Villa Park, Saturday afternoon. Guess the result, as Dave Woodhall reflects.
Stoke are a bit of a Nemesis for Villa managers. Their stoppage time equaliser after Moscowgate in 2009 helped widen the first cracks in Martin O’Neill’s time at the club. A late winner at a time when Gerard Houllier was still working off his notice with the French FA was part of the reason why his relationship with the fans started badly and got worse. Alex Mcleish punching the air to celebrate a home point remains one of the abiding memories of his reign of terror while another nail in the coffin of Paul Lambert’s time came when, hot on the heels of beating Chelsea, Villa went a goal up at home only to fall apart after twenty minutes and run our 4-1 losers.
This season’s Stoke are a more streamlined version. They’re signing players from Barcelona, which says more about the attraction of the Premier League than it does the Potteries, but they still haven’t hit form yet and Villa had the ideal opportunity to go above them in the table and calm more than a few nerves.
The optimism lasted as long as it took to read a line-up that was more suicide note than teamsheet. Three central defenders, no Grealish, Gil or Ayew in the starting line- up because when a player finally looks like he’s coming good the obvious thing to do is to drop him. Ashley Westwood, a player who whatever his strengths is woefully out of form remains undroppable and Libor Kozak is starting to come to the notice of the Missing Persons Bureau.
It was a strange team, it played to strange tactics and the only straightforward thing was that Villa, yet again, lost. As ever, the opposition stepped up just enough after the break to score and as ever Villa were unable to even look like equalising. If there had been any justice neither team would have won but Stoke were marginally less poor so if either had to get the three points the visitors just about deserved them. All Villa deserved from this showing was the derision that greeted the final whistle and their current place in the bottom three.
I don’t have any unrealistic hopes and neither do I think Villa have some divine right to success. But I do believe a club with such available resources shouldn’t find competing with Southampton, Swansea and Crystal Palace beyond them. Whoever is at fault for the current state of affairs, and the suspects can argue amongst themselves as long as they like over who should take the blame, we should not on the first weekend of October be in a position where all we have to look forward to is another fight against relegation, and that in itself being something that will take a vast improvement in the current level of performnce to win.
There are some decent players at Villa Park. Right this minute I think even Alex McLeish could get more out of them than Tim Sherwood. Managers are currently being sacked for a less damning indictment.