When you have eight goals put past you in two games, it starts to feel something like the Christmas season of horror from last year – the one where we had fifteen goals put past us in three consecutive games.
Over the past two weeks, Aston Villa have had a real tanking when it comes to conceding – though one could argue the Manchester United game is less surprising compared with the previous game against Stoke City. However, it is hard to ever be accepting of conceding eight goals over a few games.
The major question now is – what next? With talk of a contract extension dying down in recent weeks, Paul Lambert seems to be facing the inconsistency that has plagued his tenure at the club. Whilst Villa’s Scottish manager can’t be absolved of all blame regarding the club’s erratic form, there has to be some acceptance that the current era relies heavily on bargains.
Those bargains, as effective as some of them can be – I’m looking at Christian Benteke and Ron Vlaar as the two main contenders here – can’t always deliver success. Yes, some of those purchases are going to end up being a perceived failure, but when you are shopping in the bargain basement, it would be foolish to think otherwise.
Some will argue that money could have been better invested, but the squad has always needed boosting. The counter-argument would be that the youth could have supplemented the team but, and this is key, there’s a lot of evidence to say the kids were simply not good enough – or at least not ready yet.
If they had been, Lambert would have used them. Some will say that the manager would choose to not play x or y youth player because of some kind of pig-headed ignorance or a mentality that ignores anyone who he hasn’t bought to play for the team.
Whilst once can create some kind of semi-convincing narrative by using the above logic, the truth is that Lambert – like every manager out there – only wants what is best for him and his career.
If Villa’s manager could get more points by playing the kids, he would do it for the purely selfish reasoning that it would make him look better – he has an active interest in looking like a capable tactician.
As time goes by, and as people switch in and out of the hot seat at Villa Park, I have to admit I’m increasingly convinced that the problems lie far deeper than whoever is sitting in the dugout that week/month/season. Under Martin O’Neill, Villa managed successes – as unsustainable as they may have been – but they seemed to get things right somehow.
The problem arises when we try to work out how we can create that success again, albeit with far more constraints this time around. Major investment? Likely out of the question. Wage bill? A mere shadow of what it was, and still paying for a number of unwanted players.
What Villa need to do is reinvent themselves, though the meagre budgets imply that the transformation may well be akin to one of those low budget fashion shows where a young, unfashionable person gets made over for about £100, most of which goes on Photoshop by the looks of it.
Fixing the problems at Villa Park, however, is more complicated than a bit of Photoshop, but the question now becomes – how do we progress? I am all for stability, but the background context has to be relevant too – if not, continuity really has no value at all because one manager or ten, Villa can’t progress without proper backing.
So, as we lament another weekend of no points gained, the big question has to be this – can the Lerner era provide a new dawn, or is this – as Villa exist now – the long term future of the club?
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