Villa won today. Straight away, the so-called fans that would have been snarling for Houllier's dismissal had Villa lost are seething about the win! "Oh!", they shout, "it's only against an average Championship side!"
O'Leary once called Villa's fans fickle. Well, there are good many that are not (fickle), but clearly there's a fair number that are (fickle). Nothing will please them once they've decided they don't like someone, regardless of what good transpires.
These 'fans' (I call them such as I suppose they pay an entrance fee) seem to want the agony of negativism ... perhaps they do not know what something 'pleasant' is. A win is a win ... it should raise the spirits ... the fact that the net has been found three times proves the players have re-found their technique for scoring goals ... there's hope for the next match ... there's a week ahead when the Villa fan will get no taunts from his non-Villa friends.
Some of us vaguely remember those dire days of 1966, '67, '68 ... They were terrible. It had been years since Villa had been anywhere near the top-6 of the League. The claret and blue lion looked as though it was about to die ... but we kept on hoping, and justifiably so, too.
It seems that too many 'fans' now can't accept there's a life outside the top-6. That's the only sphere they know of, regardless of the lack of real quality in the football that we saw week-in, week-out, apart from the occasional sparkle.
Still, it has to be said that without suffering you cannot properly know elation. Perhaps a bit of suffering for a few weeks won't do any harm at all!
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2 comments:
Villa fans aren't fickle, per se. They do, however, have somewhat unrealistic expectations about the club's "proper place" in the hierarchy of the English game. Most Villa fans are of the opinion that when the greatest clubs in England are named, Villa are included in the first three or four names mentioned. There was a time when this was true, but that time has, at least for now, passed. We see fans of Liverpool, behaving as if the club were still in the halcyon days of the seventies and eighties, when clearly that time has gone. Villa are much the same, just many years further on.
We are not fickle. What we are is guilty of belief that the team we were 100 years ago is the team we are now. Neither we, nor the game we play, is the same as it was then. We are not the pre-eminent club in England; at the moment, we're not even one of the top five clubs in England. Once we recognize who we are and where we are, I think a measure of calm will come.
Well said, Jeff, most of which I agree with. However, I stated I go back a long time (60 years a supporter) and stick by what I said about fickleness. I'm trying to forget I'm a Villa supporter in saying that and am looking at it from the outside-in as it were.
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