In an era where much has been spoken about the failings of the first team, the youth have been quietly getting on with things in a winning fashion.
On Tuesday night, Villa were confirmed as group winners after Rosenborg beat Ajax 2-0. Villa are likely to face Marseille in the last eight of the competition, and will undoubtedly fancy their chances of progressing further in the competition.
For Villa’s youth, it’s undoubtedly been a better alternative to playing the same old teams. In some sense, I also think we should scrap the reserve team and loan them out instead. Why? Well winning the reserve league is no real victory – it isn’t a tremendously great quality of football thus stepping up from the reserves to the first team involves a big step up.
Instead, anyone not in the first team squad should be loaned out to a lesser club, be they Championship or Premier League. Bigger clubs do it, so we should too.
Creative Accounting
It might sound quite outlandish, but it isn’t really. The idea of a player not in the first team playing for another team is essentially what the reserves are doing. They’re playing under a different manager, in a different formation, with a different style. What’s so different between that any playing for Doncaster or Leeds? Apart from the fact that the reserves league is a poorer quality?
The other benefit to having players out on loan is that someone else is paying their wages. At present, if you’re not in the first team’s squad plans, then you’re just playing in a league where winning means nothing. Villa have won the reserve league in recent years, but so what? Who honestly cares? I hate to be brutally honest here, but I doubt Alex Ferguson is awake at night wishing he could reach such heights, whilst ignoring his successes in the Premier League.
So therefore we should just stop bothering with a competition that makes no difference. At least with the NextGen series, Villa have a chance of doing something different. With the reserves, it’s the same old story, and I’m bored of it.
How Many Wonder Players Can Anyone Produce
Changing things up when it comes to the club structure is something that has to be looked at. The current method implemented, which seem to involve decimating the first team squad whilst not replacing them, isn’t going too well really. If Paul Faulkner is serious about saving money, then he should have thought about what I’ve suggested already. After all, he’s supposed to be a CEO with a finance background, not a novice.
Instead, we’ve made moves that have made the club more apathetic, both at board level and below. The manager has kept senior players in the team that should have been dropped due to poor form, he’s thrown promising youngsters into a league where winning gives them a false sense of reality, and he’s topped it off with a boring style of football that won’t win him many fans, never mind games.
If Villa are to ever hope to reach any kind of height in the future, drastic changes are needed. As I’ve said before, the saying “The definition of insanity is repeating the same thing and expecting different results” is quite apt here. Why repeat it? Are the people running the club that stupid, or am I seeing something that requires some kind of magic vision? I can’t say it appears magic to me.
The main issue underpinning all of this is that nobody at senior management level outside of the footballing side have any clue when it comes to football. Randy, for all his investment and professed love for the club, is no football brain. Paul Faulkner isn’t one either. Beyond that, who exactly is guiding their judgement? I appreciate they may not be forthcoming with an answer, but their current performance illustrates that their judgement is rather clouded.
So Villa need to change, and not just via the first team. McLeish may be playing sub-standard football at present, but he isn’t the epicentre of everything that is wrong. Sadly, the core of the organisation is suffering from errors. Randy came out in a recent interview and admitted he had made some mistakes, and could have done things better.
Admitting you have a problem is the first step. Dealing with it is the next. I’m sure you are, like me, eagerly awaiting the answer.
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