Villarocker

Here's my little bit to add to this thread. I have been to two FA Cup finals: 1987 Spurs v Coventry City 2000 Villa v Chelsea On both occasions I was in the winning end. In '87 my brother's mother-in-law was a shareholder at Coventry City and got him two tickets for the final. he decided to take me as I was only a 15 year old kid at the time. Normally, being Villa fans, we wouldn't give a toss about Coventry and both of us were hoping that they would get relegated this season as we have suffered a lot of verbal abuse from Cov fans over the years. But, back in '87, it was a chance for big brother to take little brother down to Wembley to be part of a 100,000 crowd in football's greatest stadium. Now for the 2000 final! Now, I am sure people will be thinking "why was in the winning end when he is a Villa fan and Chelsea won the cup?". Basically, I didn't renew my season ticket at the Villa that season, after several years of having one. The friend I had a seat next to changed jobs and would have to work x amount of weekends in the year so didn't fancy renewing. No other Villa fans I knew were keen on getting one and I didn't fancy going alone so decided to just go to random games. Unfortunately, I didn't go to enough games to be able to get a ticket through the Villa. The day before the cup final, my Mom's best friend asked her if she knew anyone who wanted two tickets for the final. Her son was given them by his boss and wanted £80 per ticket. My brother and I paid the price and were ecstatic at getting last minute tickets to the final. We did our usual trick of going down to London on the train and getting pretty hammered before the game. However, that's where our problems started! I went to the toilet just before entering the stadium and when I came out of the loos I couldn't find my brother. He'd left the spot where he was standing and, with thousands of people around, finding him turned out to be mission impossible. We didn't have phones on us and, to make matters worse for him, I had both the match tickets and the return train tickets. I waited at the turnstile for him until 3:15 but there was no sign of him. I actually managed to sell his ticket to a tout for £80 to recover the cost of the ticket. I went in alone and you can imagine my shock/horror/dismay, whatever you want to call it, when I realised that the tickets were for the Chelsea end! There was I, decked out in Villa shirt with claret and blue wig getting dog's abuse from drunken Chelsea fans as I ploughed my way into the middle of the row of seats I was sat in, down by the corner. All I could hear was comments like "You thick Brummie cant, are you facking stupid or what?" amongst the many outbursts of laughter at my obvious stupidity. Of course, I just laughed it off - what else can you do? - and thought to myself "I hope we bloody win this. If we win I am getting a pasting but, at least it will piss these tossers off!". As soon as they scored I just got up and left. I knew there was no way back for us so I thought I would get to the train station early so I could look out for my brother. I waited two hours and let hundreds pass me in the hope that we could return to Brum together to enjoy a few beers to drown our sorrows. I wasn't to know that he had already caught a train back to Coventry before the game had finished! Despite all that crap, I can say that I was in the winning end for two FA cup finals and maybe, just maybe, that shitty experience back in 2000 was meant to be in order for me to maintain that record of always being in the winning end. I hope so because I want that record to remain intact and on the 30th of May I will be in the right end, supporting my beloved Villa with my brother - and this time he's having his own train and match tickets!

Could that have anything to do with living on that bus route?

If the big man goes anywhere I reckon it will be to Man Utd as they will be looking for firepower once RVP moves on. He could easily partner a free-roaming Rooney up front and they would have the money to afford him too. In Valencia and Young they also have the wide players to get the crosses into the beast. Hopefully, Benteke will stay at the Villa and help us become bigger and better but I fear that he will leave this summer and we will be left with another case of one step forward two steps back.

My brother and I are hoping to go the same route from Brum city centre. We'll do our customary ritual of emptying half of a 2 litre bottle of coke and replacing it with a litre of smirnoff. That'll warm us up on the the way and set us up nicely for a day of getting merry!

Totally agree with this statement. We'll need to be deeper against Arsenal and try to make them play in front of us. If we don't, and we play like we did against Southampton, it could be double figures.

I'm assuming it's from a youth team game so doesn't "count", but this is so very Suarez (from his wiki). "At the age of 16, Suarez headbutted AND THEN ATE a referee following a red card" Fixed for you!

Cheers for the pub info lads!

I got really lucky and a workmate decided to flog me his two tickets at the original price, simply because he couldn't make it due to prior arrangements. Which pubs will all the Villa faithful be in?

