turvontour

The lack of Birmingham based football shirts in Birmingham sports shops. I think it’s a bit different nowadays as Sports Direct and the like generally have national stock as opposed to regional, although there was a very small Villa section in the one that I visited on Saturday. It struck me though that I couldn’t see any Blues or West Brom shirts, albeit I didn’t search for them. The football area was dominated by Liverpool and Man U tops, with Chelsea, Man City, Barca, Real Madrid and Newcastle (Ashley’s influence I presume), all similarly prevalent. It’s difficult to pin point what annoys me so much about it. I suppose that it encourages glory hunting? OK maybe not encourages but makes it more acceptable. I just think it’s a shame that when all Birmingham based teams have around 20% of the ground empty each week, kids have the easy option to support the latest flavour of the month.

The Premier League is painfully weak at the moment, which makes our current predicament all the more frustrating. Chelses and Spurs are OK. The next 5 are all very poor considering the spending. And then the bottom 13 is just complete dross. Pulis shortlisted as manager of the season shows just how weak the league is. West Brom have lost way more than they've won, and have spent a fair bit.

I heard there was a load of confusion earlier when they called for the bomb squad and Bent, Ireland and N'zogbia turned up.

Worth a quid.

Not sure if you’re serious but I can’t agree with any of that. Roberto Carlos scored one decent free kick? Ye, alright…… Bacuna scored 15 goals in the top Dutch League as a kid before he joined us and then 5 in his debut Premier League season. So he had scored 20 goals in top European divisions by what 21-22 years of age? He’s now turning 26 in August according to Wiki and he’s scored a grand total of 2 league goals since those initial 20. Based on those figures, I’d say it’s fairly safe to say that he had the goal scoring ability and now he’s lost it. I appreciate he isn’t deployed as a goal scorer, as he often plays at right full back, but man, at a time when we need goals (I think only Blues scored fewer than us out of the teams left in the division) it’s so frustrating that players who you know can and have scored simply aren’t at the minute. Norwich are going to be one of our main rivals next season, and just looking at their stats, they had 6 midfielders who scored 4 or more goals this season, we had one – Grealish. Now you see why I’m frustrated with a player who can do it in the Prem but now can’t do it in the Championship. I’m just trying to establish in my mind the reason for it, is it confidence, change of focus in training, lack of desire to succeed etc, I wasn’t overly surprised to hear Grealish say in his recent dressing room interview that Bacuna was the last to turn up for training every day.

He scored 5 in about his first 5 months in the Premier League. All from outside the area. And has then managed just one or two across the next three years. Thats what i dont get. How do you possibly lose that ability, when you are basically just trying to fine tune it everyday on the training pitch. How have the club not done anything about it? I know you cant compare football to everyday life. But it would be like me turning up to an office job claiming to be a whizz on excel. Being excellent with it for the first year, and then gradually forgetting how to use it as time went on, until i dont even bother using it. And the company being accepting of that and just letting me do so filing or something on the same salary. Not likely is it.

I asked this question on this thread somewhere before but I don't think that anyone answered it. For my simple brain, can somebody explain to me how as a footballer who plays football every day, you can go from being able to score regularly from distance (both from open play and direct free kick) in the Premier League i.e. Bacuna 4-5 years ago, to not being able to score a goal from distance? If it is as simple as that he has regressed as a footballer despite the huge investment of time and money, then why on earth does he continue to play for the club?

Exotica Erotica! Now there's a blast from the past (sorry). Channel 16 was fantastic. Not many channels you could watch Villa reserves followed up by an episode of Strip Master Brain.

Promotion away form instead of relegation away form. Requires one hell of a transformation. For us to appear seemingly less accepting of defeats. We know we're going to lose games, Newcastle have lost around ten this season, but recovering quickly from setbacks is paramount. If we lose at Preston one week, we need to make damn well sure that we win at Blackburn say the next game on the road.

Shirley the options should be 25k - 30k, 30k - 35k and 35k plus? I'll say 33.5k. What's our average out of interest?

Yes, looking at the current side, there doesn’t seem to be too many players in their 20’s. they’re either fairly raw late teens or in the most part mid-30s coming to an end type players. To be a Warwickshire and Villa fan is to win the lottery of life……

Leandro Bacuna, what a miserable phrase.

Christ Warwick are pants at the minute. Whats going on down there? Mostly the same team as far as i can tell minus Chopra.

Haha! Blues win a game and the EFL feel the need to investigate the oppositions side. Top banter.

Oh ye, i completely agree on the away form; its pivotal. I see no reason why we cant win 13-15 home games next season. But we need 10 away games minimum to be competitive. 4 away wins again and its another mid table finish at best. We've won an away game once every four months for the last two years. We need that trend to buck big time.

What, so you would be genuinly surprised if we didnt take 6 points off those two teams next season (Sheff u and Bolton)? All i was saying is that its unfortunate that it looks like 2 or 3 quite sizeable clubs are coming up, as we generally do better against the weaker, smaller clubs and 2 of the weakest are going down. The three weakest clubs stature wise this season are arguably Rotherham, Wigan and Burton. I think we are unbeaten against that bunch winning 5 out of 6? We would in my opinion have fared better next season going to somewhere small like Fleetwood (not sure of their ground) than to Brammall Lane.

