Aston Villa Protest Group

[YGabbana]

No .... the complete fool is the one who now assumes we will be crap no matter what happens and still thinks we are crap when we aren't. Reality is, as soon as this team starts winning again you'll be reaching for your box of tissues like the rest of the keyboard doom merchants.

What has happened has happened, you can wallow and protest about the past as much as you want but I've moved on ! 

Lmao

[BOF]

17 minutes ago, villakram said:

Bruce... jeez, have we really pissed off the Universe enough to deserve him, that man is not too far off McLeish!

Removing my anti-sha bias, Fistface is a decent club manager who would probably get us out of that league.  That does not mean I'd like to have him here, but he wouldn't be bottom of that list.  Bottom would be Harry.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

1 hour ago, Paul33 said:

No .... the complete fool is the one who now assumes we will be crap no matter what happens and still thinks we are crap when we aren't. Reality is, as soon as this team starts winning again you'll be reaching for your box of tissues like the rest of the keyboard doom merchants.

What has happened has happened, you can wallow and protest about the past as much as you want but I've moved on ! 

There is a major distinction between "wallowing" and "protest". One is passive, the other is not. 

These protests are not about the past. They are regarding the present and future. The past is merely a marker by which we can formulate an opinion of which direction the club is heading in. It appears to be down no? Consistently over the past 6 years, down with ZERO evidence to suggest that Randy Lerner et al have anything like the ability required to stop it. Nor that he will provide the requisite finances to do so.  

The day you can provide me with solid evidence rather than hearsay from somebody who works in the club shop that this Football Club is moving in the right direction and further evidence that Randy Lerner is once again a motivated seller, I might reconsider my stance. Until that time you're wasting your breath with me, honestly. I imagine the feeling is mutual. 

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Please RT

Edited March 8, 2016 by dont_do_it_doug.

[dont_do_it_doug.]

Please RT

[lmarsha_926]

I dont think it is a good protest for many reasons but if you want to do it, it should be done in a game where we wont be 3-0 down after 60 minutes. Full effect only happens with a 80% full ground and the game we are still in.

Also we have no idea what the summer will bring, changes could already be afoot so protesting will not mean anything, it wont speed up the process

Lerner will still be here next season unless he drops the price and someone coughs the money to get back us up

[villa4europe]

Apart from maybe Newcastle if people go to vent their spleen I honestly don't think we'll get an 80% attendance again this season

And I think the changes are almost inevitable - garde and fox - we'll start day 1 of the championship still owned by Lerner and still playing Lescott, Richards and gabby and the penny might actually drop

[VillanousOne]

I think the penny has dropped, it's just too little too late. 

Lescott and Richards egos are too big to play in the Championship along with many others who will be rewarded by other clubs for their incompetence as only in football does being terrible at your job rarely count for anything.

Lerner can't sell, so his best bet is to get the club into some kind of shape that will appeal to a new owner, unlikely to work but there you go.

Everything he does regarding club infrastructure and board will be to get us financially in line and provide stability, I doubt he'll be doing anything to get us back in the Premiership because he knows that will require a lot of investment and he has no intention of doing anything but the bare minimum when it comes finance. He'll sell the stadium and shirts of the player's backs before he'll invest again.

I think he honestly believes that everything that has happened is down to managers and those running all levels of the club, rather than understanding his transfer policies and lack of spending is what ultimately condemned us to a slow demise.

[MikeMcKenna]

Who said protests, don't work? Yes times have changed but protests still create pressure and make the news. The situation now is almost indentical to 1968. If OTDO74 isn't making waves it wouldn't still be making news. Article tonight in BM....

 

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/aston-villa-fans-protest-brought-11010565

 

A section of Aston Villa fans have reached such a breaking point with their club's demise that they have launched protests at Villa Park.

The 'Out the Door on '74' movement prompted supporters to leave their seats early in Villa's Premier League defeat to Everton last week and similar action is planned for Sunday's Villa Park home match against Tottenham and the following home fixture against Chelsea.

Villa are not renowned for having the most militant fanbase in football, but they do have some history of rallying fans to bring about positive change.

John Russell can vividly remember helping to organise the first ever fans’ protest meeting at Aston Villa in 1968, which is believed to have been the first in the English game. With modern-day technology, football followers can come together to air their grievances in all manner of fanzines, internet forums and social media sites.

