Come On You (Young) Lions

Come On You (Young) Lions

Not always, but certainly sometimes, the future is so obvious, it seems as if it’s already here.

After five seasons resembling a long running horror show, we can actually look at Aston Villa Football Club and see hope without even squinting.

Confidence is extremely welcome in a game designed to test it. Confidence appears to be, or so we are assured by the Villa Park management and dressing room, on the rise.

With a squad that seems to get younger by the week, that is an invaluable commodity.

We currently have several talented youngsters in the ‘Figuring It Out’ phase.

Some will quite naturally fall by the wayside, move on and possibly forge careers elsewhere, while others, and I’m particularly thinking Eashah Suliman, Kevin Toner, Andre Green, and Rushian Hepburn-Murphy, will we hope, push on this season, and build on the early promise they have exhibited.

Whether that be at Villa Park, or at a temporary home in a lower league. A temporary move that will provide them with an opportunity to experience regular first team game time, first team experience that might otherwise be denied them at their parent club.

Good Luck to them, indeed Good Luck to all of our youngsters. In fact while I’m at it, Good Luck to all our players.

One of the few joys I would imagine, in dealing with a total reconstruction job, is the opportunity to deal with young footballers who haven’t made it yet. Guys whose eyes are still able to be widened. Guys that are hungry, chomping at the bit, regardless of the situation or circumstances.

Probably the best years in coaching are not always the years when a club wins a title, or achieves something out of the ordinary.

Having good players, coach-able, responsive players, who listen and learn, and stay out of trouble, is arguably just as important.

At least you know then that you’re building something, that a poisonous atmosphere and toxic dressing room isn’t undoing all of the good work you might be putting in out on the training ground.

Sometimes, no many times, we Villans see what we want to see. But hopefully the cut in the Villa’s collective strut over the next few weeks will give us the definite feeling that things are getting back on track.

Hopefully the Aston Villa sparkle will return, the vibrant energy too, the excitement, the pride in sporting the famous claret and blue.

Youth can be it’s own reward.

The club’s youngsters might be concerned with relegation and a massively unhappy fan base, but not nearly as much as with their own good fortune at simply being here at Villa Park, and hopefully playing a lot.

They don’t or wont carry the burdens of the older players, the senior players, after all being ‘the future’ gives them a pass…..for now.

For our youngsters, the premier league, just like the future, can look near, well within reach, and easy.

It’s not of course. Nor will it ever be.

But without that little four letter word ‘hope’, what have we got?

Enjoy the 2016-17 season my fellow Villans