Alan Hansen – Villa Were Embarrassing

Ouch… Alan Hansen on match of the day last night:

‘I don`t know where Villa are going to go from here because they were so bad today {v Norwich} I thought it was embarrassing for them.`

Not a nice spiral this, also not nice that the pundits are talking in such a way about Villa but I don`t buy this ‘they all hate us` (all fans of all clubs seem to think this!) and there have been a good few this year, including some of our own ex players like Merson and Yorke, the latter having called himself a fan, he is visibly upset and angry. Gareth Southgate is another.

As we know, Norwich were the better team and to be fair, they should have had a penalty before we opened the scoring and a) the Joe Bennett sending off WAS fair b) Chris Herd should also have had a second yellow and his marching orders.

The one thing I thought this year, judging by the fact we aren`t set up right, we don`t have a leader and we don`t have much experience (and the experience that we do have are letting subsequent managers down) plus the kids brought in will need time to get used to this level…. was that we`d be able to rely on beating the likes of Southampton and Norwich. Next up in that equation will be Reading… another must win!

It is too early to panic and lets be honest panic won`t help anyway, however most of us know where this is heading and it isn`t upward at the moment is it? We are – again in transition – but as pointed out in the forum, the real transition was when we were bringing in the likes of Ashley Young and James Milner, not now with championship and lower level players.

Have you ever seen a team succeed on doing the Premiership on the cheap? No, nor me. When I say ‘cheap’ I mean lower league and changing it so quickly. You need experience and quality to help the lower league players come through. I also don’t see the net gain bringing in lower league kids like Bennett to replace our own youth players?

This is, according to Mat Kendrick of the Birmingham Mail, officially our worst start in 43 years.

I also wondered when was the last time we were bottom half of the table 3 seasons in a row. Now, I know that this season is still young but surely even the most optimistic aren`t expecting top ten ?

The nearest was 2006-07 when O`Neill took over and got us to 11th. The season before we were 16th under O`Leary and 10th the year before. So that doesn`t count as three.

Well, we did three in the bottom half in 1933/34 (13th), 1934/35 (13th), 1935/36 (21st) which led to relegation …….

Then we had the mixed time in the 60`s. (Down 58/59, back up the next season)

62/63 (15th) 63/64 (19th) 64/65 (16th) 65/66 (16th) 66/67 21st and relegated. Then 69/70 we went down a further division and only returned to the 1st in 75/76 season under Lord Ron Saunders.

Obviously 1986/87 we went down again and came straight back up the following season.

In the modern Premiership world though, we`ve not done the three in a row…….

All time Premiership record we`ve just slipped below Spurs to 6th: www.statto.com/football

All time league record is 5th: www.statto.com/football

What can we do? Nothing more than many of us do already, turn up and support. It was a sadly quiet and half empty (33k) Villa Park yesterday but then, fans do need a spark every now and then to get going and that game had nothing to give us heart really did it apart from a well taken goal obviously.