But in the late 1960s, there was no such platform for a diminishing fanbase to vent its frustration about the demise of its beloved club – until Russell and his friend Brian Evans became so disillusioned with Villa’s board that they took the unprecedented step of rallying fellow fed-up fans into action.

A woeful defeat to Preston on November 9 1968, which left the claret and blues marooned at the foot of the old Second Division table, was the catalyst, recalls Russell.

“We provisionally booked Birmingham Town Hall, which was going to cost us £200, then contacted the Birmingham Mail’s Bob Blackburn, who was the Villa reporter,” he explains.

“He came back and said ‘why don’t you hire Digbeth Civic Hall instead? It will only cost you half as much, it only holds half as many and if the Villa supporters wreck it, no-one will be too bothered. If they wreck the town hall, no-one will be too pleased’.”

Russell and Evans had no idea how successful the meeting would be, even when around 1,000 disgruntled Villans packed into the Digbeth venue on 21 November 1968. The size of the turnout merely prompted pangs of fear for the pioneering organisers who were unsure how to address the crowd or what to say. They needn’t have worried.

“In the end, it was solved by the directors of the Villa themselves, who sent the longest telegram in history,” remembers Russell.

“I wish I’d still got it. It really was three or four feet long. We gathered together in a back room with the crowd getting really restless because the platform had cleared and they wondered what the hell was happening.

“It was the most ambiguous telegram and we had no idea what it meant, but Brian Evans, who chaired the meeting, said ‘I don’t care what it says, just go out and say it says Aston Villa is up for sale’. So we did.”

Russell paints a picture of a board of directors years behind the times, with the interests of the club at heart but without the necessary nous to lead Villa into the future. (MMcK: Not much has changed 58 years on)

He admits that the inaugural public meeting in Villa’s history did not suddenly result in an overnight change with the old power-brokers instantly selling up . But the Villa fanatic, who made his first visit to Villa Park as a five-year-old for a reserve game in December 1944, believes it was a watershed moment.

“The club was going absolutely nowhere,” says Russell. “You can get the general idea how depressing things were.

“We just felt that the men in charge had lost the plot. We didn’t feel they had much idea about how to run a football club. 

"The sheer number of people at our meeting and our collective frustration was the kick up the backside that they needed.

 

“They took it as a signal that perhaps they weren’t up to it, which they weren’t.”

After tentative enquiries but no firm offers from several half-interested parties, the board traded their shares to one Herbert Douglas Ellis, then a director at Birmingham City, for a reported £55,000 in December 1968.

Regardless of the opinion-splitting supremo that Ellis would go on to become, his takeover just over 40 years ago had moved Villa forward, despite a brief step back via the Third Division.

 

[dont_do_it_doug.]

51 minutes ago, lmarsha_926 said:

I dont think it is a good protest for many reasons but if you want to do it, it should be done in a game where we wont be 3-0 down after 60 minutes. Full effect only happens with a 80% full ground and the game we are still in.

Also we have no idea what the summer will bring, changes could already be afoot so protesting will not mean anything, it wont speed up the process

Lerner will still be here next season unless he drops the price and someone coughs the money to get back us up

You say that like OTDO74 have any control over the scoreline. The games just happened to be the next in the fixture list, it really is as basic as that. If you're expecting this particular form of protest to carry on until we're winning a game on 74 minutes you are mad, that could take months.

We have no idea what tomorrow will bring. Or the next week. The moon might come crashing into the earth for all you know. Changes are, apparently, always afoot. They're always the wrong changes. Whether you think protest speeds up that process or not is a matter of opinion of course, literally thousands of years of evidence should tell you you are wrong to suggest it doesn't.

Exactly? So let's try and get him to drop the price? Or at the very least, cough up the money to fix his mistakes... Or just not bother like, up to you. 

[lmarsha_926]

What is a positive change we are protesting for something that could actually make it alot worse,

We can protest all we want but Lerner will still own the club at that is the whole issue.

Very unlikely anyone even with a lower price will take us over or invest the money we need to be a stable PL club again, need to happen 2 seasons ago, We missed the boat then

[HanoiVillan]

7 hours ago, Paul33 said:

No .... the complete fool is the one who . . . still thinks we are crap when we aren't. 

