Losing Gareth Barry is Not A Problem. Is it?
When questioned by Sky Sports this weekend about whether losing Gareth Barry for the next game is a problem, Capello’s response was ‘No’ and that he’d have to find a new solution. I couldn’t help but spot the pertinence of these words to us.
Martin O’Neill and Villa find themselves in this same position; needing to find a solution for the new-found lack of Barry. Where England have Frank Lampard, Steve Gerrard, Michael Carrick and David Beckham in the central midfield position, Villa have Steve Sidwell and Nigel Reo-Coker and others.
Nigel Reo-Coker
Villa signed NRC for £8.5m but last season he spent most his time on the bench and when he did play it was out of position. £8.5m seems a lot to pay for a utility player, so does this mean he will be filling Barry’s role next season? During the pre-Milner games, Reo-Coker played right midfield and showed an aptitude for attacking play, so could he be the yin to Petrov’s yang?
Steve Sidwell
Sidders was brought in for that familiar Villa fee; £undisclosed. The plan was for Sidders to replace Gareth Barry when he left for Liverpool. Neither happened. Barry stayed and Sidwell got injured.
On his recovery, Sidwell forced his way into the side as part of the notorious 4-5-1, that the fans loved but MON wasn’t so keen on and stubbornly refused to go back to it if he could help it. Sidwell had some good moments, scored some great goals, but then again got injured and disappeared from the team on his return.
Others
There is a feeling amongst some fans that James Milner could make the switch from right wing to central mdifield and do a good job there. It would mean a change to the focus of his game, looking to pick out clinical passes and penetrative through balls, as opposed to his runs down the wings and crossing (not his specialty anyway). Could he do it?
Craig Garnder has played in almost every position on the park for the first team, being used as more of a utility player than NRC! Gardner is a player who always gives 100% and certainly has ability, but does he have enough to be the new mainstay in the middle for Villa?
We also have Salifou and Osbourne but I can already imagine what you lot will think of them as solutions to this puzzle.
Newbie
The other option for us is to look elsewhere. There have been no shortage of names linked with us by the papers including Jenas, Huddlestone, Defour & Delph amongst many more.
What’s the answer for Villa then? Do we need to look around or take one of the internal propsects?
Aston Villa lose their backbone, how will they stand tall now?
Last summer it was THE transfer saga of the summer, the whole Gareth Barry to Liverpool story. It began early, prior to the window even opening, with Rafa Benitez stating an intent to sign the Villa midfielder. It royally pee’ed off Martin O’Neill and a public war of words began.
Liverpool made an offer, Villa rejected it. Liverpool made another offer, Villa rejected it again. Liverpool made yet another offer and, guess what, Villa rejected it yet again. It’s possible that more offers were made and rejected but by this time everyone was so bored and pigsick of it all that they just wanted it to be sorted out one way or another.
Villa (or should that be Martin O’Neill’s stubbornness) won the battle; Barry stayed at Villa. But it wasn’t as straightforward as that. Barry had spoken to the papers, saying that he wished to join Liverpool and he criticised Martin O’Neill while he was at it. This seemed like a risk-free thing to do, as he would be heading to Anfield any day now, so why not? But when that didn’t happen, Bazza found himself stripped of the captaincy, banned from the training ground and fined 2 weeks wages.
So what at first was an exciting face-off, then crescendoed into a frenzy of will-he-won’t-he, only to peter out and start to lose steam as it got tiresome and repetitive and then eventually it became downright boring. By the end, neither Villa fans nor Liverpool fans could give a damn whether he went or not, so long as the news spoke about something else. Y’know, kinda like how we currently feel about Susan Boyle and MP expense claims in the UK!
Finally, the window closed and Barry remained at Aston Villa. He realised he was stuck there, but it didn’t seem like he was exactly delighted by the situation, after falling out with the boss, losing the armband and then getting boo’d by the fans. He saw out the year, but it seemed very unlikely that he would stay at Villa to see out his contract.
Barry didn’t waste much time getting things into place, being announced today as the first signing of the transfer window. The rumours were abound for a while, but then it meant little as there was a rumour out there on the blogs and in the papers linking every half decent player the world over with Man City. Their endless bags of cash will ensure that rumours will swarm around them like flies around… errr… doo-doo!
It came out yesterday that Barry was in talks with City, but I doubt many expected it to all be wrapped up so quickly. It kind of makes you wonder if this was already half-arranged during the season.
