Aston Villa vs Fulham Pre-Match Thread

[Dave]

Managed to go five years without getting to a game (Fulham at Wembley was my last before this season) due to kids being born / distance / commitments etc, took my six year old to his first in October (in no small part to helpful patrons here helping with references) and tomorrow will be his seventh and our last of the season.

Bournemouth is his only non-win, so hopefully his first loss has to wait a while yet. Pretty sure he's signed up for life now.

[eamonn]

Good work Dave, hope he sees another win tomorrow.

My "kid" brother hasn't been to Villa Park since Jan '09 (2-1 win over WBA), he was ten. Tomorrow is his first Villa Park game since then (he was at the 0-1 Fulham Wembley final too. And has also seen us lose at QPR 0-1 in the Championship. He's been a bit of a Jonah to be honest). His support of Villa during the 2010s as with every Villa fan - but especially teens, was severely tested so I'm hoping we win and win well tomorrow. He has to make sure he doesn't miss his 8.30 flight from Dublin first...

[PaulWinch again]

This is my first game at Villa Park for a very long time too. I fear the omens aren’t aligning well!

[Rigadon]

Managed to go five years without getting to a game (Fulham at Wembley was my last before this season) due to kids being born / distance / commitments etc, took my six year old to his first in October (in no small part to helpful patrons here helping with references) and tomorrow will be his seventh and our last of the season.

Bournemouth is his only non-win, so hopefully his first loss has to wait a while yet. Pretty sure he's signed up for life now.

Ace! Signed up just at the right time too - I keep telling my kids how luckily they are to be villa fans with this team and manager!

[Rigadon]

This is my first game at Villa Park for a very long time too. I fear the omens aren’t aligning well!

Spoken with the trepidation of a true Villa fans!  I hope you enjoy it.

[PaulWinch again]

Cheers - I hope we all do!

[ADVILLAFAN]

I just want you to know that if we lose, I'm going to blame each and every one of you.

[Dave]

Managed to go five years without getting to a game (Fulham at Wembley was my last before this season) due to kids being born / distance / commitments etc, took my six year old to his first in October (in no small part to helpful patrons here helping with references) and tomorrow will be his seventh and our last of the season.

Bournemouth is his only non-win, so hopefully his first loss has to wait a while yet. Pretty sure he's signed up for life now.

Ace! Signed up just at the right time too - I keep telling my kids how luckily they are to be villa fans with this team and manager!

Yeah, after the Southampton match we had a very long conversation along the lines of "look at these poor bastards, it's not long ago that they were us - would you still want to come and support if we were as bad as that, like they are doing?"

[Villafirst]

This won't be easy. I hope he plays Mjngs and Onana. If he picks Torres we'll lose. Just go for it like we did against Newcastle. None of this walk football tippy happy stuff!

[TheToffnar]

Great thing about today and every game going forward is that there's no excuses.

If we loose and play great football I'll live with it, but another performance like the last two and there'll be hell to pay

[dr.chekov]

Not sure about “hell to pay”. We’ll be disgruntled, post about our disgruntlement and then move on, won’t we?

[PeterWithesShin]

I think we can all agree that a poor performance today should see another manager rage sacked after a Fulham game, followed by the board and owners rage sacking themselves. We need to stop accepting such abject failure.

[eamonn]

Didn't Felix "Penfold" Magath rock-up to VP with his ragbag Fulham team and beat us one blustery April afternoon? I think it was a new nadir at the time.

[PeterWithesShin]

We lost 2-1 at home to them in 2014. Villa legend Grant Holt scored ours, future Villa legend Kieran Richardson scored one of theirs. Our only home league defeat to them since our shit early 70s days.

[Mellin]

Grant Holt is one that surprises me every time I'm reminded he played for us even 10 years on. I'm not sure it ever actually happened.