What is responsible for Aston Villa’s fall from grace?

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Many people much smarter than myself have spent eons yearning to discover the meaning of life. Whilst I’ve nowhere near the intelligence to write this down into an equation, I believe the meaning of life is to build. We build relationships, collections, buildings and ideas. In my view, we spend the vast majority of our lives building and constructing – maybe so when we are no longer around, there’s something either physical in the form of a skyscraper, novel or video game; or mental in the form of an idea or a thesis that can be seen as the mark we leave on the world. For Tom Fox and Steve Hollis, that mark might be Aston Villa Football Club.

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Villa; situated in the very heart of the metropolitan area of Birmingham, have a similar cultural set-up to the Manchester giants of City & United. All the tools should be there for the Villains to succeed and for so long they were ever so close, only to falter at the final hurdle. Villa’s downfall can be pinned to the exact moment Abu Dhabi invested so heavily into Manchester City. Randy Lerner; AVFC’s owner, must have been in shock. Aston Villa were one good season away from the Champions League and all of a sudden Manchester City have brought Robinho in – there was no way he could compete.

Except Randy chose the dark path. He chose to hide and hope and pray that Villa may succeed on their own terms. For him, it may have seemed that the mad titan Thanos had descended onto Earth to wage his infinity war. All he could do was hope that someone would save him. So it turned out that Randy Lerner would turn to Paul Lambert, an exciting coach with a huge pedigree in German Football. We all know how that ended. Villa; whilst excellent in possession, couldn’t score. It seemed as though they tried to be Bayern, without being Bayern.

Randy’s shadow-management of Aston Villa would need to end. It wasn’t helping Lambert and it certainly wasn’t helping Villa’s fortunes. Randy tried to be a ‘mini-Abu Dhabi’ and chuck cash at Villa in the hope it would turn out well, but there was no plan. Enter one Tom Fox, the man who had recently engineered a stellar commercial deal for Arsenal. They would be getting paid £150 million to ensure the Puma leapt across the iconic blazing crimson of the north-Londoners for the next five years. £30 million a year would ensure the Gunners could bring in a top-quality player simply based on their sponsorship cash alone. On this basis, Randy Lerner would bring Fox into Aston Villa to manage the club at the highest level. Fox would become Villa’s CEO.

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Tom didn’t endure the best of starts at Aston Villa, having being demanded to defend Paul Lambert in his infamous ‘False Narrative’ interview with the BBC only to sack the beleaguered Scotsman not three weeks later. He was placed on an island by Randy Lerner and seemingly struggled to manage an entire football operation by himself. Things had to change and they would.

The fist-pumping, passion dripping almost-iconic Tim Sherwood was brought in with the expectation he would be the man to follow Fox’s orders and while he managed to steer Villa to safety as well as an FA Cup final, it would all fall apart in the summer of 2015. With Aston Villa revamping their sporting operations department with a new head of recruitment in Paddy Reilly and a sporting director in Hendrik Almstadt, Villa were almost set to leap into the top-half of the table. This was bolstered by some impressive recruitments – the gifted Jordan Veretout, the firebrand Jordan Ayew and the explosive Jordan Amavi would crown the new arrivals at Villa Park. There was much controversy behind all of this, however.

In a pre-season meeting with Fox, Almstadt and Reilly, Tim Sherwood was asked to play a brand of ‘positive, attacking football’. Walking up to a magnetic board displaying Aston Villa’s squad, Sherwood removed more than fourteen magnets from the board and advised the trio that Villa couldn’t do it with ‘these guys’. I can only assume Fabian Delph and Christian Benteke remained on the board, meaning that Tim would eventually want Aston Villa to replace almost sixteen players. Fox & Co would actually attempt to do so with some aggressive recruiting of players – including the three listed in the previous paragraph. Rudy Gestede, Scott Sinclair, Jose Crespo, Idrissa Gana Gueye, Joleon Lescott, Mark Bunn, Adama and Micah Richards would all arrive in the summer, meaning that Villa did actually attempt to meet Sherwood’s high target and it may be colossal naivety by Tom Fox that he allowed himself to be bent so far by a manager’s expectations – he would learn from this.

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Aston Villa had assembled a good, but by no means a great squad. A squad that led Leicester by two goals to nil, before failing. A lack of confidence, a huge lack of fitness, horrendous tactical decisions and the injury of Jordan Amavi had pushed Aston Villa into a hole. Tom Fox dismissed Sherwood in November, with the football squad looking as though they had just started a pre-season. Fox would decided to replace Sherwood with a man who looks as though he would have fit the bill in the first place, Remi Garde.

Garde; the understudy of Arsene Wenger, came from Olympique Lyonnais, a football club who have truly underscored the word ‘modern’, in modern football. A transfer committee ensures only the best are brought to Lyon whilst a commercial team work day and night to establish Lyon within the highest order of world football. Remi Garde knows what it means to undertake a project.

Garde managed to get Villa back on their feet and has recently managed to engineer some good results out of Aston Villa who seem to be playing as they should have done since the start. It may be far too early to talk about Premier League survival, but the baby steps have been completed and we will see where the Villans end up come May – make no mistake though, the drop to the Championship is deserved on the basis of Aston Villa’s 2015.

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The final step to the commencement of the Aston Villa project was the hiring of Steve Hollis, a man known for restructuring failing organisations, as a chairman. Hollis will be assembling a board in the near future and by the time Villa complete their expected relegation to the Football League, they may be in a position to clear the dead wood that has held this club down for so many years. In 2016, Villa may be able to take a step forward and become a modern football club. Who knows what that may bring? It might just be that the city of Birmingham gets the football team it deserves.

Featured Image: All rights reserved by Brian Clift