Wednesday night saw Wigan Athletic beat Manchester United, and Queens Park Rangers beat Swansea City, leaving the scrap at the bottom far from over. Supposedly lesser clubs than Aston Villa have decided to not read the script where the Birmingham club are “too good to go down”, and are fighting on regardless.
For us, as Villa fans, this is far from nice to hear. After all, can’t those rubbish clubs that normally compete down there just disappear? And, you know, just close the door on the way out? We’re too big to be involved in such things.
Such a thought process might well be what some fans expect to be going on at Villa Park. After all, with the situation being what it is, people may be forgiven to think that Randy Lerner is taking things for granted.
Now, before I get an argument from the accounts reading people, we all know that the financial situation had to be dealt with. Expanded wage bills, a gamut of poor players on the payroll, and recorded losses all made for grim reading. That is, if it wasn’t the board’s doing in the first place.
For all of the defence that I can make for Lerner et al, such “sensible” moves are only based on fixing problems they have already got wrong. Lerner didn’t buy the players (well not many anyway), but he has spent quite a fair amount of money in compensation and salaries for managers over the past few years. Those particular situations, where the board can have no other scapegoat, have to sit on the shoulders of Lerner and Paul Faulkner. After all, who else made the choices?
Such choices they have been, hey? The club wants a long term plan for football so what do they do? That’s right, appoint Gerard Houllier. The same Houllier who had previously suffered heart issues, the same Houllier who was, at the time of signing as manager for Villa, sixty-three years old. Oh yes, if you want to make a long term plan, you definitely want to get a man who is 63. Of course, now it all makes sense.
To make things even more baffling for the bystander, after Houllier suffered heart issues and was replaced following his attempt to implement a pensive passing based game, who else could the board appoint apart from Alex McLeish.
Say what? Alex McLeish, you say? Is there a new manager out there with that name? Or do you mean the same Alex McLeish who took Birmingham City down the season before? Oh that Alex McLeish. Yes. Yes, I can see the similarities with Houllier immediately. Um, right.
If the board had a long term plan, then switching between the proverbial chalk and cheese move of Houllier to McLeish was, in the eyes of many, a clear indicator said “plan” was actually along the lines of “make it up as we go along”.
Which, if you don’t mind me saying, makes all the talk of cutting the wage bill, and other such financial pruning something I have little sympathy for. I understand the need why we have to do it, but what happened to sustainability? If we were so committed to this idea of following the strict discipline of Financial Fair Play, where was said sensibility when O’Neill was in charge? Or is it merely a trite phrase to trot out as an excuse?
Now, given all I’ve told you so far, would you seriously believe such short-term financial ineptitude was overseen by someone with history in the financial sector. Oh wait. Yes I probably would given the ineptitude of bankers and stock traders who got bonuses as the funds they were given to oversee plummeted. That’s right, reward inefficiency. Bargain. Then use the trimming of said inefficiency as a statement of positive management.
To Lerner’s credit, he did change things around by introducing Paul Faulkner even if, unfortunately for fans of football and not finances, it meant that O’Neill could no longer exist at the club. So, on that side of things, I respect Paul for the work he has done to remedy the financial situation and, to his credit, find positive sponsorship opportunities that have raised the club’s turnover.
What I don’t really have much sympathy for is the fact that Lerner clearly took over with a large dose of naive behaviour. Sure, people at Villa laughed when the Venkys didn’t realise that relegation was a possibility, but was Lerner’s management much better? Yes, he knew about relegation, but he seemed to know little about financial management.
His defence could well be that, before Faulkner took over, the regime in place was not his and that, ergo, he can’t exactly be culpable for the mismanagement of finances due to a legacy of personnel at the club.
Sadly, as much as this might be an answer that has some truth to it, failing to vet people you employ is a tad foolish but, by “tad”, I actually mean very foolish. How can you invest nearly £70m in a football club, yet fail to do diligent research into those in place at the club.
Had these people been used to handling such large spending sprees before under Doug Ellis? No. I also understand the desire for Mr Lerner to not shake up the existing personnel at the club to keep many existing staff in a job, but surely he realised that the club needed restructure rather than just a bit of polish and a punt of money? Surely he did, right?
Take a look at another club taken over in the fairly recent past by American owners – Liverpool. John W Henry, another fabulously rich American, has also had mixed fortunes within the Premier League as an owner. Unlike Lerner, his fortune is self-made, as opposed to Lerner’s inherited riches, but another distinct lack of true football knowledge has left their campaign in tatters, only with less end product for the sort of money O’Neill took Villa to sixth with and Liverpool are, whether we care to admit it, a bigger club.
Is the issue with foreign ownership? Or with grossly large amount of money being thrown around? Once money flooded into the Premier League, and rich owners followed suit with a seemingly limitless pot of money, efficiency can go out the window. Don’t believe me? Look at Manchester City and how they have spent a fortune, and still may not win the title. Seems like nobody wants to wait any more – it’s now or never.
Villa’s process of rebuilding will happen, in time, assuming no more errors are made. If Randy Lerner has learned from his mistakes, then the club can move forwards. However, if we end up back in a similar position in the coming years, fans will, understandably, have a legitimate reason for turning their anger on a once-loved owner and chanting “Lerner Out”.
For Villa’s sake, let’s hope that day never comes.
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