Aston Villa, a club with the potential for regular top six finishes, continue to drift in midtable under the uninspiring management of Alex McLeish.

Overview

There’s been much talk of ambition and potential around QPR this January. Mark Hughes left Fulham, who have a bigger stadium than Loftus Road and have been a Premiership team for more than a decade saying their ambition no longer matches his own, to join Rangers who play at 18,000 capacity Loftus Road and could easily be relegated this term in their first Premiership season for 15 years. That seemed a little perverse, so the club has spoken repeatedly about its ambition and potential ever since.

I don’t doubt their ambition, but whether QPR have potential to be much more than they are now I highly doubt. A new training ground may well be in the pipeline but we’re still training at below standard rented accommodation in the meantime and personally I question whether we’ll see a new stadium for Rangers in my lifetime. The potential on the pitch is therefore here only as long as Tony Fernandes wants to bankroll it, and when he doesn’t the potential is only to become the new Leeds or Portsmouth.

If you want to talk about potential then look to tonight’s opponents Aston Villa who are swimming in the stuff. Aston Villa are the only Premiership club in Britain’s second biggest city and as a consequence they are able to routinely attract more than 35,000 fans to their massive Villa Park home – there is even talk of expanding the ground still further, knocking down the stand behind the goal that we have been housed in on our last few visits to build a huge new rap-around design that would take the capacity beyond 50,000. Away from home Villa fans travel in huge numbers and are consistently the Premiership’s loudest and most vocal support. They have a state of the art training facility and youth academy that produces first team players like Barry Bannan and Gabby Agbonlahor, regularly threatening in the Academy League and FA Youth Cup as it goes. This is potential.

On the pitch, on paper at least, their team looks pretty competitive as well with the top division’s premier goal scorer Darren Bent now supported by Robbie Keane who has made a great start to life at Villa after moving this January and Agbonlahor who is carving out a new niche for himself wide on the left flank. Christ they also seem to be extracting some form from Stephen Ireland at long, long, long last. This is a team that is so much better than the twelfth position they currently occupy, as a recent thumping win at Chelsea testifies.

Their underperformance, and that’s definitely what this season and last is, can be put down to ownership which was once heralded as a model for other clubs to follow. Randy Lerner, American born owner of the Cleveland Browns, has made it pretty clear of late that there will be no spending beyond their means in order to compete. Admirable, and possibly still a model for other clubs to follow, but Villa’s defence is starting to age and slow and the lack of investment in the team is starting to show through. What Lerner needs is a manager adept at getting the best out of more limited resources and players, his summer pursuit of Roberto Martinez and David Moyes made perfect sense in that regard but to then appoint Alex McLeish when he failed with his first choices was a dreadful move that is steadily setting Villa back years.

The long suffering supporters continue to travel in amazing numbers to watch the stilted, negative rubbish McLeish is trying to make a reasonably talented and attack minded group of players produce but don’t feel too sorry for them. There’s a touch of the Charlton Athletics about all of this because when Martin O’Neill lead them to consecutive sixth placed finishes supporters moaned about not pushing on further for Champions League and not progressing. O’Neill is exactly who you need when purse strings are tightened and Villa have not, and will not for the foreseeable future, do as well as they did when O’Neill was in charge. If a lesson in the greenness of grass on the other side of the fence were required then appointing first Gerrard Houllier and then Alex McLeish to replace Martin O’Neill is about as chastening as an experience can be for a group of supporters.

At the moment this is a football club going to waste.

Interview

For the second time this season we bid thanks to Damian at The Villa Blog for agreeing to spare us some time to talk about Aston Villa’s present state.

How has the season been for you so far?

In a word; unsurprising. Alex McLeish sets his sides out to not lose, not to win and with that style of football, you basically end up getting more of what you want, a bit of what you don’t want and the occasional three points.

How has Alex McLeish done so far? Have supporters warmed to him at all?

To use another one word answer; no. There really couldn't have been a more uninspiring choice and he is proving everything we first suspected to be true.

What is the general mood like among Villa supporters at the moment?

The general mood and this is worrying more than anything, is that of acceptance. Some are starting to accept this is our lot and if that is allowed to infest supporters and the owner is able to continue taking his money out each season, then we could end up as the next Wigan or Bolton with absolutely no expectations other than survival.

What are your aspirations for the rest of this season and looking ahead to next year?

Very little. I don't think we can go down - there are three worse teams than us by a long way, so it would just be nice to see some of the younger academy players get a game or three.

Who have been the star performers and the weak links in your team so far?