He's cost us too many times this season. Guzan was dropped after making one big mistake, Vlaar has made several. He's only getting into the team because of injuries to Clark and Baker. I would suspect that Sherwood will be looking at a pairing of Okore and Senderos in training.

You don't sub a defender after a mistake. OK, two mistakes. What he should have done, and may well have done for all we know, is bark orders for the back four to drop deeper and stop conceding space. The fact they started the second half the same tells me he didn't order them to.

There is a positive in this and that is Arsenal taking us lightly in the final. They might look at this and think we will be easy to play against and get a rude awakening.

This could be double figures.

1) We need Spurs to do us a favour. 2) I missed the first 3 goals so can't comment. However, Bacuna standing with his arm raised for 4th goal was lazy. Chase back and maybe cover the line? 3) Play like this against Arsenal in the final and Wembley will be half full for the start of the second half. This HAS to be a wake up call and for everyone not just the players. Given needs dropping because one mistake in a few years was never enough to drop Guzan.

We're in the West side of Wembley so does anybody know which pubs we will get?

This guy deserves a ticket! this guy speaks sense! I'm happy just to be there, I went to league cup 2010, FA cup 2000 and I'll be dammed if we win and I'm not there!! No offence mate but can you please stay away - you're a jinx!! Lol

Given isn't commanding enough to be a top keeper these days. Guzan is definitely the better option. So he made a mistake against Man City, a rare mistake is something all goalkeepers should be afforded especially when you've had as many great performances as Guzan has had in the last few seasons.

It's only worth offering him bigger money if we're going to have the players to keep feeding him the ball. As we saw way to often earlier in the season, Benteke without any service is about as much use as Emile Heskey. But, if we keep playing to his strengths and can improve the players around him, then we should definitely offer him more money in order to keep him at Villa and build a team around him capable of challenging the top 6 or, maybe even higher.

On current form there's no way we deserve to go down because we're not only winning but we're also playing football the right way. But, the season lasts 38 games and for the majority of them we had a manager who was boring and who lacked a style of football. It's arguable that a lot of clubs in the Premier League would like to see us go down as on current form we would pose a real threat to most of the league next season. Us fans need to hope the guys can maintain this form and stay up because next season looks to be the most exciting since Lerner's first season in charge.

I think West Brom will get something at Newcastle simply to keep the distance between themselves and a relegation rival. I think that Leicester and Sunderland will go to the last day on 37 points. I think Hull will have 38 points and Newcastle will be on 39 points. I think we will be around 38-39 points. If the above happens, we will need to beat Burnley to guarantee survival. I would hate for that scenario to happen. Nothing is guaranteed on the last day, just look what happened at Derby and Watford yesterday! You would expect Sunderland to be the team to go down because of their away fixture at Chelsea but can anyone really trust the already crowned Champions to play at a level high enough to beat Sunderland, who will be fighting and giving their all? There is one scenario that came to mind. Hull beat Man United to give Bruce his first win over them as a manager. Leicester win. Sunderland win at Chelsea. Villa win and, West Ham win at Newcastle to give Big Sam a parting victory and revenge over Newcastle for sacking him a few years back. That would send them down too!

For me personally, there are four Villa players that stand out in terms of our resurgence - Benteke, Grealish, Delph and Bacuna. When I think of how well they're performing it makes me think of a quote someone once said on this site a few years back - funky awesome! Can someone (with more time and talent at their disposal - an arts student maybe?) please make a compilation of their performances to the soundtrack of Uptown Funk. I think that would be funky awesome!!

Fabian Delph was amazing against Everton but, in truth, he's been excellent ever since he signed that new deal. He's also taken the armband and shown what it's like to Captain a football club. He will be the first name on Roy Hodgson's team-sheet the way he's going, and quite rightly so! That £8m investment from MON is looking like an absolute steal right now. In fact, Delph is playing so well that you could easily see him in a Barcelona midfield. He's better than Rakotic in my opinion!

Fantastic! Agreed! That song is a winner all day long. Fridge? Fanny?

Since Sherwood took over Tom Cleverly has been fantastic and a totally different player to the one we saw playing for Lambert. If this is the real Tom Cleverly we are seeing, please sign a permanent deal and continue next season the way this one is ending.

Tim Sherwood has completely transformed the way we play football and what a joy it is to watch. Some of the football today was breathtaking and I really didn't think I would say that after what I was seeing earlier this season.

Still think we're going to need around 38-39 points to be safe.