Why do their fans fucking hate us so much, though?
I'd never come across it until I was working for a company that had a Birmingham office and we'd all get together a couple of times a year. There were 3 die-hard Villa fans and when they found out I was a Liverpool fan, went proper aggy. Almost Everton-levels of hate (and this was about late 00's when we weren't much of a threat to anyone!). Different ages, too: mid-50's, about 40 and 20's. They told me all Villa fans hated Liverpool. I was quite taken aback! 
It's a good question. I asked a Villa fan about this once and he says it all went back to when Rafa tried to buy Barry for, in his words, ''an offensively low fee, yow''. My mate said that we (Liverpool and Rafa) had insulted Villa by offering a fee far lower than they felt Gareth Barry was worth, and that the fans would never forgive us. I think Martin O'Neil was manager then and I suspect he stoked this grievance in the fans a bit as well with his usual wittering. That's Martin ''I laughed when they offered me peak-era Falcao'' O'Neil we're talking about here, so clearly a man who knows the value of players to the penny...
Anyway that was my mate's answer. I then spent a fair amount of time explaining to him that even if, for the sake of argument, we accept that we were scandalously lowballing Villa for Barry, this would not be down to Rafa or the fans, it would be the fault of Gillet and Hicks and their reign of misery. I think I managed to convince this one guy and his hatred seems to have diminished.
But if he's right then the rest of the Villa fans seem to still be carrying this most bizarre of grievances around with them.
