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ender4

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Totally agree about our ball retention. Quite frankly most of the time watching Villa I'm just resigned to us giving the ball back to the opposition. I'm a bag of nerves watching us and after 65 minutes last night I expected to lose that game.

During O'Neills tenure ( and I'm an MON fan) we have never been able to keep the ball. I sincerely hope that under Houllier this will improve otherwise I will not be watching Villa for much longer. I'll have a heart attack!

You and me both. The scripts of our games always seem to have the same unhappy ending.

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I don't care if I get slated for saying this, and I know everyone seems to have a different reason under the sun for not attending matches, but I personally think it is PATHETIC, utterly pathetic, that Aston Villa Football Club cannot sell out 2,900 tickets for a reasonably priced away match not far up the road after a 16 day break without any football. It is quite simply laughable in my opinion.

Totally agree with this mate. WTF has happened to our away support this season & the back end of last? OK I know both games have been on the box & both not Saturday afternoon KO's this season, but the away support is dwindling by the game. I've been in the away scheme for about 7 years with my pal & it used to be a mare to try and get an extra ticket for a 3rd mate, now any man & his dog can get one. A friend of mine is a Geordie fan & the support they get away is unbelievable considering there location. He told me they took 7500 to Carlisle for a pre-season friendly this year & last season in the C/Ship took 4000 down to Plymouth - A 14hr 900 mile round trip !! It pains me to see these empty seats at away games especially as we all bill AVFC as one of the biggest clubs in England. Our away support is immense and I think a few of the fans who attend home games only would be SOLD on turning up away if they made the effort to come along & support for a game - I'd put money they would want to go again as we all know who go away it's an addiction & far far better than VP. I know moneys tight but other fans seem to find the funds so IMO it's all about making the effort.

As for your player ratings - Very similar to mine. I think the fans who were at the game saw it different as we're not just following Sky's cameras.

I'm glad though people are starting to see the obvious lack of concentration & poor tackling/distribution in Richard Dunnes game at the moment. He was woeful at Newcastle and really let Collins down last night. I've mentioned this a few times & been slated. I'd love to see Collins & Cuellar start against Bolton as I don't think they've both started as a CB pairing yet ?

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havnt seen the goals back yet and they were all up the other end of the stadium but it looked to be like we had the chance to clear our lines in the build up for both of theirs which is really frustrating. stoke are shit, their crowd was quiet and they were they for the taking. should have been at least two up at half time given that 20 minute spell where we absolutely destroyed them. second half was woeful, no ability to retain possession, no subs made to add fresh impetus = same old, same old really.

downing's goal looked sick though and he played really well for the most part.

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My thoughts are they we need to work hard on keeping the ball. We did it better than normal until the 60th minute but we faded badly after that, allowing them to put us under far too much pressure. When we were playing well the cm`s wanted the balland the wingers were involved. From the 60th minute onwards we stopped moving and wanting the ball as much in the middle subsequently our wingersfaded out the game badly. We needed fresh legs in the middle or to at least change one of the wingers. I would have been tempted to either put Ireland on and put Young out wide. Or looking at our bench and the lack of a proper cm`er put Heskey and Ireland on and put Young and Gabby out wide for Downing and Albrighton. It wpuld have given us a bit more experience, pace and power out wide to hopefully gain a better foothold in the game. Would also have had Ireland in the middle where he is better than Ash and a bit more robust.

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what is wrong with that bloody team, all the bloody time goals right at the end really p**s me of
It's more the failure to score simple bloody goals that would kill the game off when we are on top that p**sses me off. Should have gone in from the first half AT LEAST 2-0 up but any halfway competent side would have been 3-0 or 4-0.
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if i was ever in doubt about KMac last night confirmed it.

surely he could see we needed some fresh legs, and then eventually brought heskey on.

please let GH be able to see these things and bring some new strikers (we have'nt had a good one since yorke)in as we're going nowhere with what we got.

Yep, it is critical to bring in 2 good strikers....Carew is injured too often, or just can be bothered too often. He's best used as an 80th minute sub, IMO.

Heskey is, well, Heskey, Gabby is too streaky, and Fonz is apparently not ready. It's the same old story, basically.

We have a good GK, a good back line, a good midfield, and sub par strikers.

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I don't care if I get slated for saying this, and I know everyone seems to have a different reason under the sun for not attending matches, but I personally think it is PATHETIC, utterly pathetic, that Aston Villa Football Club cannot sell out 2,900 tickets for a reasonably priced away match not far up the road after a 16 day break without any football. It is quite simply laughable in my opinion.

Totally agree with this mate. WTF has happened to our away support this season & the back end of last? OK I know both games have been on the box & both not Saturday afternoon KO's this season, but the away support is dwindling by the game. I've been in the away scheme for about 7 years with my pal & it used to be a mare to try and get an extra ticket for a 3rd mate, now any man & his dog can get one. A friend of mine is a Geordie fan & the support they get away is unbelievable considering there location. He told me they took 7500 to Carlisle for a pre-season friendly this year & last season in the C/Ship took 4000 down to Plymouth - A 14hr 900 mile round trip !! It pains me to see these empty seats at away games especially as we all bill AVFC as one of the biggest clubs in England. Our away support is immense and I think a few of the fans who attend home games only would be SOLD on turning up away if they made the effort to come along & support for a game - I'd put money they would want to go again as we all know who go away it's an addiction & far far better than VP. I know moneys tight but other fans seem to find the funds so IMO it's all about making the effort.

As for your player ratings - Very similar to mine. I think the fans who were at the game saw it different as we're not just following Sky's cameras.

I'm glad though people are starting to see the obvious lack of concentration & poor tackling/distribution in Richard Dunnes game at the moment. He was woeful at Newcastle and really let Collins down last night. I've mentioned this a few times & been slated. I'd love to see Collins & Cuellar start against Bolton as I don't think they've both started as a CB pairing yet ?

Good post mate, agree entirely.

Put it this way - as you've stated in the case of Newcastle - other clubs of a similar size/infrastructure/stature take far more away fans consistently than us. And for a club of Aston Villa's size and considering the factors that dictate volume of fans I don't see where the excuse is. Maybe it is true that Birmingham is just not a footballing city?

A lot of people moan about the media perception of our fans and the things they write - but we don't exactly do anything to change that perception. As much as I hate Newcastle (and believe me - I can't stand them) the media's perception of their "fanatic" away support is actually pretty accurate. It is fanatic, as is Sunderland's.

Added to that West Ham, Everton, Spurs, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, United and Man City all (in my opinion) take larger numbers away than Villa. That puts us 11th in this fictional league table already. But then I'd also suggest that teams like Stoke, Wolves etc sometimes take equal/more than us as well. That is up for debate.

Aston Villa is a big club with a grand history and situated in the middle of the country, in the country's second city, with FAR less successful clubs around them. We have a big ground, some great players and were the sixth best team - in the best league in the world - for the last three seasons.

All of the above is why I find it very hard to swallow when I see about 2,300 Villa turn up to a local derby with standard ticket prices - with hundreds of empty red seats to my right. What the hell is going on? Are we Aston Villa Football Club or **** Fulham? It really winds me up and I'm glad quite a few on here share my opinion as did everyone I talked to at the ground last night.

You can bitch about everything going on at the Villa on a messageboard untill you are blue in the face - no-one of importance hears. If more people spent less on their electricity bills and more on following the Villa lads then maybe we might have an away following that matched the stature of our club - and maybe the team would perform better as a result.

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