No away fans

[pauliewalnuts]

Aston Villa can confirm it has lodged an official complaint with UEFA over the conduct of Legia Warsaw Football Club and the behaviour of their supporters prior to last night’s UEFA Europa Conference League match at Villa Park.

Four police officers were injured and 46 Legia supporters were arrested after unprecedented violence by the Polish fans outside the stadium.

This shocking behaviour followed Legia club officials’ complete lack of cooperation with West Midlands Police, Aston Villa and UEFA throughout the day.

It started during the standard pre-match operational meeting that commenced at 10.30am on Thursday morning and was attended by UEFA representatives, including UEFA’s security team, as well as West Midlands Police including representatives from both clubs. Legia Warsaw refused to confirm if they would accept their allocation of tickets for the match at that point. This is in stark contrast to normal UEFA operational procedures.

They advised the meeting that they would meet with their supporters at 2.30pm and communicate the decision at 3pm but advised there was a possibility that they would not accept the tickets.

Despite repeated requests before and after the 3pm deadline for a decision, there was no communication until 4pm when Legia informed Aston Villa that they wished to receive their ticket allocation.

These tickets were handed to Legia officials immediately upon their arrival at the stadium at 6.16pm. To reiterate, Legia officials were advised on a call that included a number of UEFA representatives on November 2 that they would receive an allocation of 1002 – exactly four weeks prior to last night’s fixture.

Chris Heck, President of Business Operations at Aston Villa, said: “The lack of cooperation and prevarication from Legia Warsaw officials prior to the match was entirely unacceptable and deeply disappointing. This behaviour increased the danger that West Midlands Police officers and our own fans were subjected to before the game and the scenes of disorder from the Legia fans have no place in modern football or civilised society.

“Aston Villa will be making further representations to UEFA in order to ensure that other clubs and police forces across Europe are not exposed to similar serious safety risks at the hands of Legia Warsaw.

“We are immensely grateful to West Midlands Police for keeping our supporters and our local community safe last night and are pleased that they will also be making their own representations via the UK police authorities to UEFA.”

https://www.avfc.co.uk/news/2023/december/01/club-statement/

Sounds like the club are pretty fucking angry, and it is not surprising.

[astonvilla82]

Talk sport this morning were bemoaning the fact that they had come all that way for nuthin - completely missing the fact that most of them live in Erdington. I jumped on a bus from town six oclock-ish, half way through Newtown about twenty "military-age males" as the phrase goes, jumped on, no colours apart from one who had a scarf, none of them paid and nearly all had bottles of Vodka in their hands. To be fair, they were no bother - thankfully - because i was stood right in the middle of them in a Villa scarf. Their hierachy covered themselves in glory by refusing point-blank to condemn the fucking idiots that did the damage - which was most of them from what i've heard. Also hearing the Witton Arms got smashed to fuck as well.
Do us a favour Piotr - stick to plumbing....

Ah yes the Polish, they’re all plumbers, car washers and Spitfire pilots.
Cut the racial stereotypes can we please. Thanks.

Good pilots by all accounts and showed our lot up in The Battle of Britain

Not sure they showed our lot up but they were without doubt skilled & brave pilots along with the 1st Independent Parachute Brigade at Operation Market Garden who also fought with skill and bravery and took heavy losses.

They went in all guns blazing, which upset the British high command old chap, read the autobiography of the Polish general in charge and apportion blame on him for one of the failures of the mission,think he was exconerated about the seventies or eighties

[LeeB]

Throw the fuckers out, absolute wankers. They've put everyone at risk with that shite.

[Somniloquism]

So does PWS back down on his statements from last night or is it still the fault of the club, the city and the WMP?

[pablo_picasso]

Aston Villa can confirm it has lodged an official complaint with UEFA over the conduct of Legia Warsaw Football Club and the behaviour of their supporters prior to last night’s UEFA Europa Conference League match at Villa Park.

Four police officers were injured and 46 Legia supporters were arrested after unprecedented violence by the Polish fans outside the stadium.

This shocking behaviour followed Legia club officials’ complete lack of cooperation with West Midlands Police, Aston Villa and UEFA throughout the day.

It started during the standard pre-match operational meeting that commenced at 10.30am on Thursday morning and was attended by UEFA representatives, including UEFA’s security team, as well as West Midlands Police including representatives from both clubs. Legia Warsaw refused to confirm if they would accept their allocation of tickets for the match at that point. This is in stark contrast to normal UEFA operational procedures.

They advised the meeting that they would meet with their supporters at 2.30pm and communicate the decision at 3pm but advised there was a possibility that they would not accept the tickets.

Despite repeated requests before and after the 3pm deadline for a decision, there was no communication until 4pm when Legia informed Aston Villa that they wished to receive their ticket allocation.

These tickets were handed to Legia officials immediately upon their arrival at the stadium at 6.16pm. To reiterate, Legia officials were advised on a call that included a number of UEFA representatives on November 2 that they would receive an allocation of 1002 – exactly four weeks prior to last night’s fixture.

Chris Heck, President of Business Operations at Aston Villa, said: “The lack of cooperation and prevarication from Legia Warsaw officials prior to the match was entirely unacceptable and deeply disappointing. This behaviour increased the danger that West Midlands Police officers and our own fans were subjected to before the game and the scenes of disorder from the Legia fans have no place in modern football or civilised society.

“Aston Villa will be making further representations to UEFA in order to ensure that other clubs and police forces across Europe are not exposed to similar serious safety risks at the hands of Legia Warsaw.

“We are immensely grateful to West Midlands Police for keeping our supporters and our local community safe last night and are pleased that they will also be making their own representations via the UK police authorities to UEFA.”

https://www.avfc.co.uk/news/2023/december/01/club-statement/

Sounds like the club are pretty fucking angry, and it is not surprising.

