For how long must this go on?

Last week I wrote about swallows, and now I'm tempted to write about counting chickens before they're hatched!

Football at Villa Park is certainly not a bed of feathers, though, is it?! Getting three back-to-back wins at Villa Park has proved far too much to hope for. And now we're back to conceding a few too many goals.

I have many times felt like posting a message saying that "Yeah, it's not good, but we've been through all this before." Except that I can't post that; no matter what we saw in the 50s and later (in the 60s) I am not sure we then ever saw so much sea-sawing as we've experienced of late.

I vividly remember Blackburn doing a 'Stoke' on us one day in the mid-60s, winning 4-0 with the fourth resulting from a Mick Ferguson dribble from the half-way line to underline who was the better team that day. But at that time Villa were generally mediocre anyway - you didn't get a win against a league championship contender the previous week to give you any sense of false illusions.

After the Stoke week-end, we definitely know that Villa Park is a ground where unpredictable things happen. Or perhaps not, as we've kinda got used to the business of Villa coming back from behind, but we've now learnt to expect the worst when Villa score an early goal. For some reason, Villa gaining an early lead tends to fill me with concern! And I told 'em years ago not to sell Crouch; Graham Taylor liked 'em lanky and in respect of Crouch he wasn't wrong.

The Claret (and Blue) in our blood makes it difficult for us to be objective and it is indeed difficult to see where all this is going to lead. Please don't ask me to look into my crystal ball as it's been put away under the stairs - in a box.

But perhaps the time is ripe to ask ourselves - as fans - what would now be an acceptable return on an investment in a season ticket. The way I see it is that when Doug was replaced, the expectancy was that within a few years the club would be knocking on the door of Champions League football. Indeed, that's what the then chief executive under Lerner (Fitzgerald) confirmed. But the reality of matters seems now to be that the club is a mile away from that objective and, what is worse, now seems to be a 'pie in the sky' notion. One can wonder what it was that made Fitzgerald leave the club after a fairly short stint as CEO, so maybe there never was a real commitment by the board to getting the club to that exalted state, despite money being spent so freely at times (but not spent on enough quality).

Reality, therefore, stares us in the face. We seem to have to face up to the fact that great glories in the short or medium term are a futile expectation; that the main task now - which may take another couple of years to achieve - is to achieve self-respect. By that I mean that when the opposition turns up at Villa Park, they are to expect a hard fight from Villa with a good chance that Villa will win the day. No visiting team which is outside the top-4 should arrive with any belief that they will get more than a glimmer of a chance.

Now, assuming that Lerner remains as owner and assuming that Villa improve their points haul this year (and 8 points from the remaining 7 games is not too much to expect), I do not see any chance that Lambert will leave. In fact, so long as Villa stay up I believe he will stay anyway. But what I do believe is that the owner and the team manager are still sufficiently green around the gills that they will spend (as I said earlier) another couple of years developing a side that stands a chance of demanding the respect that former great Villa sides held - even those under Big Ron and Little Brian, and even the sides that pushed for the championship under John Gregory.

I don't believe, however, that the owner and the team manager don't want to achieve things - they must do. But I don't expect there to be any great signings this year. I believe it will be a case of progressive development.

So, without looking into the crystal ball, those are my gut feelings. In short, it seems to me that fans have to expect another 2 or 3 years before any greater things will show a sign of evolving. And if they don't evolve, maybe the owner will only then really come to realise that he has to sell up and move on. In any case, the owner may have lost interest by then.

What I will say is that if fans can get their heads round the likelihood of such a development timescale and accept the situation, then perhaps they might feel more inclined to support the owner and manager - for that contracted period. A kind of unwritten 'social contract' between fans and the owner.

Can the fans put up with another 2 or 3 years of non-achievement but some improvement, especially when clubs like Everton do better?