The moment a heart breaks.
The moment a heart breaks.
Another night spent weeping into their claret and blue duvets in heartbreak hotel, was served up for Villa fans last week, as yet another temptation to hope was dangled, only for the football gods to mock the spark of joy which was ignited in Villa bosoms, when they snatched away Villa’s longed-for victory and desperately needed points, with a late, late, goal from Everton, which left Villa Marouaned in the bottom-four.
These moments of exquisite last-minute torment are made worse for those who rely on the BBC web-site to be updated, because these days, since Aunty (or rather, Dirty Uncle) gave all their money away to departing DGs, you are lucky to get told the bad news before six o’clock, if the coup de grace is delivered late in the game. Which is more than enough time to drift into a dangerous flight of delusional delight.
The BBC’s gratuitous addition to my misery didn’t help but it seems that I am gradually getting used to my suppurating Villa wound, and after the initial convulsive spasm of agony, I quickly found that my pathetic whimperings of all previous Villa serial disappointments, had coalesced into that focused and numbing anger, which has evolved over the thousands of years of relentless misery, which my peasant forebears inexorably endured and defied.
Even in Greek tragedy, the tragedy has to be kind of accidental, and there is nothing accidental about Villa’s present plight.
I was even able to muster enough detachment from Randy Lerner’s cruel game, to actually watch the highlights of the match, which is sometimes actually not possible, and I was surprised to find that it was not too painful at all. Three lovely goals from Villa more than compensated for Villa’s three lousy examples of defending. And, just to prove that Villa’s problems might not be entirely insurmountable, Alan Hansen did us the favour of pointing out what Ciaran Clerk was doing wrong, which looked like something he could learn eventually.
Later in the week, Villa legend and stalwart Shaun Teale, said the same thing: if your opponent is bigger than you, don’t try to push him around, you are better off attacking the ball. Even Ron Vlaar got shoved out of the way for Fellaini’s winner, when he himself thought he was going to be doing the shoving.
I am sure there must be a chapter on this in Defending for Dummies, if Villa haven’t thrown their copy into their paper-recycling bin.
So, miserable; yes. But not catastrophically so and I can definitely feel myself making that journey to that place, where I’ll look upon Championship football and accept it and see the Premiership as reserved for those who care enough to want it, and the Champions League as Mount Olympus.
I have been there before but I was younger then and there comes a time in everyone’s life when they examine their portfolio of emotional investments and throw out the things which are worthless. It very much looks like 2013 will be the season of fan burn-out as many a Villa scrote and wrinkly will drop out of Lerner’s long march to oblivion.
Without doubt, there will have been a few more drop-outs this week.
Good news according to the Villa web-site is that Villa Park is now carbon neutral, which must mean the floodlights are connected directly to a hydro-electric dam in the Lickey Hills. But never mind carbon-dioxide, Villa need to take notice of the amount of methane they are emitting these days because methane is 20 times more powerful than CO2, when it comes to theories about climate-change.
One of the biggest sources of methane emissions are faeces and currently the way the team are playing, they must be emitting more methane than a pig farmers midden. Start to add in the balti-pie and beer generated methane emission from thirty-thousand bum-holes and it would seem unlikely that Villa’s eco-claims cannot be taken seriously.
How many Villa bum-holes will attend Sunday’s crucial game against West Ham this weekend, we will have to wait and see, but it has to be hoped that the team leave the methane emissions entirely to the crowd. There’s been a lot of talk about Villa’s performance against the excellence of Everton last week, being a sign that they have turned the corner but no one needs reminding that the last time they did well on Merseyside everyone was convinced that Villa were going to be a force to be reckoned with. It quickly followed that Villa were in fact a farce to be reckoned with and the fans’ hopes and dreams disappeared in a cloud of malodorous trouser-gas.
West Ham can be pretty malodorous themselves and so there can be no excuses if Villa turn up and produce yet another stinkeroo of a performance against another club who must be considered their peers.
I am not sure anyone associated with Villa can take much more heartbreak. Some journalists at the Guardian were indulging their schadenfreude this week, by comparing the look on Paul Lambert’s face last week at Everton, with the moment Ralph Wiggum had his heart broken in The Simpsons.
Let’s hope the football gods are kinder than Lisa Simpson, on Sunday.
Keep the faith!