Barry has gone back on his original reason for leaving Villa, which was an ambition to play Champions League football, to join a team that arguably has the same chance of reaching that goal as Villa. He has said that he wanted to join the Manchester club as they have ambitions that match his own, despite joining a team that aren’t in Europe at all but Villa being in the new Europa League.
Life without Barry
It will be odd to see us line up without Barry in the team, after being such a huge part of the team for a large part of his 12 years here and how we go about replacing him will be fundamental to whether we can continue to build on the success we have been enjoying since Randy Lerner purchased the club.
It was reported in the papers yesterday that Martin O’Neill has told Steve Sidwell and Nigel Reo-Coker that they will play much bigger roles for the club this coming season. This reeks of ‘I’m not going to replace Barry’ or maybe ‘I’ll replace Barry with a young up and coming player for the future’.
Sidwell has not proved too useful for us to date, so a big improvement from him would be required to keep us where we are, never mind grow.
Nigel Reo-Coker has shown promise for us, putting in good performances when he gets the chance, but he has generally worked best when alongside Barry. He may have it in him though, I have more faith that he could fill Barry’s boots than Sidders and he will like the chance to play as the more attacking one in the middle. So maybe NRC is the answer. Can you tell I’m more trying to talk myself into it than anything else?
Rumours about replacements will now be rife though, no matter what MON hints at, so we’ll take it as it comes, keep our fingers crossed and hope that Barry wasn’t as fundamental to our success as we fear. Cuz he’s gone now, he’s no longer an Aston Villa player (how weird is that?!).
Will Martin O’Neill be tempted by the Celtic vacancy?
Gordon Strachan has resigned from his post as Celtic manager after failing to win the league, leaving the job open and, as usual, a number of names are being batted around as possible successors.
Martin O’Neill was Celtic manager for 5 years before stepping down to care for his ill wife, Geraldine, who has lymphoma. O’Neill took a season off and then came back to football with Aston Villa, where he has been the manager for 3 seasons.
MON vastly improved Villa’s fortunes on the pitch, alongside new owner Randy Lerner, who vastly improved Villa’s fortunes off the pitch. His first season saw Villa become a strong mid-table side and then follow it up with a 6th placed finish, running Everton towards the wire for 5th, but slippin up and failing to win in the last 3 games of the season. Then this season he continued to improve the team, breaking them into the fortress that is the Big Four and heading towards Champions League qualification, but slipping up in the run-in, winning just 2 games in the last 13.
Now he finds himself facing the grim reality of just how difficult it is to break into the Top Four of the Premier League. So will the prospect of a return to a job he was so successful at be too tempting to resist?
The task that faces O’Neill to continue to improve Aston Villa is huge, needing to spend big money in order to keep up with not just the Big Four but now also there will be very stiff competition from Man City, Tottenham and, of course, Everton. Add to that the rumblings that his spending will be limited this window and the Celtic job sounds very much the easier option.
O’Neill would be welcomed with open arms by the Celtic faithful, after making himself into a legend in his 5 years there, whereas at Villa he has recently lost a large part of the fanbase. Firstly he was heavily criticised for fielding a weakened team in the UEFA Cup and then he suffered further loss of faith from the fans with Villa’s dreadful end to the season.
Now he will be thinking that he could go to Celtic and just face the challenge of fighting with Rangers, rather than with Liverpool, Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal, not to mention Man City, Spurs and Everton.
Reaching the Champions League will be a much easier task and the supporters will be fully behind him. Will it be playing on his mind? Will he leave Villa now, feeling he has taken them as far as he can?
Villa end it with a win but Everton ensure we finish 6th
After the Blackburn game at the start of Feb our season took an unexpected downturn seeing us win just 2 of our last 13 games, and those were against the teams that ended 17th and 18th. It was a disastrous end to what was set to be a sensational season. But luckily we did enough up until Feb to keep us top six, despite this crumble.
Yesterday we needed Everton to drop points if we were too sneak back into 5th for the final table, but the Toffeemen defied history’s trend and came away from Craven Cottage with a victory. Leon Osman potted 2 for them and Fulham failed to reply, making our 1-0 home win over relegated Newcastle irrelevent in the chase for 5th.
The significance of finishing 5th was that we would have improved on our league finish for a 3rd season running under O’Neill. As it turns out we have stabilised and stayed 6th. It is a wake up call to the powers that be at Villa that we need to invest to improve. The Premier League has become a VERY expensive league to compete in these days.
