Where have you gone?

At the time of writing this, Aston Villa are loosing 3-0 at home to Manchester United. They'll probably score more before the game is over.

I don't mind loosing, it happens. Should have beaten Bolton on Saturday but we lost instead, funny old game football.

The thing that gets to me is Manchester United turning Villa Park into a home ground.

25000 went to see Villa vs. Bolton last Saturday. The ground holds 43000. Bolton are a good side and Villa have been doing well so why so low?

When the Premiership started in 1992 Aston Villa were as big a club as Manchester United. We had the highest attendance of the season in 1994 before the Holte End was knocked down. We qualified for Europe more often than not throughout the 1990's and yet now we're small fry.

A few seasons back there was a banner at the base of the Holte Upper tier saying "Where has the ambition gone" - it didn't have a question mark so I'm reproducing the error.

What I'd like to know is "Where have the fans gone?"

We now have an ambitious (and wealthy) chairman, an ambitious (and highly successful) manager and an ambitious (and rejouvenated) squad. So where are these ambitious fans that have been 'staying away' over the last few years?

They can't all live 250 miles from the ground like I do. Birmingham is the second largest city in England - bigger than that northern shithole the away side come from - so surely 43000 can bother to turn up to the ground two hours later than usual?

Even the manager has said that we lack home support so is it any wonder that we get turned over by United at home if we've got no fans?

I don't go on about how we won the league and the european cup in the early eighties as I was too young to remember it. But what concerns me is our rapid decline in status (not achievement) since the F.A. Cup final in 2000.

There really is no excuse for an empty ground. Our catchment area is enormous, the nearest Premiership club is Sheffield United. At the rate we're going there'll be higher gates at St Andrews than Villa Park.

I'm truly disgusted that the large numbers of people that have spent the last 6 years slating Doug Ellis haven't put their money where their mouth is now that he's gone.

You're all a fucking disgrace!