There are going to be a lot of difficult questions to answer in the coming months for Villa. A £40m shortfall to make up, and many hard choices to be made on players to balance the books seems to be enough to deal with.
However, there are also other questions in terms of how we should approach things on the pitch. Here are a few for supporters to consider:
Are you prepared to sacrifice experience and take a risk?
The manager’s experience of getting teams promoted from the Championship, as well as a group of players with a wealth of knowledge of the league, were hailed as virtues prior to the playoff final.
With the team inevitably being broken up, should the manager Steve Bruce go with them? He has managed to get Hull City promoted on a smaller budget, and he is one of the most experienced managers in the league but is it enough?
Should we take a risk, much like Huddersfield did with David Wagner, and find a manager with fresh ideas and new tactics to get us back to the top-flight?
Do you want expansive attacking football at all costs?
Many supporters feel the negative and defensive tactics employed by Bruce are not needed to get promoted. Slavisa Jokanovic and others have shown that playing an expansive, attacking game can be rewarded with success.
If you look at the managers (Rafa Benitez, Chris Hughton, David Wagner, Neil Warnock, Nuno, and Jokanovic), who have gotten promotion in the last two years, you could say two out of the six played out-and-out attacking football.
Is that enough to convince you that an expansive style is the way to go?
Is youth the only solution?
Players like James Bree and Rushian Hepburn-Murphy deserve their chance to shine in the first team, but will they be good enough to get us out of the Championship?
There could be the case for bringing in a manager more capable than Bruce to develop these youngsters and ensure they are regular starters.
Would we be asking too much too soon, and would we be better off investing in promising players from the Championship and the lower divisions who are ready to perform?
