Aston Villa News 24/7
You won’t need me to tell you, you’ll no doubt recognise this team right away, but if not, it’s the starting eleven from the FA Cup 5th round at Eastlands that caused so much anger:
| Brad Friedel | |||
| Chris Herd | Richard Dunne | Ciaran Clark | Fabian Delph |
| Michael Bradley | Stiliyan Petrov | ||
| Barry Bannan | |||
| Nathan Delfouneso | Gabby Agbonlahor | ||
| Emile Heskey | |||
Look at it again. They’ve been called “kids”, “reserves”, “B-Team” and much more. Aside from Chris Herd – who had been named in 12 of the 35 match squads before that game by the way – who else could be called a “reserve”?
Friedel? Nope. Clark? Not really. Dunne? Hardly! Delph? He’s been out through injury, but I’d like to think he would have played a decent part in this season.
Bradley? He’s with us on loan, so nope. Petrov? Please. Gabby? Nope. Heskey? Do me a favour, love.
So that leaves Bannan and Delfouneso.
So, they then go out on loan and once again there’s much virtual gnashing of teeth across the interwebz: “Houllier’s an idiot”, “he doesn’t know what he’s doing”, “he’s destroying our club from the inside”, “what’s going on at AVFC?”.
And on and on it goes.
I’ve even seen someone expressing disbelief that we’ve kept Heskey, but loaned out Delfouneso. Are they really that dense? Do they really think that a) Heskey would be interested in joining a Championship club on loan and b) a Championship club would be on the hunt for a £40k a week player to help them in the push for the play-offs?
We’ve nine games left and we’re just three points from danger. Rightly or wrongly, as far as seniority goes, Delfouneso is number four in the pecking order of strikers right now and we’re largely using a one striker system. As they say in America, you do the math.
And it’s pretty much the same situation with Barry Bannan. To use another cliché; this really isn’t rocket science.
But, looking further ahead, feeling confident that we’ll not be sucked into the black hole of relegation, wouldn’t actually playing in a dozen or so games in the Championship be better experience for Bannan and Delfouneso than watching nine Premiership games from the bench in the hope that someone gets injured?
Bear in mind that there will inevitably be a clear out of high earners during the summer and it’s exactly the likes of Bannan and Delfouneso that we’ll probably be relying on heavily next season.
We know there’s a recall clause in Bannan’s loan deal, let’s assume there’s something similar in Delfouneso’s. If that’s the case, if we find ourselves with another injury crisis that our 23 remaining players can’t cope with (plus actual reserves of course), we can bring them back.
So, seriously, what’s not to like about these loans? Except the manager making the decision, natch.
You might also like...
20 Comments to “First they’re reserves, then they’re valuable assets. Ever feel like you can’t win?”
Leave a Reply
well said
Well posted. I’m glad someone across the Villa Blogosphere can see some sense, it appears too many people are either way too far one way or the other recently – and its nice to see some sense for once! UTV SOTC!
I just want to add to the point about this ‘weakened team’ too – this supposedly weak team had 5 players come into it who have amassed 216 full international caps between them as follows:
Heskey – 62
Bannan – 2
Petrov – 99
Bradley – 50
Agbonlahor – 3
Out of the 3 other players who came in Delph and Delfouneso are capped at U21 international level (Delfouneso let us not forget also has won a Golden Boot trophy at Euro U19) level and finally Chris Herd is capped at U20 level for Australia.
So that was a mixture of great potential and experienced footballers, none were debutants, every one of them had already played so far this season.
I wonder how many people though were simply regurgitating the uninformed crap spouted by ITV’s talentless pundits who were probably just mad because it showed their lack of knowledge and research prior to the game. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I take notice of the despairingly monotone Gareth Southgate’s opinions on football – a man with one managerial stint under him with a pathetic 29% win rate.
On top of the valuable football experience I think the financial aspect of the 10 players out on Loan should also be considered a bonus given our widely reported wages to turnover situation:
Assuming that the loan club pays half the wages (conservative estimate) villa are saving the following per week (all wages estimated):
Guzan (£25 000) – £12500
Carew (£65 000) – £32500
Ireland (£65 000) – £32500
Bannan (£10 000) – £5000
Delfouneso (£10 000) – £5000
Weimann (£5000) – £2500
Hogg (£5000) – £2500
Lichaj (£5000) – £2500
Osbourne (£5000) – £2500
Lowry (£5000) – £2500
Total = £97 500 saved per week
Over the course of an average 3 month (12 week) loan period that is a total saving of nearly £1.2m off the wage bill.
