A working model for Aston Villa?

[mrfuse]

After watching Swansea this weekend tear apart Fulham something we can currently only dream about surely this is what we and the rest of the country should be aspiring too.

Okay it make time and a new manager as McLeish will never be able too implement that kind of football, but I would rather loose games trying to play that style than any of the football we have dished up this season.

Im impressed by Brendan Rogers as well seems like a decent guy and has  excellent European and English experience despite being very Young.

I will be very disappointed if he is not manager of the season after the award usually goes too one of the big teams that have great financial backing

[KevinGage]

I think it will be his for sure.

Managers like Moyes have won it before (3 times, in fact  @.@ )    Despite zero trophies.
So the manager of the league/ cup champions doesn't always bag it as of right.  Mancini , with the sums they've spent, should be blackballed by default.  The only realistic competition to Rodgers should be Lambert of Pardew.


The success of Rodgers Swansea also does away with this notion that teams can't be expected to compete and play with a decent level of fluidity unless they've spent x amount of millions. Preparation is the key.  The better managers prepare more than most.

[Ads]

I reckon Swansea will go down next season.

[TheSandman]

Probably, but with their tiny resources it won't exactly be unexpected.

What people miss about Swansea is that their football is not the product of a good manager but rather a long term plan and an ethos. We won't be able to start playing excellent football at the drop of the hat and we will need a long term strategy. We lack that at the moment. What I think is most telling is that we have a reserve team who play excellent football with great passing an movement. Yet, the first team is completely different and has been for a long time. When our young players come into the first team some of them struggle due to the absence of passing and movement and even the ones who don't struggle end up looking less good than they actually are. We need to develop a common strategy across the club where there is a common style of play where young players are educated in the same way of playing as the first team.

Our biggest problem here results from the lack of continuity. Nowhere is this better exhibited than in managerial appointments. In two years we have gone through five managers temporary and permanent which has really damaged our ability to develop the kind of strategy we need. The club don't help themselves in this either. We went from Houllier, a manager who had his ideas on football, to McLeish, who seems to have divergent ideas on football which makes any hope of continuity way more difficult.

It's all well and good wanting to play like Swansea or Bilbao or Barcelona or Ajax, but you won't get either if you don't understand how they are done or how they have been achieved and accepting that these won't be found through short term measures, but long term strategic planning.

[Dante Lavelli]

Exactly right Zogman.  Demonstrated by their choice of managers.  Martinez, Sousa and Rodgers all try and play good football so there is no doubt about what their philosophy is.

[KevinGage]

Probably, but with their tiny resources it won't exactly be unexpected.

What people miss about Swansea is that their football is not the product of a good manager but rather a long term plan and an ethos. We won't be able to start playing excellent football at the drop of the hat and we will need a long term strategy. We lack that at the moment. What I think is most telling is that we have a reserve team who play excellent football with great passing an movement. Yet, the first team is completely different and has been for a long time. When our young players come into the first team some of them struggle due to the absence of passing and movement and even the ones who don't struggle end up looking less good than they actually are. We need to develop a common strategy across the club where there is a common style of play where young players are educated in the same way of playing as the first team.

I agree totally. 

My big fear is that the crop of players who all came through at roughly the same time will go to waste.   

There is no guarantee, of course that if we had a Rodgers or similar that Bannan, Albrighton, Clark and co would go on to fulfil their potential.  History teaches us that if one makes it as a first team regular you've done really well.  But I'd like to see them given every opportunity to succeed in the first team -and for that we will need a manager whose main motivation is to do a bit more than stop the opposition.

So for that we will -at some stage in the next few months- have to bite the bullet and make a more progressive appointment.   Flair players like Albrighton, Bannan, Delph, Ireland and N'Zog have already fallen foul of Big Eck- the latter of course being his own signing.

Delph already looks like he'd been earmarked for the exit, Bannan was apparently very unhappy with his first team involvement and was looking to get away in Jan and Albrighton has looked a shadow of the player we know he can be marooned out on the left.  With Holman coming in -a player who predominantly plays on the right- the writing might be on the wall for him too.  And you can hear the justification too, funds are tight yada yada yada.

I accept that's all largely supposition. But I don't think it's at all unlikely that all three of them could be out the door by Sep 1st 2012. Given the choice out of losing three decent, technically competent midfielders or a limited old school manager I know which scenario is more palatable to me.