If We Think Randy Is Bad, We Have No Idea Of What Could Be Around The Corner

After Villa’s abject performance in the 2-0 defeat at Norwich on Monday, Villa supporters took to Twitter in force to lament the current regime. It was clear where the frustrations lay; our current custodian, Randolph Lerner.

Remarkably, the players, and to an even lesser extent the manager, escaped the brunt of the wrath. Indeed, it was the tag #RelegateRandy that began to trend in force throughout the evening.

I myself, in jest, said that I blamed Doug Ellis for not foreseeing this when he sold the club many years ago now. Although, this was a joke, it did begin to make me think. And worry.

Back in 2006, the vast majority of Villa fans were sick to death of the Ellis regime. We felt restricted by penny pinching and with not being able to compete with the big boys. We felt we were being cut adrift. We felt that with a new rich, ambitious owner, we could be in a position to challenge and become great again. We felt that we were always just coming up short and with just a bit more of a push we’d be right up there.

It seemed that the clamour to be rid of Ellis had lasted for years and years. He was never really a popular figure amongst fans. It was felt there was a bitterness within Ellis that he was not in power for our glorious triumphs in the early 1980’s. Having been expelled from the board in 1979, he returned as Chairman in 1982, with the club as European champions. Within 5 years, we would be relegated. Whether this is down to Ellis is largely debateable; the argument is that the previous regime had landed the club with huge debts. The dismantling of our European squad was necessary to balance the books. Unfortunately, either way, it ultimately led to our last stint in what was the old 2^nd Division and Ellis was certainly held responsible.

Upon returning to the 1^st Division, we spent the next 7 seasons bizarrely yo-yoing between mounting title challenges and being relegation candidates (think Leicester City style circa 2015-16 but over several years). The following 7 seasons saw our most stable period where we finished each season between 4^th and 8^th.  Villa fans frustrations with Ellis grew throughout the 1990’s, perhaps somewhat fuelled by popular managers such as Ron Atkinson and John Gregory famously falling out with their chairman. In Gregory’s case especially, the feeling was that we were perhaps just one or two players short from being genuine title contenders and the frustration of not being allowed to break the bank to land his targets became too much. Which sounds like a familiar story regarding a certain Martin O’Neill, showing that this isn’t a problem experienced just in the Ellis era.

Ellis had spent money however. Outlays of £5.5 million for Steve Stone, £5.25 million for Dion Dublin, and the record signings of £7 million for Stan Collymore and £9.5 million on Juan Pablo Angel were certainly not to be sniffed at. Add a £6.75 million for Paul Merson here and a £6 million for Bosko Balaban there and it adds up and actually portrays an image of a supportive chairman.

The problem was always that everyone around the club felt as if just pushing onwards and perhaps speculating to accumulate could have bought us some real glory. Ellis’ meticulous nature with the pennies would never allow us this springboard, and rather than being content with what we had (and what we’d kill for now), we wanted more ambition to drive us forward. Whether this is right or wrong given the present circumstances we find ourselves in, I genuinely can’t decide; standing still doesn’t seem the right approach, but our wishes to have investment have left us in a terrible situation.

Ellis’s relationship grew even more weary with the club in his last few years as chairman and finishing positions deteriorated with an unlikely 6^th placed finish sandwiched between a couple of 16^th’s and a 10^th - the fans had enough. Apparently so had the players, as well as yet another manager in David O’Leary; a mutinous statement supposedly from the players, but also rumoured to involve O’Leary, criticised Ellis’ thrifty running of the club. Rumours of cutbacks to the extent of refusal to employ a masseur and even penny pinching right down to a refusal to reimburse a cup of coffee were emerging and it was making a mockery of the club.

Underneath it all however, was a love of Aston Villa, the club. Whilst a cynic may oppose this and say it was more a love of making money and having something he could control, I believe that Ellis just would not tolerate putting the club into debt for its own good. An old school view to take perhaps, we were operational within our own means and unfortunately that meant we could only compete so far.

However, when Ellis finally was ready relinquish control of the club, it was a drawn out process in finding a buyer who he deemed to be suitable and wouldn’t just be using Villa for their own gains. I believe he genuinely cared about who would be coming in and taking over Aston Villa.

And my worry is that Randy Lerner may not have that same level of commitment to Aston Villa. We know he is desperate to get out and he simply is not in a position to be picky about the next owner. I do not see a possibility of a takeover bid being rejected should Lerner feel that the next incumbent is unsuitable.

