To West Brom and Birmingham City fans: A note ahead of next week

Hello! And welcome (back?) to 7500 to Holte. You may notice the color scheme. You may see that it's claret and blue. And you may realize, perhaps from the name, the articles, the way we write, or perhaps just your own astute wonderfulness, that we are an Aston Villa fan site. Most of you probably already knew that, though. This is for those of you who don't.

In the next week, Aston Villa will play West Bromwich Albion and Birmingham City. As fans of Aston Villa, we don't like those teams. Not a bit. And to be honest, we don't like a lot of their fans. We're sure the feeling is mutual, though, and this isn't really a personal thing.

But I wanted to print a note in case you are a fan of one of those teams or are perhaps thin-skinned like the cadre of Leicester City fans who invaded our fair site last week. Basically:

YES, we will make fun of WBA/BCFC/(and [sigh], yes, LCFC) and their fans.

And YES, we will mean a lot of what we say (and a lot of what we say will be mean).

And YES, we will be genuine in the fact that there are fans of those teams that we do not like.

BUT

We also recognize that the vast majority of opposition fans are swell people. Something like 95%, I'd imagine. If we ever met in a pub, we'd probably tease one another (or BANTER, I suppose), but we'd also probably sit around and chat about football and have a good time.

Heck, if we're honest about it, there are probably more individual Aston Villa fans that we dislike than fans of WBA/BCFC/(and [sigh], yes, LCFC) combined.

SO

We're here to have fun. And that will often come at the expense of other teams and their fans. And we will not apologize for that, because we are Villa 'Til We Die. But we do realize that most of you are all lovely human beings, and you probably shouldn't take this too seriously.

Unless you're Jamie Vardy. We genuinely dislike you.