Today is the 21st January 2013. Six and a half years ago, the club was taken over by our current chairman, Randy Lerner, and a new era was ushered in to Villa Park. For many, it was a new beginning, and a new chance to build a dynasty on the foundations of a club that had finished in 16th position in the Premier League.
Since Lerner walked into the club, he has invested vast amounts of money into Aston Villa with hundreds of millions of pounds spent on transfers, wages, and other facets of Birmingham’s most successful football league team.
Looking at it from the context of today though, Lerner’s investment may well have been throwing his money on to a bonfire. Villa currently find themselves in 17th place – one position lower than they were when David O’Leary’s side completed the last football season under former chairman Doug Ellis.
For anyone looking at the game of football, a clear fact that £200m has been thrown at a problem and had no long term benefit goes against all that Lerner proudly promised when his company, Reform Acquisitions Limited, finally took control of Villa. Back then, there was talk of a resurrection of the club, with then-new manager Martin O’Neill making a statement in his first press conference regarding Villa’s past European Cup glory, and that the long term ambition was to get back to that level.
In some terms, Villa did make the move towards the Champions League places as O’Neill’s team went from 11th in their first season to sixth, only to hit a glass ceiling at that point. Lerner was, true to his word, happy to invest money into the club in order to progress – in fact, under O’Neill, Villa were regularly the second highest spenders in transfer windows behind only then-newly-rich Manchester City.
So what went wrong? What has happened at Villa Park to turn the well-explained long term plan Lerner vaunted in his early days to what we see nowadays – seemingly knee-jerk reactions?
When thinking about the club’s spending that they have engaged in since Lerner’s arrival, I often think of a film starring Richard Pryor called “Brewster’s Millions”. For those that don’t know the plot of the movie, the basic premise is that Pryor is tasked with publicly blowing $30 million in 30 days in order to get his real reward, $300 million. The trick is a) he can’t tell a soul why he is being so reckless and b) he must have nothing to show for it at the month.
Looking at Villa’s team as it stands, there is much in common between Lerner and Pryor’s character Brewster. Both men remained silent for differing reasons, and both of them have spent money with no real direction, with those close to each man hoping there was a plan behind the madness. Sadly, for Villa’s sake, there is no 1000% bonus available for the recklessness of the club’s investments.
If there is a lesson to be learned for the club in retrospect, it is that long-term footballing people need to make long-term footballing decisions. Sure, managers can impart their own philosophy on the club, but with no cohesive strategy (such as the one Swansea implemented), chopping and changing costs money, and lots of it.
It isn’t just the loss of money in compensation of managers – something that Villa have spent heavily on since O’Neill walked out on the club with a seven-figure settlement – but the lack of cohesion in managerial choices. When looking at Villa’s recent charges, whether O’Neill, Alex McLeish, Gerard Houllier, or current manager Paul Lambert, there has been a flip-flop of strategy that has left vast swathes of players unused, unwanted, or unsaleable.
Who, for example, thought that Houllier’s attempted footballing philosophy was a logical follow-on from the counter attacking team O’Neill had fashioned? After Houllier, who thought McLeish’s defensive football was the continuation of a team that had started playing a slower, passing game? Then, this season, who in their right mind though Lambert’s strategy was anything like McLeish’s? Inherent in this problem is the crux of why Villa have managed to take more money than most teams yet proceed to throw that money into oblivion.
Since comparative early times of Lerner’s stewardship where Steve Stride, a man with 35 years of footballing experience at Villa, was effectively ousted from the board, the American’s ownership was almost dictatorial. The replacements brought in by Lerner lacked much of the necessary footballing knowledge to be able to run a multi-million pound sporting business of which the American had no knowledge of.
Some would argue that his prior ownership of the Cleveland Browns was enough to justify that he had a generic understanding of how a sports empire should be run, though Browns fans may well disagree given the paucity of their successes.
One of the issues is when comparing American football and association football, one may as well be looking at chalk and cheese for all the differences in relegation, contracts, transfers, and any other number of variations between one game and the other.
The reality is that the club has been taking advice from knowledgeable people – football managers and the like – but that their lack of having a constant advisor in the role has left Villa with no recourse when things go wrong. Instead, anger flows fluidly towards anyone and everyone who fits the narrative.
Getting back to the advice the board has taken, in the abstract, Ottmar Hitzfeld would be quite right in suggesting Lambert as a manager that was worth appointing.
Alex Ferguson, in his mind, will have though that McLeish was a suitable man for the job based on the parameters the advice was given – “Do you think McLeish will be able to stabilise the club with limited money?”.
Would any individual in charge of a long-term footballing plan for the club have linked McLeish’s philosophy with Lambert’s though, that is without requiring another wholesale change of players and style? This, when money is far from free-flowing?
The answer is, of course, no. In abstract terms, even McLeish had some logical reasoning for being appointed to the club, even if the rationale for his appointment was less than comprehensive.
With that said, whist fans were clearly not happy with such a selection, McLeish did provide a defensive stability that his former teams also had – and this with a negative net transfer spend – though his predecessor Houllier was not of the same ethos.
So, in changing from O’Neill to Houllier, from Houllier to McLeish, and from McLeish to Lambert, the club has had to tear up the Villa footballing philosophy plan – if indeed there is one at the top level – resulting in seasons of turmoil, and no way of stepping forwards quickly as each manager has wanted different personnel, different styles, and differing ethea in the dressing room.
Without any strategy in place for the club, Villa’s owner must learn from his mistakes or face further tumult. If Lambert keeps the club up, Villa will need to stick with him or, if not, at least a man who has similar style or attitude when it comes to how the game is played – the club can not afford to switch personnel (and their connected mentalities) at the heavy costs involved without causing yet more trouble.
If Lerner can’t learn this basic lesson, then he frankly deserves to lose his money on the same level as a mindless fool would placing their life savings on the roulette table – if you can’t make a well informed choice on how to progress the club effectively, then you shouldn’t be in charge in the first place.
So, as Villa sit a place lower than when their current American owner arrived at the club, the main question asked will be “Have Villa gone forwards or backwards during Randy Lerner’s tenure?”. To which the answer will be “Neither really” though at a high cost for effectively treading water in the medium term.
Spending money is one way to success in this league but Lerner has proved, fairly definitively, that spending money without a plan is a route to misery.
Next season must mean stablilty and structure in footballing terms and whether Lerner has come across it by fluke or strategy, the club must push forwards with a plan – one that seems increasingly imperative to be headed by Lambert, or at the very least a man with a similar footballing ethos.
Things must change and are, in some ways, already beginning to change – Villans deserve better and, if all goes well in the future, I will be able to deliver some better news via Aston Villa Life.
Hold on tight lads and lasses – it may be another bumpy ride.
The Author
