I want to prepare you for something. I want to prepare you for the thrashing that might be coming our way on Monday at Anfield.
If we don’t get thrashed and we simply get beaten by a modest score line – the odd goal, say – I will take that as a result. A draw will be a win and a win will be monumental.
Are these words traitorous? Should I expect nothing less than victory? I believe I should expect reality.
The reality is that the team is desperately short of confidence at the moment and they know the fans are calling for a revolution. This makes them nervous and hesitant when they need to be bold and creative. They know that a mistake could easily start a round of booing from the terraces so they’ll play the easy ball and let someone else take responsibility for the creativity.
They’re not bad players, you understand - it’s human nature to be this way; it’s in our genes.
Once in a generation, a man arrives who defies this convention. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Martin Laursen was such a man. As I type these words and think about him and his presence on a football field, emotion wells inside me. He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.
But he’s gone and the team needs a new rock to stand on. Beating Liverpool would be easier, of course, if the team weren’t so aware of the hostility of the “fans”. If the fans were to become the new rock, who knows what they could achieve?
If the fans ignored the errors and just sang and sang and chanted and chanted and sang and sang. If the Villa players knew that the club and its supporters were a solid, indivisible unit and nothing that Liverpool could do could separate them from their team, hell, they might put aside their timid fears and decide to leave their hearts and souls on the pitch before they conceded an inch of ground to Liverpool.
They might become Laursenlike. They might become heroic.
We fans have a part to play because a little piece of all of us is Martin Laursen. We have it in us to put aside our petty concerns and become heroic. If we the fans are staunch it will be easier for the team to be so and, win or lose, our hearts will swell because we were men.
Just so you know, Jerry goes by the user name churchill on the site when commenting.