With Paul Lambert’s men facing Newcastle United in an away day encounter at St. James Park, the first glimmers of Aston Villa’s new squad will start to show through. The show is unlikely to feature Christian Benteke however with the player apparently signing too late in the day to feature for Sunday’s match.
As we all know, Newcastle did very well last season with previously unknown players making a significant impact on the Premier League. This time around, it is Lambert’s team who will be sporting a new and unknown side to the team with many fans having not seen many, or indeed any, of the players prior to their signing for Villa this season.
In these kinds of situations, some will panic whilst some won’t. There is no definitive answer on how people should feel per se but, either way, the team may well need time to gel. If there is a time to support the team, it is now as the last thing a newly built team needs is its own fans angrily complaining about it.
This might be hard to accept for many, and I can fully appreciate such an attitude, but fans with memories of the past five years will know that we tried other options and they didn’t work. We’ve spent big money in the past on players to try and plead with prospective transfers so they would come and toil for our cause, and we’ve seen the result – the best players leave wanting more money, and the worst ones stick around like an unwanted smell.
Relax – The Manager Is In Control
It is very refreshingly different to see Lambert’s attitude towards players to be as far removed from the Martin O’Neill era as possible. For O’Neill, many of the tactics used to get players in involved paying them high wages, with several of his remnants still taking large wages out of someone else’s budget. Back then it felt like the power was with the players, whereas right now it feels strongly like the power is behind the manager and club.
Few could want anything different to how it has panned out in the sense of regaining control. As I wrote in my article on Friday for the Express & Star, transfer dealings often polarise fan opinion – for every fan being happy with younger players, others will have wanted more experience. The bottom line is you can’t, and never will, please them all.
The new logic adopted at Villa can be seen as brave or crazy depending on your own perception. Just as transfer dealing polarise fans, so the reaction to set backs such as losses will indicate how a fan deals with these kinds of problems.
It is easy to sit back and complain when Villa lose because, well, we didn’t win. Complaining is a matter of choice, and there’s nobody out there who can stop a person from complaining if they want to but, by the same token, those who do complain should question what their expression of unhappiness is achieving.
Remember The Importance Of Support During Times Of Change
Take a moment to think about it for a while. Unlike last season where masses of fans were critical of Alex McLeish for his defensive style football, Lambert’s tactics are not defensive. They weren’t defensive at Norwich, and they won’t be defensive at Villa. People may have seen the perception of defensive tactics this season, but that is more down to players who don’t want to listen to the structure the manager has given them – suffice to say many of the youth based purchases brought in have been done so to make the team more “coachable”.
If fans think they are unhappy about bad results, acknowledge the fact that our manager is not a laissez-faire type who is here to pick up a salary. Lambert’s pride dictate that he won’t just be here for the money, he’ll be here for success, and that means supporting him solidly.
Again, I can’t force people to support the manager, but Lambert’s philosophies will take time to implement. If today’s game bears fruit for us then patience won’t be questioned because most, if not all, fans are happy with a win.
Should Lambert fail to take a win, or at least a point, from the game, there will be the invariable analyses looked at and questioned asked of a team that may have zero points after three games.
In this situation, fans should be critically aware of the people behind these points of view. Most of the views cultivated that criticise the club are from pundits whose very job is to create talking points. These people don’t care about Villa, and thus aren’t interested in how we do or don’t do so long as they are getting paid. Therefore the best thing to do in the face of these kinds of people is to simply ignore them.
I said in pre-season that if Lambert lost the first six games of the season, I would not be panicking. It wouldn’t be ideal, obviously, but if patience in a project – one that is well backed financially by the owner – is lacking, then Villa’s future will become unreservedly bleak. A club trying to transform itself after a period of mayhem does not do so with more entropic change, and the evidence points to the fact that further change would be destructive.
Lambert’s team will take shape over the next few months and we may well see some early signs this afternoon as the team face Newcastle in a likely-to-be challenging game that may or may not result in success.
The thing Villa fans should take heart in is this – Lambert will play to win, rather than last season’s debacle of trying to not lose.
The future will be bright so long as fans can remain calm in the face of changes that won’t happen overnight.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
The Author
