rapidler

hey,

I don't want to annoy you or anything as I'm sure many of you are gutted about this. I just want to point out that again your team and your coaching staff apparently didn't take us seriously; especially in the first leg but also in the second leg. Honestly I didn't believe we had a chance (yes, in football you always have a chance, but realistically...), and I still think we shouldn't have.

Something I just can't wrap my mind around is, I love the European Cup, I love watching my team play against clubs we don't usually play against every year, having foreign fans in the stadium and travelling to a "new" stadium myself if I have the time and money, but I just never felt like Aston Villa respected that. Not last year, not this year. Of course your players are vastly superior in almost every way to ours, but I guess that lack of enthusiasm is something that's difficult to overcome. Or we were just lucky, who knows.

Good luck in the Premier League. Until next year. (god, I hope not)

I don't take positives out of tonight I'm afraid. Not to belittle your club, but we should have won tonight comfortable, and gone through to the Group Stages. We haven't, and I blame our manager's tactics.

But fair play to Rapid. Your side could only go out and play the team they were faced with, and over two legs they were the better team. Again, I blame our manager for that. And your fans were great, home and away. Best of luck for the competition.

Well, that's football, if the better team would always win, it would be a boring sport, but that's not the case. Determination and fighting spirit can sometimes make up for class. I think, maybe you would have deserved to go through despite the 1:0 in Vienna, but your defense was somewhat careless in the second leg too. Of course your team has better player on every single position, but sometimes that's just not decisive.

do you have to come here and rub it in??????????

If I were a Villa fan I think there's lots of positive things I could take out of this game. If you team had played like they did tonight in the first leg too, I'm pretty sure you would have easily beaten Rapid twice; it seemed more like a lack of motivation than a lack of skill, especially with players like Carew not even on the bench. I would be optimistic about your prospects for the rest of the season.

If it makes you guys feel any better (probably doesn't ), this is **** huge for us; biggest win since '96 for sure and the first time an Austrian club kicked out an English club ever in the history of the European Cup.

It's unreal, I'm so jealous of the lads who travelled to Birmingham, must have been a night they'll remember forever.

Damn, I was hoping you'd get a beating in Liverpool so you would have to concentrate on the Premier League.

Just a shame that travelling back to my hotel was so unpleasant. Twice I was spat... wasn't much fun to say the least.

Sorry to hear that, there's always a certain percentage of assholes in the crowd. Just know that such behaviour doesn't represent the vast majority of Rapid-fans or Viennese people. Apart from the usual banter, most of us always try to get along with the visiting fans in the European Cup, after all it's respectable that people even make these journeys to follow their club.

This was one of the most **** amazing football evenings I've had in years, this is why I love the European Cup so much.

I don't care what happens in Birmingham. Rapid beating a Premier League team is just too mind boggling to put into words, I have to go out drink another beer.

I'll say it again, send some kids and get out of it as quick as we can. All this will do is tire out our stupidly small squad.

Oh yeah, please.

btw. I don't understand why English football fans (and you guys specifically) appear to care so little about the European Cup. For us, it's pretty much the highlight of the season to be able to compete against foreign teams and support our club in stadiums we've never played in. (especially since there are only 10 clubs in our league, so we are playing against the same teams over and over again. )