Right. I was felled by a migraine Monday evening, had meetings all day Tuesday, and I check in and find I can’t see the Luton lowlights yet. After eating too much and doing obligatory drinks round the neighborhood I couldn’t enjoy because I was stuffed and hosting out-of-towners I don’t particularly care for.
Such is the way of Orwellian Corporate Bollocks™ (OCB) and unpredictable neurological bollocks.
(I hate to say it, but I remember when Luton were actually a team I saw play in a real league once. I think.)
Anyway.
I’m sensing some panic. Some “I told you so”.
And I’m also just reading in the Star that Lambert is “out to offload Aston Villa misfits”. Has the prat who wrote that only just got done being ballast on a mission to Mars? Thank god we’ve got the A-Team on that case.
You can see what sort of mood I’m in. A day of OCB will do that to a person.
The main thing I want to say: Please don’t read too much into these results.
I was talking with a friend of mine here over drinks. He grew up in Camden but is a Forest supporter. He asked about Benteke, how things were going with Villa so far in the preseason.
I replied, “You know, it’s crazy. The games in Germany were fine, nothing spectacular, just run-outs, but I hear phrases like ‘summer break’ and I think ‘What break?!’ A month? That’s not a break. Well, it’s like a smoke break at work, but it’s not real break. These guys basically play 11 months out of the year.”
Of course, we all know this. It’s the way things are. We work, they work, there you go.
But, when it comes to preseason, this is significant. It is about fitness, but it’s the fitness that comes from training twice a day then playing a game. A game that means a helluva lot more to the opponent than to you. It’s not about having everything set up for you to give a maximum effort in an actual game that means something.
These games are just more running, but against an opponent that isn’t known, doesn’t want to cooperate, and that you couldn’t really find on a map.
Doing all the running and drills and whatnot that you wouldn’t normally do during the season and then going out and playing a game…it’s just not normal. Especially when you’re still mentally checked out.
Mentally checked out? Yes.
I know it doesn’t sit well with some, but that’s just the truth. This is all practice, some of it “televised”. And while we’d like to see practice be perfect, it’s just not going to be.
Does that make me an apologist or a realist? Or simply naive? Well, what I do know is that I’ve seen teams win every preseason game and then implode. I’ve seen teams lose every preseason game and then excel.
It matters, but it doesn’t. The players know the difference. Paul Lambert knows the difference. Just let them get on with it. We were having better results this time last year, and what happened?
It matters, but it doesn’t.
The only thing really bothering me has been the injuries. None are serious, as far as I know, but I hate that it’s disrupting players getting to know each other, and I hate that it’s likely disrupting the kind of fitness that ideally is being developed at this time.
Missing time will only increase the new boys’ resolve, but it doesn’t help team development. And it doesn’t help me get to evaluate them.
The other issue is clean sheets.
There’s nothing like clean sheets. You pull down the covers, slide in, and they’re all cool and smell of fabric softener, and you just snuggle in and all’s well with the world.
I bet you’re thinking about the other kind, though, the ones that seem absolutely alien to this Villa side.
Poor jokes aside, we’d all like to see some clean sheets out on the pitch. I agree: It’s much easier to win when you only have to score one goal. The more you concede, the more you have to score, and if things don’t go your way, you can dominate games, create lots of clear chances, and still lose.
But whether it’s 1-0 or 6-5, you still have to outscore the opponent to win.
I think there are goals in this side. However, like all of you, I’d like to think we could go 1-0, close the door, and take home three points.
But despite the name, Aston Villa have nothing to do with Italy or anything else remotely Mediterranean.
So, I’d like to see some players get healthy, and I’d like to see us grind out a couple results. Okay, sure, I’d like to see us spank a few teams.
I thing I can also say I like is that our home-grown youth are getting time to play and make their cases. Even if they’re not spanking anyone.
I’m not going to worry. Not yet. When the curtain goes up on the season and it’s money time, that’s when I’ll start to worry. And even then, I’m not going to worry until we start playing the teams we might really expect to shut down. And even then, I’m not going to worry until we aren’t at least outscoring them.
See? Nothing to worry about. It’s summer after all.
I’m off to have another purely medicinal drink and climb in between some relatively clean sheets.
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