That is disgraceful behaviour from the club officials at Legia.

Its no wonder a lot of their fans are hooligans...

[Des Little]

Do we know how so many Legia fans turned up in home ends yet?

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

Talk sport this morning were bemoaning the fact that they had come all that way for nuthin - completely missing the fact that most of them live in Erdington. I jumped on a bus from town six oclock-ish, half way through Newtown about twenty "military-age males" as the phrase goes, jumped on, no colours apart from one who had a scarf, none of them paid and nearly all had bottles of Vodka in their hands. To be fair, they were no bother - thankfully - because i was stood right in the middle of them in a Villa scarf. Their hierachy covered themselves in glory by refusing point-blank to condemn the fucking idiots that did the damage - which was most of them from what i've heard. Also hearing the Witton Arms got smashed to fuck as well.
Do us a favour Piotr - stick to plumbing....

Ah yes the Polish, they’re all plumbers, car washers and Spitfire pilots.
Cut the racial stereotypes can we please. Thanks.

Good pilots by all accounts and showed our lot up in The Battle of Britain

Not sure they showed our lot up but they were without doubt skilled & brave pilots along with the 1st Independent Parachute Brigade at Operation Market Garden who also fought with skill and bravery and took heavy losses. 

My Dad was in WW2 and had a great deal of time for the Poles. I work in retail and have always found them very straightforward, friendly and easy to deal with. Every country has its proportion of dickheads and as someone has already mentioned they have similar problems now that were all too prevalent in this country some 20/30 years ago.

[PeterWithesShin]

So does PWS back down on his statements from last night or is it still the fault of the club, the city and the WMP?

I never said it was the fault of the club, I said it could reflect badly on us and didn't reflect well on coping.

And yes, the info that has come out since does mean I put the blame on Legia. I based what I was saying on the info at the time, I now base it on the info we now have.

[VillaTim]

I'm still not clear - did Legia actually refuse to distribute tickets to their fans at the place that had been set aside for that purpose? And was it that refusal that left the police needing to decide what to do?

I'm not sure but I think we wanted it done in town and they refused, then they said the ultras were in charge of giving them out and those charming lads said all or nothing.

Apparently Legia didn't accept any allocation until 4pm yesterday and didn't collect them until 6.15pm.
We've launched an official complaint against Legia to UEFA.

why on earth would we release tickets that late ?

Legia, on Thursday morning, were still telling us that they didn't know if they would accept ANY tickets from us. It's not a case of us being late, it is a case of them prevaricating pointlessly.

They then refused to take them (ie to accept them at the pick up point) unless all of them were let in, which was clearly never going to happen.

why the fuck didn't we give them a deadline way ahead of matchday itself ?? seems ridiculous

[Somniloquism]

Because it takes two to tango, plus the tickets were always only going to be handed over on the day itself, ie the club reps come and pick them up and take them somewhere to distribute. It is not up to us to tell them to eff off, that is UEFAs job.

[pablo_picasso]

why the fuck didn't we give them a deadline way ahead of matchday itself ?? seems ridiculous

Because it's not up to us to change the whole protocol that is already in place for such actions.

This is NOT on Villa.

We did everything by the book & Legia as a club fucked around so they could do their little protest & be hooligans.

The actual club hierarchy must have been in cahoots with the Legia hooligans on the ground who attacked the police & Villa fans.

I really hope that there is a massive punishment given to them...

[VillaTim]

fair enough

[pauliewalnuts]

I'm still not clear - did Legia actually refuse to distribute tickets to their fans at the place that had been set aside for that purpose? And was it that refusal that left the police needing to decide what to do?

I'm not sure but I think we wanted it done in town and they refused, then they said the ultras were in charge of giving them out and those charming lads said all or nothing.

Apparently Legia didn't accept any allocation until 4pm yesterday and didn't collect them until 6.15pm.
We've launched an official complaint against Legia to UEFA.

why on earth would we release tickets that late ?

Legia, on Thursday morning, were still telling us that they didn't know if they would accept ANY tickets from us. It's not a case of us being late, it is a case of them prevaricating pointlessly.

They then refused to take them (ie to accept them at the pick up point) unless all of them were let in, which was clearly never going to happen.

why the fuck didn't we give them a deadline way ahead of matchday itself ?? seems ridiculous

Read the article above. It explains clearly what happened.

They kept saying they weren’t sure they wanted any right up until the day of the game.

It’s not up to us to set deadlines.

[Jon Crofts]

How does stewarding work with European ties? Does the away team provide stewards?

[VillaTim]

I'm still not clear - did Legia actually refuse to distribute tickets to their fans at the place that had been set aside for that purpose? And was it that refusal that left the police needing to decide what to do?

I'm not sure but I think we wanted it done in town and they refused, then they said the ultras were in charge of giving them out and those charming lads said all or nothing.

Apparently Legia didn't accept any allocation until 4pm yesterday and didn't collect them until 6.15pm.
We've launched an official complaint against Legia to UEFA.

why on earth would we release tickets that late ?

Legia, on Thursday morning, were still telling us that they didn't know if they would accept ANY tickets from us. It's not a case of us being late, it is a case of them prevaricating pointlessly.

They then refused to take them (ie to accept them at the pick up point) unless all of them were let in, which was clearly never going to happen.

why the fuck didn't we give them a deadline way ahead of matchday itself ?? seems ridiculous

Read the article above. It explains clearly what happened.

They kept saying they weren’t sure they wanted any right up until the day of the game.

It’s not up to us to set deadlines.

so they didnt sell any tickets until the day of the game ?? makes zero sense to have no deadlines in place ahead of this