If these rumours are true, we could be in for a much less successful season next term, so enjoy this one while it lasts
It’s not exactly new information, but it is now time that it’s ugly head needs to be reared and dealt with as an imminent reality. The word on the street is that Randy Lerner is suffering due to the credit crunch and won’t be in a position to fork out for the players we so desperately need to continue our growth and to complete the job we were doing so well at for a large part of this season.
It is being suggested that we will need to sell in order to raise cash for transfers, with Harewood, Shorey, Knight and Gardner mentioned by the Express & Star.
Progress-wise I wouldn’t be averse to seeing them go, but I do have my reservations;
- Gardner is a great bloke to have in the squad as he will always give 100% and is very versatile
- Shorey is finally starting to look the part and there is no guarantee that Bouma will be able to rekindle his old form and fitness, so we could be left exposed at left back (which we all know would see Luke Young switched to there and a makeshift RB drafted in)
- Knight is a lifelong Villa fan, so as one myself, I will always have a bond with him, I concede that we would probably be better off cashing in though
- Harewood wouldn’t be a great loss but is doubtful to raise the kind of cash that would buy us anyone great
As mentioned though, none of these would bring us rakes of cash, so we’d probably only get one big player from selling all four of them and we have already shown that to grow, we need both a bigger and better squad.
You have to sympathise with Lerner in some ways; the guy has done some great stuff for the club so far and has raised us from a club who were struggling to stay in the top flight, to pushing on the Big Four and knocking on the Champions League’s door. But until we achieve that goal, the club will probably cost him more in transfers than he will make back and at the end of the day the guy is a businessman.
If we made it into the Champions League for a few seasons and started to progress in the competition, then he would be laughing, but he must be seeing that as a very big IF right now, with the US and the UK in financial struggles and his fortunes looking far from stable.
The irony is, that to get the kind of money we need, we’d have to sell the players who are most likely to get us there. You have to fancy that Barry will be going either way, which will bring us some money (not as much as last summer’s figure, but still not a bad figure) but also the rumours of Chelsea offering big money for Ashley Young could prove very tempting for Lerner.
The Champions League has distorted football since it’s inception, making the top clubs so much harder to compete with. If you can get into it you have much more chance of staying in it, but now that we have the Big Four situation here, it is going to take years for any club to properly get amongst them, even Man City will need time. How they can fix it is a whole-nother subject and all ideas have their downfalls. Maybe they could limit how much of the earnings can be spent on signing new players and paying wages, but as I say that’s another topic for another day.
So will he be willing to splash the cash this summer? Is his heart and faith strong enough to take the risk during a time of uncertainty or will he play it safe and risk the wrath of some fans?
Arsenal the only top 6 team to win yesterday, Bye bye Marlon and guess what? Arsene didn’t see anything wrong for the penalty
It was a strange day yesterday for top 6 teams. Man Utd lost to Fulham, and by all accounts were outclassed too, Chelsea lost to London rivals Tottenham (but sometimes even the very best teams lose to Tottenham) and Everton, despite taking the lead in the first five minutes, lost to struggling Portsmouth.
Villa now find themselves being only concerned with Everton and Arsenal in the short term, so the results were 50/50 for us, as Arsenal won 3-1 at St James’s Park . If we wish to remain on level points with the Gunners, we need to win this afternoon at Anfield. That’s going to be a very big ask for a team very low on confidence to beat another so high on confidence after putting 4 past both Man Utd and Real Madrid.
I won’t say we haven’t a chance today, because not only would that be defeatist but I also don’t believe it. Villa are one of those weird teams that pull it out for the bigger occasions and it wouldn’t be totally shocking if we won. I don’t fancy our chances, but I am not writing us off.
The Hare becomes a Wolf
Marlon Harewood was apparently on the brink of joining Nottingham Forest on loan this week but rejected the chance in favour of a loan to Wolves. This way he won’t have to move house and he joins a team who currently look likely to be Premiership next season. The rumour seems pretty solid and also implies that he will join them proper in the summer.
Well I say “Good luck to you Marlon”. He hasn’t really been given enough opportunities at Villa and on some of the occasionshe has played he’s scored good goals. Whether he is cut out for a team chasing Champions League though, well I can’t say he is. But he can be a good player for a team like Wolves so I wish him well.
Arsene disagree’s with a decision that went against Arsenal!
Finally, nothing to do with Villa but I was watching the game on Setanta last night and Arsene Wenger said at the end of the match that the penalty Newcastle won and wasted, should never have been awarded because he saw nothing wrong. Well, whether it was or whether it wasn’t I couldn’t help thinking what his comments would’ve been if it had been the exact same incident but at the other end and the ref had not given a penalty. Then it would miraculously have been a clear penalty that the ref is a fool for not giving!
I know it’s not Villa-related but the guy does my head in sometimes with his bias. Whenever a player of his does something wrong; he didn’t see it, but when it’s against him he suddenly has eyes in the back of his head!
Marlon Harewood heading out the door this week
The big striker has fallen well out of favour at Villa Park, seeing 4 other strikers get a taste of the action this weekend whilst he twiddled his thumbs. A small part of me feels he should have been given some chance in the last month, as the people filling his boots haven’t been doing a good job of it, but now he looks set to go out on loan for a while and then leave in the summer.
Championship sides Sheffield Wednesday and his former club Nottingham Forest are both interested in a months loan of the Hare’s services, possibly leading to a summer acquisition. Harewood, however, will first hold out for a Premier League side, but the 2 teams that appear most interested in him are Hull and Stoke, neither of which have any idea yet if they’ll even be Premier League teams next season.
