“Just voicing my opinion as I feel I’m really starting to fall out of love with football, top-flight football at least, and just wondering if I’m the only one in this camp?

It’s a feeling that has been slowly creeping up on me over the last 18 months or so, and I think I’m close to calling it a day, both home and away – I turned 50 at the end of last year, and I’m starting to think there are better things I could be doing with my time. I go to home and away games by myself, but will occasionally meet up with mates pre-match at the pub, or chat with season ticket holders sat near me.

Odds stacked against us
We probably have the best manager we’ve had in my Villa supporting lifetime, but to me, I feel we’ve never been further from making that step up into the ‘serial contenders’ bracket. Hamstrung by spending constraints, it feels very much like one step forward, two steps back – tobbing Peter to pay Paul. As an example, no way will Rogers be here next season if we don’t get Champions League football, and this is looking increasingly likely due to how spending constraints have hamstrung us this past season or so.

Watching live football – Is it all that?
To me, the highlight of going to watch Villa ‘live’ is the thrill ride of getting caught up in the atmosphere – the fast-paced action, the singing, cheering, celebration, etc. These past few years, barring the odd highlight such as the Bayern or PSG games, has deteriorated massively, and it’s not just Villa, I’d tag most clubs in the league with the same problem. It’s flat.

I think it’s a two-sided issue – This new ‘play from the back’ system that most clubs have employed in the past few seasons doesn’t exactly get bums off seats. It’s akin to a team seeing out injury time with a 1-0 lead, but for the full 90 mins.

On the other side, there is the clamour to fleece fans for every penny they can. Having a season ticket in the Upper Trinity, I see it more evidently than most – ‘Customers’ that rock up with their half n half scarves, taking selfies throughout the match, not singing along when songs start breaking out (*as most of the time they don’t even know the players’ names, let alone the songs!). Lifelong fans who I’ve sat by for years, have slowly drifted away and been replaced with day trippers (*or away fans). I’m not saying you don’t get devoted fans in there, of course you do, but our recent limelight has started to attract people who have blatantly have no interest in following Villa.

Then there is the never-ending rising cost involved following Villa, along with ridiculous kick-off times that derail any form of family life. Saturday 3pms, you knew you had the mornings and evenings to do family/dad things – Russian roulette with the football calendar these days.

And the cherry on top – VAR.

Some might label me not a proper fan, and that’s fair enough, but to me, it’s starting to feel like more of a chore, than something I look forward to as the weekend gets closer.

I’ll always love and follow the Villa, but I think I’ll be dusting off the armchair before much longer.”

“I am sort of at the same point but with football itself. The ever increasingly ridiculous financial restrictions, the obvious bias towards the favoured few, the constant changing of the laws, the interpretation of VAR in England, the media, the terrible refereeing, the Manchester City 115/130 charges. And then there’s FIFA – celebrating an obviously warmongering orange octogenarian child as a peaceful man, leaving the World Cup in America, the financial scandals, the ever-expanding tournaments. The list just goes on.

I carry on going to Villa Park to see friends – I used to think I was in love with football but it really is just a love of Villa and the club’s history. How long that will last I have no idea but it is 50+ years so far.”

“I do think football has lost something in the last 5-10 years or so. I’ve not been much this season – we moved house and its a bit of a doer-upper so finanicaly and timewise it has been challenging. To be fair the people I normally go with haven’t seemed any more keen to go more. Some is due to the cost. A little bit is we haven’t really played that well this season – even on our winning run. We have often looked professional and organised but nothing like 2 seasons ago.

I have started to resent the whole idea of trying to become an elite club (whilst at the same time desperate we get there). I hate the constant fear of Villa not over-achieving and having to lose even more players than we normally do in the summer. Or worse Unai leaving. I have had some amazing times watching villa over the past few years. But I hate selling players you become attached to – or worse not selling them when you should and not getting the PSR advantage.

I hate the awful, awful punditry that comes with every game, and all the clickbait bollocks. I hate the fact we pretend the rules are even remotely suited to having VAR applied to them. And no-one standing up to say a rule from 140 years ago was never meant to be analysed to within a millimetre.

I know that a player today is better than 30 years ago – but I don’t think a football match is. I think football in this country is at risk of killing itself.”

