Definition of MEDIOCRITY
1
a : the quality or state of being mediocre
b : moderate ability or value
2
: a mediocre person
That just about sums up our football club, moderate ability and value. Sitting 9th in a 20 team league is about as moderate as you can get. Not only have the results been mediocre, but the performances have been as well. Before the start of the season uncertainty abounded as the club had sold its two best players and brought in a new manager. Ten games into the season it is clear that mediocre is exactly what we are.
Other than Shay Given all of our summer signings have been flops. Charles N’Zogbia has looked lost playing on the right and was recently dropped. Alan Hutton has been terrible and does not deserve to start. If the situation requires an attacking full-back, Chris Herd should play and against the bigger teams where Villa has to absorb pressure Carlos Cuellar should get the nod. Jermaine Jenas still hasn’t dressed for a game. Our midfield has been so poor he should still walk into this team as soon as he is fit.
Going into the season McLeish made it his aim to get the best out of players who had been marginalized under Gerard Houllier and develop the youngsters. Habib Beye and his £40k a week wages still can’t break into the team. Steven Ireland’s performances could most charitably be described as a dead cat bounce. Steven Warnock has been somewhat better than Ireland which is damning with faint praise. As for the youngsters only Barry Bannan has put together multiple strong performances. Ciaran Clark, my pick for the club’s Young Player of the Year, has looked good when given the chance to play. He was injured for a while, but appears to still be stuck behind Dunne and Collins. Herd turned in an impressive performance at RB, but lost his place to Hutton. He was also injured, but now he needs to be given a run-out. Fabian Delph runs around a lot, wins his share of balls and overall has been more steady than spectacular. Gary Gardner, Nathan Baker, Nathan Delfonueso, and Andreas Weimann haven’t seen enough of the pitch to make an impact.
I do agree with Matt in that the players do deserve the lion’s share of the blame for the club’s mediocre station at the moment. All sacking the manager would accomplish is setting the club back yet again. If McLeish were to be sacked that doesn’t just mean hiring a new manager, but an entire backroom staff. The new staff would have to start from scratch and formulate it’s own long-term plans for the club. What Villa needs more than anything else is stability. If the manager is indeed trying to have the team play better football and they are not doing it on the pitch then he needs to find players who will. It is clear now that were several difficult decisions that needed to be made regarding the established players like Heskey, Petrov, Dunne, Warnock, Guzan, and a few others that were not made this summer. I’d love to talk to Gerard Houllier off the record and hear what he had planned for this summer. I suspect several players who are playing big roles for the club right now would have been shown the door. We are all losing patience but the only hope the club has in the short to medium term is this manager figuring things out.
Realistically I still have a feeling that McLeish thinks he can get the players we already have to play better. All we can hope is that his public statements indicating such are just designed to boost the confidence of the players and put a positive spin on mediocrity. The club still has enough quality that relegation shouldn’t be a concern, but ten games into the season this does not look like a club that can make a serious push to qualify for Europe. That is about as mediocre as it gets.
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