Harewood will not endure another season on the sidelines, so it’s near enough guranteed that he will move on in the summer, drawing to a close a stint with us that proved to have little joy for the big man. Hopefully MON has a striker in his summer sights that will solve the problem that Harewood and Heskey have failed to.
Rumours, facts and speculation
Everton and Liverpool drew last night in the Merseyside derby, which has had interesting effects on the table in our neck of the woods. We are now 3 points off top and 8 points clear of Everton. Top is a pipe dream and looks almost impossible with goal differences the way they are, but to be 8 points clear of Everton is great news. Whilst the optimist in us dreams of remaining in the battle with Chelsea and Liverpool, the pessimist fears Arsenal and Everton hijacking the party.
Wigan are now 13 points back, so top six is looking fairly safe, but we won’t be able to stop worrying about Everton and Arsenal until the fat lady has sung.
Ins and outs
Transfer Gossip – lap it up, what there is of it anyway
13 days into the transfer window and so far it’s been a low key affair for Villa, despite being linked with about 2,000 players during December. With the way the papers were talking before Christmas, I was expecting it to be standing room only at Villa Park by now and for Randy Lerner to be filing for bankruptcy. But it turns out you can’t always trust the rumours you read… who knew?!
Emile Heskey was a major rumour for us, but now looks more likely to make Liverpool his destination if he moves away from the JJB. The England striker has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity of late, despite his game not really changing all that much. He’s playing a little better, but he’s always been a good player, people just never seemed to want to believe it before.
McGrath thinks we can paste the Baggies and there’s positive vibes on the injury scene
Filed under: Aston Villa, Injury News, Match Previews, Transfer News
It’s not just the Villa fans buzzing with the hope for the claret and blue future, there’s also ex-players bigging us up these days. When I refer to an ‘ex-player’, I don’t just mean some shit player who played once for us under David O’Leary, had a crap game and scored an own goal, no I am talking about the man many Villa fans refer to as God; Paul McGrath.
McGrath, a legend to Villans, reckons we will smash 4 past Scott Carson, our goalie of last season. He feels the challenge of our pace and skill will be too much for the Baggies to cope with on Saturday morning, a sentiment I have to agree with. Our strengths are exactly the kind that West Brom struggle with and if Ashley Young is on form, he will do a lot of penetrating into the ‘Bramich’ box.
One signed, a new target and injuries begin to stack up
What are the goings on at Villa Park on the day the footballing world was informed that Randy Lerner is the 15th richest football club owner in England (2 of the top ten own QPR) and that Jermain Defoe returned to Tottenham, making it his second stint at Spurs, his second stint under Redknapp and costing them increased wages and £6m difference in transfer fees, just one year after selling him for £9m.
First the bad news; Gareth Barry has a groin strain which may keep him out of the Baggies game and beyond. It kept him out at the weekend and Villa are currently awaiting the results of scans to reveal the extent of the damage. Groin strains can be a real bitch, I pulled mine four years ago and its never healed, but then I doubt Bazza will be using the NHS’s Russells Hall Hospital up Dudley to sort his!
As Lady Luck helps us squeeze a 3rd win, is it time to start worrying? PLUS new transfer rumblings
We’ve won 4 of the last 5 games in the league, drawn to Arsenal, got through to the 4th round of the FA Cup for a change, we’re in the last 32 of the UEFA Cup and we’re 4th in the Premier League… why on earth would we need to start worrying?
OK so the results have been fantastic, there’s no doubt about that, but the way in which we’ve achieved some of them does make concerns begin to fester about the longevity of our success.
West Ham dominated possession but we managed to overturn them with an own goal, Hull gave a good account and again we won with an own goal, not forgetting two refereeing decisions that could easily have gone against us. Against Arsenal and Everton we ’stole’ results in the dying seconds of the game.
West Ham vs Villa – Match preview
Saturday sees Villa travel to Upton Park for the annual game where the opposition wear our colours, for a 5.30pm kick off and it’ll live blogged here on Aston Villa Blog, so make sure to tune in here and get hitting F5 for the action as it happens.
Villa haven’t won this fixture in over twelve years, drawing the last two and the time before that we completely embarrassed ourselves in a shoddy 4-0 beating which included a hat-trick from a bloke called Marlon Harewood.
We go into the game pretending the Hamburg shambles never happened, instead focusing on our league form. December so far has brought us two wins in two and we’ll be hoping to make that three and keep the pressure on the top four and also take advantage of the fact that Man Utd are out prannying about in the FIFA World Club Cup, so if we win we go 3rd.
Team
Villa 1-2 MSK Zilina – What went wrong?
Did MON get it wrong last night? Not necessarily
Last night’s loss was an embarrassing scoreline that will not help us to rebuild our confidence after failing to score against Fulham despite such dominance. The game was won and lost (won by them and lost by us) in a 3 minute spell, just after the quarter of an hour mark. MSK started stronger than anyone had expected but it was still a huge shock when Vladimir Leitner’s cross was left by Zat Knight and it ended up in the net.
Villa were shocked and stunned, and while we were still pondering how on earth we were losing, Zilina caught us on the backfoot with a well worked passing movement and doubled that lead. Villa had to snap out of it and fast. We continued to push forward but Ashley Young’s crossing and Marlon Harewood’s positioning weren’t marrying up too well. Just before the half hour mark up stepped the new Villa youth wonderkid, Nathan Delfouneso, with a wonderful strike that was supposed to be the beginning of our comeback.
It didn’t happen.
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