Great article in the Grauniad

[Dave]

Their season preview seems much better informed than most that you would find in the nationals as well:

Guardian writers’ predicted position: 16th (NB: this is not necessarily Stuart James’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)

Last season’s position: 17th

Odds to win the league (via Oddschecker): 2,500-1

Whether reaching a first FA Cup final in 15 years or listening to Fabian Delph declaring his loyalty for the club, it must feel as if it is the hope that kills you as an Aston Villa supporter. Throw in the news that a proposed takeover is dead and that Christian Benteke has joined Liverpool and it is hard to pick up much of a reading on the optimism gauge at Villa Park these days.

Then again that has been the case for a while. This, after all, is a club that has spent the last five seasons flirting with relegation. The ninth-placed finish under Gérard Houllier in 2011 hid a multitude of sins. Over the four seasons since, Villa have finished 16th, 15th, 15th and 17th. You get the picture.

Tim Sherwood has spoken confidently about breaking that cycle. “I am allowed to sign whoever I want as long as I can justify the signing,” the Villa manager said at the start of May. “But I believe even if we didn’t make a signing we wouldn’t be in this position again.”

Those comments were made after Villa beat Everton 3-2 at home to pull clear of the mire at the bottom of the table. Benteke scored twice that day, Tom Cleverley got the other and Delph impressed in front of the watching Roy Hodgson. All three players have gone.

Cleverley, well as he played after Sherwood took over from Paul Lambert as manager in February, can be replaced. Finding a natural successor to Delph, the captain and heartbeat of the team, will be more difficult and it remains to be seen whether Idrissa Gueye, a £9m signing from Lille, can be that player or if Sherwood has someone else in mind. As for Benteke, the void is huge and there is no point in trying to claim otherwise.

Villa scored 105 Premier League goals since Benteke made his debut against Swansea in September 2012. Benteke was responsible for 42 of them and set up another eight. In other words Benteke had a hand in almost every other Villa goal across the past three seasons – and it is worth bearing in mind that he missed 13 league games across the back end of the 2013-14 campaign and the start of last season with a ruptured achilles tendon.

Small wonder that Sherwood was so desperate to keep him. Benteke, however, had seen enough. After three seasons of fighting relegation, the Belgium forward had made up his mind the time was right to move on and join a club competing at the other end of the table. And who can blame him?

The search for a successor has been under way for a while. Jordan Ayew, a 23-year-old Ghana international with a maverick streak, looks like being the man tasked with stepping into Benteke’s boots. Now on the verge of signing from Lorient for £9m, Ayew, the son of Abedi Pele, broke into double figures for the first time in Ligue 1 last season, scoring 12 goals. He has a reputation for being a little surly, with a touch of attitude. Perhaps more significantly for Sherwood is that Ayew is a powerful runner, decent in the air and capable of bringing other players into the game. Time will tell whether he can be a prolific scorer.

While Benteke’s departure seemed inevitable, and Sherwood must have suspected as much when he made it public knowledge there was a release clause in the striker’s contract, Delph’s situation was more curious. It is easy to criticise Villa for the release clause in the England international’s contract being so low (£8m), yet it was a minor miracle that they managed to get anything for the player, given he had fewer than six months left on his contract when he signed a new deal.

Of course, that four-and-half-year contract and all the nonsense that accompanied it at the time was a bit of a charade. On the afternoon the news was plastered across the big screens inside Villa Park a journalist asked whether there was a release clause – a perfectly legitimate question in the context of what had gone on – and was accused by Lambert of being negative. As for the fiasco with the Manchester City move, all that can be said for certain is that Delph made a right pig’s ear of the way he handled it.

Sherwood needs to pick up the pieces and move on, which is pretty much what he has been doing from the day he walked into Villa Park. Villa, it is worth recalling, were in a hell of a mess at that time. They had scored a pitiful 12 goals in 25 league games, won only two out of their previous 21 top-flight matches and, make no mistake, were heading for the Championship under Lambert. The football was dire, the tactics clueless.

Brought in on a long-term contract with a short-term objective to keep Villa in the Premier League, Sherwood rubbished the theory that nobody could do any better than Lambert with the same group of players. Pointless possession with no cutting edge gave way to a more vibrant, dynamic style of football, culminating in the stellar performance that Villa delivered in their FA Cup semi-final victory over Liverpool at Wembley.

