Wandy

We have gone from being a fan base with one of the most varied songbooks to that which now only has three songs…the “Bruno in the middle”, “ei ei ei ei o” and “whose that team we call United”. And all three of those songs are completely cringeworthy, lower league-esq shite. Sad times, to be honest, considering how great everything else is about the club.

Villa fans need to hope that their club has big ambitions over the next 12 to 18 months or Emery will be away. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Boehly tried to prise him away in 6 weeks' time.

The fact that today is the first truly bad day we have had since the 2-1 loss to Wolves on 2nd October 2021 speaks volumes on how well Eddie has done in his time here. To go 18 months without a single truly poor performance and result is quite remarkable, especially considering our position when he took over. Not gonna lie though, it’s still gutting that he has finally been schooled in a game, and by Emery of all people. I bet he is fuming about it too. I was hoping we’d get a statement result against this lot as I can’t abide them, but the exact opposite happened. Admittedly, looking at the big picture it’s great for the league to see another big club emerge from the wilderness to challenge the establishment…. I just hope this isn’t the start of Villa becoming a bogey team for us while their current manager is there.

It has nothing to do with enjoying/not enjoying the derbies, or six in a row. It’s about thoroughly enjoying their misery and frustration of being a club forgotten about in the wilderness. That is much more satisfying than any derby win and long may it continue. Even if they come up, before a ball would be kicked in the derby, we already know without question that NUFC are bigger and better than them. We don’t need them to be promoted to have that particular question answered.

That's more to do with how clueless most football club owners are.

Worst post of the year contender right here.

The one time you want the Scouse Mackems to get a result and you just know that they won't do it.

By the way, on another note, I thought Man Utd's support was utter shit on Sunday. I really expected them to come up here and rinse us over the cup final but it never happened. They barely made a peep, which is exactly the norm for them when things don't go their way.

Lol, I'm "only" 51 bud, and was actually hearing tested earlier this year.....all good apart from some permanent tinnitus from standing next to too many large speakers at 90s raves. I don't think it's rose tinted glasses either. My memory isn't tricking me as I know what SJP was like at it's best...however I have to accept that there is a yearning for those match days to come back, whilst also realising that it's unlikely. But even in the "golden years" of the 90s, SJP didn't have a dedicated kop end/singing section so I am intrigued and excited to see what it could be like.

Pissing on my chips would be putting it way too strongly. But considering how magnificent everything else is about the club, I'd be lying if I said that the flatness of the home atmosphere doesn't irritate me. I've stood amongst some of the most vociferous NUFC support over the last 40 years, and that was generally when the team was utter shit, so to see it so bang average when the club is now the best it has probably ever been is frustrating to me. I know that society has changed and it can never probably be exactly like it was, but there is still room for improvement, and I absolutely know that we can get there too.

Call me the forum misery if you wish, but I still thought there was a distinct lack of a songbook going throughout the game until 10 mins from the end. It really is incredible to me that the Blaydon Races has all but vanished from our songbook to be honest. Having said that, you can't fault the support yesterday in terms of urging the team on and cranking up the hostility to the opposition. But this thread was never created as a response to a lack of that anyway. IMO we have still lost the knack of keeping an atmosphere going through songs and I'm sticking to that, despite yesterday, and we really do need that large singing section at SJP. No doubt it, when the ground gets going it's still impressively loud but there just needs to be much more consistency and only a major reshuffle of seats/standing areas can bring that about.

Ferguson has got into his head.

Wow. Is that right he was on a 5 year, £12m per season deal? Glorious work if you can get it.

That’s the worst Man Utd team I’ve seen up here. Take Casemiro and Rashrord’s goals out of it and they would be mid-table.

It’s enraging the way we miss so many chances. They will make us pay if we don’t put one of them away. It’s what they do. They play shit for a large chunk of the game and then hit you with a sucker punch.

It definitely isn't. Just watch that 5-0 from 1996 again and watch the crowd. It was far less family-orientated. Like it or not, that made a huge difference. I still love watching the radgies in the old benches jumping off their seats in reaction to match events. Cracks me up every time.

It wasn't. Which post of yours are you referring to?

Don't think anyone is romanticising them. Rather, there is embarrassment that our support has sank to something like their level at home games. But also an appreciation that their support has made an effort to turn their home atmosphere around. The one area that they do excel in though is their songbook, it's head and shoulders above everyone else in the league for variety.

True. The difference though is that, even on one of the better days, the modern-day SJP atmosphere never hits the heights of old.

I haven't watched the 5-0 for a long, long time so as a warm up for today I thought I'd give the whole match a watch to see if I am just looking back at the SJP atmosphere of old with rose tinted glasses. Well, this confirmed that I'm not. A wall of noise from all four sides of the ground throughout the match. Yeah, the scoreline played a part, but, even in the 15 minutes before we scored the first goal, there is a hostile intensity to the atmosphere that just is not there anymore at SJP. Watching this really made me miss the days of the pre-Level 7 St James's. If the ground is extended they really need to take stadium accoustics into consideration to keep the noise inside the ground.

I agree with you on this to a large extent. Yeah, their hardcore is excellent and regularly makes a lot of noise. But then, considering how successful they have been over the last 30 years, so they should be. My experience of them is that, when a game is gone for them...or looks like it has gone...then they go missing. There isn't a Man Utd fan under the age of at least 50 that has tasted real adversity. And I mean the kind of adversity when you genuinely hate your club for what it stands for,

Yeah, that's class. And the exact kind of atmosphere we need on Sunday to help beat them. You can guarantee that they will be making plenty of noise, and rubbing the cup final defeat into our faces. Unfortunately I can see our crowd being flat again. And yeah, the SJP atmosphere has been poor on plenty of occasions over the last 20 years.....in fact you could argue that a section of our home crowd have been in a permanent sulk since we blew the title in 96..... but there is something different about the current situation. Our support has become very, very generic with a pitiful song book and only reacting to in-game events, rather than being proactive and changing the course of a game. Giving the Strawberry corner an all standing section is a tiny start, but it has to be the seed for something much, much bigger.

True. But it would have been reasonable to leave something like 6/7000 seats as non-ST. To have league games as 100% ST holders was crackers. Hindsight is a wonderful thing though.

Who are these people you are taking about?

Agree with this. Also, hindsight is a wonderful thing but, looking back, SJP should never have been made effectively 100% season ticket holders in the Keegan era.