Color me pleased. Aston Villa have replaced Brad Friedel with Shay Given, who’s every bit as good if not better, and at £3.5m, it’s good business. He’s got a point to prove, and is chomping at the bit. Forget the five-year term of the deal. It’s not important.
Could we have gone for Foster? One would assume. But McLeish has obviously seen him, and went for Given. Whatever the maneuverings and politics behind the scenes may have been, our new manager has made his first move, and I think it’s solid in terms of putting an experienced, high-quality shot-stopper on the pitch. It doesn’t hurt that he knows Dunne, Clark, and Ireland well. Chemistry never hurt a team, never mind a defense.
McLeish has also apparently made another good decision in telling Dave Whelan that we’ve met his price and aren’t going to be messed about over N’Zogbia. Apparently no one else who may or may not be in for him at this stage can meet the fee and wages. The ball is in Whelan’s court.
And, by the way, some have suggested that Whelan is teaching Lerner some tricks, which is absurd. Villa held out for £8m more than the initial offer for Downing and got it. We held onto Barry for a year. We jacked Milner’s price up and got a player in who potentially is far better. If anyone is cribbing, it’s Whelan.
The word is that N’Zogbia wants to move and isn’t pleased with the gamesmanship. If Whelan wants to hold on to a diminishing asset, that’s his prerogative. He’s only going to paint himself into a corner in terms of finding a replacement toward the end of summer or in January. I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this one.
Houllier Speaks
Gerard Houllier has been quoted as saying:
“I was happy with Alex succeeding me. I wish him the best, to him, his staff, the players and the whole club. The supporters there are fantastic.
“The target will be sixth or seventh for next year which looks reasonable when you see the power of the big guns above.
“Had I stayed there I would have done everything to keep Stewart Downing but when a player wants to leave I don’t think you can do much about it in the modern day. All you have to do is find a replacement.”
For me, that sums up the Downing situation in a nutshell. But more important is the class Houllier has shown in praising the fans. He was given a hard go by the majority of the Villa Park faithful, and unfairly, I thought. While some would’ve rained plastic frogs on the pitch, Houllier has stuck to the high road. He’s a gentleman, if nothing else, and should be recognized as such.
Speaking of Targets
Our Jerry Churchill has nailed his colors to the mast, and quite eloquently. I’m also going to go on the record, again, in support of McLeish’s appointment. I think he’s the right man for the job at this moment in time, and I become more convinced every day.
We hear talk of ambition or lack thereof. We hear talk of doing things on the cheap. We hear all sorts of rubbish. There are some hard facts that Villa fans need to wrap their heads round, and most on here are smart enough to have already done so.
Martin O’Neill was backed. And he blew it. Of all the players he signed, only Young, Downing, Milner, and Friedel were solid signings, and none of them were world class. The rest of the £120m-£140m he spent? You tell me. There are some okay players in there, but the wages and transfer fees would never have given anywhere near the return Lerner or anyone else would have expected.
Lerner was in a no-win situation. He did what English fans expect an owner to do. Hire a manager, back him, and get out of the way. O’Neill defenders and Lerner bashers say Lerner should’ve stepped in earlier to control O’Neill’s profligacy. But when he ultimately did, he was accused of interfering. Not at all fair or even logical. And O’Neill wanted Ireland as part of the Milner deal. That was his choice, not Lerner’s.
Lerner didn’t undermine his manager. He stepped in when it became clear that O’Neill was spending his money like a drunken sailor. And the minute Lerner exercised his rights and did what fans retroactively said he should’ve done, O’Neill ran for the hills rather than admit he needed to flog a bunch of players he signed, fell out with, didn’t play, or deemed not good enough.
Worse, O’Neill flattered to deceive. By getting us to sixth with that spending he unreasonably raised expectations that we were just a hair’s breadth from pushing into the top four. It was never that close. We didn’t have depth in quality, we didn’t have superstars in waiting, and we had to run our starting 11 into the ground just for a good half-season’s showing. Forget cups and Europa, never mind CL.
We defended desperately. We were overrun in midfield. We had our share of luck and smash-and-grabs. If we’d gotten a CL spot, we’d have never made it past the group stages, and wouldn’t have finished in the top four the following year. The game was up.
The Bad Part
The worst part, though, is that it’s only now that anyone has been able to actually address the mess. Heskey, Beye, Petrov, Dunne, Collins are still here. Are the top four coming in for them? Not hardly.
We’ve let others go, have a couple we can maybe rehabilitate, and can only hope Leicester want Heskey, and that Warnock and Dunne can pull their fingers out. Cuellar…you might think it’s madness. But he’s 30, coming off knee surgery, isn’t even running yet, won’t be match fit for a while, and even then, we have no idea if he’ll be the same player. It makes sense to offload him, get a little cash, get someone else in who’s ready from day one, and eliminate the wages.
While it’s easy to be either glass-half-full or empty, the reality is that at the start of last season we had a decent squad and no more and a lot of dead weight. And we’d spent a lot of money to get there.
Lerner found a manager that gets results, organizes a team, gets them playing and fighting together, and makes a result anywhere possible. McLeish wasn’t brought in because he was the only manager who was willing to work with nothing. McLeish was brought in to add steel and discipline, get the best out of what we’ve spent a lot on and allow us to get our house in order before FFP kicks in, all without us being in danger of relegation. I think he’ll succeed in this.
O’Neill’s team, I’m sorry to say, would not have beaten Arsenal in the final. And we know this, in our hearts. McLeish’s did. Was it ugly? I don’t care. I like pretty football. But I’d rather stay up playing smart in the fashion the league dictates than try to build Barcelona in Brum. Because there’s absolutely no guarantee all that spending would get us anything but deep regret. We could spend £100m this summer and get nowhere close. I would’ve backed Houllier. But I understand the potential change in direction.
This is the reality. It’s an adult reality. It’s not a false dawn, it’s the sober morning after, and a hard-nosed grown-up has been brought in to see us through the rebuilding of a side. I’ll take a slew of 1-0 results any day of the week, especially given how competitive the PL is becoming top to bottom. We need to be hard to beat. That’s job one. The icing can come later.
Right now, finishing top half is not capitulation. Lerner could sell every player, pocket the money, take a huge loss, and still have a team no one in their right mind would buy. That’s not what he’s doing. And who’s going to come in and buy a PL side now knowing they can’t dump £300m-£500m on fees, let alone wages? Our turnover would never support it.
Lerner’s regrouping to live to fight another day. That’s the sort of sane thinking that we should all be able to get behind. It’s the kind of thinking that will secure the future of the club and leave us looking toward another push at the CL in a few years’ time. I’m down with it, and I’ll reiterate my call to buy a season ticket if you can, get down the Villa and cheer the lads on, and build up our turnover so we an continue to aspire.
We’re Villans. The club need us. As I said before, we have to act big if we want to be big. And to be big, we have to back the team, loud and proud.
The Author
