What Direction Should Villa Choose?

What direction would you choose?

Villa are not the biggest club in the world. I’m sure that first line will have my popularity dipping but it is true.

Like all fans I often believe they are, I always wish they were and often dream of a day when we will once again be competing on a par with the best of England, Europe and the World.

The question is how do we get there?

We made a half-hearted effort to spend our way there under O’Neill, buying players who MON considered ready for league action there and then, not many who would be considered great players, but hard workers who would follow his instructions on the pitch and grind out results. This was often at the expense of our youth though, the best of whom were sold to other clubs to fund the purchase and wages of average scrappers who would win us a few games in the short term. It nearly paid off too, how close did we come to the Champion`s league, the promised land of increased income and better players wanting to join our club – rather than leave?!

However close we came, we still failed, and Randy felt it was time to start putting our house in order, cutting the wage bill and not replacing top players like for like when they leave. As hard as this is for supporters to take, thought of rationally I’m sure we’d all prefer mid-table premiership football to the sort of bankruptcy fueled firesale relegation suffered so recently by other clubs spending beyond their means, take Leeds and Portsmouth as the most obvious examples.

Of course we still have to see if we are capable of avoiding the drop with a depleted squad and a manager with a great experience of taking teams down! I think we still have enough quality to compete, if not currently at the highest level. If we can keep Given fit and get supply to Bent, there should be enough results to get by. The real question is was there a better way? Villa are often lauded for the quality of their academy and the players it produces. So would we have been better building slowly under MON, bringing in one or two quality players from outside, but then rely on developing our young talent, players like Cahill and Gardner? That seems to be the plan now and if our youth are as good as we always say, perhaps it isn’t a bad one. Imagine what sort of club West Ham would be now if they had hung on to their youth players, the likes of Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Jamie Redknap and Joe Cole amongst others, instead of selling them to the highest bidders?

Not only did they all go on to become top players, but had they stayed they’d have been at a club for whom they had real passion. We have that potential now, in Gabby, Albrighton, Gardner, Bannan, Delph, Clark, Baker, and others. Chances are some will fall by the wayside, but if even 50% make it and we add one or two top quality players per season in the positions where players aren’t developing as we’d wished (Bent last season along with Makoun depending on how good he turns out to be this season, Given and hopefully N’Zogbia this year). Like all fans I’d really then like to see our top class youth and other Villa supporting players return, imagine a central defence of Cahill and Lescott, or the fear of an opposing defence with Daniel Sturridge playing in a 3 man attack with the finishing of Bent and the pace of Gabby?

If we produce these players, we have to do a better job of identifying their talent, nurturing their talent and keeping their talent for our benefit over the course of their whole careers rather than trading it in for a couple of seasons with a sniff of success.

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