - how would I feel? Picking the best players from our rivals to maintain the gap. I doubt we’ll ever get to that stage and we would surely struggle to match the spending of City (and Chelsea), but how would I feel if I did? Would I pretend that it’s all brilliant and get excited every summer about all the players we were going to buy to keep ahead of the rest. I honestly don’t know - but I can say from here, with little possibility of that happening, that it isn’t my dream.

So what’s the point? Why do I care so much, and devote so much of my life to this club, if it isn’t about sustained success? What is my dream?

It’s for things like watching a homegrown player, who was a genuine fan of your club, to grow up from a petulant and troublesome youth player to captain your team to winning trophies and playing at the highest level.

Or watching a new manager come in, who has loved the club his whole life, and dragging them up, back into the Premier League before progressing year in year to finally start competing with the best teams in Europe.

Maybe it’s watching a successful youth team blossom into a successful first team, packed full of local lads.

Not all dreams come true, of course, but is that a bad thing? Sure, when you are abruptly woken from one and you are confronted with reality, you may well be sad for a while, but that will pass. We can see what happens to clubs, and fan bases, when all their dreams do come true - they start to lose grip on reality and what really matters.

The rest of us will start a new dream, and hope at least a little bit of it comes true.

Maybe that’s the point.

Alex Whybrow

  You could ask the same question to Leicester fans for more insightful answers!

[Woofles The Wonder Dog]

I’m still at the angry + sad stage. I really thought he’d be different, which probably is me me than him.

I’m trying to disentangle myself by watching him play for Manchester City. It’s painful but I hope it start a process of indifference/numbness. Though Villa performing better without him would be the inoculation I need.