Maybe not even necessarily more expensive signings, just shrewder ones really. If we had enough quality players on the fringes of the team, we could’ve prevented this season’s crumble. We could’ve halted our league slide and avoided the UEFA Cup mess.
But outside our first team we are very below par, as was proved by our early Carling Cup exit and our poor EUFA Cup performances (ie Zilina & Hamburg). The Moscow mess may well have been the cause of the slide as it made the club unsteady and ambitions unclear. If it wasn’t the cause it certainly did nothing to stop the boat rocking.
This summer will be a very telling time for Aston Villa. Keep your fingers crossed.
These rumours just can’t be avoided – No, no please god no to this one!
Robert Huth - not on my wish list
I don’t wanna be doing transfer rumours every day. I love doing them and reading them and hearing your opinions on what a player could do for us. But there are so many at the minute that it is going to turn into an obssession and get boring if I do it every day.
One I couldn’t ignore though was Footy Latest’s linking of us with Robert Huth. I hope to god it’s not true. Huth was linked with us (and I believe nearly came to us) back in the O’Leary days. When our ambitions were so much lower and a player like Huth was about the right standard. But as a Laursen replacement, I would be bitterly disappointed. It would be a huge step down for us as a club and would show low ambitions.
It’s no doubt made up and probably based on about as much evidence as; O’Neill looked at him during the Boro game. But he is not what we are looking for. We are after a player who is well above the class of the current crop of centre backs and who will raise them to his level. In fact I might campaign to make genetic modifications legal and then we can clone Laursen but with new legs! Who will sign my petition? Come on, get your biros out.
What’s new rumour-cat? Tuesday’s latest Villa transfer gossip
Martin O'Neill has an itchy-biro-finger over Randy Lerner's cheque book
The transfer window is so close that you can feel it’s smelly breath on the back of your neck. So it’s no surprise that there are loads of rumours around linking us to all and sundry. Some will come true, some will nearly happen and some are just made up by someone wishing to shift papers or get pageviews 
Here at AVB we like to go through them all and try to give a little info on a player and open it up to debate on whether you want them at Villa or not. Yesterday we saw a nice response in agreement with me that Senderos would be a poor signing, or to correctly quote what is one of the funniest comments we’ve had on here for a while:
As for Senderos, I’d rather have sex with a lawnmower than sign him
And on that bombshell, let’s dive into today’s bunch:
- Giles Barnes is a young pacy winger for Derby County, who has been on an unsuccessful loan to Fulham for part of this season. I say unsuccessful because he hasn’t made a single appearance. Roy Hodgson either doesn’t think he is cut out for the Prem or doesn’t see a way to fit him into his team. Now, I’m a big fan of Roy Hodgson, I think he’s doing a great job at Fulham, but I must admit that when I first saw him interviewed I judged the book by it’s cover and said “What’s that old fanny gonna do with Fulham?”. He proved me wrong and I respect that. Anyway, we’re talking about Barnes, not licking Hodgson’s bum-ring, so back to the matter at hand; we are more suited to Barnes’s style and he may well go fairly cheap, so don’t rule him out but he’s not going to set the club on fire and may well prove to be another Wayne Routledge.
- Fulham’s keeper Mark Schwarzer is next up, having been mentioned as someone we have been sniffing around, but I can’t really see O’Neill buying another aging keeper when we still have Friedel. I think MON will keep his faith in Friedel for at very least one more season, so I can’t see where this rumour has come from. A younger keeper maybe, but I just can’t see it with Schwarzer.
- Stewart Downing looks destined to get relegated with Boro so will almost definitely be moving on this summer. He will be far from cheap though and isn’t an area of urgency (like centre back and centre forward are) so I don’t see this happening either. It may do, he is certainly a talented player, but I doubt it. If it does tho, I’m going to take a positive stance and say that if we spend big on a midfielder/winger, we also plan to spend big up front and at the back too. Cuz if he splashes £12m+ on a winger and gets some mediocre centre back then I’m right on that O’Neill-hating bandwagon. And I don’t want to get on that wagon. I like O’Neill.
