We’ve talked about the divides in football, the tribal settings of different teams, and the divisions within a city with more than one team. These divisions are happening on Aston Villa Life. We have the Desperate Dans and the Happy Clappers with a few fence sitters (that’s me at the moment).
Both of these factions have gone down the same rabbit hole regarding Aston Villa. The play is so poor it’s barely describable. The Happy Clappers are happy with the smallest improvement and make excuses for the team whether it be injury, form, or indifference. The Desperate Dans flog the team at every turn, not good enough, no tactics, no nothing. A waste land.
Why do we have two distinct camps at AVL? Glass half full/half empty. I suppose that’s what makes the blog – if we were all the same, nobody would ever comment, right? But in reality both camps are very close in their thoughts regarding the team only they express it ever so differently. So differently that the distinctions in the two groups are becoming more apparent every day.
I wondered a bit as to why AVL was becoming divided. A few things came to mind:
(1) We have become obsessed with the product on the pitch.
(2) Our humour has become more sparse because we’re so wound up by the club.
(3) The off the cuff thoughts on other topics have dried up.
(4) We have very little information coming out from the top end- RL, PF, and PL.
(5) We let the media wind us up with half truths, lies, and rumours because we are desperate for any nugget of information.
(6) We have perfect 20/20 hindsight.
and finally…
(7) The grass is always greener across the fence.
After 18 months of Lambert, we can be pretty certain the big money isn’t going to show up. We know the modus operandi is to go with youth and try and build. We can rage all we want, but it’s not going to change anytime soon. The product is going to be a crap shoot every game, probably for the foreseeable future. It’s gut wrenching, but it is what it is. We can’t dwell on the occasional flashes of brilliance because they are few and far between. Improvement is so small it’s invisible. The mishaps, gaffs, and sheer madness of it all has taken over for most of the games – how we sit where we are in the league at present is beyond me – and it’s also taken over our perspective whether you are a Clapper or a Dan.
We need to be less divided as a blog, less angry. We need to temper our expectations and be more realistic to the situation. Less forgiving and more constructive in our criticism. We have turned our disappointment onto each other and have become a slightly meaner site to visit. We are, perhaps, turning into that other site, though I don’t frequent it. We have to stop going down that rabbit hole every day and try to expand this blog to where it was a year ago.
If, as Matt says, all the Villa blogs are looked at by Aston Villa’s administration, players, and staff then we have an avenue for several kinds of conversation, even if it is only a one way conversation, mind you. We can be full of bile or empty platitudes which would render the site unreadable to them, or we can be constructive with our posts. We can commiserate with fans who read and don’t post. AVL has attracted plenty of people who are bright, thoughtful, and football wise. We can be a place for reasoned debate both for and against. A place that offers options and a brighter future instead of anger and excuses. A blog that offers fair criticism to the people who run the team.
There is a bigger picture for us to focus on. It doesn’t have to be Villa 100% of the time. It can be the league, FFP, or even the competition between WBA and Villa for the city. How are other teams doing in relation to Villa? 11th is a good place to start and why did West Ham crater its first half of the season? Why them and not Villa? We need to expand our thinking and put things into a wider context. We need to relax a bit.
We really are wound up this year – I hope we can release the tension this January!
The Author
