Save yourself because full scale panic stations have gripped the Villa (From Stourbridge News)

Save yourself because full scale panic stations have gripped the Villa

10:38am Wednesday 25th April 2012 in Sports Blogs

As Morrissey sang there’s “panic in the streets of Birmingham,” writes Steve Zacharanda.

Grown men are losing their mind.

But instead of just their mrs seeing their worse side they are showing the world via twitter and facebook how mad they have gone.

I’m not immune, I bit the mrs nan’s head off when I got in from the game last night.

How could she have know the sad spectacle I had just witnessed, well perhaps me slamming of the door and kicking the dog should have been a clue.

How low we have come.

After Bolton scored their second goal the next 15 minutes were the most important of the season but instead of getting behind the team, who looked if they had collectively lost control of their bowels, a large section of fans went after McLeish.

They should have waited until the final whistle. As the ever noisy Brigada 1874 sang to the rest of the Holte End: “You only sing when your angry,” which just about summed it up perfectly.

Fans singing against their own fans But this was always going to happen. The decision to hire McLeish was the worst managerial decision since John Gregory was given control over transfer dealings.

We did not want McLeish because he had been relegated twice and his football was boring and the fact he was ex-Blues meant dislike would quickly turn into hatred.

The first whiff of failure and bad run of form, and with a rapidly declining team and budget this was a given, the fans would turn on him. And turn on him we have.

This is the season where nobody has covered themselves in glory, the players (remember them?), the vile nature of some of the fans, and our inept manager.

And it is the fault of the top brass.

I am not a Lerner Out merchant, he has poured millions into the club but someone has to be responsible for this mess and as we can’t afford our money man to abandon us then Paul Faulkner has to go.

He would have made the decision to contemplate hiring McLeish and for that decision alone he has to go, our club is a laughing stock, our fans are derided across the country for being world class moaners, though, but as it happens moaners who had a damn good point.

McLeish is not good enough and he is a tactical buffoon. When the man with the world’s biggest backside Kevin Davies came on for Bolton it was obvious he would bully our defence but McLeish did not make a change.

And when Heskey, who had been playing well, was injured he left him struggling for over ten minutes which was negligence of the highest regard.

We had the easiest start to any Premiership and if we go down it is those first ten games when we had Bent, Petrov and Dunne playing that would have sealed our downfall.

McLeish’s negative tactics meant we were sitting ducks for relegation if everything went wrong, and everything has gone wrong.

Who could have foreseen our top striker being out for months and our captain fighting a real battle of life and death.

With Bent and Petrov fit we would not have been in this position, we would not be far off but we wouldn’t be staring at the Championship down the barrel of a gun.

If I’m honest a season fighting Blues for the Championship is kind of appealing, a different season instead of the normal boring Premiership fare.

Don’t get me wrong I don’t want us to go down due to the humiliation.

It is a bit like if a mrs you dont really like that much runs off with the pub prat, it is embarrassing but there are more than a few advantages.

Cheaper away tickets, better away games and maybe the new breed of Villa fan who seem to think that we have a God given right to a Champions League place despite us never getting one and who call for every manager’s head after the merest hint of trouble will disappear back to wherever they came from, probably Solihull.

So make no mistake it will be our two remaining away games where we have the best chance of getting the points to stay safe because Villa Park is poisonous at the moment.

A lot of fans seem to have forgotten our history, every so often we flirt with relegation, and let’s be honest, we are never going to feel the excitement of trying to win the league so winning a relegation battle is the closest Villa fans will ever get to squeaky bum time.

So embrace these three games.

Embrace the feeling that for once something is really on the line during a Premiership match.

Embrace being a Villa fan.

But most of all embrace the Villa because they need our help.

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