Ellis did his best in finding us a new owner who had money and a vision for the club. An owner who would protect the values of Aston Villa football club. The fact that Lerner had professed an affiliation to Villa during his time in England as a student was a plus point. Lerner had obviously further outlined his intentions to Ellis and passed the test. A fiercely stubborn man, Ellis would not have been pushed into selling the club on anyone’s terms other than his own.

And to his credit, Lerner has done some amazing things for this club which we should not forget about. Those first few years under Martin O’Neill were exciting times. Lerner did bankroll our push for Champions League football and we could boast exciting talent such as Ashley Young, Stewart Downing and James Milner. However, far too much of the money was actually frittered on average, even poor, players; £8.5 million on Nigel Reo Coker, £10 million on Curtis Davies, £5 million on Nicky Shorey etc... Perhaps a bigger problem than this however was the incredible wages being offered on top of these transfer fees which was the true downfall in our demise. Nevertheless, the willingness to spend WAS there. If only the structure was in place to have invested it in a more controlled and thought out manner.

For me, those early years saw a raise in Villa’s profile as a club off the field just as much as on it, and that is down to Lerner. The charitable gesture to forego a sponsorship deal and let the Birmingham children’s hospice Acorns adorn our shirts was extremely noble and bought us much goodwill from the football community. The renovation of the Holte Hotel was popular with fans and showed us that we actually had an owner who cared about the club and its traditions. A long overdue recognition for the heroes from our early 1980’s glories who had been shunned for so long was now forthcoming and celebrated with a ‘Legends Day’ where greats such as Peter Withe and Dennis Mortimer were paraded around Villa Park before kick off and an nice extra touch with the text of the commentary leading up to Withe’s all important goal against Bayern Munich now sits adorned as a banner on the North Stand. Not to be forgotten amongst these charitable and history-embracing gestures was a much needed investment in Bodymoor Heath which had been long overdue and dithered over was instantly upgraded and transformed into what in recognised as perhaps the finest training facilities in the country.

Once the going got tough however, the excitement for Lerner ceased and the gestures have all but stopped. What remains is an owner desperate to salvage something from the wreckage of the good ship Aston Villa. With endless unfit owners flooding English football over the last 10 years or so, our club could be in real trouble with any future proprietors. The current regime may be a disaster right now, and the last few years have seen us drift aimlessly towards our current situation. But I fear we could be the target of owners as ridiculous as Massimo Cellino, Mike Ashley, The Glazer’s, Vincent Tan, Karl Oyston, Craig Whyte, Peter Risdale, Alexandre Gaydamak, Hicks & Gillett, The Venky’s - the vast majority of these people coming into football do not know what they are doing and see only the money they can make.

Our next owners need to be football people first and foremost. They need to know how to run a club or at least have success in running a huge sporting institution. For all Lerner’s good intentions, he has ultimately failed for not knowing this business sector and hasn’t surrounded himself with those of a football background who could’ve helped and advised better. We’ve had military generals, corporate marketing men and banking officials steering us wildly. But can we really expect a man who is disinterested, without motivation and, crucially, desperate to reclaim anything he can, to put us in those safe hands going forwards? Those sort of people do not come along very often and the likelihood is that another American business group or Chinese consortium will be our next owners.

And perhaps bottom of Randy’s checklist will be to make sure they have the best interests of Aston Villa at heart.

 Any thoughts or comments? Please let me know here or @lovespud83! Thanks for reading!

Perhaps Not A Window of Opportunity This January

The bookies don’t usually get too much wrong, and with odds now floating around of 1/12 about Aston Villa being relegated, it’s looking more and more likely that we are going to drop out of the top division of English football for the first time since 1986/87.

The looming January transfer window therefore poses several problems and dilemmas. Most crucially, do we still attempt to try to save ourselves this season, or begin to build a squad that will be competitive in a tough Championship division next year.

Unfortunately, it’s a choice which we may not even be in a position to make.

Villa currently have a frankly pathetic total of 7 points. This consists of one solitary victory which came way back on the opening day of the season against Bournemouth (it is important to take points of your relegation rivals...). With 21 games to go, there is still time to turn things around. But realistically, out of the remaining 63 points on offer, We are looking at trying to snaffle 33 of those points - that means winning 11 of those 21 games. A tall order for a team with a 1-in-17 win ratio.

