Aston Villa 1, West Ham 1: Mat Kendrick's big match verdict

Apr 20 2009 by Mathew Kendrick, Birmingham Mail

FOR a football club who pride themselves on their match-day hospitality, Villa are rapidly running out of patience with their unwanted reputation as the perfect hosts.

Not content with ensuring most of this season’s guests have gratefully left Villa Park with a little something, Villa even dressed to impress visitors West Ham at the weekend.

Agreeing to wear change shirts to avoid a colour clash of the Hammers’ making was another example of the club reluctantly bending over backwards to accommodate away teams.

Something they have done on the field far too many times this season.

And, if Villa’s compliance in switching strips at the start bemused their increasingly frustrated home faithful, then the familiar collapse at the end was a generous gesture too far.

The mild boos which accompanied Villa winning their 24th and dropping their 27th home point of the 51 on offer were more jeers of resignation than expressions of anger at Martin O’Neill and his players.

Villa now know, if they didn’t already against Stoke, Spurs, Everton etc, that they simply can’t contemplate gatecrashing the VIP party of the top four when they are unable to stop their own Villa Park shindigs being ruined.

Far from being the hosts with the most, the club now has the least number of home wins – five – outside the bottom five having drawn nine and lost three in front of their own fans.

How easily an Arsenal advantage of seven points, which now seems insurmountable, might have been overhauled had Villa’s home record been anything like their away statistics.

The annoying aspect of Saturday’s match was that Villa once again got themselves into a dominant position, only for the winning habit to elude them.