Villa’s next game is against Chelsea, a fixture that was practically identical in timing to last year as Villa faced off in a 3-3 thriller at Stamford Bridge. This year though, the expectation is unlikely that Villa will score three past the stuttering Londoners, but Villa are, surprisingly, further away from the dreaded dropzone than we were last season.
Before the Chelsea game, Gerard Houllier’s Villa were one point off the relegation places. A year on, and whilst McLeish’s team are hardly trailblazing their way into the top six, their six points from the drop zone are significantly different to Houllier’s first half of the season where he went into the game at Stamford Bridge a point above the bottom three.
On their own, such stats provide limited analyses, but the fact remains that a man who has suffered a forced handed sale of almost £40m worth of top players, as well as having a host of players released, is actually in a better position than his former charge managed. No mean feat there.
The Fallacy Of Gerard’s Football
This kind of evidence goes to show that, for all their yabbering, some other outlets may be a tad blinkered by suggesting that Houllier was somehow a better manager of Villa than the team under McLeish. That McLeish is somehow more likely to cultivate a relegation with Villa, even though he is currently doing better than Gerard Houllier, and finds himself in a better place in terms of breathing space. Oh no. Perhaps we should just ignore such, you know, actual facts and proceed directly to the burning of ginger effigies, protracted gnashing of teeth, and other relevant and angry sentiments. Especially with it being the holiday season and all.
Such suggestions have argued that Gerard Houllier’s “plans”, even though nobody actually had any concrete evidence of what said “plans” were, were aimed at doing more for the club.
That, somehow, the very fact that a man with a foreign sounding name, who suggested that Villa should pass the ball a little better was, by some stretch, performing something our current charge couldn’t do.
That, by some rationality, the concept of a dour sounding defender from Scotland having about as much idea about football as I do about crochet which, if you hadn’t guessed, is and was very little at all.
I’ve seen over the Christmas period multiple people on social media sites, and in local drinking establishments, using this well-worn, if misguided, phrase that McLeish’s Villa team is around the same area of the league as Blues were last season. Given that Blues went down, the argument suggests Villa will do the same, ergo we should sack him before he does.
On the face of it, there appears to be some rationality, even if the suggestion that every extrapolation from a first half of season performance like Blues’ last season’s efforts, or Villa’s current plight, ends in relegation is far from true.
I know. He’s been relegated with Blues twice in three years. No, that isn’t a highlight but I also know he’s come second in the SPL with Motherwell before. Yes, Scotland is a two team league which, rather than downplaying said achievement, actually goes on to prove that the guy can actually manage a team, despite what we may or may not believe. That random statements about half season point totals actually mean nothing without context.
The main flaw with such a statement is in the understanding of WHY Blues went down last season. The fact remains that it was a post-February squad collapse that forced McLeish into a tailspin, leaving him with a broken squad and no transfer window after that point to remedy the issue. Blues went down as a result of that crisis. If Blues were terrible under McLeish, we must have been worse last season to lose to them in the league cup, right? Or maybe McLeish was just lucky. Either way though, his tactic against us worked.
Like it or not, these facts disprove the suggestion that McLeish doing x in the first half of the season actually has any bearing on the second half of the season for Villa unless, of course, someone here has an inside line on a hit squad coming in to shoot many of our squad to put them out of contention. I’ll assume for the rest of the piece that nobody is aware of such a dastardly plot.
To illustrate just how shocking last season really was, Villa finished a grand total of nine points clear of Blues last season. That’s right – NINE points. This fallacy that Houllier’s football was somehow shifting things forwards with creativity, and that McLeish has sent it spinning backwards is, in reality, nonsensical.
As much as we might all be disappointed with our collective lack of value from buying tickets to B6 this year, and I am the first to admit I am far from happy with my excitement vs outlay, at least it is progress. Dull, boring, uninspiring progress, maybe, but progress all the same. Whether any of us will reinvest next year though is a jury that is still out. I personally will keep my money in my pocket if a press pass lets me in to games. Seems pointless to pay to attend if you get in for free, right?
Getting back to last season, some might suggest that passing the ball was a bit better under Houller but, in reality, was it? Isn’t the mark of a manager, of a team in general, the points they do or don’t accrue? Isn’t the point of the game of football to accrue points as best as you can with the resources given to you? And isn’t it, therefore, a fair point to suggest that the unliked man from Glasgow has, somehow, managed to get further from the relegation zone in the same amount of time as an esteemed foreign coach?
