Darius Vassell - Hero or Villain!?

Have to agree with Barry, thought Darius was treated dreadfully by the club. He did not engineer a move away and should be treated with respect when he comes back. Bar the colours he is playing in he is effectively one of us. Thought at the 2m was a joke, would have been interesting to see what MON would have got out of him on the pitch, having said all that I hope he plays cackadoo tonight.

This is something that I posted a couple of days ago. Most of it is a general thought on how we react to returning players, but it does go on ot highlight the issue regarding Darius. In short you must be braindead if you think he is the sort of player we should be giving stick to. Applauding ex players is not soft. Quite the opposite in fact. It shows a level of intelligence and decency that inbreds will not understand. Southgate did not say he wanted to leave for a big club. He did say he wanted to leave for a club that was showing ambition because he had realised, as all the fans had years ago, that Villa were going nowhere apart from backwards under Ellis. He came for £2.5 million and left for £6.5. He did nothing apart from critisise Ellis and make Villa £4 million. Since leaving he has never once critisised the club or the fans. He has only questiones the abilities of the former Chairman. In my eyes that makes him a pretty decent bloke. You will also find that Villa players who were here with Southgate have nothing but praise for him, along with nearly everybody else in the game. It is only the small minded who think otherwise. Some players do deserve a bit of stick for the way they go about orchestrating their transfers. Solano spings to mind. But the likes of Southgate, David James, Crouchy, ULDC amongst others do not. It would be great if we became known as fair, sporting , knowledgeable fans. Unfortunately that will not happen whilst we have children at the back of the Holte shouting abuse at former players and brain dead sheep joining in. No doubt on Wednesday the brain dead will start abusing Vassell. Not only a local lad but a Villa fan. He never asked for a transfer, and was sold for a pittance by the former manager (can't remember his name). Vassell was misquoted as saying he was glad of a transfer to a big club, but that is all it was, a press lie! Lets grow up. Unless you are a teenager or a moron, surely people must realise that by shouting filth at former players makes you look stupid.

Bit worried about the picture of Vassell though, are his eyes about to pop out?

He deserves a very warm, courteous welcome from all at VP, including us the supporters. He is after all one of us, no doubt still holds the club very dear to his heart, and we should all wish him well for the remainder of his career. Of course once the action starts he immediately becomes 'one of them', and consequently cannot expect, nor will get any favours.

Vassell left for his own reasons. He wasn't encouraged to stay but Ellis especially, did much to help him out

Villa fan he may well be, but as a player he just wasnt doing it, for whatever reason. He had to move on.