Dunlavy column: Current Villa team have no chance of top 6 finish

by Chris Dunlavy

AT the start of the movie Deliverance, Burt Reynolds’ Lewis casts a sneering eye over Ned Beatty’s Bobby Trippe, an Atlanta insurance salesman dragged on a weekend hunting jaunt.

“Hey Ed,” he says to John Voight. “Can that chubby boy handle himself?” “Bobby?,” Voight replies. “Well, he’s rather well thought of in his field, Lewis.”

Which, of course, proves totally irrelevant when the out-of-their depth city boys are waylaid by inbred mountain folk. Intellect is useless, cash no currency. Even their canoes and state-of-the-art weaponry are no match for men who know every dell and dyke. You know the scene…

Aston Villa‘s grisly slide into the Championship is just like watching Ed, Lewis and Bobby enter the Cahulawassee River.

They’ve got the history, the famous name, the baubles in the trophy cabinet. They’ve got that magnificent stadium and 40,000 fans to fill it every week. They’ll certainly have a few quid once the parachute payments deploy.

Sadly, none of it will count for anything among leaner, meaner sides honed to Championship perfection and determined to bloody famous noses.

How many current Villa players would Burnley want in their starting XI? How many would Hull swap, or Sheffield Wednesday?  One, maybe two.

Villa’s squad is pitifully weak and patently unsuited to Championship football. With the exception of Joleon Lescott, Scott Sinclair and Rudy Gestede, nobody has even played there before.

So what, you might say. That didn’t stop Newcastle romping it in 2010. But the Magpies had men like Joey Barton, Kevin Nolan, Nicky Butt and Alan Smith – sleeves-up, chest-out leaders able to mix superior technique with outright aggression. Nobody at Villa Park is in their class.

The Villains are an unenviable combination of foreign flops bound for the first plane home and home-grown ‘talent’ unfit for purpose.

I wouldn’t back the present team to finish in the top six.

Villa fans are furious that Randy Lerner’s determination to sell the club has robbed them of a place in the Premier League. Far more scandalous, however, is the American’s failure to prepare for the Championship. In 2014-15, Villa limped into 17th place with a pathetic points total that should have spelled curtains. Previous finishes of 15th and 16th amounted to writing on the wall.

Yet Lerner and his cohort refused to recognise a looming disaster. Instead, they spent £28m on second-rate players from France. By November, Villa had won one match. Their response? To recruit Remi Garde, a French manager with no knowledge of lower league football. By January, their survival chances were roughly the same as a penguin in the Sahara. This time, Lerner reacted by buying nobody at all.

Compare that to the pragmatism of Burnley. Promoted to the top flight in 2014, the Clarets were not deluded enough to anticipate anything longer than a one-season jolly.

So, they stowed the money, kept faith with manager Sean Dyche and retained the spine of their promotion-winning side. Lo and behold, Burnley are seamlessly heading back to the big time.

If Villa are to have any hope of following suit, Lerner must finally make a shrewd appointment.

Forget big names. Forget foreigners. Forget Gary Neville. Ditch the myriad corporate advisers and do what Burnley did: go for someone who understands the lower leagues, who won’t cost the earth and give him full control. Villa need a Nigel Pearson, a Mark Warburton, even – whisper it – a Gary Rowett.

Lerner’s lack of preparation has already cost him dearly. That £250m asking price will need to be drastically revised.

Now, he has one last chance to arrest the situation. Fail and Villa, like poor Bobby, will be left prone and helpless, squealing like a pig.

*This article was originally published in The FLP on 3 April 2016.