Are you for real? 

We're bottom of the table and get thrashed every week. We're the 3rd worst side in Premier League history - out of what, 600 or so? But 'we aren't crap'. 

Right-o. 

[dont_do_it_doug.]

6 minutes ago, lmarsha_926 said:

What is a positive change we are protesting for something that could actually make it alot worse,

We can protest all we want but Lerner will still own the club at that is the whole issue.

Very unlikely anyone even with a lower price will take us over or invest the money we need to be a stable PL club again, need to happen 2 seasons ago, We missed the boat then

Only very unlikely? Is that it? You're not even going to pretend it's impossible? 

I love those odds, because I've got faith in the fan base to force the change the club deserves. 

[dn1982]

40 minutes ago, MikeMcKenna said:

Who said protests, don't work? Yes times have changed but protests still create pressure and make the news. The situation now is almost indentical to 1968. If OTDO74 isn't making waves it wouldn't still be making news. Article tonight in BM....

 

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/aston-villa-fans-protest-brought-11010565

 

A section of Aston Villa fans have reached such a breaking point with their club's demise that they have launched protests at Villa Park.

The 'Out the Door on '74' movement prompted supporters to leave their seats early in Villa's Premier League defeat to Everton last week and similar action is planned for Sunday's Villa Park home match against Tottenham and the following home fixture against Chelsea.

Villa are not renowned for having the most militant fanbase in football, but they do have some history of rallying fans to bring about positive change.

John Russell can vividly remember helping to organise the first ever fans’ protest meeting at Aston Villa in 1968, which is believed to have been the first in the English game. With modern-day technology, football followers can come together to air their grievances in all manner of fanzines, internet forums and social media sites.

But in the late 1960s, there was no such platform for a diminishing fanbase to vent its frustration about the demise of its beloved club – until Russell and his friend Brian Evans became so disillusioned with Villa’s board that they took the unprecedented step of rallying fellow fed-up fans into action.

A woeful defeat to Preston on November 9 1968, which left the claret and blues marooned at the foot of the old Second Division table, was the catalyst, recalls Russell.

“We provisionally booked Birmingham Town Hall, which was going to cost us £200, then contacted the Birmingham Mail’s Bob Blackburn, who was the Villa reporter,” he explains.

“He came back and said ‘why don’t you hire Digbeth Civic Hall instead? It will only cost you half as much, it only holds half as many and if the Villa supporters wreck it, no-one will be too bothered. If they wreck the town hall, no-one will be too pleased’.”

Russell and Evans had no idea how successful the meeting would be, even when around 1,000 disgruntled Villans packed into the Digbeth venue on 21 November 1968. The size of the turnout merely prompted pangs of fear for the pioneering organisers who were unsure how to address the crowd or what to say. They needn’t have worried.

“In the end, it was solved by the directors of the Villa themselves, who sent the longest telegram in history,” remembers Russell.

“I wish I’d still got it. It really was three or four feet long. We gathered together in a back room with the crowd getting really restless because the platform had cleared and they wondered what the hell was happening.

“It was the most ambiguous telegram and we had no idea what it meant, but Brian Evans, who chaired the meeting, said ‘I don’t care what it says, just go out and say it says Aston Villa is up for sale’. So we did.”

Russell paints a picture of a board of directors years behind the times, with the interests of the club at heart but without the necessary nous to lead Villa into the future. (MMcK: Not much has changed 58 years on)

He admits that the inaugural public meeting in Villa’s history did not suddenly result in an overnight change with the old power-brokers instantly selling up . But the Villa fanatic, who made his first visit to Villa Park as a five-year-old for a reserve game in December 1944, believes it was a watershed moment.

“The club was going absolutely nowhere,” says Russell. “You can get the general idea how depressing things were.

“We just felt that the men in charge had lost the plot. We didn’t feel they had much idea about how to run a football club. 

"The sheer number of people at our meeting and our collective frustration was the kick up the backside that they needed.

 

“They took it as a signal that perhaps they weren’t up to it, which they weren’t.”

After tentative enquiries but no firm offers from several half-interested parties, the board traded their shares to one Herbert Douglas Ellis, then a director at Birmingham City, for a reported £55,000 in December 1968.

