After what happened Saturday we are all, yet again, frustrated and upset. If losing to Chelsea & Tottenham Hotspur was something to swallow, the Wigan result was always going to stick in one’s craw.
Following the game, the plans I have seen have involved one or more of the following: sacking the manager, changing owner, buying more players or buying more experience.
Of course, any one of those changes may well have an effect, though whether the effect may be positive is something we are unlikely to find out.
After all, the continuation of Aston Villa’s scrap at the wrong end of the league has been the result of spending gone wrong and too much flux making Lambert the fourth full time manager in as many years.
Stability has been the bedrock that most successful clubs are built on, and it was no coincidence that Villa’s most successive era was where the manager was funded over a regime that spread multiple seasons.
Since Martin O’Neill left, no manager has racked up a full season in charge of Villa, and the constant flux has undermined any form of progress at the club.
Some may argue that Messrs Houllier and McLeish could not be afforded more time than they were given, albeit for differing reasons. Some would suggest that the aforementioned managers should never have even been considered for the Villa job.
The reality is that Villa don’t have the pick of the very best of anything – players or managers. This isn’t any individual person’s fault, but rather the culmination of multiple aspects of the modern game, whether it be the drive to spend at all costs, impatience in the stands, or poor performances.
Of course, fans are angry. I can’t profess to be happy sitting watching another sloppy, pathetic, non-cohesive performance whilst freezing my backside off.
So I understand the mentality of why people are angry, and it is totally understandable – no team should capitulate as we did against Wigan Athletic.
What people must realise when these reactions flare up in the midst of that anger is that the responses suggested are emotionally charged and often oversimplified.
For example, people may want to suggest the manager must go but, in reality, how much of the past three games can we say is Paul Lambert’s fault? The formation perhaps?
The issue here is that whilst it fits an angry narrative to have one or more targets of the collective fan ire, it never falls on one person’s shoulder, and much less on people who have only been in the door for five minutes.
Look around at the context of the football club. Villa are not as good as some think they are. The gamble that Randy Lerner made when O’Neill was still in charge didn’t pay off as the transfer choices of Villa’s former manager created more failures than successes.
At the time, however, too many fans were happy to just go along with the astronomical, money driven tactic that Villa were applying. Too many were happy to say “If the board are sanctioning it, it must be ok”.
Villa’s current situation is still toiling under the shock waves of a failed Champions League punt, and past recruitment drives have been consonant with the issues that have transpired since it all went wrong.
The choices that were made since that point were, to be fair, borne out of some structured logic. However structured logic itself guarantees nothing, and the world is littered with many well thought out ideas that, for one reason or another, crashed out.
Every manager coming to Villa since the exit of O’Neill has been shackled in some way by financial restraint. In a game where money is often power, Villa’s decision to become more astute, whilst fundamentally sensible in business terms, did limit the marketability of the club to prospective candidates.
Which was why, in a roundabout way, Gerard Houllier ended up in charge. The Frenchman, a well decorated manager across a long career, came with his positives and negatives. After the wreckage that was Villa’s finances at the time, no ideal candidate would want to stroll to the gates, shakes Mr Lerner’s hand, and settle into the role.
Villa’s next choice, puzzling as he may have seemed to many fans, took the reigns with austerity a primary motivating factor for the club. Alex McLeish, for all of the disharmony surrounding his appointment, toiled under a negative transfer spend and a chairman who told the unpopular manager to just make the most of what he had. The lack of other interested candidates, again, showed Villa’s position as manager to be far from highly sought.
And now, as Paul Lambert sits in charge of the team, the restraints of any mediocre team are sat to the forefront of the choices that the club must make.
When a club has little to offer in terms of glory, the options available are stark – unproven players or those who are easily tempted with inflated wages. Neither choice is ideal, but austerity forces a club such as Villa to make their new platform with more of the former category than the latter.
Behind all of this though, it must be understood that there is no malfeasance, no evil architect of Villa’s demise, no matter how popular or plausible the suggestions appear to be, whether the idea of Lerner as a destructive, ill-informed fool is the option of choice, or past views that a manager like McLeish wanted to do badly.
Just on the face of basic, clear-headed logic, these anger-inspiring concepts fall down. The reality, that Villa have tried to do their best but still failed, is perhaps far too hard to contemplate, forcing as it would a nervous introspection of each and everyone of us, and a realisation of an altogether more potentially bleak future.
So, as we smart after yet another defeat, things must change but with sensible focus and forethought. Lambert is still a wholly capable manager as his experience at Norwich is evidence of, yet it appears at Villa he is struggling, one of a long list of men in charge who have struggled.
Could the answer be more money? Potentially, yes, but money alone promises nothing as the plight of Queens Park Rangers illustrates to date – there are no magic bullets that will act as a panacea for all of Villa’s issues.
So, in January, many will sit hoping that money is the way forward, that experience is the way to salvage Villa’s season though such a choice has high costs associated with it, especially if it fails to half the club’s demise.
The youth experiment may well have failed in recent weeks, and changes may need to be made, but wholehearted, sweeping moves are unlikely to take the club anywhere but backwards.
So whilst January may offer a beacon of hope for a change in the club’s fortunes, it may not come in the form of buying supposedly “better” players.
Whatever happens at Villa, the reality is that the finger of blame, whilst angrily being ready to point at anyone and everyone, must be held back. We’re angry, and rightly so, but infighting and a crowd turning on yet another manager may well be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and sends the club into the oblivion we hope we never realise.
Time to be level-headed because, frankly, more anger and frustration is going to take us nowhere at all besides down. So, before you try to find a single person at fault, realise things are far more complex than such a simple narrative will imply – the only way out of this mess is together, as one.
Time for everyone involved to stop pointing fingers at each other. The road is long and hard ahead of us. Only time will tell if cohesion or anarchy will define the rest of the season of Birmingham’s greatest club – one can only hope it is the former.
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