Blog: About to find out where Villa will go

As opening day approaches, Stoke City seem like the ideal team to reflect Aston Villa's recent plight, struggling as they have with a combination of underfunding and stumbling into mediocrity.

For many years Stoke, then under the watchful eye of Tony Pulis, were regarded as the archetypal anti-football team.

That their style of playing, often likened more to rugby than association football, was functional was what irritated many fans far and wide - "how dare a club like Stoke play with a points first philosophy" would be the subtext that got mired in style critiques.

Which, in 2014, is an interesting angle to work as a Villa fan.

For what has seemed like a lifetime, but is actually less than five years, obscurity has approached with a quickening pace, with standards dropping progressively to a point where survival is now seen as a target more than an expectation.

Under such constraints, it is interesting to see the "Stoke" logic put forwards as a way out of the present B6 based mire. Could Villa fans commit what some may consider blasphemy and build up from a base the same way.

OK, Villa are coming from a position above where Pulis took over Stoke - they are still perennial Premier League members - but there's really little to differentiate the journey that the Villans must undertake to get back to any form of relevance.

Sure, Villa's history is full of far more excitement and reward than the Potters.

But transitioning from a bargain basement team to something a little more stable involves multiple steps, some of which may not exactly be ideal for those who worship at the altar of beautiful football.

Ask a Villa fan how they'd react if we could start taking points in a dull and unattractive way.

One would imagine there'd be an internal struggle where an Alex McLeish like mentality - function over form - might actually prove better for the club than flair.

Which isn't to suggest, by any stretch, that flair is something to disappear into the ether forever, but rather that there's a fair few points to traverse from the club's current standing to any form of success.

Are fans interested in taking that risk though? What if Pulis turned up at Villa Park as manager in future. Is such a suggestion total blasphemy? Or a step towards being pulled up by the bootstraps?

So, as Stoke provide the away day entertainment for our fans this weekend, it may well be signs that times are changing. Whilst City are far from Barcelona, their direction under Mark Hughes appears to be aiming to develop what was a no-frill functional base.

For Villa, establishing such a base may well be the key to survival this season.

Whilst it may not provide the excitement of the club's greatest moments of history, there's a sense that if foundations aren't laid soon at Villa Park, imbalance and change could mean that the club's footings have to be rebuilt from a lower level still a year from now.

You can follow Matt Turvey's regular opinions at his own site, Aston Villa Life at http://www.astonvillalife.com, via the site's Twitter account @astonvillalife, or via his own Twitter account @mturvey_star.