Sherwood Faced With Tough Stats While Fox Sees Business Progress Equal Football Decline

Compared to last season’s results in the corresponding games played so far this season, Villa are 10 points down

Terror Stats

“We’ll turn it around. I’m 100% sure we’ll stay in the Premier League this season,” claimed Tim Sherwood, before the 2-0 loss at Chelsea, the first of five tough fixtures that Villa face to redress their troublesome league position.

Has anybody cared to ask the Villa boss, why actually he is confident of that? It’s a tough task to even begin to tackle when you look at the upcoming games.

In the same games last season, against Chelsea (a), Swansea (h), Spurs (a), Man City (h), Everton (a), Villa only scored one goal and gained three points, the result of their 1-0 win away at Spurs. It’s a worrying statistic.

For Villa to begin to redress the increasingly worrying spectre of relegation they perhaps will need two positive results from the next four games. It’s not a forlorn prospect though, a couple of seasons ago Paul Lambert’s record against the top four saved the team from relegation, so Sherwood must follow his predecessors’ lead.

I say ‘must’, because compared to last season’s results in the corresponding games played so far this season, Villa are 10 points down and most of those lost points have been against average teams.

The threat of relegation is VERY REAL with such a tally to make up.

Carefree Outlook

“Oh, it’s only early days” and “it takes time to gel a team and for players to get used to the Premier League” are two sentiments heard to counter Aston Villa’s poor start to the season. Consider this though…

Almost a quarter of the season has gone and Villa are on just FOUR points after nine games; teams normally get relegated from such starts. Also, why buy so many players with no Premier League experience, when in this season more than most, it is essential for teams to stay in the league to be privy to the increased TV financial windfall of next season?

The Moneyball approach is ok in theory, but in football the factor of Premier League experience, which Moneyball fails to really address in, is a vital ingredient. Villa have brought in little legitimate Premier League experience in the key areas of midfield and attack. They needed a mix to make them ready to go from the off. You don’t go into a season thinking ‘well, the results don’t matter in the first nine games, because we’re finding our feet’.

The quotes from Sherwood referring to the four league points that Villa have so far as ‘to be expected’, are quite frankly nonsense. If as a manager you were half-expecting to have four points out of a total of 27, then that’s not the plan you should be following. Full stop.

As for being a ‘team in transition’, which Sherwood has described Villa on more than one occasion, this club has been in perpetual transition since Gerard Houllier came in as manager. When will it end? As Villa supporters we have been fed the ‘transition’ pill as a placebo, season after season.

In any team rebuilding, you built a team to be competitive from the start, while they ultimately find their feet and full potential. That is how you run any sports team. Villa have already tried the drastic approach of untried young and hungry talent under Lambert, but where did that get them? Why did they not learn?

The Villa board are being risky in the extremity of their transfer approach, not to mention the appointment of an inexperienced manager, who certainly was worth a gamble in the short-term to shake the Paul Lambert coma, but had long-term question marks over his head.

 

 

Action

The Aston Villa Supporters Trust statement calling for a clarity of direction in terms of back or sack the manager was fair one, considering all the press hullaballoo in recent weeks.

To make up 10 points just to reach a paltry total of 38 points last season, will be tough and still does not guarantee safety. Sherwood will need the club’s full support, if the board believes he is the man to do it. If not, the more chance a new manager has of rescuing the situation the better.

In the interim, it would be good to hear if Randy Lerner will be appointing a chairman to take over as was suggested as a course of action, if he failed to sell the club. At the moment, you get the sense Tom Fox is very much running the show, but while he maybe updating the business side of the club’s operation, the football side may regress all the way back to the Championship and that would ruin everything.

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7 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve been supporting AVFC for over 40 years and I’ve never felt as certain as this, so early in the season that we will get relegated. Beating Swansea on Saturday would indeed give a little ray of light, and my god just to go home feeling proud that we won a ******* game would help ease the gloom. But lets be realsistic to have a real chance of getting out of this we need to string together 4 results on the bounce,(at least 2 wins and 2 draws i.e. 8 points minimum)
    Surely the manager has got to address the individual mistakes that are costing us dearly….In the old days it was a simple case of dropping them and giving someone else a go ? messers Lescott, Guzan & Westwood, seem like automaic choices regardless.

    • In the old days the managers word was law & when his staff & players went against that law they had to go . But now there are DOF’s who can dilute his power but maybe at villa that is about to change ?

  2. Frankly I am tired of hearing about the TV cash windfall – for this is at the very heart of the problem. Its all about the cash these days, never about the game, the club and the supporters (Not just at Villa but the game in general).
    Its no secret that I was, and never have been, a fan of Randy Lerner – simply lacking in passion for our once great club. AV are nothing more than an expensive toy, that Randy puts away in a drawer and gets out occasionally to impress his fellow wealthy friends. He and his board have to go and go sooner rather than later. But who is going to be mad enough to invest in something that is already dead on its feet? Lets be honest – TV Cash – we wont be seeing a sniff of this for many years, that’s how low we have fallen. Perhaps we should all be emailing David Cameron – whilst he has access to the Chinese premier – he probably knows a wealthy businessman who would prefer to invest in AV rather than build an atomic power plant 🙂
    We ALL know what is wrong – we need to be strong and more vocal – WE WANT OUR CLUB BACK.

  3. I for one will sleep easy knowing that now. All’s for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Thank c*** for that. Just one thing though – if he didn’t have full control of the team before, who had control of the bit he didn’t have control of ? Are/were Guzan, Westwood (to name but two), being controlled by someone else, Mr Robot ?

    • Mistakes happen to all but the perfect ! But it does not help when there is a member of staff working from a different training manual to Tim & the rest of his staff

  4. I hear Tim had a lengthy phone call with Randy today, the result of which is that Randy is backing Tim to turn things round after being giving him full control of running the team which of late he has not had

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