Happy to be corrected over estimated wages and level paid by receiving club but you get my point.
sure. the details might be a little off, but i wouldn’t argue about that, the principle is sound.
i think we become blinded by weekly wages and lose sight of the fact that £40k a week is just about £2m a year. it doesn’t take too many of them to cause the revenue/wages ratio to take an alarming battering!
I would love to see a paid vs performance chart, show how over-valued some players are, and undervalued others are. The likes of Petrov, Carew, Heskey, Ireland, Warnock, (Freidal?) all under perform to what they earn, hell, most of them fail to make first team, while others do out of necessity or habit. This is the dead weight in the squad, Davis was also considered dead weight, but he’s a bluenose now, being dead weight there as well.
Bring on the end to these players contracts, the sooner the better imo, allow some young talent to develop and sign 1-2 late 20s experienced players at their peak to help the younger players develop
I like the idea Aussie. Every team should be tracking how their players “perform” vs. the salaries they are paid. The questions comes to how do you define performance. Petrov and Friedel are certainly doing well on a “games played” basis.
Stikers could be tracked on a salary per goal basis (instead of per week). Defenders on goals let in? clean sheets? It would be interesting to see a breakdown but personally I struggle with how to define performance into a single stat that can be compared against salary.
loved that last point, i bet you’re not far from the truth at all. wouldn’t be the first time the limits of knowledge held by TV “experts” was exposed. and, by extension, the viewers too.
Don’t forget Weimann as well, he was on the edge of the first-team squad until his injury at the start of the season. With Delfouneso loaned out, GH has an opportunity to see him in with the first team squad a bit more.
he’s at watford, james. we played him in the reserves the other day, which we’re entitled to do as a “youth” apparently, but they got a bit pissy about it from what i’ve read.
haha, I missed that. Cheers.
allowing these two player out on loan to actually play some football is great news for next season.
why are people so pissed GH is looking at next season.
in Prem or Championship he is trying to develop a style of play and bring on the youth, what exactly do we have to loose?
we have this bright future ahead of us, its now the time to start putting it in to practice.
aye. i can see a balancing act between keeping them “in-house” to maintain some control of their development early on, but at their age now competitive playing time has to trump that.
if they’re as good as we think they are, they should thrive in the championship.
if you get the right teams that you trust, and i’m sensing a growing relationship with leeds, then it’s all good. i can’t think of a better fit than bannan and blackpool last year, he came on leaps and bounds.
This blog is a haven of common sense. I have seen such reactionary, impatient, redundant statements out there about Houllier and by implication the Villa Board, that I was beginning to question my own view. Interesting to see the latest poll on VillaTalk substantially backing GH despite the weight of topics all over the Villa forums criticising him.
Dan, your post cuts through the nonsense perfectly. Keep on posting, please.
that’s an encouraging endorsement, thank you.
the poll you mention is interesting. reassuringly suggesting it’s an unhappy minority that are the most vocal and they’re not representative of villa fans in general.
as much as an online poll can be trusted to tell us such things of course, but still.
Well said Thunderball, my sentiments entirely, and well done Dan too. Love this blog.
Great post as usual, I agree 100%. I think GH has made the correct decisions regarding those going out on loan. The only reason people are moaning is because we lost at the weekend, if we had won they wouldn’t be making half the noise.
as always, it’s a results business. win games, no one cares much how it’s done. lose, and fans want to analyse everything the manager does to the Nth degree.
Right, too much agreement on here for my liking.
Why didn’t he put out our strongest side?
(By the way loan deals are great – means we dont have to play them in cups, to give them a game!)
but that’s outside the scope of this post, nan. i’m not seeking to explain or justify that team selection, i wish he’d put a stronger team out as much as anyone.
i’m just highlighting how over the top some of the reaction is. these players can’t simultaneously be utterly unworthy of playing and indispensable.