Remember that football folksong of a decade or two ago? … ‘Coming home… Coming home…’? But the thought of being home has officially been declared anathema by the Villa manager – he wants to play away. I’m beginning to wonder whether the Villa’s owner might do a Wimbledon and settle the club somewhere else in the country. Wimbledon became MK Dons; perhaps Aston Villa could become Cirencester Villa, a name that might appeal to the owner’s interest in history. But that’s the only way Villa’s owner is ever going to get close to Mr. Roman Abramovich!
But let’s be serious; never in the field of football conflict have things ever been so serious as the lack of form at Villa Park.
We don’t really need stats to tell us that it’s not good, but here they are, nevertheless – 3 seasons’ worth:
Poor home results like this have never been sustained over such a long period in Villa’s history, and the way the current season is going, the home results are going in even a worse direction than over the previous two seasons. The number of home defeats may end as being worse, as also the number of goals against column. We’ve already conceded 21 goals at home and failed to score in more than half of the matches. Yet somehow we’ve scored 3 and 4 against Man City and Albion. Take those two matches away and we’ve scored 5 goals in 11 home matches this season.
In contrast, the away form is keeping Aston Villa in with a chance of staying out of the relegation zone, but it’s not that many of us that have time or money to travel to see those games. The ordinary (home) supporter has not been fairly treated for a long time now, and the club’s management seems not to care – anyone vociferously complaining is deemed to have a screw loose, or at least that’s the impression given by the management. The ordinary supporter is now regarded as purely a consumer. But when buying any other product and it doesn’t work properly, you have protected rights to ensure that the matter is fixed. So as supporters are nor refunded after poor performances by the team we can’t actually be consumers in the legal sense at all. It’s our footballing emotions that have been hijacked – we’re made to feel guilty if we’re not entirely supporting ‘them’.
What a club to be a member of. Except we can no longer be members. So it’s not a club.
I usually have my glass half-full, and I do feel that (a) there will be no relegation and (b) the situation will improve for next season – perhaps sufficiently for the owner to sell his hobby to some entity that can (at last) make a difference.
But if Mr. Lerner does not sell very soon then I would say that despite his fine commitment to local charities, the club’s owner is very close to ‘losing’ the club’s supporters. If Paul Lambert is made the scapegoat, I can only see the next manager getting bogged down in exactly the same way. So no difference to the Doug Ellis era really (in fact, it’s probably worse) – then, each manager had three years at the helm and then found he couldn’t get any further.
Aston Villa seems to have developed its own form of a New Millennium Bug. It’s going to take a big change in performance by the owner and the manager this summer and next season to stand a chance of curing that bug.
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