- Man City’s Joe Hart is again being linked with us and if we do buy a keeper I fancy him as the favourite. He will very likely move on after having had his progress disturbed by the arrival of Given. The lad is definitely a big prospect and may well go on to be a regular England keeper if he finds a team where he’s number one choice. He probably needs to learn to make ridiculous mistakes if he wants to play for England tho
- Along similar lines to Downing is David Bentley. He is also a talented player but he has gone seriously off the boil. He never plays for Tottenham so will most likely move on in the summer but they will want to recoup as much of the £16m they wasted on him as possible. Again, it’s not an area we are screaming out for new players in but if we do make the step up to serious European contention, then we need some rotationability (<– nah, it’s probly not a real word!).
- A quick note on Thomas Vermaelen, who we have been linked with; apparently Arsenal are now interested too.
- Finally, Rabiu Afolabi of FC Sochaux is on our radar. He is a tall central defender with plenty experience but like many of the rumours that are now surfacing, he is unlikely to be of the mould we need to replace a player as influential and significant as Laursen.
What’s new rumour-cat? Plenty Villa transfer gossip
I don’t know about you lot but I am still feeling down about our boys. Maybe come Sunday I’ll have picked my head up and be thinking we can take a game to Newcastle, get a result and get some luck with Everton dropping points at Fulham, but right now I’m feeling resigned to 6th. A season of exaggerated ups and exaggerated downs that served to change our expectations and then have them come crashing down in our faces.
So what’s left to do other than daydream about who we’ll add to our squad to try and change our fortunes next season. Time for more transfer talk, and yet again there is a fresh crop of names being mentioned in connection with us. Let’s dive in:
- We are said to have had scouts at Toulouse’s last match, watching André-Pierre Gignac, who is a young French striker with a good scoring record (21 in the last 33 games). Toulouse almost came to blows with Lille over his signature, after seeing his impressive loan spell at Pau (low division French side). He became the main striker when Elmander joined Bolton, so maybe he is hoping to follow in his footsteps into the Premier League. Not exactly the number one choice for Villa fans, but depending on how much truth there is in O’Neill’s cautious talk, he may prove an affordable option. There is also a conflicting rumour around that he has already refuted these links.
- Next up is one that I would love to see come true; Joleon Lescott. There’s always a chance with him being a boyhood fan of us, but there have been incidents with him and his brother that have apparently left a bitter taste in his mouth. Lescott would be a great replacement for Laursen; solid, dependable and also gets some goals. Would he want to come though? By the time the window opens, Everton could be 5th and FA Cup winners, so it may be a step down to him. But on the positive side; he has past love for us, knows he would be the number one centre back, a good chance of captainship and ‘ambitious’ owners and management. It’s not one you can call easily, but I hope it happens.
- Arsenal centre back Philippe Senderos has also been mentioned, but he’s far from the top of my list. In fact, if we do buy him as a replacement for Laursen I will jump into bed with all the doubters out there who think that MON is going to have us mid-table next season. Senderos is not crap by any means, but we need a real inspirational player who will pick the team up, lead by example and rule the park from the figurehead position of centre back. Senderos is just another Davies, Knight and Cuellar, who needs a stronger figure alongside him to be effective and who makes silly mistakes. Mind you, I wouldn’t say it to his face. He’d probly nut me!
There are still about another 5 rumours out there worth mentioning, but you don’t want an essay, so I’ll do the others tomorrow. Anyone fond on today’s crop?
DEBATE: Tiredness? Small squad? Inexperience? Incapability? What IS Aston Villa’s problem?
Aston Villa’s recovery from their winless streak lasted for just one match! Not the best.
You can’t take anything away from Fulham; they played well and deserved to beat us, but it served to severely deflate a huge number of Villa fans who thought we had re-found our winning form of earlier in the season and were going to go unbeaten for the last 4 games. We’d already left it late enough to start winning again, but we still had 5th in our grasp and if we won our games we would secure it. Whatever your opinion in the grand scale, 5th IS an improvement over 6th, so it would’ve been another season of climbing up the league ladder (whether that climb is quick enough is your own opinion and for another debate, not this one).
But Villa blew it after just one win and now have 2 games left which we will have to win because Everton won’t be letting us get away with it again. We have the tough task of facing 2 teams fighting for their Premier League status though (Newcastle and Boro), so they will be real dogfights.
What has caused our slide?
At earlier points in the season we occupied 4th place and even made it look pretty secure. We had a big gap over Arsenal and were flying high, winning almost every time we walked out onto the park. We looked uncatchable and destined to be in next season’s Champions League qualification games. Then it all went tits up!
