If Media Muppets has taught you anything, it’s that the press like to get excited, they built up a big protest from what was always likely to be a few hundred fans do a demo. Still, it acted like the perfect Trojan Horse to get the extent of Villa’s problems into the press and to a wider audience.
On the field, it was business as usual. Another three points dropped and another 90 goalless minutes for the claret and blue. Fans are now talking about the possibility of relegation and it’s hardly surprising.
In the meantime, here’s five reasons to be cheerful as Aston Villa fans…
1. The Alarm is Sounded
For the past week Aston Villa’s current plight has been the talking point of the nation’s sports press. Three Villa sites (including this one) helped break the club’s sorry plight to the nation at large and the press coverage in the national press, TV and radio has been phenomenal. It’s a big wake-up call to help stop the club sleepwalking into the Championship. Hopefully, it will push the board to go the extra mile in the current transfer window.
2. Brave Hearts
The 300-400 supporters around the ground (one fan counted 286 in upper Holte) who made their stand and had the courage of their convictions to do the demo at the Liverpool game. We salute you. Others wanted to, but couldn’t resist the temptation of the build-up and kick-off, which is totally understandable.
Did the club really have to be such shysters to turn off the TV screens on the concourse or shoo people out the Holte Suite? If people have paid their money, they should be able to do what they want.
The Villa fans who didn’t agree with the idea of the demo, but supported the sentiment of the action, fair play to them, as they realise the full extent of the problems the club are facing. Other fans said they didn’t agree with the demo, but suggested other ideas to get our views across. Fair play to them too.
To the fans that booed the supporters making a stand, then booed the team off at half-time and full-time, what are you going to do to help the AVFC cause?
3. Bright Spark
On the field Carles Gil (Gile de Pareja Vicent) was perhaps as exciting as it got without really doing anything out of the ordinary. He did spark a 15-minute period when he came on, where Villa created several chances through the increased dimension he offered to Villa going forward.
Speaking of dimension, it’s hard to think what exactly Tom Cleverley is bringing to the Villa team beyond industry. I doubt he’ll be around after the end of the season.
4. Interview Delight
If you want humour you only have to watch Paul Lambert’s post-match interviews. After the Liverpool game he said: “I thought we were excellent”, “the second half was relentless pressure from us” and “their goalkeeper has probably kept them in it with the save the he had from Christian”. If we need to get rid of him as Villa boss, surely we have enough evidence now to get him committed?
5. Have the Cherries have popped?
I’m sure Bournemouth wouldn’t have fancied the extra midweek fixture and a trip to Leeds before their FA Cup duty at Villa Park. A struggling Leeds team managed to beat them 1-0 to suggest a little tiredness setting in for the south coasters. The FA Cup fixture will be the Cherries third away trip in a week, a taxing schedule for any team.
Anything to dampen Villa’s free-scoring FA Cup opponents will be most welcome. While Villa have managed just 7 goals in 12 games in Birmingham, Bournemouth have manage to score 8 goals in just 1 game in the second city (they whacked the Blues 8-0 at St Andrews).
You need to get over the so called demo and move on.
To mention it in this article (5 reasons to be cheerful) don’t work for me, in fact it has the opposite affect.
Here’s an alternative;
1) Carles Gil
2) A good old fashioned Saturday 3 o’clock kick off
3) We managed to go 90 minutes without a Red Card
4) Great support given the circumstances, cold weather, time of year, road works (see what I’ve not included here)
5) We actually showed an attacking intent and the players proved to themselves they can create, it was pleasing to see Benteke actually bollocking himself for a change.
VTID
Moving on, but it’s obviously part of our wrap of the events of the weekend. Interesting that both the United and Liverpool games were both 3 o’clock this season. Is that because Villa’s box office potential has dropped?!
The Bournemouth game could be key to getting some confidence back. I think a lot of fans are half-expecting to get beat, but it’ll be a chance to prove a few folk wrong and get some practise in the art of goal scoring. UTV
The 3 o’clock kick affects all footbal fans and I found this article interesting http://www.fsf.org.uk/blog/view/Football-and-TV-fixtures-sky-sports
The FSF have actually set up a working party in an attempt to pressurise the likes of SKY to think about their proposed broadcast times to take into consideration the avid football fans travel arrangments for example.
I don’t think the Manure and Liverpool 3’o’clockers have anything to do with Villa’s box office potential dropping? I think its more likely that their Outside Broadcasting Management team have risk assessed the bigger picture, and maximised their already known TV audience?
Yes Lets hope that we break our recent goal scoring cherrie, against the cherries!
I’ve secured my seat in the hope that we do just that UTV.
Fwiw, I admire your having taken a stand, but believe the way you went about it was doomed to failure, because of the small numbers that were going to be involved.
The sad fact is that if only 300 people took part, how can it be taken seriously?
It’s 1% of a 30k crowd.
Fair play for it bringing massive attention in the press, but the way you’re talking, even that seems to have been beyond your control and somehow anti what you wanted????
The biggest problem I have though, is now that it’s happened and frankly made any protest look futile, what’s the next step? I almost feel that the protest has actually set us back, if anything.
While I appreciate the rush because of the transfer window etc, imo the biggest mistake was not consulting the rest of the Villa sites to get a better overall consensus as to if this was the way to go. Although I do realise that this can open it’s own can of worms.
Or did you try, but got knocked back?
MOMS was approached to do this by the two other main Villa sites (I don’t know if other sites were consulted). As the article says, MOMS’ first response was that protests don’t work (for example, fans had tried to start several protests during the McLeish reign) and anything like this needed further playing. The trigger was the email by the young fan (which he sent to several sites), then with the January window still open and in terms of relegation picture, it was better to act now before the horse had bolted.
This needed action and not procrastination.
The media exposure was massive and ultimately the big success. With the size of it, that soon became the main achievement in terms of exposing the issues at Villa. Obviously, it build up such hype, we were going to get egg on our faces from what the picture the media had been painting, but it was a small price to pay.
It’s also shook the tree of supporter apathy and hopefully the AVST, which is meant to represent supporters, will become more dynamic.
Sometimes you’ve got to throw a grenade to shake things up a bit.
the 20 or so minutes chasing the game against pool were a lot better
but this was a very average pool team,,, and we are in trouble with this manager if he continues
with the reliance on hutton and sissoko to provide the crosses
hopefully mr gil can produce some magic