Lowest attendance in 15 years

So do you think that this piss oor turnout is a one off or have the masses had enough?
I've said I'm not prepared to drive up from London for the crap that's been served up at the moment.
Was it so low due to it being a Monday night and on TV?
Do you think anyone at the club actually gives a shit?
How long can this go on for?

Attendance: 25,311.

What's the monetary value on the missing 10,000? Surely enough to get rid of Lambert.

I can't watch Villa and enjoy it anymore. I don't see why I should expect anybody else to.

Owner not giving a fuck + poor squad + terrible manager + no apparent tactics + no entertainment = shite.
We're many times the size of Southampton yet we're holding on for a point against them at Villa Park. That should tell you everything you need to know about Aston Villa 2010 - 14.

There needs to be sweeping changes. Starting with... everything.

Wow only 25,000 looked a lot of empty seats but that is really low. Will it spark Lerner in to action..... NO!!

Mazrim wrote:I can't watch Villa and enjoy it anymore. I don't see why I should expect anybody else to.

Owner not giving a fuck + poor squad + terrible manager + no apparent tactics + no entertainment = shite.
We're many times the size of Southampton yet we're holding on for a point against them at Villa Park. That should tell you everything you need to know about Aston Villa 2010 - 14.

There needs to be sweeping changes. Starting with... everything.

I'm not so sure it's a poor squad rather than a squad that's playing poorly. Other than that...word perfect.

It was always going to be low for this game, due to the combination of all the factors allready mentioned above.
People will only take so much. I did not watch the game, just kept up with the score. Two games on the trot i have not bothered to watch now, first time in many years. Not watching the game on Saturday either. Again i will just keep up with the score.

I live a few miles from St Marys and I'm not willing/can't afford to spend money I don't have driving on my own up to Villa Park to watch us lose or draw or fluke a win (I haven't seen Villa win at home for a couple of years!). It costs around £70 minimum and takes too many hours out of the day based on the high number of losses I've come to see. My main issue is that the manager sets up the team to offer minimum entertainment and excitement with the maximum risk (them scoring, our defenders getting injurd). Hit and hope requires very little skill and our forwards knacker themselves out chasing long balls and might get one shot away all match and frequently miss. Don't get me wrong, I watch as many of the matches as I can from the comfort of my own home and I cheered with the rest of you when Gabby scored. You know, if I thought I'd get to see Grealish play, and some adventurous tactics, and strikers running into space, and the kind of football where we might get thumped but at least might play to the players' skills (let's face it, Guzan is not good at long balls) then I'd make an effort once a month or every six weeks.

Please don't knock Saints, they have a great stadium and great support. They have momentum from being relegated to the First division and fighting their way back up, an academy just behind ours in terms of results, excellent training grounds (I've been to see the Villa U18s), a good manager and some very good players. A 32k capacity stadium means it's full all of the time (maybe a slight issue with us at the moment with 42k capacity but low 30ks attending) and they're on a big roll this season.

I'm a Villa supporter though (my father's parents were Saints season ticket holders) and I miss coming to matches.

If anyone does come up from Hampshire/Dorset and is interested in the occasional car share though, please let me know.

"an academy just behind ours in terms of results"

Are you sure?

It's about time this 'Villa Academy' myth was exposed once and for all!...yes we may have won a youth cup or two, but in terms of producing players....we are MILES BEHIND Southampton!!!!

Is it the academy or is it the senior management once they step up?

Hearing stories of how Cuntyhouse used to bully and berate the youngsters whilst they were doing his fetching and carrying, it's no surprise that they prefer to fuck off to the lower leagues where they enjoy their football.

Mardybum72 wrote:"an academy just behind ours in terms of results"

Are you sure?

It's about time this 'Villa Academy' myth was exposed once and for all!...yes we may have won a youth cup or two, but in terms of producing players....we are MILES BEHIND Southampton!!!!

Yes, I read that in a list of the most successful academies we were one spot above Southampton. Maybe it's because we won the NextGen. I wonder if it's more the way the players don't progress into the main team rather than the academy not producing good players in the first place?

Frankly it's embarrassing to watch this team, the football is of such poor quality with the single tactic of hoof it up the field quick after yet another attack from whoever we're playing against, hoping it lands at the feet of Gabby who hopefully manages to do something with his pace..Either set someone like Weimann up or score himself...Both of these happened last night and were our only real two chances of the game... Gabby did score his but Weimann when set up by Gabby fluffed his..as he does 9 times out of 10 of course!!

It's bloody infuriating to watch so no surprise thousands have decided not to bother... me included.

I really fancied going up last night even to the point of arranging it a week ago with a friend of mine. Mainly because i miss "going up the Villa" as it's what i did for years & years week in week out.

What actually happened though was as the week progressed i thought about my last 20 visits over the last 4 years and the horrid memories started to put me off. My enthusiasm wained over the week and i actually regretted mentioning it to my friend and started to dread the thought of another wasted £30+, drive & 90 minutes of being shocked at how far we have fallen since i began watching us..Even more depressing than the two relegated sides i watched as a ST holder as we simply get outplayed every week and seem to have this weird infatuation with perfecting the hoofed counter attack and nothing more....Its horrid to watch and even more difficult as a fan to support that style of play. Its akin to the footballing equivalent of Ali's famous "roper dope" tactic whereby you are being battered & on the ropes etc..the difference is we end up going down knocked out as a result 8 times out of 10...It's plain to see the tactic simply isn't working.

The sad thing is even with all our players fit we still do the same thing!!

That's it!! And it's soul destroying to watch.

Oh nearly forgot!! No i didn't end up going either and the saddest thing is my friend didn't even bother to call me to ask if i was still going!! Says it all!

