Last night, the reserves proceeded to beat Arsenal reserves 2-0, with Samir Carruthers poaching a goal against his old club, with the second coming via Daniel Johnson.
This win followed the recent successes of the youth in the NextGen tournmament where they will proceed to the knockout stages against some of Europe’s finest.
If we didn’t know any better, we’d be forgiven for thinking the first team would be flying high because surely you can’t be great at lower levels and be poor at the highest, right?
Solving Causes, Not Symptoms
This success at other levels but a failure to progress it to the senior team is a puzzling one. Last season, we even had the reserve team manager in charge of the first team, and many of the reserve players involved in first team action. The equivalent fixture to our weekend game, against Manchester United, started well too with Villa going 2-0 up before falling back to a 2-2 draw.
Arguably, the ability to close down a game was down to lack of experience on the part of the younger players. However, the fact remains that we put two goals past United, which clearly shows they can be forced to concede if they are pressed enough.
To me, constantly using old and weary legs in a game that is known to be played fastest in England seems totally contradictory. In other leagues, losing a yard of pace isn’t fatal so long as you have a football brain. The concern at Villa is that not only do we have players who are entering the twilight of their career, several seem to have something “wrong” with them.
“Wrong” sounds a bit generic. To be more specific, some look either apathetic or incapable. When it comes to picking winning teams, both terms are not what I would judge to be criteria to pick players on.
The youth aren’t the solution on their own of course, but I’d struggle to defend an argument when it comes to effort of the reserves/youth vs the first team. I mention in a prior article that the gulf between lesser levels and the first team is significant but, by the same rationale, the reserves and youth teams of other teams are also lower. Thus, all things being equal, we are excelling whether the league is valuable or not.
Where Do These Players Come From?
Which leads into analysing why things don’t seem to move forwards from where things are to where they could be. Villa are already known to be entangled in a less than favourable money situation, so a straight out set of investment is out of the question. Knowing that, surely then the manager should be using all the resources available to him?
It puzzles me to wonder why we seem to have an interest in playing players out of position when there are alternatives out there. Sure, they may not have the pull of a “big” name, but does that really matter?
If, in a world where money is the primary way clubs seem to progress, Villa can’t compete, are we supposed to just give up but continue to pay out cash for a decreasing standard? If we are going to lose the money fight, and thus won’t be rescued by an Arab oligarch, Villa have to make the most of it.
Making the most of it means using the youth. Some may not cut it, of course, but some will. Life is about taking risks to move forwards. Those that are the most successful took a risk at some point. Arsenal hired a man who wasn’t well known in the 90s as their manager. Ferguson had a crop of youth come through together that he had faith in when others didn’t. Chelsea had a ton of money and some of the finest managers money can buy.
All three clubs took risks. They were differing kinds of risks admittedly, but they paid off to some extent. Compare and contrast that to Villa who spent money but with no real plan at all. We’ve looked like morons with money rather than sensible spenders.
Randy Lerner intimated the idea of a “five year plan” when he came in, the foundations never seemed to be laid to build them. O’Neill, for all his comparative success he had at Villa with high league placings, wasn’t building for the future.
Houllier had a different kind of issue in his future – he was very lucky he still has one. McLeish will be lucky to have a future no matter what he does due to the depth of feeling towards him.
Fail To Plan, Plan To Fail
The point I am making is that every option in recent years didn’t plan for the future. The club itself didn’t plan for the future. Buying young players looks like planning for the future, but if all you do is sell them on, that isn’t progression, it is a money making scheme.
Villa might have to take a hit to move forwards. Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards. Sometimes you need perspective to realise what reality is. For individuals, such an awakening can come via being diagnosed with an illness. For Villa, the situation is the same – realising what the problem is, and fixing it.
As a club, especially if finances are going to continue to be tight, then Randy has to take risks. If he doesn’t want to spend money, then he has to do something else. Roberto Martinez was a good fit because he took risks with how football was played and, at Villa, he would have had far more talent than at Wigan.
The problem was that whilst we looked at Martinez as a solution because he was a creative footballing man, the board were looking at him because he operated on little money. Martinez had a redeeming feature to spending little money because he offered a bit of excitement. McLeish, sadly, operates under dour football. I can’t blame him for using that style because defenders are what defenders are, but add that to a Birmingham history and the current situation was somewhat predictable.
Interestingly, I don’t actually think that Lerner is a fool. Nor do I think Faulkner is one either. I think they chose McLeish because he would do their bidding financially and, if the whole things went sour, they’d hope they could leave him to take the blame.
Which makes them something different to being a fool, it makes them remarkably calculating. I’d like to suggest it is something other than that but when I’ve seen it happen to people at the club as employees, when I’ve seen the flip side to Martin’s arguments for leaving, and when I’ve seen the whole picture, it makes me feel like the club have a real reason for not saying anything – that saying anything honest would indict them.
I love Aston Villa, and I give everyone a fair chance to show what they can do. McLeish may not have had long, but I don’t honestly think the board expected him to have much time given to him by fans. They saw it as “We’re in a difficult financial situation, who can we get who will shoulder all the blame if it goes wrong?” and ran with it.
Conversely, if McLeish had worked out, then they could take the plaudits as a masterstroke of selection. It’s a no lose situation, and whilst I understand the necessity of doing what needs doing to get the job done, there’s the small matter of ethics that plays a big part in how it is done.
The worry I have now is that ethics are gone, and the ideas are running out. If we have options, why not use them? Or is this another facet of making McLeish the scapegoat for a far bigger problem?
The Author
