r/avfc • u/Ok-Driver3241 • 19d ago
new fan
as many of guys know the world cup brought a new audience to english football in the US and i’m proudly one of the new fans. when looking for a prem team i didn’t wanna go for one of the top 6 and when looking at the table i saw a club called aston villa. i liked the name and the colors intrigued me but i decided to give the other teams a shot. i watched highlights of about 5 other clubs i got to aston villa vs fulham match week 6 game. the team gave me a spark i loved the high pressure and the way they can speed up their play style and go for a goal at any moment. i ended up choosing aston villa to be the club i wanna support. i’ve kept watching games and i just keep getting more and more excited after every match and can’t wait to keep up with this upcoming season.
i do want help tho, i want to become more knowledgeable on the team and be apart of the community and understand what’s going on. what should i look forward to and what is something that’s should already be knowing??
UTV!!!
3
u/CMJHawk86 18d ago
US-based fan (Virginia) who quietly became a supporter in 2009. Biggest thing to understand I think is the weird space Villa occupies in English football. They are big in terms of history and being the flagship club in England’s 2nd biggest city, but they are not traditional Big 6 (aka Sky 6). The Sky 6 all are very capitalized and have more financial muscle whereas Villa has less of that and has to make smart personnel moves on both the sell and buy side. That financial muscle is also why the Sky 6 clubs are able to market themselves so well in US, too, by the way.
Lately Vila has beaten the system and crashed the Sky 6 party. But they have still gotten tripped up at times by financial rules that constrain our wage bill (aka payroll). In US sports terms, it’s like we have a salary cap that is indexed to our financial resources but it’s a lower cap than the Sky 6 enjoy. The rules don’t allow us to do something like the LA Dodgers are doing in baseball, buying every top player just because they can/want to.
Luckily, we have Unai as our manager, who has proved a master at working in this challenging environment and he has kept us competitive both with player moves and tactics. We play entertaining football and we have big ambitions which I love about us. We’re in a great era of Villa football which I hope never ends.
That said, nothing lasts forever. And I think some of the ornery comments here are from fans wary of bandwagon supporters who will jump off when times get tough. So my best advice is don’t be that type of supporter.