Writer: McGrath4Pope
Taken from our Vital Villa Spurs Match Day Forum Thread following the aftermath of the 2-0 defeat at the weekend.
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As Villans, we surely know by now not to get too carried away with the highs or too despondent with the lows.
You have to take the season as a whole, and we were never strong enough as a squad not to have ups and downs. Had we started the season in this form it would have been expected, if we were then playing now like we did at the start and moving into the top 10 we’d be delighted.
A strong start to the season can be a double-edged sword – it gives you space to breathe and not look over your shoulder, but it also raises expectations and makes you dream ‘what if we do something special?’. I certainly was guilty of beginning to believe ‘Champions League? Why not?’.
For instance, I imagine there will be West Ham United fans who will see it as a failure if (when) they don’t finish in the top 4 after the run they’ve had.
As the saying goes, ‘it’s the hope that kills you’.
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There’s a very valid point behind McGrath4Pope’s words there about reversing the season in effect. We all know expectation’s rocketed in the first half of the 2020/21 campaign, and in many ways – and for slightly different reasons – we are now seeing our campaign levelling out as many fans expected.
The problem is how poor some of the performances have been since the turn of the year and I think that’s intensified feelings and rather than it simply being a levelling out after punching above our weight for so long, for a number of fans it feels like the wheels have come off and we are dramatically going backwards.
Some will blame the coaching, others will blame the players for not being as good as initially thought, others will point to the Covid outbreak and losing our momentum, the fitness elements with Bodymoor Heath closed and then that run of games when proper training wasn’t an option.
One way or another it’s all factored itself into this current run of form and even in slightly brighter moments, we seen unable to capitalise – Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United being two prime recent examples where we should’ve taken more than we did.
But the fact is, if we could swap the two halves of the year around, fans in the vast majority would be far more content than they currently are. The trend would be steady improvement as opposed to hitting the wall (for whatever reason(s)) and falling away.
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