On 30 May this year at around 8pm, thousands of Aston Villa fans filed past the commemorative Bobby Moore statue at Wembley, stunned – but not especially surprised – that their team had just been comprehensively dismantled by a slick Arsenal outfit in the FA Cup final. It came at the end of yet another stressful season which saw the Midlanders flirt – yet again – with relegation with all the predictability of a rich playboy.
A Priceless Win For Aston Villa
The mood was sombre but pragmatic. The cup final had been a bonus of colossal proportions – in reality, the long suffering fans were simply happy that their team had preserved their Premiership status for the twenty second time, but the war of attrition the concluding season had subjected them to left them dazed but peaceful – akin to shell shocked soldiers returning from a harrowing conflict zone. Little were they to know that even more drama would unfold before a new ball had been kicked in anger for the 2015-16 season.
Some of the transfer moves in the summer were not exactly unforeseen. Contrary to popular belief, there are actually three certainties in life: death, taxes and Christian Benteke moving to another club. In this case Liverpool – the blow softened by the player’s honest assessment of his future (in other words, away from Villa) – and the fact that his departure would be softened by the rather eye catching transfer fee of over £32 million pounds – the kind of profit owner Randy Lerner would have purred about once the finer details became apparent.
Benteke was also granted immunity from any poisonous aftermath that may have been left around Villa Park following his move to the red half of Anfield. He had, after all, almost single handedly kept Villa in the top flight for the last two seasons, a fact not lost on the Birmingham faithful. The less said about Fabian Delph’s transfer the better. It had more twists than a nightly soap opera – and was just as seemingly far fetched. Rumour has it that had Delph been around in biblical times and taken thirty pieces of silver to betray anyone, he would have taken it back the next day and demanded sixty.
And so the third departure – this time the erratic Ron Vlaar – completed what many thought of as being Villa losing their three best players. Manager Tim Sherwood sprung into action, only just making it through the ‘ten items or less’ section of football’s transfer supermarket – and leaving supporters in as much puzzlement as the outside football world. In truth, no one can accurately predict the fate of Aston Villa this season – because there are so many new faces, it remains to be seen what lies ahead.
The Premier League fixture list computer then delivered another low blow to the Claret and Blue army – sending them away to Bournemouth on the opening day of the season. The very same Bournemouth who had captured the hearts and minds of the British public with their romantic charge to the top division – under a highly regarded young British coach in Eddie Howe and proof that money, amazingly, isn’t always the most essential commodity in the modern game. The fact that the Bournemouth squad was probably put together for less than the price of what Delph would pay for a pair of shoes was highly relevant. Villa were in for a tough opener.
In the event, the 1-0 win to the away side was a priceless victory. Many of the new signings were on show, and in the shape of match winning substitute Rudy Gestede, new young left back Jordan Amavi and the industry of Scott Sinclair – Villa pushed on after a tepid first half performance to come away with a treasured first win of the season. Sherwood, also, showed a pleasing amount of tactical guile and silenced a few doubters; his introduction of Gestede and even more fundamental decisions such as leaving the regularly outclassed Alan Hutton on the bench showed a man in control of his football club.
The victory won’t have earned many headlines – indeed, it won’t even go down as an especially fluent performance. Yet imagine the dark cloud that would have immediately engulfed the Villa faithful had the visitors lost to their hosts on the first day – all the more relevant given their next test at home to Manchester United on Friday. Of course, it is intrinsically possible that this winning start is a false dawn – just as Villa’s 10 points from their first four games last season was a distant memory come the next six games which all ended in defeat. But this was a vital, essential, hugely important win in the context of what has gone on so far this calendar year, and Villa’s fans will be hoping that this is just the start of things to come.