Even faced with such diversity, it surely can’t be an option to simply accept relegation at this point. Whilst most supporters feel at this time that we are pretty much doomed, where there is life, there is hope. As one of the grandest clubs in the whole of the game, we have set many firsts and hopefully being the first team to escape this sort of predicament will be another achievement for us.

In order to do so, reinforcements are compulsory. The big problem is that we are not in any sort of position to be a viable option or attractive proposition for the type of player we would ideally like to take on board. Or sadly, even players we would deem suitable to help us battle back from relegation.

If I see another suggestion for us to sign Charlie Austin, I may very well bang my head against a wall until I pass out. There is zero chance of this happening. And for once it isn’t down to just finances. Austin is a proven Premier League goal scorer. I personally think we should’ve paid the £15 million to sign him back in the summer. After all, that is a drop in the ocean compared to what we are about to miss out on next season. But now, there is absolutely no benefit for Austin’s career in joining us. Despite a queue of clubs ahead of us in the pecking order anyway, Austin is effectively a symbol of a greater problem that we are facing.

Aston Villa, in its current position, is not even a viable option for so many Championship players. Due to the fact that we are so far adrift right now, we look nailed on to be relegated. With the Championship being notoriously tight, at this point in the season, as it will be throughout January, it is feasible to suggest that any team from Fulham upwards, who currently occupy 18^th place on 24 points, still have a chance of at least making the playoffs. The Cottagers are 10 points behind 6^th placed Ipswich Town and a run of two or three wins on the spin brings them right into it. That means that any of the decent players in these 18 teams who we might be looking at will be harbouring hopes, at this point, of potentially being a Premier league player next year. We can currently only offer a 4 month relegation fight and a strong possibility that they will still be a Championship player next season, whilst their current team mates make a step up into the big time should they achieve promotion. This rules out players such as Austin, Ross McCormack, Sam Byram, Demarai Gray and a whole host of other promising options.

Other, more established, experienced and impact options will also prove incredibly difficult to land and probably would see our hands severely tied in the process. For example, a strong link has been a move for Everton’s Steven Naismith. On the face of it, a decent acquisition. A player who will run all day which is something we are desperately missing, and is also capable of scoring. But what can Villa offer him? First team football, but with the very real possibility of Championship football next season. Not exactly a enticing proposition. Indeed, if regular action is our only selling point, there is a very real risk that our offer would be gazumped by any one of our rivals who could put a more attractive package on offer. It comes to something when the likes of Bournemouth and Norwich could be preferable destinations over Villa Park, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves any longer into thinking that simply being Aston Villa is enough to give us the edge over the small fry that has, in fact, already overtaken us.

Should we choose the strategy to attempt to salvage this season, the potential danger in all of this is that our only option left is to offer obscene wages to entice our targets. Players will literally be able to bend us over with their demands. This will see our wage bill rise considerably just at a point where have managed to balance Randy’s books to a certain degree. After an exercise in cost cutting which has taken five years to clear the likes of Darren Bent and Shay Given off the roster and has landed us in this position in the first place, we may have to completely undo all of this austerity to be able to sign players who will give us a chance of escaping. Relegation release clauses with either huge payoffs or low sell on transfer fees will be written into contracts. Five year contracts of £50k, £60k, £70k a week or even more would be the minimum to attract the players wavering at the thought of joining us. And make no mistake, we aren’t talking world beaters here - we could have Steven Naismith on our books for the next 5 years on upwards of £50k a week! Mind you, if he kept us up, he’s more than welcome to it.

We are in an extremely fragile position. We could end up being football's bitch. Whichever way this goes we are in very real danger of a future with more average players on huge wages, or a squad of players not equipped or good enough for a Championship season. Although we may already have that anyway of course.

There is talk of clearing out the remaining deadwood on huge wages such as Gabby Agbonlahor and Charles N’Zogbia in order to free up some cash to bring in improvements in January. Easier said than done. Neither exactly has a reputation worth scrapping over and both are sitting pretty on their current contracts. N’Zogbia reportedly is generating interest in the USA and maybe a move abroad is Gabby’s only chance also, but mutual termination of their contracts, especially in N’Zogbia’s case, is the likeliest outcome if we want to rid them; a significant outlay which would render the whole point of freeing up wages pointless.

Randy Lerner has some big decisions to make. Whilst I have always stood by my gratitude for not leading our great club into the sort of debt that Leeds faced after over-spending and trying to keep up with the big boys, the balance hasn’t been struck and we are now in an all or nothing last roll of the dice. Millions will be wiped of the value of the club he wants to sell if we are relegated, whilst the expenditure needed to keep us in the Premier League, or even to prepare for relegation in a positive manner, will be vast.

