Aston Villa’s Future Running Out of Time


Aston Villa’s Future Running Out of Time

Do you ever get the feeling you’re a person ahead of your time? Like you’re just doing what comes naturally and it’s the rest of the world that needs to catch up? We usually end applying the term ‘genius’ to anybody of that nature, but only retrospectively. Leonardo Di Vinci envisioned helicopters and tanks in Renaissance Florence. Newton thought calculus was so throwaway, he forgot he’d invented it. And Paul Lambert’s going around signing all the players Aston Villa need to mount a Champions League challenge. The only sticking point is that he’s five years too early for it.

This morning, it was confirmed that Aston Villa made an enquiry about Brazilian playmaker Philippe Coutinho, currently at Inter Milan. In the normal run of things, the fact that Villa are bidding for a South American would fill me with joy, but the point I can’t avert my gaze from is that Coutinho is twenty years of age.

Earlier this week, strong rumours flooded Twitter that Villa were close to signing Charlton prodigy Dale Stephens. Good stuff, but the player is twenty-three. Now Villa’s side has an average age of twenty-three. But at twenty-three, I was still being asked for ID to buy fags. It took me a fortnight to grow a five ‘o clock shadow. Tuesday’s humiliation at Bradford carried with it the anguished scream of thousands of fans: we need experience!

Youth isn’t necessarily a stumbling block to talent. Top teams are swimming in youngsters who can win man-of-the-match but aren’t allowed to neck the champagne, but only in the direst of circumstances are a few of them thrown together and asked to form the spine of a team.

And that’s the issue with Aston Villa. It’s not that the players we’ve got are useless, just that they’re overpromoted. They’re, at best, the reserves. The Bradford debacle wasn’t down to the Premier League side being unable to handle the pressure, more that the Bantams could probably boast more experience. The sprinkling of old hands was located up front, where we were most assured. In defence, however, the lack of understanding stemmed from, as the cliché goes, schoolboy errors. Kids can’t lead a defence, because they haven’t developed the necessary skills and discipline. Villa play four of them.

Paul Lambert is sticking to his policy that experience doesn’t guarantee success, which is admirable. After all, plenty of teams go down with overpaid, lazy mercenaries. But he’s a stubborn fool if January passes and old heads are not bought in or rehabilitated from the squad. In five years, some of these players will be peaking, maybe even playing Champions League football. But even if that’s the case and Lambert’s a genius for talent-spotting, I’d prefer him to stop looking to the future and keep both eyes on the present.

Chris Stanley

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