Aston Villa vs Wycombe FA Cup replay: Gareth Ainsworth asks Villa fans to save their protest
'You’ll kill us if you boycott the replay,' says cash-strapped Wycombe manager
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Your support makes all the difference.Gareth Ainsworth has asked Aston Villa’s mutinous fans not to boycott the FA Cup third-round replay with his Wycombe Wanderers side.
Ainsworth believes Wycombe could earn a much-needed six-figure fee from the replay at Villa Park and has pleaded with the West Midlands club’s supporters to delay any protests against the board and the beleaguered manager Rémi Garde.
Villa are stuck to the foot of the Premier League table and were the subject of fierce criticism from travelling fans during and after Saturday’s 1-1 FA Cup draw away to their League Two opponents. They turned on Garde when he replaced Carles Gil with Jordan Veretout after 71 minutes, with supporters chanting: “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
The visiting captain, Micah Richards, told furious Villa fans: “We are doing our best” when confronted at the dugout, while travelling supporters swarmed around the team’s bus as it left Adams Park.
When asked if he would want Villa fans to shelve any protests and turn out in numbers for the replay, Wycombe manager Ainsworth said: “Yes. Do it in the next league game after the replay, please, because you’ll kill us if you do that [boycott the game]!”
He added: “Villa are in a tough place at the moment. They’ve got good players but they just don’t seem to be gelling as a team. I want to say thank you to the Villa fans for showing us so much respect by clapping us off the pitch. For them to do that when they are in a bit of disarray, that was great.
“This game would be worth £144,000 if it’s screened live on TV, which we hope it will be now, of course. And then you could add in a sizeable gate, hopefully.
“Everyone knows about our debt, so this would be huge for the club, and hopefully it will be a packed house up there. But we’ll be giving our all again.”
Garde has now gone 10 games without a win in his increasingly testing Villa tenure. The Frenchman refused to accept his players are failing him, however, despite another frustrating weekend.
“I don’t think they let me down,” said Garde. “But, of course, that’s something you always ask yourself if you’re not winning games. We have to accept the criticism from the fans; they travel a long way. This is what we deserve, probably.
“I warned the players at half-time that we had to keep the level otherwise they would find a way back in, so I don’t know why we didn’t manage to keep that up. We started the second half poorly.”
Garde hailed Richards as “brave” for taking time to listen to the supporters’ protests at the side of the pitch – a mood backed up on Twitter by many Villa fans, who praised his passionate and honest views – but said he did not know the extent of the defender’s ankle injury.
“I don’t know exactly how bad it is,” said Garde, whose side entertain Crystal Palace in the Premier League tomorrow night. “I’m not sure it’s very important – but still it was important enough for him to ask to leave the field.”
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