Aston Villa are in no position to ask anything of their fans without significant improvement

There have been much tougher times to support Aston Villa. If you’re as old as me, you’ve known Villa as a second-tier club. If you’re a bit older, there’s a good chance you remember them in the third.

Villa have lost their way a bit this season but it’s March and they’re in a Champions League place. Seven years ago this week, they beat Birmingham City in an infamous away derby in the Championship, the second win of ten in a row that took Dean Smith and Villa to the play-offs and, ultimately, back into the Premier League.

A few bad results and some distinctly whiffy performances since the turn of the year add up to many things. It’s been frustrating, surprising and upsetting, but there’s no need for supporters to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

A turnaround in form – it wouldn’t be the first this season – could still make 2025-26 a landmark season for the club. That’s how close they are to meeting their stated objectives and that proximity in itself is cause for some knowing disappointment, but worse things happen at sea. It will probably change but there are only three teams above Villa in England.

Nevertheless, there’s a time and a place for leaning hard on supporters and the middle of a fumble isn’t it.

No football club should ask more than it gives

Villa have asked a lot of their supporters lately. Manager Unai Emery has often called for continued backing from the stands and sure, he’s always done it in the right way, but together is only together when the manager and the players do their bit too.

There’s nothing wrong with asking for support. It’s what supporters are there for and it’s very obvious that the team pick up on the energy around them for better and worse. When they need more, they need more. If anything, it’s a compliment.

But dive beneath the surface, past the calls to arms and geeing up to the more complex emotional arrangement, and you’ll understand not only that timing is important, but why timing is important.

It’s not hard to figure out why the manager and his players appealed for togetherness and vocal backing after the loss at Wolverhampton Wanderers. They needed a boost. We can see that for ourselves.

But when they ask for support, get it, and then lay a cable the size of the Chelsea game in the very next home fixture to make it two outright embarrassing losses in a row, it reveals an imbalance in the unspoken deal; they run the risk of opening up a whole bunch of questions about the social contract between a football club and its supporters.

Unconditional support has to work both ways

The reaction to pleas from the club after the Wolves match was predictable. Most supporters are more than happy to see their role as one of proactive backing but it doesn’t come for free because match tickets and season tickets are anything but.

Ticket prices have become a fault line between the club and its supporters even without the recent tacit acknowledgement from the players and manager that they’ve noticed a change.

That supporters support is a given but the edges can fray under examination. Villa’s quick rise on Emery’s watch has been thoroughly enjoyable and long overdue but we’re not that far removed from Championship matches with a vast section of Villa Park closed off.

Some supporters who were there then, when they really were needed, have gradually been priced out. Cards on the table: I no longer attend regularly for a variety of reasons but that one is the biggest by far. I carry some resentment about that.

We’ll never know the full details of Ezri Konsa‘s verbal altercation with supporters at Molineux but that sort of display exposes the cracks in the artifice and creates lasting fractures. Banning a supporter from European matches for a retweet is officious nonsense that further fails to read the room.

Asking the people who can still afford to go for more support and rewarding them with the Chelsea performance is the kind of thing you can only really get away with once. The onus is firmly back on the team now.

The bigger picture is not just a Villa problem, but it’s a problem

Villa have released more than one collection of merchandise this season alone, some of it enormously expensive. There’s nothing wrong with that either because nobody has to buy anything, but it’s another little indicator of the kind of support that actually counts for something.

The extent and location of upgraded hospitality facilities at Villa Park are frequently criticised. They have an effect on atmosphere directly, no doubt, but they also point to an uncomfortable truth for many of us.

The average match-going football supporter is changing.

That’s not unique to Villa. Football supporters are being priced out or squeezed or both all over the country and what they’re actually paying for is often pretty questionable fare.

This season has seen an amplification of the discussion around time-wasting, set pieces, negative tactics and VAR, all of which can make it difficult for supporters to justify the huge amounts of money they’re spending just to be there.

It’s not a slight on Villa specifically but all of this is the true context of the strained relations between club and supporters over the last week or two. The football environment into which appeals for more support is not a fertile one.

Only performances and results can stitch the logic back together. When fans give what’s asked of them, they expect to see what’s promised in return. Without that, there’s a missing line of code somewhere that kills the entire programme.

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