Hi there.

[Laughable Chimp]

Ok, I've got to make an introduction to post apparently so finally motivated myself enough to do it.

Been lurking on this forum for years now, just reading the opinions and stuff. Relatively new villa fan, I started supporting the club during Houllier's time. Couldn't have chosen a more awful time tbh considering the shit that's happened to this club since then. But was a loyal supporter the whole way and tried to watch villa matches whenever I could.(except all those times we were shit in the Championship but hey, that's all in the past). Making this account so I can finally post some stuff and argue against people.

On the top of my head, things I've wanted to say.

Micah Richards was a great signing at the time considering his pedigree and someone even said that he would be Sherwood's best and most important signing. Its really easy to say in hindsight he would've been a bad signing at the time.

I admit I was on the Dean Smith out bandwagon which is pretty embarassing considering how much Smith has taken us. But we were pretty shite without Grealish tbh. 

I feel like we signed a lot of players that had great potential and should've turned out better for us but for some reason just never did. Its really a shame tbh and when we got relegated, they were off. Some ended up fulfilling their potential and lighting it up at their new clubs while others seemed like they were broken by a stay with us and never recovered. Honestly, wth was happening with the club. 

I'm not as close to the club or as knowledgeable about it ever since we dropped down to the championship as you can see since it got harder to watch games. Guess that's not gonna be an issue anymore.

I didn't realize how close we were to get **** by the tax man. Remarkable turn around all things considered. I do think Xia is a questionable character but I think he's more incompetent and delusional than actually malicious. At the very least he seems to truly love the club so I'll give him that credit at least.

Anyway, yeah. That's all I can think of right now. Pretty random collection of thoughts. Maybe I should give some info about myself now.

I'm an international student from outside the UK. Just about to finish my first year. Was a villa fan all the way back when I was in my home country though and believe me, no one and I repeat no one was a Villa fan back then. Everyone loved the big succesful clubs, you know, the top 6 right now. So I never got this idea of Aston Villa being a "big" club like I've seen many people here claim because back there, no one cared for Villa, there were just another team outside the top 6 and all those teams were irrelevent. But I did enjoy bragging to my friends when we did win a game against one of their teams very much. I remember the win over Man City with Weimann with the winning goal, the win over Liverpool where Benteke waltz into the Liverpool box win, the week one win over Arsenal where Antonio Luna, in stoppage time and being ridiculously out of position scored a goal. Shame he wouldn't amount to much after that. I think we beat Liverpool one more time as well in the FA cup and the whole stuff about ruining Gerrard's birthday? Oh, that was amazing. We really did have a good record against top teams we really shouldn't have had considering our league record.

I ended up studying and living relatively close to Villa Park lol. Haven't been to a match or the stadium yet, will probably do so one day.

Okay, that's about it. All I have to say..

[limpid]

Welcome