With the pre-season training kicking off Thursday this is probably one of the last days before we see transfer activity kick off at Villa Park. Well at least that is the hope.
You see, it has been a long and arduous summer where reporting every day on the club has provided challenges. After all, how can you discuss what the club is going to do when, for most of the summer, we didn’t even have a manager? It’s tough – just ask any one of our contributors.
Anyway, all that said, I thought it might be interesting to think about what could happen at Villa Park this season. Not just in transfer terms of course, but in general thoughts on expectation.
Up, down, or in the middle
I know for a fact that there is a wide diversity in opinions on how Villa will play next season, on whether we will succeed or fail. Some consider the club still to be smelling sweetly of roses, whilst other consider that the roses are overpowered by the manure that we are standing knee deep in. Who is right? I’m not sure there is really a right or wrong view.
Last season, I predicted we would finish between 12th and 14th (isn’t that just 13th?) based on Houllier’s appointment, and I was pleasantly surprised. Well a little. You see the 9th place finish hid the reality of what had actually happened last year. If it wasn’t for a few wins that nobody expected then we really could of been in the mire.
We need replacements
The question now is where do I think Villa will finish come May 2012. With the fact we haven’t signed any players yet, and a need to cover at least a few positions, then I have to make a few assumptions. They are:
1) We will sign a goalkeeper as asking Richard Dunne to play rush goalie might show him up a bit. Ideally I’d like the keeper to be less than 30 years old as it appears that just because Friedel is going at 40, that we assume Given will do the same.
2) We will replace Ashley Young with a suitable replacement. For “suitable replacement” read “a winger with burgeoning talent” not “someone who will fall over to get us free kicks”. With United signing Young, surely this means they will get a refereeing decision every 6.2 seconds now given his, um, penchant for going down as if he has been shot.
3) We will either keep Stewart Downing or replace him with a like for like replacement. Again I mean “someone who is left footed and can play on the right” not “a player who loves the club one second, and wants to leave the next”.
Assuming we can get those three replacements I think we can finish top ten. Top ten might not be overly exciting given that we finished sixth for three years in a row not long ago but it will, at least, mean that we have at least a fiver to buy some half time oranges. As opposed to paying very average players enough money to bail out Greece just so they can sulk about it. What’s that? We still have Beye and Ireland? Oh yes. Um *looks around*. Well it could be worse.
We could support Birmingham.
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