Villa fans frustrated

Friday, 02/09/2011

by Steven Green, Shoot's Aston Villa blogger

With the country now breathing a collective sigh of relief at the closure of the transfer window this week we can now sit back and reflect on some of the choices our clubs made over the summer. You could sum Villa’s activities up in a word; frustrating.

After a very positive start bringing in Charles N’Zogbia for a cut price £10m and one of the best keepers in the league in Shay Given all signs from the board suggested that that was it, there’d be no more, we’d be lucky to see any new faces. That news left us deflated and confused.

All of a sudden our more experienced players like Carlos Cuellar and Luke Young were being linked with moves away, very worrying when it didn’t look like they’d be replaced.

It didn’t stop us looking up the gossip pages as every day a new name was mentioned, however exciting or underwhelming they might have been we all secretly hoped that whoever it was would just come.

Rumours of our lack of money were rife but we’d just released fourteen players, trimming our wage bill substantially and brought in only two, surely there was some cash still available.

No, probably not, loan deals it is then, but a club of our size and stature shouldn’t be looking at loan deals right? We’re beyond that now aren’t we? Well, not unless someone truly amazing pops up.

So onto deadline day and NOW the board decide to act. After letting Luke Young go but confusingly keeping hold of Habib Beye we’d need a new right back. So we go and sign an unproved left back that won’t be joining until January. Priorities? 

I woke up on Wednesday morning to find that we’d put a loan bid in for Joe Cole but he’s in France with Lille. We missed out. Now there are probably a number of reasons for him joining Lille over Villa but if we were serious about bringing him in then why didn’t we act sooner?

We knew he wouldn’t be cheap and at point we would have been a very attractive option for him, something there just doesn’t add up.

In the end though we did bring in two Premier League proven internationals in Alan Hutton and Jermaine Jenas, although Jenas only on loan without an option to buy.

Most Villa fans are pleased with the two arrivals. McLeish obviously knows how to get the best out of Hutton, a player who was once linked with Manchester United. Jenas is interesting but ultimately useless to us, without an option to buy he’s basically on holiday and there’s a lot of people at Villa Park who would prefer to see Barry Bannan play more instead.

Enda Stevens could go wither way. Ireland have always imported great players to the English game and he could be a hidden gem… or a complete Championship signing who will end up being sold to someone like Coventry when it doesn’t work out.

The board are becoming increasingly erratic over the transfer period and it’s to the frustration of many fans, Randy Lerner needs to let the fans know the state of affairs before it becomes too much, he’s done a lot for this club and I’d hate to see the fans turn their back on him.

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