Recently, we’ve been seeing a lot of statements talking about Darren Bent and how his “selfish nature” has been something of a bane of the lives of some players and fans. I’m not bringing this up to talk about Darren Bent though. What I’m interested in is the concept of selfishness in the first place.
The Importance Of Being Selfish
When we talk about selfishness, it isn’t like it’s some new trait that got picked up due to football, or a facet of humanity that showed up as a new fad in any of our lifetimes. As we all know, the human race survived for much of it’s existence based upon kill or be killed. Nowadays, the challenges that face us as humans individually are rarely that severe, but the selfish streak that governs the “importance” of what “I” want and need is still going strong.
Not that long ago, in a deep time sense, we were running around doing what most animals did – hunting, having sex, and sleeping. There’s probably quite a lot of people who do little but (at least part of) those three options nowadays. Life was, by it’s very nature, simple and brutal. You did things to survive, nowadays, it’s a little different.
Think about it. Often when we talk about the pampered lifestyles of footballers in the top leagues of the world, we regularly hear about the demands that go alongside keeping such a life going. “How am I supposed to live on £40,000 a week?” is posed as though that is honestly a serious question. As though demanding that kind of money is somehow “okay” as a value proposition for the average squad player. Like a loaf of bread now costs £400, which it obviously doesn’t.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand free market economics and the concept of being entertained. What I struggle to understand is value when you look at it in realistic terms, but what validates it for many is about “need”. After all, the ideology many of us have had drilled to our head incessantly tells us every day – buy more stuff, whatever you own is rubbish, and you need more money. It’s all a fallacy, a sham, but many believe it like it is the only code of life.
Do you really believe that though? Do you honestly need more items to fill your already cluttered house with? Is that 3D TV really giving you much more pleasure than the “old” LED TV you bought last year? Or are we just, whether we like to admit or not, addicted to wanting more? As individuals, or as Villa fans?
Are we spoiled thinking we deserve the new iPhone, or that we deserve to go out two nights in a row, or that Villa should afford a new defender or a winger, even though neither us as individuals, and Villa as an entity, are feeling the pinch. Surely when there’s many people out there who are homeless, which is especially pertinent when we have seen the recent awful weather in the UK, and others, and I mean good people who have done nothing wrong, dying of illness, then we could appreciate the positives even if, comparatively speaking, they aren’t what they may have been three years ago.
Yet there are people out there who lived on credit, buying things they couldn’t afford who now feel irritated that their possessions are being taken from them, when they could have just, you know, not bought these things in the first place. Bit like Villa really, only I do desperately await the first person who can honestly tell me they would have stopped Martin O’Neill sooner given the circumstances.
That they’d support a non-football man telling a football man what to do and what not to do. Which, as it happens, would contraindicate the popular view that Villa need a football man to guide the club, and not that we should just employ a lot more chiefs to manage more chiefs.
That, if that had happened, they wouldn’t have been up in arms saying Martin deserved more money to progress, the same way that many fans and reporters still argue that Martin having Darren Bent’s money to spend might have meant Villa could have broken the top six. Which, of course, is something we will never know for sure.
Such arguments are unwinnable and never-ending, much like saying if x happened then y would have, and people know this is the case. I don’t know that doing things differently would change things, and neither does anyone else. We can’t prove any reality besides the one that unfolded. Martin got us into debt with spending, Randy let it happen, and we’re paying for it, just like the people who spent money they didn’t have on overly expensive houses, cars, and other items thinking the bubble would never burst.
I’m not talking about people in debt over food, I’m talking about people who have 50 inch TVs, and who have never bothered wanting to work, thus they feel they are entitled to everything the world comes up with. The riots last year showed that. Step back and look at that, and tell me that kind of attitude isn’t totally ridiculous. That it isn’t just spoiled. It is. End of story.
Speaking regarding footballers, does a person honestly need to have a £20,000 a week payrise because they kicked a ball in the back of the net a few times. I understand the premise of paying someone in case others pay more, but how is that morally or logically justifiable? It’s just mindless desperation, borne out of “keeping up with the Joneses”.
We all know how the money bubble in football is going to end at some point and, to that end, few could rationally argue against what Lerner has had to do in recent times. It may not be good, pleasurable, or likeable, but it needed doing all the same. Sometimes medicine tastes awful. Often taking it is far better than slowly succumbing to whatever bug or disease you managed to catch.
Which, in a roundabout way, is much like Villa in recent times. If we were to term Aston Villa’s recent plans as “medicine”, even though they have caused more headaches for us as fans than they has ever cured in recent times, then it honestly has been difficult to swallow. I’ve found the football dull, uninspiring and poor value, and I’m not just talking about under Alex McLeish.
The common fallacy that Houllier’s style of play was “better” ran slightly aground on the reality that it almost took us down, and almost stuck Gerard six foot under.
