Villa need recruits

Friday, 06/01/2012

by Steven Green, Shoot's Aston Villa blogger

The longer this season goes on the stranger it gets. After playing so well towards the end of 2011 and picking up what is most likely to be the steal of the season at Chelsea, old ways crept back in and normal service was resumed in the defeat to Swansea.

For some unknown reason Alex McLeish saw fit to change a winning formula and set himself back ten paces after making some good strides to getting the Villa Park faithful on his side. Luckily now the transfer window is open and despite the manager stating that limited funds are available it’s an ideal time to swell the numbers.

A few months ago I said it’d be strange to never see Robbie Keane pull a Villa shirt on and it looks as if it may be happening now. The Irish forward looks set to arrive on a two-month loan from LA Galaxy. This however, is not what I, or anybody else had in mind.

In many ways it’s a step backwards, loans aren’t ideal at the best of times and a two-month deal hardly seems worth it. Granted, we’ve had trouble putting the ball in the net this season but the problem lies in midfield more than in attack. If the club had found adequate replacements for Young and Downing then Daren Bent would most likely have scored 10-12 goals by now, Gabby too as he wouldn’t have been moved out wide so often.

Other than Keane there hasn’t been a whole lot to get the fans excited. There has been mention of a few African internationals a lower league clubs in Europe but what would be the point of signing them now? The African Cup of Nations is just around the corner so it’d be another month before they’d be ready.

There have of course been links out too, Darren Bent being one (obviously!) Liverpool have been linked but in all honestly it seems unlikely at the moment, we can’t afford to lose him and there probably aren’t many clubs who could afford what we’d be asking for. I wouldn’t be surprised though to see him move on in the summer.

It’s incredibly worrying but hopefully the Swansea result was just a fluke and a consequence of tired legs and minds from a busy December. There are some winnable games coming up over the next couple of months against teams who are around and below us. A few shrewd acquisitions are paramount and the right attitude could see Villa move away from the danger zone and into mid-table mediocrity.

We’re used to that around these parts, we usually leave relegation to the blue side of the city and we’d like to keep it that way.

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