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So Aston Villa’s Main Rivalry – Who Exactly Is It With – Birmingham Or West Brom

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This particular topic rears its head about once a season in my mind – who are Aston Villa’s biggest local rivals, Birmingham City or West Bromwich Albion.

Both sides have a tendency to focus on singing about us in their games and that was ably demonstrated on Monday evening as West Brom fans could be audibly heard chanting about us as Brentford held them to a draw and we all know the same is true about Blues.

In fairness, a strong section of our own fanbase can’t get through 90 minutes without singing about the Alliance from Small Heath either – but unless we are playing the Baggies they never feature.

Chancing across these posts on social media got me thinking.

There were plenty more and I’m sure it’s a generation thing. Some of those wiser than me (the old) over the years have assured me that the Boingers are our more established rivalry purely down to the fact that when you look at their list of achievements in the game, it’s not Aston Villa’s copied onto the Birmingham website.

We competed and Birmingham rarely did.

But speak to people of my age and younger (the younger being lucky sods), it’s Blues all the way and West Brom only feature when we play them but really with no greater emphasis than Wolves, Nottingham Forest et al. Coventry usually rank higher but again that seems to be based on their obsession with us rather than the other way round.

It’s been a good few years since I saw this particular topic outside of a forum, so I thought I’d open it up to our younger fans now to pipe up and give their thoughts – especially as with social media more prominent these days I’m guessing there will be more of a variety of responses.

It’s just one of those topics that leaves me scratching my chin as I can’t see how it’s not Blues, I was surrounded by them growing up but it is West Brom next so it’s relevant.

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