Our past five results, no, games, have been tough. The maulings at the hands of Chelsea and Spurs respectively were indeed footballing master classes. Wigan again showed how fragile we are and fully exploited us further, the Swansea game gave us false hope leading up to the League Cup clash with League Two’s Bradford—which in truth was an embarrassment. I am a pretty optimistic person and I fully buy into Lambert’s long-term plan, but something in the short term needs to be done. But what?
During the summer, fans of Aston Villa were overwhelmed with a flurry of transfer activity, gossip and speculation. Brett Holman had already agreed to join during last season under previous manager Alex Mcleish and Paul Lambert went on to bring in a further seven new faces- not including Brad Guzan. Matt Lowton, Ron Vlaar, Joe Bennett, Karim el Ahmadi, Ashley Westwood, Jordon Bowery and Christian Benteke all joined Lambert’s Villa revolution.
Paul Lambert’s mindset for his targets appeared to be predominantly young and hungry, many did and still do, myself included, buy into this logic, but there is a key issue that has become apparent of late that is the squad’s inexperience.
Football is all about balance, you need defensive, creative and attack-minded players to make a team work. The same can be said about youth and experience. Our youngsters have brought us bags of energy and a willingness to work but on the flip side of that they have also bought naivety and immaturity—in a footballing sense that is.
So what can be done? It is no secret that we are missing Stiliyan Petrov—we miss his ability to break up play, pick out a pass, and guard the back four, but most important, his leadership. Ron Vlarr has gone a long way to stepping up to the plate to fill the void, but Stan’s boots are pretty big to fill, even for concrete Ron! I think it is no coincidence that Vlaar has been missing throughout our recent bad patch and I am sure his return, which should be any time soon, will go a long way to alleviating some of the pressure on our young team. But we can’t put it all on Vlaar’s shoulders—we need reinforcements to take some of the strain.
As I have said, our midfield is in tatters at the minute. Petrov’s absence is being felt and becoming more apparent every game. It is no secret that Stan’s return to competitive football is unlikely so we need to bring in someone who can do his job—fast.
Mohamed Diame would have been ideal in my opinion, a big, strong, powerful midfielder, who can boss the middle of the park, but, as we all know, he is now at West Ham. Nevertheless, a player in his mould would be ideal—it would give or centre backs some much needed protection and stop teams just passing their way through the middle of the park.
We also need a centre back, Clark and Baker look good—Baker especially—but we are leaking goals. A strong, level headed, experienced centre half to play alongside concrete Ron would go a long way to stopping the rot in my opinion.
Last but not least, we need some creativity in the final third. I am not singling individuals out for criticism here, I am sure you will all have your own views on who is to blame, but we lack a creative spark, someone like Gouffran of Boudreaux, a player who can play out wide or central and is comfortable doing so, a player who can create and take chances.
So for me, the problem is one of balance—we have some fantastic lads in our team with the potential to grow into very good players, but action needs to be taken now and I believe it is. We are currently in the middle of a transfer window where I would expect at least three new faces to come in. I am confident that Lambert has the funds to make it happen.
Once we get some new blood in the team, I think order will be restored—not to the point where we go unbeaten until the end of the season but so much so that relegation will not be a factor. Lambert took a gamble in the summer and put a lot of faith in his young signings, I still think they will grow into good players but they have been thrown into the deep end this season and this is where we need leaders to help pull them out and show them the way.
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