Looking at who is coming up actually worries me. Sheff U, Bolton and maybe Bradford through the playoffs. All ex Prem, all have had the better of us in the not too distant past. Really unlucky bunch of clubs for us i think. Particularly when it could have been Scunthorpe, Fleetwood etc. Its really gutting that we are losing Wigan and Rotherham from the league as they made up 2 of the 3 teams we did the double over this season? Think thats right. Its the 10 away wins that i cant see happening. If Reading go up, then we will look down the fixture list in a couple of months and see 23 away games for next season listed. We'll have only won at one of those grounds in the season just gone. Just, how?

You're right, now i think about it, its only ever women that say it. But the ones turning 50 will say that its their 30th. The conviction and regularity with which they say it is what troubles me, like they genuinly want to change their age. Its just strange to me cus ive always been fairly content at each age that Ive got to (like you have any other choice anyway). One final thing, without meaning to overdo this but if they are able to go back ten years as they wish, are they going back and simply reliving their lives, knowing all along whats about to happen. Or are they going back to completely live those ten years again say. So in otherwords, completely deleting the last ten years of their life?

Why when its someone's birthday do they jokingly say that they are really turning a younger age? Girl at work was 30 the other day but said about ten times that she was really turning 23. I dont get it. Is it just a long running joke that you say it each time that its your birthday, or do people actually really want to be a younger age?

I'm really struggling to see how we're going to make the transformation needed to get us up around the automatics next season under Bruce. A transformation in energy, urgency, quality, consistency etc etc. Simply, we need another 30-35 goals from somewhere.

Incredible stat that the 14 away goals. Triple that next season and we'll be right up there......

As with a lot of these examples, its likely to just be an attention seeking thing. Look at me, I’m the centre of 40,000 people’s attention, plus the endless videos from every angle of me being tripped over by the steward, plus people like you and I taking time to rationalise it. To some, that notoriety may well be worth the cost of the fine and ban. A football banning order might be seen as cool in certain circles, as I believe Asbos also were among young chavs for a while? In other words, they had the opposite impact to which they were intended, as individuals deliberately committed crime in order to receive the “punishment”. To answer your question directly, they know full well what will happen when they encroach on the pitch. Again, it’s difficult for me in my own mind to see past the simple notion of people just wanting to break the rules. The pitch is seen as sacred, with its stewards and police lining the perimeter. Some people simply just want to do what they’re supposed not to do. What actually pushes people to do it will be a combination of drink, drugs (maybe), peer pressure, unbridled jubilation (which I don’t believe btw as you can celebrate as much as you want around your allocated seat), intrigue (joke) etc.

Why would anyone commit any crime? What I’ll always come back to in this sort of discussion is the sheer volume of people that we’re dealing with at Villa Park. Among that 40,000 crowd, you know that there are a minimum of 400-500 absolute bell ends. The bell end takes various forms too, from the lad graffiting in the toilet, to the pitch invader, from the guy punching the Blues fan, to the little scroat throwing a brick at the Blues fans coach window. I tried to illustrate it in the other thread by suggesting how many of our fans on average have criminal records. If you know that there’s 200 people at a Villa match with a serious criminal record, why wouldn’t they commit crime at the game? Remember that guy that turned up to the Albion FA cup game the other year with a dildo stuck on the top of his head. You can’t legislate for these characters and its why I was saying that you shouldn’t feel any shame for their actions as a Villa fan.

In most football violence incidents you generally have no more than 10-20 people actually involved in the fighting, but you have a huge fringe of 50-100 who are there as “back up” but generally won’t be involved in the trouble. They’ll maybe throw a cone or a bottle or something equally brave This is one of the big problems for me, as like the incident on the train the other day, the idea of the “football lad” allows those who aren’t out and out nutcases to become idiots for a day. If individually they were walking in a busy town centre to work on a Thursday they wouldn’t dream of launching a bottle of lager half way up the road, but for that Saturday afternoon, they probably feel that there is almost an unwritten rule that allows them to do it. Again, individually, I don’t think any of those lads would harass people on a train (I don’t know them, and there could be one or two real arse holes amongst them) but under the banner of football, lad, Villa, match day, lager, firm they feel like they are untouchable. As has been mentioned, it’s the safety in numbers feeling that drives a lot of the bad behaviour. For example, if you ran on the Villa Park pitch on your own, you’d be banned from Villa Park and given a £1000 fine. If you and 500 others run on the pitch, nothing happens to you.

No that’s fine, I completely get your take on it. I just think that we’re powerless to stop dickheads being dickheads and we know there’s a lot of them associated with the club through the sheer volume of fans. We also know that every other club has their share of them (us less than most I’d also like to hazard based on our level of support). Put it this way, I’m about as embarrassed of Villa fans being dickheads as I am of people who share my star sign being dickheads.