Martin O’Neill’s football was based on luck and running, not Villa’s employment of a footballing mastermind. After all, if O’Neill was that great, why was his next job Sunderland? Why wasn’t it Liverpool?
I’ll tell you why – it’s because O’Neill could cultivate underdog spirit, and will prove that by making Sunderland overachieve during his tenure, but I would bet a large amount that he won’t get them in the Champions League any time soon, he’ll just have them overachieving like he always does, then he’ll choke, predictably, when he faces teams who sit back and expect him to make the moves, rather than being able to counter attack them.
Before O’Neill, it was O’Leary. We all remember how we felt about him. So it’s been the same old story, with a bit of variation for entertainment. Sometimes we finished sixth which is, in my opinion, a good performance. Sometimes we finished somewhere else. Every time we failed to win anything, at all, since the mid-90s. Not even a league cup.
Villa had most of their success in a time where my grandparents, who are now dead, weren’t even born yet. Most of Villa’s triumphs came from a period where photographs were in sepia. Yet we sit around sometimes like we have been sat astride a footballing colossus. As though Villa have done well in recent times. We’ve done okay. A little above average.
That’s what we have done for most of the lifetimes of anyone who reads this piece. Unless you’re a centenarian, in which case I salute you for keeping up with this modern technology flim-flam, then you’ve only ever since one league title win in your entire lifetime and, if you are, you’ll probably then realise that, in the grand scheme of things, Villa winning a title was probably far less important than getting through two world wars alive.
Getting Back To The Here And Now
Anyway, I digress away from the original point about selfishness. The relevance of the past is that I could, just like any fan, demand that what is being served up isn’t good enough,
and that things need to change now. That McLeish’s football isn’t good enough, that Houllier’s football wasn’t good enough, that O’Neill failed to win anything of note, well, anything at all. No, the Peace Cup doesn’t count.
Thinking that would be part of this selfish desire that “I” deserve things. Do we really? We’re not top in terms of money, in terms of size, in terms of anything. Villa are ranked as the fifth most successful team in Premier League history, but that doesn’t take into account the recent appearance of Manchester City, nor the London attraction of Spurs. So when I said eighth to twelfth as my prediction for this year, I am still giving Villa a lot of credit, considering all the issues we have faced, and are facing.
If you look at the pertinent “records” that Villa hold though when it comes Premier League statistics though, the main ones are based on draws. We have the record for most draws in a season (17) in 2006-2007 when O’Neill was in charge, and we have the record for most draws overall. Other than that, our other main record is conceding the most penalties in the time of the Premier League. So Villa drawing and conceding from set pieces isn’t a McLeish thing, it’s an Aston Villa thing, for twenty years or more.
So to think we “deserve” anything is foolish really. We’ve had a very rough time where we had our finances ruined over a short period. To use an human analogy, we were close to dying without major surgery. Luckily we had, and we’re alive now. Is it better to be glad that we are actually still alive, or to say we looked prettier when we didn’t have a surgery scar? It’s obviously your free choice, but ask yourself if it is making you happy and, if it isn’t, what you should do to make things any better by changing anything that you have any control over. I can’t sack the manager, neither can the fans, and it seems highly unlikely that the man who can sack him, will sack him, rightly or wrongly.
Players might be selfish demanding more money just because they think they are worth it, but then so are supporters who demand more satisfaction simply because is it their club. Of course we want success, but we’re competing in a system where everybody else is doing their best to do better too, and they aren’t suffering with the same financial problems as we have in recent times. That isn’t a cop out, it is just the reality of our current experiences.
A great example is Stoke. Stoke cost Peter Coates £1.7m to buy, and £3.3m to clear their debts. Their chairman is worth more money than Randy Lerner. So, by that rationality, is it really any surprise they are progressing, even if the football is about as fun to watch as inserting hot pins in your eyes? No. Many Stoke fans don’t like Pulis’ football, but it works. Progress rarely gives any fan everything they want, but sometimes they get odd bits. So Villa may well finish middle of the table this year, which is below where I would ideally like, obviously, with a manager I wouldn’t have picked, but without the cost cutting, we might well have not existed in twenty years. Trust me – Alex McLeish wasn’t in a massive list of candidates. Even with Villa’s austerity measures, he has more money than at Blues, and a chairman who isn’t accused of laundering money.
So be patient. Success might not come today or tomorrow, but being in the middle of the Premier League for a few years isn’t a hard life, even if not winning things feels a waste. I would rather we won titles and had Mourinho rather than McLeish too. No disagreements from me there.
Next time you think our plight truly is absolutely awful thought, go ask someone who supports a non-Premier League team if they would swap with us. Sometimes life isn’t about getting all we want, it is about getting by, and sometimes we forget the absolute value of anything because we’re too darn tied up in relative score keeping.
Villa won’t do much this year but, when Randy gets his financial plan in order, we’ll be better off. Sometimes it just takes time, even if some of the recent football has made that time feel like it is dragging out like torture.
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