There is little any fan can do regarding Villa’s predicament. Tactics, formation, players, manager, administration, owner, and quite possibly the guy selling programs, have had a three-year run of appalling form.
Every permutation has been tried on the field—nothing has worked for more than 45 minutes of play per game, and some games not at all. And not just this season. It’s the classic Catch-22 and Villa won’t pull out of it anytime soon. Unfortunately, relegation in my mind is a certainty. From what’s been said, the Championship won’t be a cake walk by any means.
Lerner, Villa’s owner has, through naiveity or perhaps through a huge case of hubris, really messed with the team. His bull-headedness in his belief that he could turn the team around instantly with unlimited cash was his first blunder. Just like turning the tap off, it destabilized the team. O’Neill’s spending was profligate and completely scattergun, buying for the sake of buying in most instances. It worked, but the plan had no foundation. Like him or hate him, Doug Ellis gave you exactly what he wanted. A solid foundation for mediocrity. Nothing more, nothing less, but a place in the Premier League year after year. Like Wigan, I imagine.
Like a John Wayne war movie, you, Mr. Lerner waded in and got smacked back (with financial reality). Sitting back now, licking your wounds and trying to regroup for the last 30 minutes of the movie where Wayne wins the battle and the war with all his men singing his praise. In the movies all Wayne ever got was a mere flesh wound, even Wayne’s horse never got shot. Everyone walks out of the theatre feeling good, proud, and invincible. Mr Lerner, you are not John Wayne with a winning script just for you.
Well, Mr Lerner, you can forget the Magnificent Seven, the Guns of Navaronne or any movie of this ilk, it isn’t going to be your epitaph. You haven’t built in the six years of ownership, regardless of three sixth-place finishes, you failed to build and re-group responsibly, you threw good money after bad, you indirectly threatened people’s health, probably ruined people’s careers, dismissed good football people both on the field and in the offices, and hired dross and lap dogs, and you stubbornly refuse to stabilise. Like the kid on the block who owns all the balls you refuse to come out and play properly. You placed fall guys between you and your problems. Problems you created. To feel ashamed is an understatement. But you live in a different world. Your placement on this planet insulates you from the rest. It’s no biggie that it went wrong for you. It’s more like forget about it, let’s try something else.
The sooner you move out the better. Good luck with your next venture and woe betide the next group of people you mess with. It’s their lives not yours.
So, what about Villa? The club has been around since, well, practically forever. A founding team, filled with great stewards of the game over the years. Lots of glory, lots of despair, and lots of beer spilled over both. It’s a club that will move through this period of stress. The club will recover, it’s in its genes. Whether it will be with the current crop of administrators or some future chairman, it will recover.
As fans, we fanaticize over the present with a great deal of past glory colouring our thinking. We even look at the average and mediocre years as something that was great. Time removes the bad memories and gives credence to the average. Only the really bad sticks in our minds and this is a time that is really bad. What can we do? Nothing actually regarding the running of the club.
But the fans who have supported Villa for generations are the lifeblood of the team. To pull our support and lose our pride in something we all have a vested interest through our forebears that is over 100 years old isn’t the way to go. Life isn’t a bed of roses. For most it is a slog right up to the end. Like a vexing teenager in the family, keep the thought that better times are ahead and really, will soon be here. Perhaps not as quickly as we like but soon.
We can rant and rave all we want, this boat isn’t turning around anytime soon. When the smell of failure starts to stick to Lerner he will sell up. He is still thinking like John Wayne, that he will rise up on his horse and smite those indians and win the girl of his dreams. All in the last 30 minutes.
Dream on Lerner.
The Author