“The top-level game is as close to being rigged as it’s possible to get without it being so transparent as to destroy the illusion of competition. I am possibly more embittered than most because my formative years as a supporter were kind of from Yorke leaving up to MON being appointed, and I went to a school (2000-2007) that was about 80% Man Utd ‘supporters’. If anybody dare remember or look up our record against those fucking scumbags in those years, it is the ultimate proof that God and natural justice do not exist.

I went to 5-10 games a season in the Championship but I haven’t been to a game since we were promoted. Some of that is ticket prices and difficulty getting tickets for me, my dad and brother together. But part of it, undoubtedly, is apathy. I’ll always love Villa and they’ll forever hold the power to make or destroy my happiness for an entire week, but the game itself is broken.

I don’t think there is any conspiracy involved, it’s just demographics and economics, but what we have now is a product, not a sport. Maybe it was always the case and it has simply come into sharper focus over the last two or three decades. I don’t know.”

“The last three years have demonstrated, clearly, that the right manager can take a club far. There was an established top six and we have smashed right through it. Even before Emery, Smith gave us the 7-2 game and wins at Arsenal and Old Trafford. The next step is the hardest, but it always was. Newcastle and ourselves came close in the 90s to winning it and just fell short. If we hadn’t the injuries that would probably be us this year coming 2nd or 3rd.

I get it that the Ci££y and Chavski stuff stinks to high heaven while Manure and Liverpool have always had the advantage of cashing in on the fact their success came with television giving them a big casual following. Spurs and the others were lucky in that they were in the right place to cash in on being good in the early 2010s when social media burst on the scene.

Which brings me to us. The clubs above played smart but until NSWE have we ever played smart? The ghosts of the past still lurk. We didn’t kick on in the 90s and inexplicably Randy Lerner just gave up at precisely the worst time. When we needed eyeballs on us circa 2010-2016 we served up McLeish, Lambert, Remi Garde and the rest. Playing devil’s advocate, that’s more our fault than it is anybody else’s. Again, it’s interesting how similar Newcastle are to us – they had a similar 2010s to us too.

To bring it back, I hate the FFP/PSR/SCR shite and the ‘big six’ shite. I don’t gave Sky a penny of my money. I hated the price increases and the Heck stuff as is well documented. But nothing is forever and whatever shape the game is in by 2036 the Unai Emery years have given us back some hope that our great club can compete and I hope there is 50,000 inside Villa Park to roar the team on.”

“Take the social side away and I wouldn’t go. I know the club neither wants me nor values my support whatever game I attend. There’s nowhere to congregate pre- or post-match, the Warehouse thing sounds horrific, plastic glasses and godawful music, the Barton’s and the Heart the latest to go and the most recent development in the ground, a singing section, has pushed me further to the day I jack the lot in.”

“I’m almost done. The glass ceiling, the leaking of our talent and the blatant corruption as to not damage ‘the brand’. Coupled with media coverage that is biased against anyone not in the scab 6. Deep down, it is the internal strife that pisses me off the most in that we get so far to doing something then we bottle it. FA cup 2000, 2015, last year in the semi. It is as if the club gets so high, stops, then shits the bed, gets a nose bleed, whatever. Meanwhile, teams who consider the League Cup beneath them hoover them up year after year.

Going to Villa Park now is beyond my means. It feels like how massive arena concerts are. An event within an event to fleece fans. Then there is the case of Sheffield Wednesday who have been royally cooked whilst the Oil barons and Russian backed johhny come lately lot get away with a slap on the wrist or delayed actions. It has all become boring beyond belief. Much like any sport Sky gets their hands on (see F1).

It isn’t about entitlement or a slide in form. It is that we never really look like competing and there are active forces preventing us from doing so. Get into Europe, get slapped with restrictions, don’t get into Europe, lose our top players. How can anyone get to the top under this way of working and sustain it long term? The anomaly of Blackburn and Leicester winning the league means that in the thirty-odd year existence of the Premier League, Manchester United, Arsenal, Man City, Chelsea and Liverpool (albeit took the latter a long time) have dominated either by winning the league or by getting the Champions League spots. As pointed out, Liverpool are an amazingly-run club (no beef with Liverpool at all) but Manchester City and Chelsea basically cheated their way to the top and stopped anyone else cracking on.