I don't think it's a style of play or rope-a-dope or anything of the sort. I think the simple fact is we're shite and shite teams end up getting battered.

We have one tactic .... give them the ball and hope that at some stage they make a huge mistake that we can nick a goal from. It almost worked last night as it has occasionally in the past and will do again occasionally.

This dross is not going to put bums on seats. If it wasn't for season ticket holders having to go to VP at the moment the place would be nearly empty.

Message to Randy .... It's a waste of your time and ours allowing us to continue playing this kind of awful football, just to try to scrape enough points to hang on to Premiership status. If nobody is prepared to pay to watch this rubbish then the club is finished!

Last night on world wide TV the huge number of empty seats were a visually embarrassing statement of how far our great club has fallen.

Before the replay came on, they had Man City v Swansea. You can see the coaching coming through in the style of play. It was like watching a game of 5-a-side in each area of the pitch - players would pass and move to support each other, rotate in and out of play and keep the ball moving.

Our style of play seems to be "Everyone run away from the player with the ball like he's a mad jihadi".

No movement, no control. Just hoof and chase.

And players don't get to even a halfway decent level of football without the ability to be able to do some special things on a football pitch and it's obviously not the case that we just happened to have signed every shitty player going.

So it's down to training and tactics being unimaginably poor. And if we play like this when there's still a lot of the season to play, what the hell are we going to play like when we come into the last half dozen games and survival is on the line?

Trotters wrote:
And players don't get to even a halfway decent level of football without the ability to be able to do some special things on a football pitch

Emile. Heskey.

I stand corrected. :)

Trotters wrote:I stand corrected. :)

Get you point though, we have some decent players (no world beaters) who are capable of at least a mid-table finish. So where are we going wrong ? As you say, tactics.

Trotters wrote:I stand corrected. :)

As the man in the orthopaedic shoe said...............


Alright folks - I've been away for a while - lurked from time to time but too depressed to post.

still shit innit??!!

I was working last night so followed the match online - we got some stick for bus-parking on the BBC site. Mind you, someone said can the probe that landed on the comet recently try Villa Park next to see if there's any atmosphere? To be fair I did smile at that. Compare that with the away experience - We've taken 4,800 tickets for the Burnley game so even though we'll get beaten (and we will) at least the away support has a party every game!

De Kuip wrote:

Trotters wrote:I stand corrected. :)

As the man in the orthopaedic shoe said...............


Alright folks - I've been away for a while - lurked from time to time but too depressed to post.

still shit innit??!!

I was working last night so followed the match online - we got some stick for bus-parking on the BBC site. Mind you, someone said can the probe that landed on the comet recently try Villa Park next to see if there's any atmosphere? To be fair I did smile at that. Compare that with the away experience - We've taken 4,800 tickets for the Burnley game so even though we'll get beaten (and we will) at least the away support has a party every game!

Hi De Kuip, going to away matches is still fun because it's just an excuse for a bloody great piss up with a load of your mates, the football is almost incidental. Going to Villa Park these days is where the reality sets in. It's less enjoyable than a trip to the dentist's.

villabromsgrove wrote:

De Kuip wrote:

Trotters wrote:I stand corrected. :)

As the man in the orthopaedic shoe said...............


Alright folks - I've been away for a while - lurked from time to time but too depressed to post.

still shit innit??!!

I was working last night so followed the match online - we got some stick for bus-parking on the BBC site. Mind you, someone said can the probe that landed on the comet recently try Villa Park next to see if there's any atmosphere? To be fair I did smile at that. Compare that with the away experience - We've taken 4,800 tickets for the Burnley game so even though we'll get beaten (and we will) at least the away support has a party every game!

Hi De Kuip, going to away matches is still fun because it's just an excuse for a bloody great piss up with a load of your mates, the football is almost incidental. Going to Villa Park these days is where the reality sets in. It's less enjoyable than a trip to the dentist's.

Yeah - to sum up the difference...

I was supposed to be going to Everton away recently, things changed, I couldn't go. Expected us to get beat, but I was still gutted. We lost, I was still gutted I wasn't there.

Yet with the same mates, I got offered a free ticket (the Everton ticket wasn't free) to the home game v Spurs, and I still said no. At the end of the game I was just a bit relieved that I hadn't bothered.

Hiya VB - yep, was talking to my Coz this weekend and he goes to all of the away matches. his early New Year's resolution is to be able to remember them - seriously!
He said that when he watched the QPR game later on TV, he genuinely couldn't remember anything about the game and he was there - obviously that's a blessing with Villa at the moment, but it did make me laugh.

at the moment Villa make me feel like this:


and this:



and this:



because we're led by a fuckwit who has about the same level of intelligence as this guy................

That last pic cracked me up. It sums up our confused Villa in a nutshell.

Who was the manager and what was the team 15 years ago?? I don't feel like using my brain today.

People often defend Lambert and say that he inherited a poor squad and has had very little to spend.
Our poor performances are often excused by the fact that others have spent much more than us and therefore we have to scrap and fight for every point against better financed opponents and it's no surprise that we are coming up short.
Add in the injuries and we are told that it is also no surprise that the quality of 'football' is so poor.
The fatal flaw in these arguments is our cup record under Lambert which has seen us lose over two legs to a L2 team, lose at home to a L1 team in the FA cup and generally fail to shine against inferior opposition.
Even when the odds are stacked in our favour, we cannot play proper football under this manager.

gdav wrote:Who was the manager and what was the team 15 years ago?? I don't feel like using my brain today.

John Gregory was manager that season and we finished sixth. We had a good team including David James, Ugo Ehiogu, Gareth Southgate, a young Gareth Barry, Ian Taylor, George Boateng, Paul Merson and Dion Dublin.