by Isco Benny Sat Jun 18, 2011 4:10 pm
Football 365 opinion piece:
Antichrist In Aston But Hope For Salvation
Posted 18/06/11 11:35EmailPrintSave
So it's done, then, and we're all still here. The world didn't stop turning. It wasn't the coming of the Rapture, so maybe he isn't the antichrist after all. In the end, after the protests at Villa Park, the graffiti at the training ground, the vicious Facebook campaigns and the legal chestbeating from Birmingham's two closest neighbours, it all seemed a bit of an anti-climax.
That was partly down to some clever timing. Announcing the appointment of Alex McLeish five minutes before the fixtures were unveiled on Friday morning ensured that, while the patrons of the Holte End were still slightly more concerned with the choice of the 25th Aston Villa manager than an opening game away at Fulham, most of the rest of the country had moved on to more interesting things. And you know what? Maybe it was just the prospect of that sunny Saturday afternoon in Putney in August - we're all bored of the close season already, after all - but the majority of Villa fans started to move on as well.
Whether that was with an air of embracing the situation or grasping the nettle varied from case to case. There was something of a split amongst Villa fans last week, between those who didn't want Alex McLeish as manager because of his former employees - strange, quipped the comedians, since relegating Birmingham never normally goes down badly at Villa Park - and those who insisted... well... he's not very good, is he? The latter camp spread far beyond Aston Villa fans themselves, taking in wide swathes of the public, a large portion of the press, including Football365, and - or so it seemed - every single person who sent me a text, tweet or email last week. Schadenfreude is alive and well in cyberspace.
The attitude now is more philosophical. If he's the manager - if he's our manager - shouldn't we at least let him put a team out in claret and blue before we wheel out the boooooos and the bedsheets? OK, Birmingham played some awful football last season but, leaving aside the matter of not scoring enough goals, they looked alright the season before, on the way to their highest league finish in half a lifetime. And yes, he spent a fair few bob, but if you take over a poor team with few assets, your net spend is going to be high - the likes of Ben Foster, Scott Dann and Roger Johnson have only increased in value since arriving at St Andrews, and we'll probably see the proof of that with a couple of sales enforced by the financial pinch of relegation.
Ah. Relegation. Of course, there are the relegations. I was trying not to think about those, but it's impossible to ignore them. Let's face it, the collapse after the League Cup win is really quite worrying - a good manager should be able to arrest such slides. Even if Villa surprise a few next season - and the fixture list suggests a good start is far from impossible - a couple of defeats on the trot will leave people wondering if the only way is down.
That's something McLeish will have to deal with, as is the stigma of being a defensive manager in an age when the world wants to play like Barcelona. He's hinted that his Villa team will be different from his Birmingham side in that respect, and Gabby Agbonlahor has been wheeled out to say he's damn right they will. But - and especially with Ashley Young bound for Old Trafford - words will need backing up with deeds before anybody's really convinced.
A dose of negative expectation, though, may not be the worst thing in the world. Last week, Philip Cornwall wrote - quite scathingly, if you ask me, but maybe I'm too sensitive - about the unrealistic expectations of Aston Villa fans raised on legends of league titles and European Cup wins. But those pointing back to 1982 miss the point. 12 months ago - one short year, for all that it seems a lifetime in some ways - Villa had just secured a third consecutive sixth-place finish in a season that had also taken in the journey from the Holte End to Wembley. Twice. Getting close to success isn't as distant a memory as success itself.
And there, one suspects, is the rub. Martin O'Neill lost a lot of goodwill from Aston Villa fans when he sent the kids out and brought an end to what had been an exciting Uefa Cup run in 2009. Gerard Houllier put a dampener on the excitement Darren Bent's arrival had brought in January by playing the reserves against Manchester City in a game that put the winner a home tie against Reading away from a Wembley semi-final. Both were strange decisions - although O'Neill's, with Villa then ahead in the chase for fourth, was understandable if misguided. This is a club starved of silverware for 15 years.
We all know the league title is out of reach, and call me old-fashioned, but what are fifth, sixth, seventh or ninth but degrees of failure? Alex McLeish won Birmingham City a cup. He put a trophy in the cabinet. If he does the same for Aston Villa, no-one will care that he came from a club that, lest we forget, also counts Peter Withe and Ron Saunders amongst its alumni. Over to you, Alex.
Adam Fraser
Home
It's pretty shocking! ain't it Debbie? I have sympathy for Debbie.
But I do think it's less conspiracy than pure naivety - they just got played by Ferguson. Been there before - David O'Leary buying Eric Djemba-Djemba and say how highly Fergie thought of him 
