A new season, renewed optimism, and much to be happy about – it’s light and day from last year isn’t it?
Certainly the untrained eye and casual analyst could be forgiven for making such a comparison but, as fans and students of all things Aston Villa, I’m sure we can dig a little deeper to understand why this season is better.
After all, I know many fans were unhappy with Alex McLeish, his football, and his league position. Nobody as a fan of Villa needs to be reminded that finishing 16th is not exactly something to be happy with.
So to that extent, yes, it is far from unexpected that McLeish was axed as the circumstances did not exactly pan out in the best of manners last time around. Think about those circumstance – Alan Hutton seemed woeful, Jermaine Jenas got injured, Enda Stevens appeared to be invisible in selections, whilst Charles N’Zogbia had a fairly anonymous time amidst public protests on the football. Couple that with uninterested players who had no real cover to replace them, and it almost seems predictable, whoever the manager.
Look beyond those parameters though and there are reasons why the board may have made McLeish’s appointment, and why appointing Paul Lambert doesn’t represent a sudden volte face when it comes to recruitment.
On that matter, again, some fans will suggest that these are the actions of a board without direction, desperate to pick any option and luck out, as though there is no guiding structure to choices, merely pot luck.
I can understand why people think this kind of thing, though the reality of situations rarely pan out in such a manner. In the realms of some anger-fuelled concept where the world is out to get us as fans, the narrative of Randy Lerner as some evil Machiavellian despot may well serve to fuel a personal desire to divert our real problems – that we have been superceded by recently rich clubs who were in the right place at the right time whilst we weren’t. Situations as large as how a football club is run are rarely as simple as some arguments make them out to be.
In that vein, and judged by perceived mismanagement, it may well be that fans think Paul Lambert’s appointment was a collective “coming to our senses” idea, as though the board had been toiling down a mineshaft away from civilisation for years, choosing to ignore all possible other options.
In the world of decision making, it is often only external judgement that quantifies the perception of steadfastness or stubbornness, of culpability or context. Lambert, whilst one pre-season game is far from a full set of analyses for expectations, will do better than McLeish for many reasons than simply being a better manager.
He will do better because the reception he received at the Pirelli stadium was a mile away from McLeish’s reception, whether fans want to say they gave the former manager any chance at all.
He will do better because the board have both changed their attitude on spending, as well as the fact that several high paid players have now left the club, leaving Lambert with more leeway when it comes to wages.
He will do better because his recent past will be the area that lives most strongly in fans minds – of his improvement of Norwich – rather than any other supposedly extraneous information such as his job at Livingstone.
Just as Andre Villas-Boas suffered the ignominy of being sacked at Chelsea only to find himself back in the game at Tottenham Hotspur, managerial careers can change in an instant. If we were to look back to the latter part of the 1990s, we would see Roy Hodgson sacked as Blackburn manager whilst, in this present moment, he is now England manager ahead of other, more lauded candidates.
Managers will go into the annals of their respective club’s histories as legends or lame ducks because circumstances outside of their own control conspired either for or against them. Without wanting to detract from the positive atmosphere we have amongst us as fans, it may well be beneficial to realise that there is more to success than the manager – Brett Holman, scorer of Villa’s second, was signed by McLeish, and the Dutch scouting system Villa have in place is down to his direction.
After all, if there isn’t anything else to success than one manager in isolation, why did Manchester United’s board not sack Alex Ferguson during an awful run in 1987 and, if they had done so, would United not be the same team with the glut of players that came through together? It may be that, in the current “give it me now” modern day circumstances, Manchester United’s manager wouldn’t have been in a job, viewed in a totally different way to how we see him now.
Further proof that even the “best manager of his generation” owes more debt to circumstance and long term planning than his ego or CV may ever deem to acknowledge and, by the same token, that both McLeish’s and Lambert’s tenures may run, or may have run, differently if the circumstances were different.
Don’t believe me? Ask our current manager and you will hear this – “Football isn’t about the manager, it is about the team.”
Perhaps such a selfless attitude, coupled with the full support of the board, is the reason why today’s manager may well bring sunshine to the skies above B6.
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