Source: Daily_Mail
ASH WEDNESDAY: Aston Villa are not good enough to finish fourth
Apparently Martin O'Neill is the next manager of England, having done a fine job of leading the seventh best-supported club in the country (behind Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Newcastle and Manchester City) to fifth place in the Barclays Premier League.
That kind of success is giving hope for other managers, men like Steve Bruce, who will have done his sums and worked out that he has taken the worst supported team in the Premier League into eighth place in the table after 31 games. Next stop Spain? Brazil even? Argentina might be coming up again soon.
The country got carried away with Aston Villa after their dramatic 3-2victory at Everton on December 7, 2008, swept away on a tidal wave of enthusiasm after Ashley Young raced clear and scored his second of the game (his first goals in 14 matches).
O'Neill rode the wave too, labelling the left winger 'world class' and he responded to the accolade with a goal in his next game (against Bolton) but he has not scored, or barely been seen, in the 16 matches since.
Neither have his team-mates, many of whom arrived last summer when Aston Villa became one of the biggest spending clubs in world football when the incoming transfers reached a conservative £47.5m, probably nearer £50m.
Here's a refresher on the Nearly Men: Curtis Davies (£10m) Steven Sidwell (£5m), Brad Friedel (£2m, yet worth every penny of his £75,000 a week), Nicky Shorey (£5m), Luke Young (£5m), Carlos Cuellar (£7m), James Milner (£10m) and Emile Heskey (£3.5m).
Poor Heskey is the 2008 equivalent of Rodney Marsh, signed as the final piece in Malcolm Allison's Manchester City jigsaw in 1972, just as the team were four points clear at the top of the old First Division. Marsh did not fit in, City went on the slide and eventually they finished fourth.
Heskey arrived with a similar brief to Marsh, designed to give the squad a lift at a crucial stage of the season and yet after marking his debut at Portsmouth with a goal, the Villa striker has not scored in eight games for his club (although he did score for England in the 4-0 victory over Slovakia on March 28).
Of the others signed by O'Neill, some of them barely get a game. Right back Luke Young consistently plays left back because Nicky Shorey, the left back also signed by O'Neill last summer, is not good enough to play left back (except when the game is against Manchester United).
Central midfielder Nigel Reo-Coker, one of three vice-captains (because a Premier League outfit chasing fourth place need three vice-captains), is often played at right back because the first choice right-back is playing on the left.
Curtis Davies, the most expensive pub player (hey, his words) in the history of the game is half-full one week, half-empty the next, sound alongside Martin Laursen and shaky when his central defensive partner is Carlos Cuellar.
Steven Sidwell has not played since the CSKA Moscow shambles in February (another story), big John Carew fancies it some weeks, as he showed signs of when he scored against Manchester United last weekend, but not others.
There is also a frustration with Gareth Barry, the central midfielder who leaves for international duty every other month, is effectively tapped up by his team-mates who play for clubs in the Champions League over lunch at the team hotel and returns to Villa with his mind on other matters.
He will get away this summer, with Liverpool his preferred destination (but do not discount Arsenal) and that ambitious move alone will force other players to consider their options.
The proliferation of stories linking Young with a move away from Villa Park in recent weeks (he also believed he was Destination Arsenal) suggest that the mice are already at work, nibbling away at a clutch of top clubs who will be provided a DVD of his performance at Everton in December, but not necessarily against Chelsea last month.
This was the team the country were brainwashed into believing could pip Arsenal for fourth, with some giddy Villa supporters even talking of the title when they won a club record seventh successive away game at Blackburn in February.
Around 5,000 travelled to Ewood Park, singing 'we're going to win the league', dreaming that they could even emulate the achievements of the 1981 team who did just that under Ron Saunders
Two weeks later they were buried by Chelsea in Guus Hiddink's first game in charge and are without a victory in nine games.
Can they finish fourth? Of course not. They are not good enough, just as they were not good enough in October, when Chelsea bashed them around the head at Stamford Bridge, winning 2-0 with their best performance of the season so far.
O'Neill admitted that day it could have been 'nine or ten' (he got that wrong, it should have been more), but they recovered, even beating Arsenal at the Emirates the following month with a thoroughly deserved victory.
This weekend they play Everton again, the most frequent fixture in the history of top-flight football (you thought it was Chelsea v Liverpool, didn't you?), knowing that the tenth best supported club in the Premier League can still finish ahead of them.
It is all about managing expectations, something Aston Villa forgot about when they were still in the top four.