The weak link is the manager. I hear the players like him and what isn't to like when you come from a fairly strict regime under Houllier, called back in for the afternoon, to the relaxed atmosphere with this manager who has no problem working for two or three hours and then letting his player off to do what they want. Remember - this is the manager that knowingly sold a player who had a cocaine habit - the players will be loving it - he is most definitely the weakest link. As for star performers - Ireland is looking better and Bannan, if he gets the run, will hopefully show us what he is capable of and Gabby, when played on the left has looked much better, but nobody really stands out head and shoulders above anyone else.

You looked much more attacking than I've seen you for some time against Arsenal on Sunday, but were wide open at the back. You won at Chelsea but lost at home to Swansea. What's going on here?

I have to disagree with you about our attacking threat against Arsenal - it was pretty much as we played against Chelsea - ten men behind the ball and counter attacking football. In itself, that isn't bad, but the main thing about playing this way is you have to be able to defend. There is no point sitting back and scoring on the counter if you can’t defend. We can’t defend. The result against Chelsea was luck - the result against Swansea was simply that they played better football than us and do play better football than us.

What do you make of recent events at QPR, given Mark Hughes looked like he might join you back in the summer?

Cards on the table, I'd have been happier with Hughes than McLeish, but not entirely happy, because I'm fed up of journeyman managers and while Hughes and McLeish might not fall into that category just yet, they will. Hughes will get you playing some decent football, but I'm not convinced, but with the right funds, you better just hope he doesn't try and sign Roque Santa Cruz. Hughes and McLeish have little about them other than keeping a side in the League - we both know these managers will not get much more than top eight, not unless you throw silly money at them and then, it is still a massive risk.

Manager

It’s fair to say I don’t really rate Alex McLeish. I mean, I know he’s Scottish and he once played for Alex Ferguson and those are supposedly the two key elements that go to make a successful football manager but as far as I’m concerned his record in this country speaks for itself.

It would be easy to write off the Villa fans’ misgivings about his appointment as a product of petty local football rivalry. In the same way QPR fans were willing to get stuck into Paul Furlong right from the off because he used to play for Chelsea, appointing a Birmingham City boss at Villa Park would seem to be giving the new man an uphill task before he’s even begun. It would be easy to say that Aston Villa fans would not like McLeish regardless of how he did for Birmingham or in his new job simply because he came from St Andrews. But while the club he moved from hasn’t helped, I believe that wherever McLeish came from this summer he would not have been a good appointment for Villa.

Let’s do the history bit and then get to why that is. As a player McLeish spent the overwhelming majority of his career with Aberdeen – making more than 500 appearances in 14 years at Pittodrie and winning 77 Scotland caps at a time when Aberdeen and Scotland were actually quite good. He won three Scottish league titles, five Scottish cups, two Scottish league cups, one European Cup Winners Cup and one European Super Cup while at Aberdeen and played at the 1982, 1986 and 1990 World Cups. He was the country’s Player of the Year in 1990.

As a manager he enjoyed some initial success at Motherwell, who finished second behind Rangers in 1995, and at Hibs who were relegated initially after he took charge but then promoted straight back sparking a series of cup final and semi-final appearances and a third placed finish in the SPL. Poached by Rangers he then won the usual array of cups and leagues you’d expect in such a one-sided, pointless competition but was removed early in 2006 when it was announced he would stand down at the end of the season. He went on to manage his country, and brought them within a whisker of qualifying for Euro 2008 with a memorable 1-0 win in France and a valiant effort at home to Italy in the deciding group game.

So far so good but LFW has never been shy of devoting paragraph after paragraph to just what a complete joke Scottish football is and although some managers (but not many players) have been able to cross the border successfully in recent years McLeish is not one of them. He was appointed as Birmingham manager in November 2007 after a protracted battle with the SFA over his international commitments. Birmingham must have wondered why they had bothered because despite spending big money that January on James McFadden they were then relegated.

Yes McLeish brought them back, yes he won the League Cup last season, but for the second time he relegated them back to the Championship on the final day of the season. On paper the Birmingham team he had there was perfectly capable of staying in the league, and a long way away from being one of the division’s three worst teams. I’ve since seen it said that their relegation underlined why clubs like to duck out of cup competitions early, but it wasn’t the League Cup run that relegated Birmingham – neither Blackpool nor West Ham did well in the cups and they both went down. I’ve also heard the arguments about the dodgy boardroom situation undermining his efforts but, again, this sounds like a hunt for excuses rather than facing up to the obvious answer.

