Villa transfer dealings likely to polarise fans
As the seconds count down to the closing of the transfer window, the ability of managers to make deals at the right price will be displayed prominently. Matt Turvey looks at the manager in charge at Aston Villa and reassures fans - "We're very lucky to have him".
Writing an article on the cusp of the transfer window shutting can always provide a challenge. Fans seem to be split into two camps - those who are viewing all of Paul Lambert's moves as sensible, with others wanting to see a few marquee players added into the mix.
Over the past few days, I've seen fans suggest the likes of Jermaine Defoe, Andy Carroll, Clint Dempsey, and Dimitar Berbatov as targets that they would like to see in claret and blue. There's no doubt that any or all of those players could, and maybe would, do a job for the club, but in today's austere market, value comes first, and players demanding big salaries seem unlikely to be unveiled at Villa Park.
Whilst I can understand the desire of fans to get a team back to winning ways immediately, Aston Villa are operating under different parameters to when Martin O'Neill's last minute transfer windows splurges meant big fees and big wages. Under the board's closely managed policy of targeting value in transfers, Villa want value as a top priority, with Lambert himself believing that there are ways to get players cheaply and make them into a success.
One only need look at how Lambert's development of once-seen-as-a-journeyman Grant Holt, and Holt's move from being a League One striker to the cusp of the England squad. Lambert isn't a miracle maker by any means, but his prior experience with getting the most out of players, both young and old, is certainly established.
I know, for some, the purchases of lower league players such as Matthew Lowton and Joe Bennett may seem underwhelming. I should point out at this point that I personally don't find them to be, but some fans wanting to see Villa sign the very best players may have been disappointed by the players signed to date.
Others fans have been frustrated by the fact that the players Villa are linked to are "unknown", at least in their eyes. Many didn't know who Ron Vlaar or Karim El-Ahmadi were before their moves to B6 but early signs show both to have a lot of potential.
Perhaps part of why signing players without Premier League experience frustrates fans is down to the prior transfer policies of former managers, or maybe it is because many fans simply don't have the knowledge of football teams and players as a modern professional Premier League manager.
That isn't meant as a sleight on fans, rather about a sobering reality that despite fans playing games like Football Manager 2012, fans are not professionally positioned to have the knowledge and information available to a modern football team.
In much the same way as you or I wouldn't masquerade as a solicitor if we didn't have the qualifications or experience, so it's sometimes naive in the eyes of fans to think that the footballing knowledge we have is more than a man who has spent his whole life in the game, any more than believing that watching CSI qualifies us as an expert in forensics.
Getting back to the armchair analysis we all can be guilty of, whilst the data provided to games such as Football Manager is well researched and based on statistics that often may illustrate young players as the future stars some turn out to be, being an expert at a game is not consonant with being a professional in the game. In fact, O'Neill himself remarked during his time at Villa that the game today is rife with opinions based on people confusing aptitude in a game with the ability to run an actual football club.
Today's Google generation may well have information available, but said information viewed out of professional context often means that the data people find may only be validating what fans wanted to think in the first place. They say a lot about how a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and the absence of much public information from clubs leaves a vacuum rapidly filled with nonsensical rumours borne out of sheer lies.
This week's reveal of how a bored 18 year old who had gathered 42,000 followers on Twitter pretending to be a football agent or ITK (an acronym for "in the know") only to admit he had made it all up, hoodwinking many professional journalists as well as the general public, illustrates how many people will believe anything in search of a scrap of new information.
Getting back to fans playing the role of manager, we have all tried to play the role of a manager in our own heads coming up with suggestions of the players we would want - that is as much part of social culture in a country obsessed with the national sport - but we need to invest our faith in the fact that a man such as Lambert clearly knows more by virtue of his life-long involvement in the game as a professional and, in more relevant terms, his possession of a Uefa Pro License.
Getting back to transfers, both Pauls - Lambert and Faulkner - are working extremely hard to get in the players that the manager wants to progress the club, and the addition of personnel in roles such as those occupied by Gary Karsa and Michael Henke illustrate Villa's overdue move into the 21st century, and the establishment of systems to support a far more stable club than other regimes may have built.
The changes may seem miniscule when looked at in the brief context of Lambert's tenure at the club but they will bear fruit. I sympathise totally with the fans who are concerned that players signed from lower league may not work out but they will go one of two ways - they are either relatively cheap players on low wages who will provide quality at great value, or they will have sale values that are not so distant from their purchase prices and without the high wages that have recently dragged Villa's revenue into the red.
So the window will be closed by the end of the day this article is published and, as with every team and window, some will be happy with our buys whilst others aren't. Whatever happens, fans can rest assured that the club is being built back up on solid foundations, and that the owner and CEO are providing the required financial support for Villa's long term rebuilding process.
Tonight will see the end of the window, but only the early beginnings of a Paul Lambert push for Villa into a brave new era. The time of relatively expensively paid players may be over, but Villa's new, vibrant future is only beginning.
You can follow Matt Turvey's regular opinions at his own site, Aston Villa Life at www.astonvillalife.com, via the site's Twitter account @astonvillalife, or via his own Twitter account @MatthewSTurvey.