Either way, Randy is going to be counting the cost of tightening the reins a tad too much over the last few years.

Any thoughts or comments? Please let me know here or @lovespud83! Thanks for reading!

Libor Kozak. What More Can He Do?

When Remi Garde was asked last week about Libor Kozak's continued absence, his answer revealed extremely little. In fact, it only served to fuel the conspiracy theories surrounding the big Czech striker even further.

Garde noted that 'he was no better than the current forward line' and that 'he needs to be better'. Without any expansion upon that, the plot thickened as to what Kozak is/isn't doing in training or in and around the club to be given a chance in a side that is struggling to score goals.

It perhaps shows a touch of desperation amongst us that we are so keen to see Kozak given a chance. After all, he has only ever featured in a handful of games, thanks to a huge layoff due to a broken leg with which followed complications in recovery.

Further to this, Kozak's career goalscoring record is patchy at best. A decent return of 19 goals in 41 games in two seasons for Czech 2nd division side Opava earned him a move to Lazio as a 19 year old. In his first couple of seasons in Italy, Kozak featured just 3 times. A promising third season however saw him bag 7 goals in 22 appearances which then dipped down to 5 goals in 24 games the following campaign.

His final season at the Stadio Olimpico before Villa came calling was the most baffling of all - 19 Serie A appearances with 0 goals to show for it. Yes, zero. The bizarre flip side of this was the fact he scored 10 goals in 11 Europa League fixtures, which meant he finished as the tournament's top scorer.

Before Ciaran Clark nobbled him in a training session, Kozak had delivered 4 goals in 14 league games in his first season at Villa Park. Fairly meagre and nothing to be overly excited about. However, he never struck me as a poor player. He was decent, fitting in, but unfortunately for him, he wasn't Christian Benteke. Now, however, there is certainly an air of wanting to find out more about Kozak.

During this year's pre-season, Kozak featured fairly heavily and grabbed himself a few goals. Whilst we can't read anything into these games, it was promising to see Kozak back around and as an option, especially with Benteke departing.

Yet, despite our continued inability to score, Kozak has not featured at all in the Premier League so far and has amounted just 48 minutes in the League cup against Notts County. 

The timing of this article comes as during the U-21's game against Derby County on Monday evening, Kozak bagged himself a couple more goals and added to the fervour to give him a chance in the first team. Interestingly, before this game, Kozak had also scored in an U-21's game against Blackburn but Garde had confirmed that Kozak wouldn't be involved at all for the upcoming Southampton Premier League game. Which seems like a strange thing to have already decided.

Obviously the competition for the 'big man up top' position is between himself and Rudy Gestede. Garde seems to rate Gestede above Kozak, as did Sherwood. We know Gestede was one of the players that Sherwood definitely wanted to bring in, so that explains that to an extent. But is there something deeper about Kozak that we don't know about, apart from a lack of match practice? Does he not work hard enough? If that is the case, then how is Gestede getting a regular run out?! Kozak was fit for pre-season and contributed, but since then has completely fallen away from selection again. It cannot simply be a case of fitness at this point? Kozak seems to deliver in these friendly's and reserve fixtures, so what else is going on? The quality of opposition is a million miles from a Premier League fixture of course, but if they are his only chance to impress, then surely he is taking those chances and deserves a run in the first team. Especially as Gestede is not performing.

Kozak, to me, has more ability than Gestede and is a more complete player. For a start, Kozak has shown he can use his feet rather than just score with his head. The problem for Gestede, especially with Jordan Amavi now injured, is that the supply of crosses needed are not materialising, leaving him floundering trying to get into the game and being able to offer little else. Kozak would be a better option to try and link up play whilst still having a presence in the box.

Villa fans may be getting carried away with the growing support for Kozak, and seeing him as some sort of saviour, which in itself says so much about the state of our plight. Whilst he may not be the man to save our season, he has certainly earned himself the chance to have a go at doing so.

With rumoured interest mounting from Celtic, who came in for him in the summer, and also Birmingham, I would hate Kozak to leave and then blossom into a regular goalscorer elsewhere, without being given a chance to show what he can do at Villa first.

Mind you, wouldn't that be just typical of us.

 Any thoughts or comments? Please let me know here or @lovespud83! Thanks for reading!