Regardless of the opinion-splitting supremo that Ellis would go on to become, his takeover just over 40 years ago had moved Villa forward, despite a brief step back via the Third Division.

 

And the biggest change came from getting a new owner which we've been trying to get for years and sadly until that happens we will struggle. You can walk out as much as you like but the facts remain we need a new owner which won't be coming anytime soon so all we can hope for is Hollis to sort us out behind the scenes. We have been down before we will be back. 

[dont_do_it_doug.]

9 minutes ago, dn1982 said:

And the biggest change came from getting a new owner which we've been trying to get for years and sadly until that happens we will struggle. You can walk out as much as you like but the facts remain we need a new owner which won't be coming anytime soon so all we can hope for is Hollis to sort us out behind the scenes. We have been down before we will be back. 

Have you, like, read OTDO74's mission statement? 

Also, did you read the article? The protests in 1968 bought about change that lead to a new owner. Sitting on your hands and hoping Steven Hollis sorts it all out for you will achieve **** all except more misery for you bud.

Edited March 8, 2016 by dont_do_it_doug.

[Zatman]

6 hours ago, BOF said:

Removing my anti-sha bias, Fistface is a decent club manager who would probably get us out of that league.  That does not mean I'd like to have him here, but he wouldn't be bottom of that list.  Bottom would be Harry.

Problem I always have with Bruce he seems like a chequebook manager, he always made big enough signings at clubs that he was at. His Hull side now were mainly signed on big Premier League deals like Hernandez, Snodgrass and Dawson etc

Plus the insistence to always sign his crap son

[MikeMcKenna]

17 minutes ago, dn1982 said:

And the biggest change came from getting a new owner which we've been trying to get for years and sadly until that happens we will struggle. You can walk out as much as you like but the facts remain we need a new owner which won't be coming anytime soon so all we can hope for is Hollis to sort us out behind the scenes. We have been down before we will be back. 

"...which we've been trying to get for years..." Show me where? Whenever was there a sustained campaign against those that run the club or their strategy since RL arrived?

Like 1968 we have started to voice our anger and call for change. I know personally back then that some also had a half empty attitude to any form of protest constantly saying 'nothing will change' but change DID happen because of protest. Doing nothing begets nothing. 

Like 1968 we have no idea whether OTDO74 will work but like 1968 we are doing something. 

[dn1982]

11 hours ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

Have you, like, read OTDO74's mission statement? 

Also, did you read the article? The protests in 1968 bought about change that lead to a new owner. Sitting on your hands and hoping Steven Hollis sorts it all out for you will achieve **** all except more misery for you bud.

The protests in 1968 brought change because it made the owner sell the big difference being our owner has been trying to sell for years and can't get someone to buy us. Now unless you're telling him to walk away and lose £100m+ the only way something will change in the short term is for a shake up by Hollis behind the scenes. 

[dn1982]

11 hours ago, MikeMcKenna said:

"...which we've been trying to get for years..." Show me where? Whenever was there a sustained campaign against those that run the club or their strategy since RL arrived?

Like 1968 we have started to voice our anger and call for change. I know personally back then that some also had a half empty attitude to any form of protest constantly saying 'nothing will change' but change DID happen because of protest. Doing nothing begets nothing. 

Like 1968 we have no idea whether OTDO74 will work but like 1968 we are doing something. 

When I put we I meant us as a club and Lerner to be specific!! We or shall I keep it simple Aston Villa FC have been for sale for a few years. I think Everton have been for sale for a decade or so and have only just got an investor. Comparing now to 68 is silly as then it forced the owners to sell whereas ours has been trying to sell. 

[Paul33]

12 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Are you for real? 

We're bottom of the table and get thrashed every week. We're the 3rd worst side in Premier League history - out of what, 600 or so? But 'we aren't crap'. 

Right-o. 

That is not what I said ..... my point is that even if we did the right things or good things (however you want to define them) then some doom merchants will say it is crap. My point is NOT that we aren't crap but that some of those doom merchants ALWAYS think its crap even when it isn't or might not be.

I believe we can succeed under Lerner if he makes the right moves and I personally believe those moves are taking place behind the scenes. If you are seeing different then fine but I'm happy with what I'm aware of.