Aston Villa May Regret Savage Attack On Their Future


Aston Villa May Regret Savage Attack On Their Future

I’m no naturalist, but I’m certain there’s an elephant in the room. There’s something Aston Villa fans don’t want to admit, but I’m going to have to be the one to say it. No, not the possibility of relegation; that one’s been done. But yep, I’ll have to be the one. Here goes: maybe Robbie Savage was right about us.

For those of you who prefer not to listen to BBC Sport’s enfant terrible (with the emphasis on that second word), you’re not missing much. I have no idea if he thinks of himself as a former footballer or dancer these days, but he dresses like a shop dummy having a mid-life crisis and puts as much thought into his punditry as Kraftwerk do into their song lyrics. Unbelievably, it seems to be catching: there are more glimpses of chest on Match of the Day than the average episode of Baywatch these days.

Creepy as that image is, Mr Savage and Aston Villa seem to have entwined fortunes this season, stemming from the former’s prediction that Villa will wave adieu to the top flight come May. In the actual piece, which is still on the BBC website, Savage plumps for Reading, Southampton and adds in Villa with a grin on his face, almost willing the Twitter abuse to crash into him like waves over a suicidal surfer. His reasoning is that despite the change of manager, we just didn’t have a very good team.

Cut to December, and Savage revised his prediction, batting away his random bet and placing us in with three other sides, based on that weekend’s larruping of Liverpool. The Beeb claimed he had eaten humble pie. It looked more like he’d guzzled down a vat of teeth bleaching agent, but I digress.

But here we are, ensconced in April and Aston Villa are in the relegation zone with seven games to go. On goal difference, but that argument won’t wash if that’s what keeps us there in May. But we are in the horrible situation of maybe admitting Robbie Savage was right; we are going down, because we’re poor.

This is no knee-jerk reaction. My definition of a poor football team is a side that has players unsuited to the level they’re at, incapable of processing tactics and adapting to the situation. This leads to more losses than wins or draws. The latter doesn’t apply to Villa, who have lost just the fifteen games this term, but outside of the narrative of a matchday, the figures paint a picture of a poor team.

There have been things to cheer, to be sure. But when the half page in the Villa histories is written about this season, we’ll see the names of Christian Benteke, Andreas Weimann and Brad Guzan and not a lot else. The spectre of Bradford is one of many that haunts the corridors of Villa Park, and that’s as damning a thing as you can say about this season overall.

Like millions across the country, I delight when an egotist like Robbie Savage is shown up to be nothing more than a popped balloon, and I’ll be booting up to give him his electronic cards if his glib prediction turns out to embarrass him. But the pieces on the chessboard are refusing to budge, and Aston Villa remain desperately exposed to checkmate by a rank amateur.

Chris Stanley

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