Aston Villa take a trip up north to the DW Stadium to take on Wigan Athletic as part of a critical run of games for the club. Villa are currently a team who are operating at the wrong end of the table, considering their stature, as being sixth from the bottom is definitely a step backwards from being sixth from the top.
Regardless of past glories, or rather past periods of qualifying for Europe only to do very little, being 15th is where Villa are at present. Good enough? No. Acceptable? Probably not, even with cost cutting. Well not to you or I anyway.
However, what exactly was this season going to look like to anyone with a modicum of sporting intellect, knowing what we know? If you were to make a recipe for “great footballing season”, I doubt it would include ingredients like “disillusioned squad”, “overpaid under-performing players”, “large spending cuts”, “sales of better players”, or “a manager who has not only got relegated last season but also comes from your hated local rivals.”
I mean, I don’t profess to be a culinary wizard of the level of Raymond Blanc, but I think I know enough to see that the only recipe the aforementioned ingredients make is “disaster”.
Ambitions – It Is About Where You Set Them To Judge If They Fail
A lot has been said about how the club have “failed” this season. For someone to judge failure though, you have to have an agreed criteria to mark against so you can reference things. For example, is my 11 second 100m sprint record good if I repeated it today? Yes, if you’re me. No, if you’re Usain Bolt.
Villa are no different. Of course we, just like the supporters of most “big” clubs, want to be challenging at the right end of the table. Given our stature, challenging for the top six seems an adequate aim when things are being funded and managed optimally. However, anyone who thinks the club is currently being both funded and managed optimally needs help, and a lot of it.
We all know the situation at the club. Villa made an attempt at breaking the top four, and it didn’t work. Martin O’Neill wanted an extra £10m to try again the year after, and Lerner turned it down. Martin left, club crumbles, some time passes, and here we are.
Depending on whether you’re focused on winning in pure football terms whilst ignoring the finances, much like a Brian Clough copy would be, or being specifically tied into the profit and loss number for the club and ignoring the quality of football, much like Paul Faulkner would be, your ambitions are always going to diverge.
£10m more to spend by O’Neill was seen to be a price too rich to pay by the club, and he left. What left the club with egg on their face, in the eyes of some, was that here was a management team that figured £10m was too much to spend, only to spend over twice that on Darren Bent.
Yes, I’ve heard before that Darren Bent’s goals “saved us” last year but, for the record, I think such a statement is slightly disingenuous. There’s no doubt his goals played a part in wins, but he was just the man who finished the job off. He was, and always will be, only one cog in a machine. To that end Bent is like the exhaust on a car – great when the rest of the car is there, not so useful on its own.
All that aside though, surely it might well have been argued that Villa’s squad last season would have done better under O’Neill rather than the comparatively fragile Gerard Houllier. Provable? No, but a distinct possibility.
Anyway, I digress from my point which is ambition. Villa’s ambition was to use this year to plan for the future so, to that end, it will be qualified as a success if Villa finish 17th or above this season. I know that is not going to sate the desire for those who want attacking football, value for money, and a return to the glory days but, if you were the board, just how exactly would you dress things up when your primary need is saving money, not playing great football? That is, how would you dress things up any differently to how they did – by saying nothing.
Sometimes The Best Thing You Can Say Is Nothing At All
Take some time to think about that. You’re running a company, and you know you have a tight year ahead of you. It isn’t a “beginning of the end” year, but it is a year to forget. What do you say and do to your customers?
Do you barefaced lie and say things will be great knowing that, by doing so, you will actually make yourself look like either a moron or a liar?
Do you tell the truth and say “Look lads, things are going to be rubbish this year, but the situation will improve, so how’s about you pay less?” knowing that a) it insults your current playing staff which might cause further issues and b) that you will end up with less money in the tills?
Or do you, by elimination, do the “best” thing and say nothing at all?
Season tickets may have been poor value for those who paid for them, and I am included in said group, but they are money in the bank for the club. Sure, we may say we’re not going to renew, and we may well not renew next year, but if next season is a success, we’ll be back. We don’t know any better. After all, supporting a football team is an irrational addiction, not a reasoned choice. I know that, you know that, and the club knows that. So we’re fair game to be exploited in their eyes – simple.
Here’s a fair comparison – look at cigarettes. People know they can kill you, and that they can cause lung cancer, but people still smoke. Worse still for smokers, people smoke regardless of pricing. Every time the government raises taxes on cigarettes, smokers still buy. They can stick pictures of lung cancers, dead babies, and other assorted horrific imagery on them, and people will still smoke. Why? Smokers are just as addicted to cigarettes as we are to football. If the price goes up, they just buy less of the “other stuff” – that’s what an addiction does to you.
That isn’t to say that all Villa fans will buy a ticket regardless of quality, much the same as not all smokers will stay addicted. Sometimes smokers quit, and sometimes Villa fans do too. So, perhaps, season ticket renewals will go down off the back of this year but, if Villa do reinvest next season after escaping relegation, then I would put money on season ticket sales going up the year after – it really isn’t anything complex. Play good football and invest money, get more punters. Play poor football and take out money, get less punters. The only problem for a club the size of Villa is that how you play football isn’t solely what a modern football club is about, especially when the club’s finances are, or rather have been, a mess.
This season, like it or not, the board made the decision to cut as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and, in their eyes at least, as safely as possible. No member of the board, however, wanted or expected to be dodging relegation by only a few points but then, as is often the case, things don’t always go to plan. The board figured that a manager who went down by one point and one goal difference can probably avoid relegation via a larger margin with a better team. Simple logic, but pretty flawed execution.
However, what’s done is done. McLeish was appointed, wrongly in my eyes, but he was. I did my best to get behind him, and will do for as long as he is manager, but he has to understand that, come the end of the season, and barring some miraculous volte face our campaign has been poor. This is because of a number of factors – players, board, and manager – but ultimately a manager pays the price for the results, rightly or wrongly.
The only issue, and question, is whether the board will see survival as good enough. If they do, it doesn’t mean this is how Villa will always be, but they will have to ensure that the next campaign is well funded in order to sustain interest. Otherwise, it may well be the end of one man’s era, and relative happiness for some who have called for his head, but it may also be the beginning of yet another period of uncertainty.
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