As I sat down with my faithful Chicken Balti pie and cup of Bovril, I was hopeful of a win against Ipswich Town. Come the end of the game, the win was ours and I was off home (relatively) happy.
However, what played out in the time in-between illustrated that we, as a team, are riding our luck somewhat. As we are also aware, there are times where that luck can run out, and the hammerings over the Christmas period reflect that.
You see, when it comes to Aston Villa, there is a degree of sloppiness, of poor decision making that invariably leads to either bad choices or bad consequences. When watching players like Fabian Delph or Ciaran Clark on the ball, I tensed up, fearful of a poorly distributed pass, or a grossly over-complicated move.
Add into this the strange finger pointing that is visible for all to see on the pitch, and you get the impression that the blame is rapidly sliding off the shoulders of certain players, with very few interested in shouldering any responsibility.
In a sense, this is the hallmark of a young, inexperienced team. Whilst youngsters will, in ideal circumstances, run around and do more for the cause, without guidance they are prone to a complete lack of direction, and a lack of structure.
Think as a unit, not as an individual
Given where I sit, which is in P6 for those who are interested (in the upper tier, eight rows back, on the half way line for those that don’t know the Villa Park seating plans), there were numerous times where the structure of the formation was being broken apart by strange, ill-thought out runs and moves.
Now, as Arsene Wenger has said many times before, the speed of the game is different at the angle I watch it from compared to the bench. On the ground, passes that look obvious to me are not as obvious for a player, especially when that particular player is young or inexperienced.
However, the issue now is just what one quantifies as “young” or “inexperienced” nowadays, and the reasons as to why these players are one, both, or neither.
For players like Delph, injury has no doubt took its toll on the player. Delph, a player who made great performances in his early Villa career, seems to now be a player whose touch is poor, who needs about three to five yards to be able to move around effectively, and who worries me, especially when partnered with the equally diminutive Barry Bannan.
It would be hard to lambast Delph for his injury plagued career, but his game has been shaped as a result of it. A player who arrived at the club having just turned 20 walked into the midst of a fairly experienced Villa side under Martin O’Neill. Since then, upheaval has stripped out much of the experience (well the experienced quality) that the club had, leaving the team woefully short.
If the issue was just with one player, it mightn’t be cause for concern, but the fact that many players haven’t been developed, that they have gone from being “young with potential” to increasingly less youthful with a busted hand, is the real reason why experience is so vital at this time.
Now don’t get me wrong, I totally understand the concept of the youthful Villa team being built out of the ashes of a broken, poorly directed squad that has done little besides underachieve for at least the past two seasons. However, there are great long term ideal plans, and then there are short term necessities – many of the time, these two generic concepts aren’t wholly compatible.
For some, the belief that investing in older players is something that should never even be discussed, lest we fall back into the mayhem that the past few seasons have created. However, with creative use of contract lengths, as well as the inclusion of associated clauses, Villa can add experience without being lumbered with aging players who only serve to take a wage whilst becoming increasingly poor.
Think about it – if Villa could find low price players who can be secured with performance based contracts (ie with extensions for good personal/team performances, or a contract that offers pay-as-you-play deals with a lower wage paid when the player isn’t playing), then the club can push on.
I’m not saying abandon the youth premise as this is a fairly solid platform on which to build the long term future of the club. However, the long term can only be planned for if the short term survives and, in my opinion, that means bringing in older heads to steady the ship – they don’t have to be here for three or four years but, in the next few months, I doubt few would argue that Villa could do with some experience to change the team’s strategy from riding their luck to imposing their will.
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