I started blogging about Aston Villa more than ten years ago now and in July it will be officially ten years since I purchased my first 'Aston Villa' connected domain name. I've still got it, it still points to this website and some people still have it bookmarked and visit by using that link. It makes you think.
A lot has changed since I started blogging and that includes my activity for which I'm not apologising again. And I distinctly remember when I started. It was a warm March in 2003 and I was in Cape Town and we'd just lost to The Clowns for the second time in a season and I'd had the misfortune to watch the match with a nice couple that just happened to both be supporters of Birmingham City.
When I got home that night, I started a petition that got quite a bit of press coverage and support. A month later Villa Fans Combined was launched and three years later we had a new owner. I was posting every day back then and it was fun. It's not as much fan these days and I find it hard to regurgitate stuff from the web and have little opinion these days on what is mostly PR form the club. It's the match and the weekend that matters.
Sometimes I get interested again though and this is where I'm getting to the point of this post. You see, with Sherwood joining it became interesting and defeat at the weekend wasn't nice but we were never going to keep winning and Swansea, even if they were only one place above us in the current form table going into the match, are a decent side. And we did come close more than once and we were unlucky.
The summer to come
And Sherwood will keep us up as long as the focus is on the League and our players don't get distracted by the FA Cup. Although I do think any decent manager would keep us up, Sherwood makes it interesting and probably even more interesting come the summer when he is given a budget by the new owner. Another reason why this summer is going to be fun.
And why I hope I'll blog more or why my view will change on all things Aston Villa because everything about Randy Lerner has come true. And even though I'm sure he's a lovely bloke and his intentions were good it was never really about Aston Villa for him, despite what he said or what he had to say.
But the truth is, if we're sold in the summer the person buying is more than likely not going to be buying us for the reasons we would probably like, they will be the same reasons as Lerner and he'll probably do and say the same things. This is the game these days and why I suppose I'm not blogging so much and maybe why I will in the future.
Write for The Villa Blog
I mean, has anything really happened since the defeat to Swansea? My views are drained, so this is the final point of the post; do you want to write about Aston Villa and have your opinion posted here? We're opening the doors to new writers and I'm going to make a dedicated effort at running the site as a sort of editor. My opinion might have dried up, but I've got a feeling that some have an opinion or two they'd like shared.
And to make this fair, we're also going to include a bio about the person posting at the bottom of each post, because there is one thing that I've stood firm on ever since I started this blog and it's this; the opinion of the blog must be consistent, but that is sadly going to change if anyone can post, well almost anyone. Here is the disclaimer; if I've got to spend too long editing the post for spelling mistakes or the opinion doesn't seem well enough formed, I'll tell you but I'm also not going to publish it.
There is a standard and I'd like to keep it, even if not everyone agrees with it. If you know what I mean. Like a light and back when there is proper football or we get a new owner.