Birmingham and McLeish’s problems were nicely summed up on the final day of the season when, needing a win to guarantee safety, they went to a Spurs team that was scarcely bothered about challenging Liverpool for a Europa League spot and played for a point. The draw they looked like getting for so long was never going to be good enough, and that only seemed to dawn on McLeish in stoppage time at which point he suddenly flung everybody he had forward in attack and Spurs calmly won the game through the wide open spaces at the other end. As a tactical masterclass it was like arriving at a UEFA coaching course and finding your activity leaders for the day are Jim Magilton and Paul Hart.

So it’s not, for me, the fact that he crossed the city’s great divide that’s the problem with this appointment - it’s that he has been tried at this level before and failed twice, it’s that his tactics are miserable and most problematic of all it’s that everybody knows he wasn’t choice one, two or three for Villa this summer including his players.

Scout Report

If either team is going to win this game it’s likely to be achieved down their respective left flanks, and I’m expecting a fairly lopsided game as a result.

When Gabby Agbonlahor first appeared on the Premiership scene it was as a lightning fast, nimble striker to play off bigger target man. As time has gone on Agbonlahor has bulked up to the point where he now looks more like a rugby league player than a footballer and for me it has taken away some of his sharpness and fleet of foot in the penalty box. A below par couple of years has been turned around somewhat this season by a move to the left wing and he looked threatening there when I saw Villa at Arsenal last Sunday.

The problem is, his effectiveness out there makes Villa predictable. They look to him every time, in every attack. We’re not talking about the QPR team of 2005/06 here where the game plan was just to get the ball to Lee Cook and hope for the best but it’s not far off. Consequently I found myself constantly looking up at the top of my screen in the first half to see not a single Villa man in the picture on the right flank and acres of pitch available to play in. QPR’s game plan this evening should be based entirely around marking Agbonlahor out of the game, and then when they have the ball switching it left as quickly as possible. If Armand Traore is back from the African Nations Cup and Taye Taiwo is available I’d pick both and tell them to stay nice and wide when we’re attacking, and I’d look to them at every possible opportunity. Probably the worst thing we could do is put Wright-Phillips wide left again as his insistence on cutting in field onto his right foot every time would negate the effect.

Villa lost at the Emirates on Sunday when they really should have won three or four nil. They’ve added Robbie Keane to their attack this January, a player many at QPR have repeatedly said they wouldn’t want for some reason, and he gave them another dimension of attack altogether. He was involved in everything in the first half and eventually set up the first goal for Richard Dunne. Two things concerned me about Keane from a QPR point of view: firstly the Dunne goal came from a quickly taken set piece and Keane is always alive and alert to such possibilities when the opposition has switched off which sadly we do quite a lot; secondly he played behind leading striker Darren Bent, in a free role that he may find is a whole lot freer this evening given Mark Hughes penchant for two solid banks of four. I’d pick Onuoha at centre half this evening and detail him to break out of the line and shut Keane down at every possible opportunity. Darren Bent’s record (148 league goals in 298 starts) speaks for itself and he will be the chief threat again.

With Bent looking dangerous in attack supported by the lively Keane, Agbonlahor making hay down the left flank , Stephen Ireland suddenly revitalised in midfield and Stylian Petrov breaking up the play and distributing it well I couldn’t help but wonder why, having taken the lead, Villa then decided to sit as deep as they possibly could and concede ground to a poor Arsenal side low on confidence and taking some unmerciful stick from its own supporters. Then I remembered who the Aston Villa manager is. McLeish’s misery and pessimism was dripping from every facet of this performance and eventually saw them concede three goals in nine second half minutes to crash out of the cup. Entirely his fault.

McLeish is leaning on a defence that isn’t good enough and the second reason I’d get Taiwo and Traore in down that left side if at all possible tonight is because they look completely incapable of dealing with any sort of pace and speed whatsoever. I’ve never really understood everybody’s fascination with Richard Dunne and I don’t rate James Collins at all – although Carlos Cuellar played centre half on Sunday – and how they can allow Luke Young to join us for a pittance and select Alan Hutton instead I just don’t understand at all. They looked terrified of any speed on Saturday, even when it was Theo Walcott who is currently combining his lack of a footballing brain with a lack of footballing anything in a dreadful run of form but nevertheless looked effective against this totally immobile Villa back line. Make sure Cisse has packed his boots, and then get him running at this lot at every opportunity would be another key part of my plan tonight.

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Photo: Action Images

westolian added 09:17 - Feb 1 Really interesting, cheers Clive Can someone quickly text this gameplan to MH
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themodfather added 18:12 - Feb 2 villa were looking good under o'neill but lack of buying and selling barry and milner ( to name 2) just didn't show ambition and now mid table looks about it when europe should be the aim. high prices and unpopular manager?? = empty seats. i like villa park as a ground and i'm sure many remember that european cup winning team as a great football side.
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