Another day, another dollar, and dollars are certainly front and central when it comes to Aston Villa at the moment. If you ignore the claret in the Villa shirt, you can draw a parallel between Aston Villa and the Conservative party.
Think about it for a second. Both run by a Villa fan, both obsessed with money savings, both getting it wrong in so many ways.
David Cameron proceeded through a series of austerity measures in order to “help Britain” when what is seems to have done is quite the reverse. Rioting on the streets, record unemployed, and a total lack of a feel good factor.
Randy has stark similarities. Via his man in charge of the day-to-day, Paul Faulkner, Randy is also looking at the same logic – cut away excess spending. The trouble is instead of “excess spending”, we seem to prefer cutting away any spending at all. There’s not been riots just yet, but protests don’t feel a million miles away either.
Now, as I’ve said a million times before, I am not blind to the fact that Aston Villa Football Club has to run like a business. Of course it does, because if you don’t operate in the terms of how a business runs, you go under. Simple.
However, to use that line as an excuse is simply ridiculous. Yes, Villa are a business, but they are competing in a field where competitors can flaunt the same logic that governs Paul and Randy’s rationality. They can’t expect to operate on a similar level because they are totally, in every sense of the word, outgunned by owners who have more of everything – more players, more money, more experience. Just more.
Businesses Need Capital
Cost cutting is a good way to make a business improve after a period of overspending, but it isn’t some kind of black and white alternative. Stopping funding a business can actually have an overall contraction impact, dropping revenue as well as costs. No good saving costs if your revenue drops too after all.
Cutting £15m off the wage bill to make £15m in profit is one thing. Cutting £15m and then losing £15m in gate receipts is another. It simply doesn’t work. Quite how the board failed to think what they did might have this effect is beyond me. It’s beyond logic. It’s beyond naive.
Right now, we are trying to play with teams who just simply have the ability to adapt, regardless of their superior spending. Most clubs of our size and stature have a squad they can rotate in order to help with form. Villa, on the other hand, have youngsters who have to step in to save the day.
Is that even good for these players? We’re on an endless cycle here – first team do badly, hype a youngster, pressure them, watch them fail. This isn’t just under the current manager or owner, it is a universal concept that has happened for years. Look at the past, it’s always been the same. The Moore brothers, Darius Vassell, Steven Davis. Do ok, get hyped, not do as well as previously expected.
Villa can’t compete like that. The problem is changing these expectations isn’t easy. They aren’t going to just be switched by Randy Lerner saying “Ok lads, we need to finish 10th this season, and that is good enough for me.”
The trouble is Randy never talks to fans, and doesn’t want to talk to fans. Fair enough. However, he also wants to still charge the same amount of money for a season ticket even though he isn’t investing the same amount of cash. Tell me how that is fair?
How is it that he thinks he can spend less cash, but us, the poor man on the street, me and you, has to pay just as much to watch Villa now as when we actually had a fair chance? How is that fair on any level? It isn’t, and the supporters are voting with their feet in droves.
Money Talks
Randy needs to make some stark decisions here. Villa can’t compete at the current spending level and, as we’ve seen in terms of tactics and other areas, cutting money is only going to make things worse.
So what can Randy do? Well he has three choices really. They are:
1) Get the money out and let the manager spend it. Short term overspending is ok if you know you’re going to be able to balance the books longer term. Risking austerity on a strategy that could see Villa plummeting down the league is not a clever move.
2) Get the manager out and get someone else in. I’m not going to call for McLeish’s head at present, but many fans are very close to asking for it. Whether he has had a “fair chance” or not, the results and tactics are uninspiring, and certainly not value for money. Would you pay up to £47 a match to watch us presently? No. I didn’t think so either.
3) Get himself out. If Randy can’t compete financially in a market with your spending, then the game is clearly too big a project for him to run. Making money is one thing, but ending up in precarious situations like last year nearly cost us £38m. Bent being bought seemed like good value. On present, I’d say that value is quickly diminishing because it didn’t look at the bigger picture.
Things aren’t going right for Villa. As I said before, whether people want to say what fans think re: McLeish is right or wrong, the end result has been predictable. We knew he would have a difficult time, and we knew patience would be low. We knew that without net spending many managers would struggle to do as well, never mind better, after a tumultuous season last year.
So Randy, what’s it going to be? Spend some money and try to compete by slowing how we cut costs? Or watch Villa die slowly as the crowd dry up, apathy kicks in, and the fans desert you?
You’d be well advised to realise that alienating your target market is only going to make matters worse, not better.
We may not own the club Mr Lerner, but without us fans, you’re going to struggle to get any better going forwards.
Empty seats my Lord? There will be more at the rate this is going.
The Author
