Villa face their first stern test of the season against English galacticos Manchester City on Saturday. With City flying high in the Premier League due to their galaxy of footballing stars, it will be a match where even a point would mark an achievement for McLeish’s men.

Manchester City are without Mario Balotelli, Sergio Aguero, and Carlos Tevez due to a combination of injury and well-reported petulance, leaving Edin Dzeko as their primary striker.

However, to suggest that Manchester City are weakened as a result of losing three players of those aforementioned would be short of the truth. With players such as Silva and Nasri operating in creative roles, City are far from lacking in quality.

Of course, they could ask Tevez to play, if only to get some more news coverage so “forensic lip readers” can be kept in a job reading Dzeko’s intimations towards Tevez calling him “an idiot.” After all, I can’t see much work in the forensic lip reading market, but what do I know.

Ignoring Tevez’s saga for a second, and in watching David Silva’s masterclass for Spain against Scotland earlier this week, it could well be argued that Silva is one of the top players in the Premier League at present. After a start that, whilst good by other standards, didn’t justify his ability following his move from Valencia, Silva has dazzled the league, playing an instrumental role in the demolition of sides in the early stages of the league.

Regarding Aston Villa, the team are likely to welcome back current form player Gabriel Agbonlahor to the fold after a back injury. Clouds. Silver linings, and all that. Assuming he doesn’t play at right back as part of “creative thinking”.

Are You Beckenbauer In Disguise?

Which leads me on to the next bit of “news” where Alex McLeish has suggested a new contract for Emile Heskey may be on the cards. Whilst initially this seems like a poor decision given his age and lack of prolific striking rate, McLeish appears to be suggesting that Heskey’s career could be extended by a change of position. Sadly, for many fans, the change of position wasn’t to “out the door to Wigan.”

The position change, in case you have some how not heard about it already from John Clark, is to defence.

On the face of it, there’s some validity to putting Emile in that kind of role, as often strikers can move further back on the pitch as their natural pace diminishes. In fact, former players Dion Dublin made such a move and, whilst his performances were far from stellar following the move, he proved a solid, if unremarkable centre-half.

What many will have heard though on the grapevine is McLeish’s, shall we say, *ahem* intriguing comments regarding parallels between Emile Heskey and Franz Beckenbauer. Whilst the link was, admittedly, far from a statement of “Emile is Franz Beckenbauer”, the decision to draw a similarity between one of the legends of the defensive game and that of a converted striker has drawn some interesting responses.

Many feel that to compare Beckenbauer to Heskey is akin to suggest Savo Milosevic to Paolo Maldini, and thus I can only imagine that considerable ire will be drawn from such as remark, however throw away it may have been in context.

I can only look forward to the seemingly obvious comparisons going forward such as that of Stephen Warnock being the next Lionel Messi, or that Shay Given may, in the twilight of his career, surrender the idea of being a goalkeeper and, instead, become a ballet dancer just to keep up the trend of adaptability.

Alternatively, Habib Beye could adapt to become a footballer rather than a patented bench warmer, as I’m sure a piece of canvas could keep bottoms warm. I’m sticking my money on the lower odds of “Shay That Again?” being a front page headline in Russian ballet circles.

I, to follow said trend, will now choose to say that my car can, in fact, transform into a large robot being that saves humans whilst fighting similarly transforming vehicles who want to harm humans, although I’m sure that’s been done somewhere before.

The Case For The Defence

Changing the angle slightly from massive lumbering robotic monsters to massive lumbering pseudo-defenders, the concern is that it doesn’t really provoke thoughts of creative defending, or swashbuckling attacking football. Neither Heskey nor Optimus Prime. Still at least Optimus could have brought fresh meaning to “parking the bus” even though, as pedants may point out, he was a large truck.

Getting back to Alex McLeish, whilst I can defend his record at Villa thus far, even in light of dropping three or four points on the balance of things, I have to say he’s making things a tad harder for himself. I’m not sure anyone is expecting Cruyff-ian Total Football employed in B6, but a step up from Heskey in defence would be a good idea.

After all, when you have a reputation of dour football, converting lumbering strikers into defenders is hardly one for the “good PR” box. Quite the reverse. In fact it makes Reo-Coker at right back look like something out of the book of Jose Mourinho, which is saying something indeed.

If ever somebody needed to storm the gates of Villa Park to hand people a dictionary detailing “PR” and it’s benefit, then I think now would be a good time.

Credit where credit is due though, even if the “PR” at the club is as well thought out as a chocolate teapot, McLeish has cultivated a solid, unbeaten start to the season even if, by some standards, he has marginally underachieved.

Following a season where defence seemed to fly out of the window in pursuit of a more creative brand of football, solidity is a primary building block for Aston Villa going forwards.

Of course, it is no surprise that a man well known for his tough tackling, no nonsense defending in his playing career focusses on defending as a manager.

A leopard can’t change their spots after all, and being defensive is a way to win games or, at the very least, a good way to steady nerves in a club that has far more upheaval in the past 18 months than some countries.

In saying that, I’m not defending an idea that McLeish should play 10 men behind the ball, but the facts illustrate he was never doing that in the first place.

If you’re operating with players such as Bannan and Ireland, it is inherently clear that you’re not going to be sitting back and defending deep as your sole tactic, largely because adding creative players to a team that is inherently defensive poses no particular advantage for the club. If we wanted massive defenders to play our sole purpose to football in the McLeish era then we should abandon all ideas of buying players and invest in cloning technology, a large vat, and some kind of lure for Richard Dunne to get in the aforementioned vat.

Fear Begone

Getting back to Manchester City, the main thing that they does do for us as an opponent is they give us the chance to lift the fear and just play football. Martin O’Neill used to cultivate this underdog spirit when he was managing us, and I can recall several times where McLeish had done the same prior to coming to manage us. I refer, of course, to the times where McLeish won, not lost. Obviously.

When it comes to lowered expectations, and you’re not expected to do anything besides avoiding getting hammered, well then you may as well go and play football. This is much the same logic as Ian Holloway enacted when in the Premier League, but with the obvious difference of knowing that you can’t just play football every game. Not that I’m suggesting we go and play cricket as an outlandish confusion tactic.

Some might argue that playing football against City is suicide, and something of a foolish method of going about preparing for the game. However, on the contrary, I think that doing so is precisely what they wouldn’t expect us to do (prior cricket tactic obviously excluded) and, given we can only lose three points in that one game, it hardly poses a risk in the grand scheme of things.

Unless of course you are one of the maudlin types who thinks we will have to rely on goal difference just to stay up this year. Which, I hasten to add, I would suggest we won’t.

Of course, if that is your view of choice, then it only compounds McLeish’s rationality, ignoring the Beckenbauer “lapse” for a second, in that it makes sense for McLeish to be generally defensive then, doesn’t it?

So we can look forward to a trip to Manchester knowing that whilst we may not be the favourites, sometimes there’s a benefit to being expected to lose. We might actually win. Or draw.

And if we don’t, well we can always drink a few cans of Stella before lamenting in the haze of our hangovers “I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I’m miserable now.”

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