So with Villa facing their second Midlands derby this weekend at home against Albion, it may well give a clearer picture of how McLeish’s men are going to perform in terms of the season ahead.
After all, following a start against supposed “easy” teams, then a match against what is, arguably, the most star studded team in the league, the results have been somewhat different.
Well when I say somewhat, I mean they haven’t all been identical losses, regardless of how the sorrows of some fans might lead you to believe.
Now before I draw too much ire for suggesting misery is some sort of indigenous Aston Villa problem, I’ll clear things up. Of course, we’ve underperformed in some matches. I’m pretty clear and able to say that is the case, and Villa’s last derby against Wolves was an example of that.
That said, when a second half performance comprises an opponent who is playing with six, yes SIX, defenders at Villa Park, perhaps breaking them down wasn’t going to be the easiest task.
All that aside though, a win against West Bromwich Albion should really be what is being aimed for.
I want us to win, and I hope we do, but as I’ve said on numerous occasions prior, expectation seems to be a weight that sits heavily on the shoulders of our players. Whether it should or not is debatable, but what isn’t debatable is that our players, just like any others, do suffer when pressure gets applied.
Pressure – An Aston Villa problem?
Now the reality is that Villa have to face the same teams as everyone else, so why does pressure seem to have such an impact on Villa, when elsewhere it is seemingly shrugged aside as another of the myriad of challenges other clubs face?
Surely teams such as Wigan or Blackburn suffer from as much, if not more, pressure than Villa? So why aren’t they buckling under the expectation of things? Or are they?
Perhaps Villa’s history, illustrious as it is, is a burden that the current players can’t handle. Why? After all, as has been mentioned many times before, these men are paid more than enough to manage, so they should just perform, right?
This never actually works out like that though, as we are all too aware. Being paid a high wage can often put a bigger burden on a player, just as an overinflated price tag can. High wages don’t mean better players, they just mean better paid players. Big difference.
Add into that, Villa have a manager who most don’t even want at the club. To say that fans want him to fail is a tad far, because no Villa fan wants to see our club play badly, no matter their displeasure at the appointment of McLeish.
His place at the club though is still a divisive problem amongst fans. After a season and more of turmoil at B6, only a psychic or a madman would have predicted Alex’s appointment at the club and, as much as he may be a manager capable of delivering, McLeish’s selection surely made the task much harder than if the role would have been given to any other candidate.
Some might think that is nonsensical, what with games being games, and points being points, but appointing a manager who was reviled by at least some of the fans, on the back of a season where costs were still expected to be cut, funds were lacking, and overall direction was missing, was something of a straw that broke the camel’s back.
Some Villa fans, rightly or wrongly, have chosen to stay away from games because of the managerial selection. That, for club financial reasons, is counter productive. Save money on hiring a cheap manager, lose money on gate receipts. Smart as the people may be who run Villa, that choice was massively misunderstood because it smacked of a degree of taking the fans for granted.
As though fans, for the most part, would continue to come to Villa Park on matchday no matter what happened.
Almost as if you could sell the team, replace them with any old players, and expect the Holte to roar it’s approval.
Which, as we all know, was just exactly where things went awry.
I attend matches because that is what I want to do, but I totally understand the malaise amongst fans who don’t attend matches. Why, after all, would you pay your money just to watch a game of football if you don’t believe in the product?
If you want to watch football, you can go to your local park and watch the same game.
If you want to watch value for money football, you can either pay less and see a local lower league team, or you can pay out and go and see a team who wins regularly. Assuming what you are bothered about is football, not specifics.
Football, you see, is a universal game, but it is also a saleable product.
Villa, as much as O’Neill overspent on the wage bill, were better value under his tenure for us as fans than in the season just gone. The football may not have been Cruyff-ian, but it was, at least, about winning games. We lost games, we drew games, but we put up a fight against the best of them.
What owners don’t seem to figure is as much as they care about penny counting and balancing books, I don’t go to Villa Park to admire the look of the latest financial spreadsheets. I go to Villa Park to watch football. Which I largely, if naively, expect to be entertaining.
I don’t expect to pay out money and when Gabby goes racing down the line to be remarking about how exciting it is that catering have saved 20% on their recent budget by changing suppliers to A N Other food supplier.
I don’t expect when Shay Given pulls off a fantastic save to turn to the bloke next to me and say “You know the food in the restaurant is rather good, isn’t it?”.
I don’t care if the restaurant serves doner kebabs and greasy burgers if the football is good. In fact, I don’t care if there is a restaurant, or if there is a series of delightful starters to go with a three course meal.
I don’t care, as a fan, if we are overspending on money. That’s not my problem as a fan, it’s the owner’s problem. What I care about, funnily enough, is being entertained. You know, by the concept of watching, say, a game of football.
I go to football matches to escape the arena of spreadsheets and financial calculations. I go to football matches to be entertained.
So I would say to owners – are you having an issue with the finances being a tad expensive?
Then you, sir, should have thought twice before dabbling in the world of professional football, given that it is a vortex for throwing cash into.
I don’t go out and buy a Bugatti Veyron because, as it turns out, they tend to cost a bit of money, and keeping that thing on the road is not worth the bloody hassle of paying for it. I also don’t buy one and then moan about it being bloody expensive, because it just is. Anyone with half a brain can tell you that ahead of the purchase, so complaining afterwards is, at best, short sighted.
Thus you don’t stumble into the world of football and say “I tell you what, it turns out this game costs a bit of money!” unless you’re amazingly naive and incredibly foolish. It hardly takes due diligence to realise that, shock horror, buying players and running a club in 2011 is actually going to cost you hundreds of millions of pounds over the years. For starters.
The only reason foreign owners even came to this league was because they thought it was a money spinner. They thought they could earn money, and have a bit of fun. Randy, as much as I like the bloke, is not at Villa simply because he wants to throw hundreds of millions of pounds down the drain in the name of being a fan. He actually expects it to make a bit of cash. Not a lot maybe, but some.
Just this week, there have been owners wanting to abolish relegation and promotion from the Premier League. Doesn’t take a fantastic intellect to realise that the clubs that are in danger of going down would vote for that.
After all, if you are Wigan, and you can’t get relegated, then you can take all the time in the world to get things right, and be safe in the knowledge that your TV money will roll in regardless.
The problem with this idea is it would expose us to seasons of cost cutting and boring business based team strategies.
We’d be expected to pay the same for a season ticket when we are cost cutting as when we were competing for sixth.
Don’t believe me? Ask any Villa fan how much their renewal cost this year. I can tell you from personal experience, it wasn’t less even though we knew this season would be difficult, and provide a possibly mediocre result.
So, club owners, please don’t take us for granted just so you can work on cost saving because, as it turns out, next year even less of us might actually pony up for another season of over-priced underwhelming football.
If you want to be honest, cut the season ticket prices so people can go for less money if you’re going to spend less during a season such as this one.
Better to have a bit of a discount to cultivate a better turnout than no turnout at all, surely?
It’ll never happen, but it bloody well should, right?
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