After my somewhat spontaneous “burst of pride” post last night, it seems at least Nick Hawkins agrees with me;
What makes a big club?
Is it the trophy list they have won, or the history given we were one of the founding members of the first football league, or is it based on global support?
Every fan says their club is big, but how do we measure that?
Let’s take Man Utd. In the 90s they were the dominant force; in the 80s it was Liverpool, however prior to United winning the league in 1992-93 their last league title was 1966-67. That’s a long gap.
Liverpool have never replicated the 80s in the league but had success in Europe, the magic night of coming back 3-0 down vs AC Milan, so where does villa measure in this?
We have won the European cup but look at us now, a relegation battle again for the 4th yr running.
How can we go from challenging the top 4 to this? That is another topic up for discussion which I will address in another article.
Personally, I think Villa should be playing European football. That’s how big I believe we are and I measure that on the traditions of the club, we are the main team in the 2nd biggest city in England, the fact that a club is built on its stadium, trophy list and fans.
We will never be a small club. We are Aston Villa FC
Given that Nick’s opinion somewhat mirrors mine, I might as well reply to any replies to my previous post here.
See, I think too many people judge the size of a club by what it’s done in recent years and that’s wrong, imo.
Nick makes a very good point about Utd. Even when they were in the second division with us, did any of us think they weren’t a big club?
How could they be anything other than a big club, when they were still getting the biggest crowds in the English game, even though they were still in the second division?
Even Wolves are a big club, imo, because the potential is there.
Leeds are similar.
and I could rattle off a few others.
Of course, we’re not currently thinking like a big club, but that can change, just as it did when Lerner came in.
By the same token, things could of course get worse and we might be on the slippery slope to total oblivion that some seem to predict. But that hasn’t happened yet and I don’t believe it will.
Let’s not confuse our current plight with where we stand in the bigger scheme of things, is my point.
Rodney marsh on sky sports said some years ago when asked the same question ‘a big club is a club who spends money and wins things’. So using that analogy do we spend lots of money? No. Do we win things? However in recent years, Portsmouth, wigan and small Heath have won trophies so does that mean they are bigger than us? No. A lot of posters on here have a pop at me and say that I’m asking to much to compete with the big spending clubs like chelsea etc. Why? City and Chelsea were nothing teams until they had big money pumped in. Unfortunately this is what makes you a big club nowadays. Ok if we can’t compete with the top 4 due to lack of funds il accept that, but what I can’t accept is not competing with teams like Saints, etc. Even worse Saints play good attacking entertaining football as well as winning football. This is a team that lost a decent manager and sold virtually all their star players but look at them now. That’s because the club is run properly from top to bottom. If you look at how much money we have squandered since MON onwards and the appalling choices lerner has made ever since its criminal in how badly we have been run in comparison to saints and dare I say a Stoke City/West Ham. We will never be successful again until long after lerner and lamberk go we havnt win a trophy since 1996 the longest we have ever gone in modern times. Appalling.
Rodney (everything was better in my day) marsh is hardly the Oracle of all footballing wisdom is he now?
Southampton as a model? Well perhaps we should follow it, so firstly let’s go to within days of the club folding (Southampton 2009).
West Ham? F++k me you’d have add an heart attack if Alladice would have walked through the door at VP.
Pulis well heaven forbid that with your puritan footballing sensitivities.
You really deserve the award of Villa’s all time fickle fan.
