As the potential for Ole Gunnar Solskjaer taking up the Aston Villa hot seat increases, I wanted to focus my attention on an ethos that the club would be smart to work towards. Whether or not Solskjaer is offered the job, or takes it, the idea is transferable anyway.
In Solskjaer, Villa have the potential to drop the tired old formula of “hire generic British coach and achieve (variably) average results” and go for something else. Certainly making the appointment is the first step in a long series of steps that Villa need to make to get back to competing at the right end of the table, but it is by no means the end of the process.
What Villa would do well to set up is a focal point for scouting. Despite Villa being one of the biggest clubs in England, and still one of the top 30 European football clubs for revenue, the club can not afford to have a shotgun approach at scouting – it spreads resources too thinly.
After all, if we are going to try and scan all the territories in the world for players as the generic idea, it seems unlikely we will unearth anything simply by scouting and watching games. What Villa need is a more thorough approach, but focused in a specific area.
Given Solskjaer’s Norwegian nationality, it makes as much sense as anything to start the project up in Scandinavia. With Villa having success in the employment of Scandinavian players – Denmark’s Martin Laursen, Sweden’s Olof Mellberg, and Norway’s John Carew being the three prime candidates of recent years – it would make sense to continue this tradition. When one also considers that players such as Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrik Larsson are from the area, there is clearly talent there to be harvested.
If Solskjaer can encourage the setup of local football schools, much like Manchester United did to find the already linked Magnus Wolff Eikrem, then the seeds will be sown for a bigger scale academy than Villa currently operate. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t scrap the existing setup, but I would reimagine it in far bigger terms with several countries being the scope of Villa’s search, not merely Birmingham.
Another idea that would earn Villa some respect points is to offer Molde a link to the club if Solskjaer does actually get appointed. By setting up a formalised link with the Norwegian Tippeligaen club, Villa can show that they have more interest in football’s ecology than simply harvesting people from it.
The club would also do well to look at loaning out players to Molde, free of charge of course, so that Molde can benefit from having players who may improve their team without any outlay. Villa’s side of the bargain would then be to have first pick of any promising Molde players who may be of interest to the club.
With Aker making threats of withdrawing funding from Molde, such a gesture may well be welcomed by the club from Norway, so making a considered effort to build foundations abroad at the time will provide far more rewards than ignoring such a chance.
Getting back to the generic idea of using Scandinavia as a base, the club would be wise to look at setting up regional soccer schools in order to scan the areas where football clubs may be small, or unable to sustain such projects. The reward would be, invariably, a bigger scope of players from which Villa can pick their youth from.
Should the club want to expand reaches in the longer term, the establishment of further schools in Central, Western, and Northern Europe, would all provide players who would have little issue settling in the league, especially when compared to Southern European players, or players from different climates.
So don’t just think of the move for a foreign manager to be a single move by the club. If they have any sense about themselves, and if they have done their homework properly, a simple conversation with Molde could turn them from potential enemies to the best of friends.
Molde may not be happy if they lose their manager, but if Villa’s assistance can help soften the blow of the withdrawal of Aker’s funding, then the relationship will be off to a positive start.
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