Author: Dan Hemming
With Tony Xia’s purchase of Aston Villa Football Club expected to be ratified early this week, Villa fans can finally start to look forward to a new squad being pieced together following an inevitable clear out. We have already read rumours of some players stating their desire to leave Aston Villa Football Club this summer. Gil and Veretout are just two of those players. I wouldn’t stand in the way of anyone wanting to leave Villa Park this summer. However, every single player who kicked a ball for Aston Villa last season is part of the reason the club is…
With Roberto Di Matteo finally unveiled as the new Aston Villa manager on Friday and Steve Clarke set to appointed imminently, Aston Villa Football Club may have found a managerial pairing fit to lead the club back to the Premier League quickly and build from there. As a fan, the last few weeks have begun to fill me with a cautious sense of optimism, something I hadn’t felt for a while in relation to Aston Villa, and I actually enjoyed renewing my season ticket. The new management team has plenty of experience in the Championship and Di Matteo and Clarke…
What a crazy few weeks it has been for Aston Villa Football Club. When the news broke on Wednesday evening that the club has been sold to Dr. Tony Xia, I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. It felt quite surreal given the time it has taken the outgoing Lerner to find his preferred buyer. For this, Steve Hollis deserves enormous credit. I don’t think the huge impact the chairman has made in his short tenure at the helm of Aston Villa can be underestimated. He has guided the club through an exceptionally difficult period and has hopefully left…
I have been asked this question quite often over the past couple of weeks. The answer is a resounding yes, of course. The reaction that gets has been somewhat mixed, with some people, who tend to be fans of Premier League clubs, calling me crazy or simply laughing. I know Aston Villa should be a Premier League club and, believe me, I want it to be, but football wasn’t invented in 1992. As a fan, I will always be there, no matter what league Aston Villa Football Club is in. For me, it is about more than which team we…
It is now almost mathematically impossible for Aston Villa Football Club to avoid relegation. As even the most optimistic fan has known for weeks, the Villans will be playing in the second tier for the first time since 1987, three years before this particular blogger was born. No longer will Aston Villa Football Club be one of the Premier League’s ever-presents, as that number drops to six. It is now time to begin healing the rift that has developed between the fans and the players on the pitch. A simple start in that process would be for the caretaker manager,…
As Aston Villa fans, we know exactly what the club means to each and every one of us. We are passionate about Aston Villa Football Club. We want to to see passion from those in charge and expect to see the eleven men who take to the pitch displaying it too. Whilst the boardroom has received a much needed overhaul, with football people and claret and blue blood added in recent weeks, the next target has to be the playing staff. A typically gutless performance on Saturday against Chelsea got myself and the season ticket holders around me chatting about…
Rémi Garde may be sacked as Aston Villa manager before he has spent six months in charge of the club rooted to the bottom of the Premier League. If he is still in place after this week then the axe can’t be far from falling. I have spoken highly of Garde and still believe he is a good manager who will have a long and successful career. Whether his career will be in England is up for debate. He is, hopefully, the final victim of Villa’s failing board and transfer committee, both of which have been deemed unfit for purpose and unceremoniously dismantled by…
I am really struggling to write about Aston Villa each week. Such is my disillusionment that when I sit down on a Sunday afternoon to tap away I find myself wondering what on earth I can write. The club is in the midst of an absolute crisis. We have effectively already been relegated and, to compound our misery, have started to get thrashed every week when previously we were only losing by the odd goal. The weekly humiliations mean that, on aggregate over the last three games, the record is 13-1 against Aston Villa, with twelve different goal-scorers. Life as a Villa fan is horrendous. It…
With each passing week there seems to be another embarrassment for Aston Villa Football Club. We truly have become the laughing stock of English football: while it is the least of fans’ worries, cutting chocolate biscuits from the match day experience of people paying up to £400 for hospitality tickets is insane. The club is sinking faster than a lead balloon. An investigation is supposedly under way into the causes of this disaster of a season. To most fans the answer is simple: King and Hollis now have to clear that boardroom and start from scratch. Tom Fox and his…
At the time of writing, all Aston Villa Football Club has achieved in the January transfer window is to hand ultimate control of the football club to a man who, as he openly admitted, hasn’t the first clue how to run one. All the other teams in danger of relegation have managed to add multiple players to their squads while Aston Villa Football Club becomes more of an embarrassment to football with each passing day. The team and manager may not have given up but it certainly looks like the board has. Aston Villa Football Club is going to be relegated; we’ve known this for weeks now.…