Had
agree with you oohah
the money spent since mon left is nothing short of criminal paying of hoiuller mcleish and there 2 clubs compensation wages onireland bent given zog makoun biggest joke ,loans for jenas car for pires, new contract for gabby hutton who they left to rot for 2 years he wouldnt go anywhere without a big payoff has 4 good to average games then bingo he won the lotto 4 year deal.yes mon spent big but all clubs where at how much did moyes pay for russian sunderland for bent spurs buying selling keane defoewest ham went brokepompey even blues bought zigic, lerner hasnt got 1 footballing decision right yet and if he doesnt get it right before november we are looking at 5 years in a row fighting relegation and guess what the trapdoor is opening surely fox can see that is if he is here to make money for club you not gone get sponsers when you get relegated and if fans keep going away they not coming back to put up with the misery of supporting villa i have 3children and they support pool arsenal chelsea and laugh at me why would any young boy want to be laughed at for supporting a team everybody says life too short well when you lose one generation you never get them back
All my kids and my grandkids (girls and boys) support Villa and I’m proud of that fact. My kids stood on the Holte with the Youth and we take our grandkids and sit in the Holte with them. There are real supporters and glory seekers – I know which I, my missus, our kids and our grandkids are!
Tom Fox left Arsenal to join Villa; well respected and successful – he must believe there is a real future. Perhaps, one day OohAh we’ll recover from the ravages of MON (and we’re not the only club to be left in ruin by his ego) and be able to compete financially with the Sky 4, 5, 6 or whatever.
Villa is a family and we’ll survive whatever RL can throw at us. Have Faith.
UTV
Longest sentence ever. Agree with the sentiment though
I do think people have this perception that you have to be a huge, successful club to be classed as big, but that would be what, 15-20 clubs out of the near 1000 leagues in the world, as most would only consider the big 5 leagues as big clubs. I’d say being in the top flight of one of the biggest leagues in the world would make you big, no? Or are there only 20 big clubs out of the thousands in the world? Is there a set amount of clubs that would be big? Or is it the 98 clubs in the top flight of the big 5 leagues, plus your known Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, etc leagues? Plus maybe your dominant Swiss, Swedish, etc clubs?
Well look at man City last night and they are our champions they were awful. U.S. The premier league overrated
Hell I could’ve told you the Premier League was overrated.
Lol over rated but best marketed if that makes sense
Oohah spot on mate, should the paying fan have to take crap like we have over the years, why settle for a club that gives excuse after excuses in bad footballers and management and you still have to pay the price we do,if the club put more bums on seats with decent football and ran it as a business we have no problems, the hole of the club is riddled with bad no care people, us the fans have to take it.are we a big club? in the eyes of the Villa fans, yes, I want cup matches , I want a packed club with fans, I want the world to know The name of Aston Villa, not a club that puddles along and other clubs getting better than us. Give me my club back.
We’re bigger than the SCUM that’s enough for me.UTV
They won lastnight Giddy 2-1 and that’s with a new manager.
Yes MATE it certainly makes a difference New manager new idea’s,I think we have the only chairman who can’t see this as a solution fucking laffable.
Regarding MON….he assembled what could be said our best team for years and we were on a high…….this team lost 7-1 at Chelsea
Brad Friedel
Luke Young
James M Collins
Richard Dunne
Stephen Warnock
James Milner
Steve Sidwell
Stilian Petrov
Ashley Young
Gabby Agbonlahor
John Carew
Fast forward a few years and we are now so rubbish we loose 8-0 at Chelsea with this team…Is this team rubbish against the MON marvels though…..
Brad Guzan
Eric Lichaj
Nathan Baker
Matthew Lowton
Chris Herd
Ashley R Westwood
Ciaran Clark
Barry Bannan
Andi Weimann
Brett Holman
Christian Benteke
I know the 7-1 was a bit out of place but it hurt more than the 8-0 (just) as we were the big hope to break the big 4 domination.
Things obviously need to change but I cannot see a march from VP to town and a demo meeting in Digbeth even happening never mind achieving anything……I am just left sitting here HOPING. I cannot attend more that once a year as football as now priced me out of it and I cannot see how people can keep going week in week out to league/cup and Europe games now a days.
As for bigger than the scum….they were above us in the 70’s …and the way its going could it happen again……..I want all the Midlands clubs in the Prem together….
“As for bigger than the scum….they were above us in the 70’s”
That line explains exactly the point I was making.
Even then we were still considered the bigger club, even though the Scum temporarily closed the gap.
Back in the day all teams used to ebb and flow (even Man U went down in the 70’s) but not today, no now it’s survival of the richest. Then just for good measure and to preserve the status quo we have the uefa fair play b******x.
