Randy,
If you’re listening, we would like to know what your plans are, especially since said plans affect if many of us want to continue to support the club financially with ticket purchases.
We know that, in your staunch silence, you are often stubborn, so we’re not going to hold our hopes out for a public announcement.
After all, for many of the fans, such an announcement would either be castigated as waffle, or signal the end of the world. At least the Mayans were in the same year with their guess.
The problem us fans have at present is that the club appears to have no direction. Of course, we understand that you may have a plan that is kept in a little secret book hidden away in a safe somewhere, probably next to the letter from Sir Alex Ferguson recommending Alex McLeish for the job.
However, for us mere customers, we haven’t the faintest clue in what you are up to. Past choices made by the club through your guidance have been confusing. First there was a laissez-faire attitude towards money when Martin O’Neill came in. Now all the talk is about saving money, and trimming the wage bill.
You can see, surely, that to the average fan, your choices look puzzling, foolish, and misguided. Does it not cross your mind that your choice to not communicate is the reason why you are judged this way? Does it not make you feel in the slightest bit concerned? Or is your legendary stubbornness going to override any logical sense of clearing up this PR disaster?
Because this is exactly what Aston Villa are facing as a club. Many have chided our fans for their intolerance of your selection of Alex as manager, but the fans can not solely be to blame, despite the best efforts of many news outlets to frame us as idiots.
As you well know, being under pressure is not an excuse for being inept, or at least appearing that way. Sure, I’d like the world to be a different, perfect kind of place but, you know, you have to make the most of the circumstances.
Circumstances that, if we are being honest, were made far more difficult for our club than necessary. I fully understand as someone who has conducted business deals that are worth more than the whole value of Aston Villa Football Club that business needs can drive personnel changes, that picking someone to cut finances may not be synonymous with the longer term plan to rebuild the club.
I also understand, as a fellow person with a long track record in business, that communicating such choices may have an adverse effect on revenue which is, if I am asked, the reason why I tell fellow fans your stony silences are what they are.
However, did picking Alex as manager appear like a sensible decision to you, and why? Were there not other managers who could operate on a reduced budget without finding the leader of “the enemy”?
Whether you care for, or even accept, football tribalism as an aspect of the game, few can doubt the influence of rivalries. What makes it even more unpalatable for the average fan, ignoring for the moment the two relegations in four years, is the fact that your choice of manager relegated Birmingham City a season ago.
Whilst many fans would probably have bought Alex a drink at the end of the last season for relegating our deadly rivals, considering the circumstances, was he truly the best man for the job?
Yes, he won the Carling Cup for Birmingham which is, in my opinion, a fantastic achievement. However, he also had severe injury problems in his squad, something that the last season’s campaign showed quite starkly when Gerard Houllier’s attempt at shaping up some of our squad ended up with dissent. Thus the fact we currently have an injury crisis is, in my opinion, not in the slightest bit surprising.
If you think he was the right choice and, as Paul Faulkner stated earlier this season, our aim was European qualification, then surely you see this season as little more than an abject failure. Will you accept that as part of your responsibility, or will you let a choice to axe the manager as your way of saying “I did what I can?” whilst taking the plaudits for getting rid of a man you hired?
Or will you, as some fans seem to believe, continue with the same unpalatable situation which involves poor football and a lack of quality players, and hope throwing money at it makes a difference. It didn’t work too well when you did that for Martin did it? So what, if you don’t mind us asking, is any different nowadays?
Does all of this not tell you several things? Firstly, that the club needs massive footballing changes and, secondly, that you need to have people around you who have the knowledge to make these changes?
Your appointment of Paul As CEO was an excellent decision when it comes to commercial deals. His work in securing deals with Macron, Genting, and Sohu, to name a few, has been outstanding. To that end, his efforts in developing revenue are positive and, in my opinion, he gets some unfair flak for executing footballing choices that are directed by an invisible hand – you.
Fans have slated Paul for his choices of manager – surely that is your call, not his? Yes, I understand your desire to delegate responsibility to Paul as “your man in England”, but Paul is not, by his own admission, a football man.
His commercial talents are highly regarded, but his CV and experience does not show that he can rebuild a football club from scratch – something that this club desperately needs.
Or will you, as with Alex, let the blame slide easily from yourself to Paul if things go wrong? Will he become the secondary fall guy after Alex, as if we are to believe that both of these people are architects of the current predicament and not, as I would honestly say, grossly naive behaviour from day one?
Will we see yet another employment tribunal, one of at least two I know that have been brought since your time as chairman, and both of which have meant retractions and financial compensations?
Fans like me may be nobodies individually to a man of your wealth, and I understand more than many just how much money can open doors for a man when he has it to use, but have a little respect for those of us who grew up in the shadows of Villa Park – playing football in Aston and the local areas dreaming of playing for our beloved team. Those dreams are what this club is made of to us, not the bricks and mortar you bought from Doug Ellis.
Please, for the love of Aston Villa, the spirit of which flows through all of us who pay our money to watch games, look at this situation with fresh eyes.
Find someone who can guide the procedure and the undertaking that will be required to make our club an effective and enjoyable outfit. Somebody who will make us feel pride in our badge, not shame.
Hire someone who can tell you where our staff are going wrong, which players are good enough or not, and have them take a hand in transforming the club into something that we can all be proud of in the long term.
Show us a plan Randy, please, because otherwise what do we have left of our beloved club besides memories and, wouldn’t you agree, memories are not something a person should pay £600 a year in the vague hope luck may fall on us, right?
Please, for the love of our club – a club we cling on to as part of our community, as an extension of my flesh and blood family – make change happen.
We don’t expect everything immediately, but we’d like to know where we’re going because, without some idea of your plans, the only direction many of us think we are going is downwards, and that lack of support will cost you financially.
So, even if you won’t do it for us fans, do it for yourself and your own investment. If our love can’t motivate you, do it just to make yourself a return on the club, and we’ll thank you anyway.
In hope,
Matt Turvey – lifelong supporter of Aston Villa, and son, grandson, great-grandson, and great-great-grandson of Aston Villa supporters throughout generations of my family.
The Author
