Drop The Dead Donkey

Drop The Dead Donkey

Forget how many goals Ronaldo scored before we got our long overdue beauty against Spuds last Sunday. Forget how many wars have broken out, how many ceasefires had been observed or broken, how many planets had been discovered or any of the other pointless, piss takes shoved in our faces by the growing number of fans happy to take up the cornet of Aston Vanilla being once again, the team anyone can lick. You can laugh all you like, cry all you like, but what we really need at Aston Villa are fighters. Villans through and through, willing to stand up and be heard, stand up and be counted, stand up and roar – in support of our team out on there on the pitch – and in support of just about ANYONE who can persuade Randy Lerner and his protected species, Paul Lambert, to leave Birmingham B6 as soon as possible, so that we may return to uniting our club and pushing ourselves back up the EPL to at least the mid-table position that our current squad ought to be able to eat for breakfast.

Last week, a blog appeared within these walls, which suggested that Lambert should be backed to the hilt. In the same week, Janine Self, a well-respected freelance journalist, wrote that we should be giving him four more games until we judge him – and incredibly, those four more games were in fact seven! Well for me, Lambert’s first judgment day came and went on that harrowing, snowy night of January 22nd 2012, when we had to witness possibly the most tactically inept performance from a top flight manager since the boss of the Titanic claimed that the ship was unsinkable as it left Liverpool on its maiden voyage.

‘F***ing clueless’ I screamed from my seat on the Holte. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing,” yelled others, as the reality of a once promising manger’s ineptitude began to sink in for the very first time. He didn’t have a clue. We didn’t have a clue. Attacking from a central midfield ‘commanded’ by one of the worst players I have ever seen in a Villa shirt, the bald headed, bong smoking bungler named Stephen Ireland. We played straight into their hands as ‘Bratford’ formed a funnel that always resulted in 5 of their biggest cloggers corking us up in the bottleneck in front of their goal. All we needed was width and crosses. Width and crosses, WIDTH & CROSSES! And I will never forget the sight of young Joe Bennett, on several occasions, flying out of defence and down the byline (with the ball I might add), suddenly stopping at the halfway line and allowing it all to come a tumble, I strongly suspect because his manager had told him not to overcommit, as we didnae wannae get heet on tha cowntrr! #AskBennett. He’ll tell us one day, even though I have to question what on earth he, Steer, Luna, Bowery, Sylla, Helenius, KEA, etc. were doing here in the first place.

Almost 2 years later, so many more judgment days have passed and been survived by a man who would have been more popular in these parts as a Rab C. Nesbitt comedy double, than a Villa manager with a contract now set to keep him at the club until 2018. A man earning a reported 2 million smackers a year as Villa boss, a man who is actually performing about as well as Rab C. Nesbit would have done, had our foolish Shunammite mistakenly given the job to him – which, judging by the nonsense going on down at B6 these days, he may well have been close to doing.

I’m not going to go over Lambert’s appalling, record-breaking record. Hopefully, you’ve all seen the tweets and the posts draped all over social media these days.

And yes, almost 2 years later, it is still clear that the biggest thing the team needs is width when moving forwards – that is for as long as we don’t have that majestic, but so far elusive, playmaker spearheading the midfield and playing in defense-splitting balls through the channels or over the top. Dream on. The two men who gave us a little bit of width and crosses last year, Marc Albrighton and Leandro Bacuna, don’t play anymore. The first, a Villa lad through and through, was allowed to leave for nothing when his contract expired, stupid at the very least, criminal at the very worst. Bacuna, well who knows? Maybe we have a new bomb squad? This time a stealth one, more difficult perhaps for the opposition to spot, one where the more enthused endeavors of Bacuna, Grealish, Okore and Gardner somehow strike fear into our opponents as they are denied those games that will see them bed themselves into the top flight – whilst the bench warming backsides of Bent, Clark & Cole win the day with their cameos. Yes, that should confuse them before a ball is even kicked. So what exactly is it Lambert is playing at? He must have a cunning plan. After all, even Baldrick used to come up with something, however crazy it may have been.

Like I say, who knows?

In fact, something like that infamous little man from Barcelona – no, not Lionel Messi, I mean Manuel, the Spanish waiter from a very different, though just as comical, Fawlty Towers. “I know nuuthing”, we know nuuthing, because the club rarely has anything intelligent to say to us these days, aside from twaddle about allotments, Chicken and Mushroom Pies, Villa cash (or lack of it), or how many sleeps it will be until our next embarrassing showing against lesser opposition. I can hardly sleep at all these days – for fear of waking up a day nearer to yet more doom and gloom. Staying up all night at least makes it seem like there’s twice as long to go.

But it’s Wednesday night already. Big Sam and his iron filings await us next. May God help us and allow us to leave the Boleyn Ground with our heads, not only still attached to our shoulders, but also held high, proud and happy with the points. It is the Irons that must be left rusting in their bubbles, not us rusting in pieces. No Hutton, no Delph, No Benteke, possibly still no Senderos, and there’s still a full day to go on the training ground – surely a bigger danger to our squad than Ebola in a Man City shirt. We could lose another couple before the team is announced. It doesn’t bode well. I doubt that it would bode well if our squad was a strong as Chelsea’s either, not under our very own Specially Clueless One.

Perhaps Randy Lerner, these days looking even more pasty and drawn than you’d have thought possible in a living human, believes in his soccerball, US naïve way, that The Championship is the next league up from the Prem? Again, who knows, but I wouldn’t rule it out. It’s surely as confusing as cricket to a foreigner. Maybe he’s even tasked Lambert to get us as high as League One – again, who knows! Poor old Randy. He invested a fortune in Aston Villa, and there’s no doubt, he’s done some great things for our infrastructure, but he seems to have completely failed to understand the importance of having someone in place that knows the game, knows how a soccerball club is run – and the pitfalls associated with not running one well. He knows them now, I would hope. Lerner by name, surely learner by nature, albeit a little slow. Perhaps he’ll be there on Saturday, in our hour of need, in that ‘all hands to the pump kind of way’. The bulldog spirit. The way of the underdog. We’ll fight ‘em on the beaches, and all that stuff, I hope so! I’d genuinely love to see him leading us from the front, I really would. Then again, imagine the confusion that another team playing in claret & blue, with its fans chanting ‘Come on you Irons’ would cause him.

There are enough laughs at our expense at the moment, and I doubt we could stomach seeing him singing along with the wrong fans, as we feature last on Match of The Day come Saturday night. That would surely bring out the self-harmers or worse. But my money says he won’t be. He’ll most likely be back home, dressing some other turkey in it’s V-neck pullover for the forthcoming Thanksgiving celebrations, and preparing for that all American Yard Sale because, as sure as eggs are eggs, that’s where his attempts to sell our beloved Aston Villa are heading if he doesn’t see the light and drop the dead donkey before the Christmas lights are switched on. UTV

Article by:  © 2014 Kezz AVFC         Follow Me On Twitter:  @KezzAVFC