If points were given for attractive football rather than scoring more goals than the opposition, the likes of Arsene Wenger would be wearing permanent champion medals, Ian Holloway’s Blackpool would never have gone down last year, whilst the likes of Tony Pulis would be down the trap door faster than a speeding bullet. The reality is though that attractive football often bears no resemblance when it comes to results. You can win with good football, and you can win with bad football. How you win is irrelevant, so long as you start to win.
Many don’t like Pulis’ football style, but taking a team that cost £1.7m to buy, and £3.3m to clear the debts of, to Europe is some achievement. By comparison, that amount of money is how much we paid for Steve Sidwell, or how much we gave Darren Bent as a signing fee. Bottom line is if you want to overachieve in the short term on a limited budget, you might have to forego silky football. (Comparative) beggars can’t be choosers and all that.
Don’t believe me? O’Neill didn’t play fluid skillful football, he counter-attacked. Pulis doesn’t play silky football, but he is above us. Like for like, sad as it is to say this, I’d say Stoke’s squad was more on a par with Villa’s than United’s. Thus maybe the football style Villa are “entitled” to, if there is such a thing, has a lot more in common with Stoke City than Manchester City.
I mention football styles because it has been vaunted in many areas that changing the manager would solve the problems. That, by culling McLeish, Villa would be playing free-flowing football in a manner not seen outside of Pep Guardiola’s team. That, just by axing one man, Villa will transform themselves like a footballing chameleon, soon to do battle mano et mano with the likes of Spurs and Liverpool in the top six chase.
John Clark referred to a radio show that a Villa fan had called into to suggest this exact statement, straight faced, detailing that such a choice was obvious.
That, somehow, Randy Lerner had never contemplated such a compelling argument for giving McLeish’s nascent career at Villa the lethal injection. Only for him to be replaced with a different fantastic candidate who would be drooling over the prospect of managing James Collins and, who wasn’t, any of, the likes of Curbishley, McClaren, or any other such medicore manager who would realistically be interested.
Honestly, and speaking candidly, I see absolutely no evidence of any change doing anything like that at all. What I see, and what I am led to believe is the case, is we have a group of men who have had to be treated like children to get them to pull their collective fingers out. Not all, but some.
That, following a period where the manager did what would be expected at a new club and allowing the players to prove their professional natures, things have proven that maybe some of these people clearly can’t be expected to respond.
That Lerner’s absence had left part of the dressing room in a scene akin to that of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, with players doing what they liked whilst getting paid through the nose just for them turning up to play football or, in some cases, not even doing that and, instead, showing us their best mannequin impressions.
Sadly, it has taken a real ear bending to get some of these players to actually do as they are told.
Such an indictment isn’t more rope to hang the manager, it just goes to show that the environment Alex McLeish has had to deal with is far from a placid lake, and more like the occasional choppy sea.
I’ll add now, before it is even suggested that I am even implying such a thing, that I don’t mean in any sense that McLeish has lost, will lose, or has ever lost, the dressing room. What I am saying here is that there are players who have had to be given the proverbial kick up the backside to get them playing as players. The very fact any manager, McLeish or A N Other, has had to do this is hardly inspiring.
If you can’t enact tactics that are drilled into you by a guy who treats you kindly and, arguably, with more respect than you actually deserve, then you’d better be prepared for a bit of a change of tactics. That is hardly a big ask in order to earn the tens of thousands of pounds you have going into your bank every week. For McLeish, the advice to players is simple – sort yourselves out or see yourselves shipped out.
On the face of such a brutally honest statement, I find it unlikely to believe that any fan would do anything other than commend a manager for taking such a step. Villa players should, in all reality, have professionalism and a desire to play football as basic tenets of being a professional footballer at a professional football club.
The recent upturn in fortunes may be attributed to many things. The fact is that part of the reason for the change is that the players now know who is boss. Long may that continue.
Managers get things right and wrong. Nobody is infallible but, for Villa, having players doing what they are told is a small step in the right direction. Maybe January will provide the resources and time to ensure that Villa can continue to move forwards. They already have since last year, even if it doesn’t seem that way.
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