When the recent Premier League TV deal was announced, it was generally agreed that one of the attractions for broadcasters was the crowd itself. We know what English football is, in part, because of its supporters but that crowd is changing.

Last week, Liverpool's Ian Ayre stated that 20 per cent of Liverpool's "game day" audience comes from outside the UK. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this and, in fact, there is something anachronistic in expecting football - the global game - to be dependent on its local audience when its reach is, in reality, so vast.

There is, too, often a barely disguised xenophobia when fans of the Premier League from, for example, Asia are discussed as if these supporters are in the grip of some irrational frenzy which they can do nothing about.

Even if this were true then surely it would constitute passion. It's understandable that people don't want to see anyone turning up at grounds and spending their time taking pictures of themselves with selfie sticks. There is also a feeling that seeing, say, a Manchester City fan taking out his phone to Instagram Wayne Rooney during a Manchester derby is wrong when the correct procedure (for a football fan if not an actual adult) is to stand up and abuse Rooney.

There is also something thrilling when these trends are not apparent and they certainly weren't apparent when Aston Villa played West Brom in the FA Cup last weekend. There were, of course, unfortunate scenes of violence amid the joy at the end, but what joy there was.

Football has been conditioned to see all pitch invasions as "a return to the bad old days" especially during the bad old days, even if many now think the bad old days were better than the bad old present.

But there is no way the pitch invasion at Villa Park can be removed from the context of Aston Villa's season. To be a Villa fan in 2015, and indeed in 2014, 2013, 2012 and even 2011, has involved being introduced to novel ways of suffering.

"Let it be known that when I die I want my coffin to be lowered into the ground by the players of Aston Villa," one Villa fan tweeted earlier in the season, "so they can let me down one last time."

There were hours and hours of scorelessness to go when that tweet was posted. During the 659 minutes they went without a Premier League goal over the past couple of months, Villa supporters had to endure the football and then endure the many, many ways this could be explained humorously.

The fans who showed up at Villa Park with arrows which they held up and pointed towards the goal were doing what supporters have always done and taken refuge in mordant humour.

They had to do something as newspapers listed players who had scored more than an entire club this season and, even when the drought ended, they had to deal with realities such as the fact that Ben Mee, the Burnley full-back, had, at the beginning of March, scored as many Premier League goals as Aston Villa in 2015.

Then something changed. They are now in the grip of another presence. Not since Freddie Mercury stepped onto the Wembley stage at Live Aid 30 years ago has a man communed with his audience the way Tim Sherwood communed with the Aston Villa supporters during the two victories against West Bromwich Albion.

Sherwood captivated the world with his celebrations following the league match by mimicking checking for his pulse in a manner which suggested he was placing a small calibre pistol under his neck or, at least, doing a version of Alan Partridge's "kiss my face".

Like Partridge, Sherwood was bouncing back but his audiences promise to get bigger and bigger. As he walked along the touchline in celebration after Villa's second goal last weekend, Sherwood channelled Freddie Mercury, rolling his shoulders as the great entertainer once did. Freddie Mercury's mission to entertain allowed us to occasionally forget how terrible Queen's music was and Sherwood, too, understands that entertainment can sometimes transcend everything.

Last weekend, he called Villa's first half performance "boring". This is the language of the entertainer, not a coach who might explain that the reason the game was so dull was because of his side's effective implementation of a "low block".

Sherwood just wants to break free and when his side did, the supporters joined him and eventually they joined him in their thousands as they entered the field of play.

The pitch invasion is so in tune with the traditions of the Cup that this should have been treated as a marvellous scene.

Instead there was immediate condemnation and it would seem that, for some, the fan with the selfie stick is the only kind of fan. While any act of violence must be condemned, the wild expressions of happiness that Villa fans were engaged in made perfect sense.

Could it be that when some talked about the magic of the Cup, they were, in fact, engaging in corporate bullshit? Nearly every known image of what we would call the magic of the Cup involves pictures of supporters unable to contain themselves, going all the way back to Wembley in 1923 and taking in Ronnie Radford at Hereford United in 1972.

On those glorious days, people invaded the pitch and everyone understood their joy. Last week, the Villa fans were told that they could "tarnish the tournament" and a commentator relished the fact that "all those faces will be on CCTV".

Football is sold on the basis of its meaning to supporters but when they demonstrate what it means to them, they are condemned.

Aston Villa supporters had reason to unleash their joy. They have spent a season in football's equivalent of East Germany. They've inhabited a sterile and barren land but last week the walls came tumbling down. They are led by a charismatic showman and, for one day at least, they were free.

dfanning@independent.ie

Sunday Indo Sport