Young Understands The Fans

Luke Young is desperate for Villa to deliver the fans top class performances next season, because he understands what it means to us.

Our flexible friend says 'football is religion' and it's hard to disagree when you think about how mental we all become for 90 minutes, and the likes of us lot spend the next week disagreeing over the tiniest of errors.

Look at the Monny threads, I'm not sure on weapons of mass destruction but you can certainly see fundamental extremism depending on what side of the bed we get up on!

Young gets this, and says he first tasted supporter passion when he was a sprightly teenager and an up and coming professional.

Speaking on the official site he explained it's difficult to not 'get' the fans when you arrive at the stadium, the air of expectancy, the nerves hoping the players perform well - it all travels to the players and helps build them up for the game ahead.

'As a player, you always drive past the fans in the pub with their claret and blue shirts on and it reiterates in your mind what it means to them and how much money they've spent to go to a game.

'Not only do you go out and perform for yourself, your family, your manager and chairman, you do it for all those fans too.

'If you win, they have a smile on their face for the entire week.'

Remembering back to his days at Spurs when Luke was young, he explains:

'My dad's mates are all Spurs fans and when I was a youngster at the club I used to pop down down the pub to see them.

'They went home and away with their club and they used to have competitions to see who had travelled to more games, who had done more miles and who had missed the last game - the sort of thing.

'They worked - and worked very hard - to be able to see their team at the weekend. I have seen first hand what it means to fans out there. The game is so important to supporters.'

Admitting that if he wasn't fortunate enough to be a player, he would be exactly the same as us lot, he ends:

'Our fans work all week and their release - and their main thought throughout the week - is football. they talk about it 24/7.

'Football is religion. It's their identity - who they are is who they support.

'If I wasn't playing, I'd be exactly the same. Credit to the fans, they come week in and week out and going to a game is almost a religious experience.'

I'm glad he stopped short of saying a good win is better than sex though.

For the very latest Premier League odds




Click here to join in the debate on the club forum.