Vaid3, its what most true fans want, the difference with 7-1and 8-0 would be down to managers nothing wrong with 7-1 it was manager errors, that was a reasonable side in my opinion. But again an heartache to us.
Just off topic tribal football reporting manure have put a 6mil bid in for vlaar can they afford that much????FFS
I’ve heard its Liverpool Giddy, Delph, and Vlaar, how true that is god knows.
Let’s hope they succeed we need to get rid of that skiving injury prone, error prone dickhead. He will have a good half season with them and will be nothing more than a squad player
vaid3
the 71 was freak bit like manu beating arsenal 82 losing to city 61
our 80 result was followed by spanking from spurs 40 then WIGAN30 AT VP followed by 1 team to lose to 4 tier team over 2 legs and then milwall that was year one
year two
cpalace newcastle stoke done the double with 1 time stoke scored4 away from home in years sheff utd culverhouse and co
year 3
sign keane cole sendross richardson gie gabby new contract lose at home to oirent with one shot on target lose 6 in a row 5 without scoring 2 new records
Giddy this what you seen
Double Dutch: LVG could turn to his former Netherlands skipper
Louis van Gaal wants Aston Villa captain Ron Vlaar to solve his defensive injury crisis.
Manchester United boss Van Gaal is ready to make a cut-price January move for Vlaar to help patch up his back four. Arsenal are also watching developments closely but Van Gaal’s Dutch connection may help if Villa are forced to sell in January.
It comes after United’s latest defensive injury blow saw Marcos Rojo ruled out for up to three months with a dislocated shoulder.
That comes on top of Chris Smalling, Phil Jones and Jonny Evans all suffering injuries this term and United want to plug the gap.
But don’t Vlaar take his annual 6 week holiday around Xmas and into the new year?
LOL :-D’
Ding dong merrily on high,
At Christmas Ron Goes Missing!
Similar story MATE.
I found myself very respective of football clubs although there is a few I detest. I still now look at the likes of Leeds, forest, both shefields, portsmouth, wolves and more as massive clubs. Clubs that have real history in football, large and loyal fan base, stadiums, the players they have had and so much more. Football clubs with stories to tell! It genuinely angers me when someone calls Aston villa a small club and belive me I hear it regularly. It tends to come from one person in particular who happens to be a Derby fan, I still show his team the respect and tell him his own club is huge just like mine. I guess the use “big club” is used in many ways. You speak to a man united fan who lives in some country town 400 miles from machester and he will say Aston villa is a piss pot club, with crap players and shit manager. On the other hand you speak to a Bournemouth fan who stayed with his local team, he will tell you the villa is huge with some decent players and a decent manager.
I cannot stand speaking to someone on Monday morning who watched Villa loose at the weekend and simply say we were shit! He cannot coment on why but because we don’t score or we loose we were simply shit! Some football fans just don’t feel the game like we do. As it’s been said there’s either glory hunters or true loyal fans. They just want to see big signings, 40yard gaols and trophies. How do you measure a football club is a good question. For me if you are a true fan of football you know deep down. The interesting question for me is how many of these “big clubs” like chelsea and man united have real loyal, true football loving supporters?
I could go on and on with my views on the state of football today and the lack of respect some fans show towards mine and other clubs. Banter is one thing and it’s part of the game but these idiots tell me as if it’s a fact how big mine and other clubs are.
Meh!
Tom, I like it mate that’s how I feel as a fan, in the days of Don Rev, we feared Leeds, they was the team of the year, Nottingham Forrest, even Burnley, all fell by the way, but Villa was always a club to fight back, we cannot say today that we can do just that, not with an owner or Manager we have, I dont want us to go the same way, we are a big club ,we should have big ideas, problem is we have been hijacked by a yank that don’t understand our ways.
Anyone see the article on the BBC website about footballers who have lost their fortunes? 3 out of the 4 are ex-Villa…! Lol!
What was the odds on that?