Villa 0-2 Liverpool – Match Report

On the penultimate weekend of the 2006-07 season, we played Sheffield United at home, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of our European Cup triumph. The scarves that were handed out at the ground contained a lovely little PR slogan, which proclaimed, ‘Proud History, Bright Future.`

This only came to my mind again today, as this was the scarf that I picked out of my drawer to wear to the match. Four and a half years on from that day, and we now know that only half of that is true, all in the context of having three different permanent managers, wasting more that £100 million in the process and having the misfortune to have to listen to pleas of poverty from a multi-millionaire that will rankle with most ordinary supporters and their bank balances.

There are two major issues here, I feel. The first is the manager. Yes, he hasn`t been helped by the fact that he is perceived as being a ‘bluenose twat`, or something along those lines, but the state of Aston Villa Football Club right now hasn`t been caused by him, although he is a symptom.

Having reflected on the events that took place at Villa Park over the summer, it is easy to see that Alex McLeish wasn`t the first choice pick of Lerner. Based on what was made public, at least, then it would seem that Roberto Martinez was. My point here is that Alex McLeish is simply Aston Villa manager because nobody else wanted the job, and we can work that out because we know that other people were spoken to, but they aren`t here now. There is another way to look at it, that being that if you`d just done a crap job somewhere else but then a bigger company offered you a pay rise to go there, wouldn`t you? I know I would. So how much blame can McLeish take for not getting results when £38 million worth of talent was sold from underneath him? Not much in my opinion.

Now, that brings me nicely onto the board, the second issue. The man in charge has decided that he doesn`t want to spend any more money on the team, and over the course of the last few seasons our best players have been sold every summer. This is in spite of the fact that the ‘Super Six`, as they are now referenced, have continued spending to improve, and even just consolidate – the exact opposite of us.

So, when Randy Lerner spoke to managers back in June, I imagine that the conversation would have been started with something like, “Hi, Randy Lerner here. We are interested in making you our manager at this fantastic and historic football club. You won`t have much money to spend because we need to recoup some expenditure back, but won`t it be great for you to manage at a club of this size? Hello…Hello!?!”

The managers at the other end of the line will have hung up, because they know that to compete at the top you need to spend money. Why would anyone want to leave their cosy jobs to come to a club that wants to go places (allegedly) but doesn`t want to spend money doing it? It`s an impossible job, made even more impossible by having no-one with any footballing experience on the board, genuinely believing that this tripe is possible, and my example of that is Paul Falkner, who thinks we can finish in a European place despite not even coming close to replacing the players that have been sold. What a clown.

Anyway, that`s my rant over with. I suppose I should get on with talking about the game, not that there was much to talk about. The bin dippers were two goals up after twenty minutes, entirely of our own making after dreadful marking from two corners, the first particularly bad after a pathetic attempt from Stewart Downing trickled it`s way through and found it`s way into the back of the home net. The second was marginally better, at least in that it was very well taken but still poor from our viewpoint.

We were slightly better in the second half, with Liverpool`s defence coming under a tiny bit more sustained period of pressure, but still nowhere near enough, and we were still completely unable to string more than three passes together, showing up these miserable excuses for professional footballers for their true level of ability.

I couldn`t really decide on a man of the match for today, but for me it is a toss up between Charles N`Zogbia and Nathan Delfouneso. The former because he looked like the only player who wanted to run at the defence and cause danger, and the latter because of the same reason but in the context that he is far less experienced than a lot of the other players who played today.

As you can probably tell, I`m not very happy tonight. For me, this has been a “straw that broke the camel`s back” moment, because during the ninety minutes the realisation hit me that Alex McLeish has took the money and shown himself willing to be an extremely useful wingman for this board`s at best, naïve, and at worst, utterly stupid and doomed to fail model for ‘success and sustainability.`

See you on Wednesday.