We gave up our lead and let Arsenal back in (not just back in but let them fly away ahead of us) and now we find ourselves relying on Everton to draw to keep hold of 5th. What went wrong?
Was it our small squad? Are you tired of hearing that we have a small squad, especially when MON didn’t utilise January to fill it out?
Was it our January signings that knocked confidence out of the players and made them feel like the club wasn’t aiming as high as they were? All we brought in was Emile Heskey (who has never been Mr Popularity), who is not going to score 20 goals and lead us to the top of the league and Arsenio Halfuid, who is for the youth system for now.
Is it Martin O’Neill? He has many more fans than critics (maybe not right now), but there are plenty out there who believe that MON is no divine saviour and it has been his ineptitude, particularly in the transfer market that has led to our recent downturn in fortunes. (Personally, I’m not in this group; yeah he’s having a mare at the minute but look where he’s got us from and to)
Was it the ‘throwing away’ of the UEFA Cup that caused the problems? Did the way we seemed to concede knock the stuffing out of us and lead us into this awful run-in?
What’s your opinion? Who or what do you blame for Villa’s dramatic change to the season? Click comment and add your views to the debate.
O’Neill has no idea… any of us dare to venture a guess?
Morning, morning, morning Villa fans! How are we all today? I’m sound, thanks for asking My 9 month old daughter has already done 2 cacks today though, which kinda takes the shine outta things, and she’s straining like there’s more on the way! I write these at 6am y’see, and then sechedule them to upload around midday. Oh well, we’re not here to discuss my little girl’s bowel movements or my morning routine, so let’s get onto business:
“I’ve no idea,” he replied to Setanta’s Darrell Currie when asked where he thought Villa would be in a year’s time. “Honestly.”
The above quote is lifted from a Setanta Sports interview with Martin O’Neill, in which he also talked up the progress that Spurs and Man City will make next season, claiming that our push for the Top 4 will be more difficult with those 2 also doing the same. It surprises me massively that he makes no mention of Everton, as I believe they are more likely than either of those 2 to be in the thick of the fight. Just look how well they are doing this season, under huge injury woes. But this isn’t EvertonBlog.com, so let’s leave their potential threats aside for now.
Where will we be in a year’s time?
It’s a question that many of us Villa fans have avoided answering, particularly in this period of pessimism, where everything we touch seems to be turning into another loss (or draw on a good day!).
In the last 5-6 years many teams have had a good season, putting pressure on the top four (Everton, Spurs and now us) or even just a season where they do better than usual (Bolton, Fulham, Middlesbrough, us) but the following season they often have a mare (us, Everton, Spurs). So will next season see us push on with the progress we’ve shown this season or will we see a decline in our fortunes?
In the same interview, O’Neill hinted that the funding for transfers this summer will not be vast, and having seen his limited activities in January, you can’t help but think that we will only be signing unproven, unready youngsters and/or players past their best.
So what do you reckon? Will Villa kick on and carry on growing next year? Or will we suffer a dismal / mediocre season next term?
MON is praying the international break doesn’t do as much damage as the Dubai one did?
Not too long ago, still a very fresh (sour) memory in all Villa fans’ minds, is the trip to Dubai that Villa made in order to correct the sliding path we had embarked upon. The intention was to get the team out of the Midlands and try to refocus their minds on the task at hand. We had been knocked out of the FA Cup and UEFA Cup and our league form had gone from winning constantly to 2 losses and a bitterly received draw.
The plan failed.
Villa came back and lost at home to Tottenham and then got thrashed 5-0 at Anfield. Hardly the re-establishment of a push for Champions League.
Sure, even the greatest teams lose from time to time, and they also go on bad streaks, but to lose as many as we have recently and then to get thumped so heavily, does make me wonder if we’re better off finishing 5th and trying to give UEFA a REAL push next season. We treated it with a little disdain this season, sensing that a greater achievement was in our reach, but maybe we should try to grow slower. After all, many a team has tried to grow too fast and seen the following season be one of misery, instead of continued growth (ie Everton and Tottenham).
Back to the point though, the international break is now half way through and come the weekend, the Premier League battle recommences. Villa may still be gunning for 4th, but really our goal needs to be in the short term first and that is to get back to playing well. Even if we don’t get anything at United, to play well will mean a lot to our confidence.
But if we go out and get hammered again then I think it’ll hurt the confidence so bad that 6th will be our best hope!
-
Categories
-
Archives
-
Links
-
Meta
-
Sponsors
