Another clean sheet? In two games? I must be dreaming, right?
After a second successive shutout against Shamrock Rovers, Aston Villa are slowly, but surely, swinging into action for the season ahead.
Though pre-season friendlies offer very little in the context of predicting the future of a club in competitive games, the cohesion shown as the friendlies have progressed is a positive.
Yes, the opponents are not of a Premier League calibre but, as stated before, winning is winning, and confidence building for a young team is perhaps even more valuable than the wins themselves.
Let’s be honest and open about the team and say that Villa are still going to be facing a challenging season – even if they manage to leap five places up the table, they may be less than ten points better off.
What matters now is that the team become more cohesive and more able to play without thinking first – the latter being an issue that had previously crept into the game of Marc Albrighton.
Which, succinctly, leads me into the value of correctly managing players. Last season, Paul Lambert faced a challenge of having to integrate players such as Ashley Westwood and Christian Benteke into a team. Rather than be pig-headed and constantly play all of his acquisitions, he used his head and cut many of them a break, knowing that careers are often built on confidence, and that pressure best avoided is, well, best avoided.
This time around, I sense things being very similar. Just as in the case of last season, Villa will be integrating new players into a team – when framed in the context of developing those individuals, having the ability to build confidence will be key, and Lambert, thankfully, has this effect on the dressing room.
For example, I am sure I wasn’t the only Villa fan to be surprised that Albrighton seemed to be in the future plans of the club. During the Peace Cup, back when Martin O’Neill was the manager, Albrighton was outstanding, only to find himself on the bench – or worse – after.
Albrighton took a step backward at that point, ending up a player who had to think too much, taking one second longer to play the ball before doing so – in Premier League terms, that one second is the difference between success and failure.
All of which illustrate the fine lines on which Premier League careers are defined – built upon or destroyed in the space of a few good or bad games.
The ideal manager will, as in any sector, know when to put the pressure on, and know when to take it off or, as someone once sang, will know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.
This season, we will see a sprinkling of those new players, with competition the key to getting the best out of a youthful squad. Will all of them be successful? No, but having the ability to pull players out when they are under pressure will do them the world of good – something Lambert has proved is one of his key skills in how he has built things during his career.
After all, in his own words, having the confidence and support to put the effort in for the team can be the difference between being a “crap” player and someone who can be a cog in the machine that wins the Champions League – a self-referential link Lambert used in order to describe his own career.
Villa may well be far from Champions League contention but Lambert’s transfer policy – and his own mentality – goes to show that, in the right context, you can win things with kids, even if it may take a while to happen.
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