That was also a day when a teenager with slicked-back hair and socks rolled down by his ankles announced himself to the wider football world. Jack Grealish, a 19-year-old from Solihull, played like a free spirit and was a joy to watch. His emergence under Sherwood provided a silver lining in a troubled campaign and it will be fascinating to see how Grealish performs in his first full season in the Premier League, whether he can add goals to his game and how he handles the media spotlight.

Being photographed lying asleep in the street in Tenerife in June was not one of Grealish’s finest moments but nor was it a hideous crime. He is, after all, a kid, not a role model (that is your job as a parent). The question for me seems to be not so much what Grealish was up to – he will learn and Sherwood will make sure of that – but where the hell were the “mates” who left him in that state. Anyway, that is a discussion for another time.

To date, Sherwood has made five signings, including Scott Sinclair, who has joined permanently after spending the second half of last season on loan from Manchester City. Sherwood used Sinclair sparingly – something he largely attributed to the system he played last season – while Carles Gil, who showed some real promise after being brought in by Lambert in January, had even less of a look-in.

Whatever the reasons behind that decision with Gil – Sherwood has suggested that it was because Villa were embroiled in a relegation battle – the gifted Spaniard is set to be an important player this season and it looks as though he could end up being deployed in the No10 role.

The problematic left-back position has been addressed with the arrival of Jordan Amavi, a 21-year-old Frenchman signed from Nice for £10m. Micah Richards, brought in on a free transfer from Manchester City, offers versatility but will almost certainly start the season in central defence, possibly as the captain now that Ron Vlaar has departed. Vlaar was something of an enigma, one of the best defenders at the World Cup last summer but a man who spent too much time on the sidelines at Villa (he has just confirmed he will be out for four months after undergoing knee surgery).

With Jores Okore recovering from injury, Ciaran Clark looks the favourite to start the season alongside Richards, with José Ángel Crespo – who is due to complete a move from Córdoba – or Alan Hutton playing at right-back. That is assuming Sherwood prefers Leandro Bacuna in a more advanced role (the Dutchman performed well as a makeshift full-back across the final few months of last season).

As things stand – and it would be a surprise if another midfielder does not arrive between now and the end of the transfer window – Sherwood’s options in the centre of the pitch revolve around Gueye, Carlos Sánchez and Ashley Westwood. Where Charles N’Zogbia, who got a new lease of life as a second No10 alongside Grealish at the end of last season, and Kieran Richardson fit into the plans is anyone’s guess.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record the biggest problem for Villa this season is likely to be where the goals come from, even if there was a marked improvement after Sherwood’s arrival. Look back over the last three campaigns and the next highest Premier League scorer for Villa after Benteke is Gabriel Agbonlahor with 19 goals. Andreas Weimann, who joined Derby in the summer after his Villa career fizzled out, contributed 15 goals over that time.

Then the numbers fall off a cliff. Bacuna is the fourth highest league scorer with five goals in three years. Libor Kozak, who has not kicked a ball in a competitive game since December 2013, following a lengthy period of rehabilitation after suffering a broken leg in training, is next on the list with four.

Tied on three goals are Cleverley, Delph, Darren Bent – who has also left – and Westwood. It does not make for brilliant reading and highlights the need for Sherwood to find a way of getting midfielders and wingers to chip in and share the load with Ayew, assuming he signs, and whoever else plays up front.

One positive for Villa is that the fixture list appears to have been kind in terms of their start. A visit to Bournemouth on the opening day will not be easy by any stretch and Manchester United tend to regard trips to Villa Park – the two meet the following Friday – as a guaranteed three points. But in the next four matches Villa take on Crystal Palace, Sunderland, Leicester and West Bromwich Albion.

Quite what Sherwood’s starting XI will look like then is difficult to say. With so many significant incomings and outgoings, Sherwood faces quite a task to mould a new team quickly and successfully in what will be his first full season as a manager. If he ends up delivering on that promise to keep Villa clear of the relegation scrap – albeit a vow that was made before Delph and Benteke packed their bags – the 46-year-old will have done one hell of a job.

[richardb]

@villasnake what's his Twitter name, please?

[Villa in Denmark]

imacuntanddontiknowit

[Des Little]

We're gonna win the league

[PeterWithe]

I agree with the last article, even down to where we will finish.

[The Charmer]

Well, with all the effort that has gone into the transfer dealings, I am surprisingly optimistic.
After all the shite of recent years, we are due a change and a positive one at that.

Top-half finish for me.