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Fans of the non-fickle variety have admirable reserves of patience.

They can keep the faith with owners strapped for cash, a manager losing his way, new signings failing to settle in, players under-performing, biting chunks out of opponents’ arms or kung-fu kicking fans’ faces for decent periods of time.

But when they see paralysis on the pitch, empty seats multiplying around them, lesser clubs comfortably out-spending them, players refusing new contracts, and hear the same lame excuses when their fears are aired, breaking-point is reached.

That’s what’s happened at Aston Villa.

That’s why three fans' websites have written an open letter to Holte End regulars asking them to leave their seats empty for the first eight minutes of Saturday’s home game against Liverpool before getting behind the team for the final 82.

The eight minutes references the number of seasons Randy Lerner has owned the Midlands club, 1982 was the year they were champions of Europe and the protest goes under the name “We want our Villa back”.

(Image: Getty)

Many of the organisers' fellow Villa fans (and rubber-necking outsiders) have given them stick for this move, arguing that it’s an act of petulant self-indulgence which won’t affect the club’s coffers, but risks demoralising their team.

I disagree.

Such decisions aren’t taken lightly.

I’ve sat in on meetings with fans of more than one club when they’ve been debating similar action and heard their heartfelt cries of impotence in the face of intransigence from above.

Their options are always limited and painful. They don’t want to hurt players’ morale, but it reaches a point when that is secondary to the hurt being done to their club.

Lerner appears to have long washed his hands of Villa.

Some close observers believe it happened in 2011, when he lost an expensive employment tribunal to the club's former manager, Martin O’Neill.

(Image: Getty)

It was as though the American realised, after ploughing in more than £200million, how hard it is to make money out of English football – or rather, how easy it is to lose it.

Consequently, for the past few years, Villa has been a ghost ship, drifting towards the rocks.

I know a high-profile manager who was interviewed for the Villa job in the summer of 2012 and wanted to take it... until Lerner told him how much he’d have to spend on new players and salaries.

He laughed and declined.

Paul Lambert didn’t.

Small wonder Lambert’s spent every season since in a relegation battle and small wonder many fans reacted angrily to that record being rewarded with a new four-year contract in September.

Or, in their eyes, rewarded for doing the absentee owner's bidding - sniffing around for free transfers and basement bargains because Lerner’s not prepared to put another cent in.

(Image: Action Images)

The result is that this season Villa have scored only 12 times in all competitions (the lowest of any in English football’s top four tiers), have the least number of attempts and shots on target in the Premier League and are three points off the relegation places.

Which is why many in the Holte End fear they could be watching Championship football next season.

Do they just accept that or do they send a message across the Atlantic that they’re not prepared to watch a club of Villa’s size slide into mediocrity?

I’d say fair play to them for telling Lerner to get over and sort out the mess now.

Or, to borrow his fellow American Herbert Hoover’s famous advice to President Calvin Coolidge when he prevaricated over sorting out a police strike: “S**t or get off the pot.”