turvontour

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.

My point is that a Villa fan isn’t a specific type of character or person. If you feel shame when one or a few of the hundreds of thousands do something untoward then that’s fine, I’m just saying that I don’t. I also think that we’ll continue to see more and more of these “incidents” with the continued rise of social media. I’ll just add, that I’ve seen four or five videos of Man City and Arsenal fans kicking the hell out of each other outside Wembley on Sunday. Not condoning the prats on the train, but come on, mountain out of a mole hill.

I don't get this feeling of collective shame at all. There was 40,000 Villa fans at the game on Sunday. Surely you appreciate that a significant proportion of those people are dickheads. Doesn't one in four people in the UK have a criminal record? So presumably 10,000 of those fans will have had some dealing with the police before. Might be driving offences sure, but could be rape or murder, we don't know. If those lads in the video weren't being dickheads on a train on the way to the football, they would be being dickheads (either individually or collectively) somewhere else.

We as a family started going to Villa 95/96, so the loss of Ugo has had much more impact on me than the loss of Atkinson who I never saw play live. But much more than that, I think he was my favourite player of that time. He was the first players name that I had on a shirt – Ehiogu 16 on the AST Computers home shirt. And I’ll never forget him handing me his training hoody as he ran down the tunnel of the old Trinity before a match. It was one of those LDV vans navy blue hoodies, so I want to say 98/99, feels like it was the same year as the Arsenal parachutist game, who landed about 15 feet away from me btw. I think that it’s made me realise how lucky I was to have people like that as an idol growing up. My young lad shouts the names of Richards (his only autograph to date), Grealish and Mccormack when we play football. Now I know there not bad people but it just feels worlds apart in terms of a role model. Few things I’ll remember of Ugo; The purpose with which he ran in from training pre-match, was always fairly late in I recall, but would sprint in. The size of his hands when signing autographs. OK I was 10 at the time but a pen in his hand looked like how a match would in yours or mine. Attacking headers from corners, again the word purposeful comes to mind, and a very real belief that he would meet the ball. Good memories

A Villa loss would mean that Blues would prob need to beat either Hudds at home or Bristol C away in order to stay up, having not won a game since February. Hope we play a reserve team. Given that Boro are as good as relegated maybe they could loan us back the all stars for one game only! Guzan, Traore and Rudy would get the job done.

Urrgghh. Giving my MOTM to a player who was completely annonymous for all but two seconds of the game.

I think we’ll win this and I also hope Reading stay down this season. They’re one of the only clubs that I feel we can beat whenever, wherever (only other would be Sunderland off the top of my head, and hopefully increasingly QPR). Got no idea how they’ve made the playoffs – don’t recall ever seeing a team promoted with negative goal difference.

Such a shame he hasnt developed. Was a genuine threat from just outside the box in his first season but very little since.

Cant dispute that, its a top away end/day no doubt. I just cant see how that designated 2 thousand seat neutral section functions. I dont believe that theres a thousand yanks/chinese that want to go and watch Fulham v Csrdiff on a Tuesday night. But even if there is, i wouldnt want to be told having come from the US that i was being sat in the tourist stand. Maybe its just me but id want to sample the atmosphere. The irony of it all is that the 1k tourists would likely be mixed with say 1k Cardiff away fans which makes it even more bizarre and much more extreme for them when compared to just sitting anywhere else in the ground. As you say, i think it would only work at Fulham where nothing ever seems to happen. Just imagine if we had used the upper trinity as a neutral section for the last five years......

Could watch his appearances on WILTY over and over again. The one with the hand lion is my favourite.

Personally, I don’t think it’s getting worse, I just think that social media makes it appear more regular/pronounced due to everybody being able to film and upload even the slightest incident within seconds. Those looking for trouble with their club often target a specific game across a European campaign, so the Chelsea fans causing problems in Paris probably targeted that one game as its near and cheap, and they may well not have attended another euro away game that season (I’ve got nothing to back that up by the way). Everton too, it’s fairly simple to get to Lille so no major surprise that there were problems, potentially attracting that more loutish supporter. Again, it was why there was so much trouble at the Euros in France last year, Germany 2006, Belgium 2000 etc they’re all very accessible and affordable, particularly when they are announced years in advance (that feeds into the discussion as to why Arsenal champions league fans are generally well behaved, because they are the sort of people that have the financial flexibility to make trips all over Europe at very short notice). Whereas with England, incidents in Brazil, South Africa, Japan etc were few and far between due to the time and financial investment needed to get out ther I did it, as a very immature 18 year old. I drove to Cologne in 2006 for a few nights for England v Sweden and didn’t even watch the match, and there were a load of others out there (60,000 England I think they estimated to have been there in all) in a similar position. Very little time/financial investment and probably wasn’t any more expensive than a weekend in Blackpool.

I think its a part expense, part novelty thing. I appreciate I'm making a massive generalization here, but those who can afford to follow Arsenal all over Europe every season are less likely to be loutish, laddy type characters. Whereas, when England organize a fixture in Germany every four or five years (I know its been twice in last two years) the less regular/flush supporters target it in advance.

Not the best stat is it......

Are they having to get coaches or is it optional? If optional i dont see how it reduces threat of trouble as those wanting to cause bother will go through trains and taxis.

I sometimes wish that Karanka had been a referee - simply for chanting purposes.

Our away support never fails to astound me.

Can anyone explain the idea behind a neutral section? I don't get it. Surely it just increases the chance of trouble. What's the purpose of it?

Bouncing back from bad results/setbacks will be the key, not panicking and then going on winless runs for weeks/months. Newcastle will likely be automatically promoted this season having lost about 10 games. You don’t have to be invincible to get out of this division, but being consistently good/strong is essential.

Wow! It's a Monday lunchtime, and we've won the last three without conceding. Optimism Hops, optimism.