…he has now.

I’ve heard it said a lot in the last season. And the season before that actually. “MON has taken us as far as he can” the clairvoyants said. The evidence, for as much as evidence is worth in football, suggested the opposite to be more likely. Turns out those with physic powers were correct. The record books will forever record that this is indeed as far MON will take us.

It’s probably about 11 hours now since I saw the news pop up on my screen and knew instinctively it was true this time. It practically came from nowhere, too random, catching everyone by surprise. Last time, earlier in the summer, I had witnessed the rumours grow like a virus via a couple of blogs to lower quality mainstream media outlets to, well, just about everywhere.

Sure, the chatter of unrest behind the scenes persisted. In hindsight, MON, when speaking recently about the imminent transfer of James Milner to Man City, was perhaps leaving a trail of clues that all was not well behind closed doors by making sure we all knew that he was not involved in the deal.

He seemed slightly more irritated than usual by requests from local media to justify his transfer activities for the fans and critics. He rightly said that he didn’t much care what the critics thought. Something I agreed with, he knew what they didn’t after all. We might now be starting to get a sense of what that was.

I’ve tried to take the time to reflect, there’s plenty to think about and I don’t think I’ve resolved much in my own mind. It’s no secret that I am a big admirer of MON’s achievements at the club and one of the reasons I created Aston Villa Central was to provide a platform for reasoned analysis, contrasting some of the ludicrous and entirely baseless claims made on other sites.

What’s done is done. I don’t want to overly dwell on events, but further thoughts and analysis will inevitably follow in the coming days and weeks, especially as new information surfaces. For now though, it almost goes without saying that I’m hugely saddened by O’Neill’s exit as I, unlike the clairvoyants, was excited about the coming season, MON’s fifth in charge and one that I felt would truly start delivering on the previous four years of groundwork.

Naturally I’m angry and hurt by the timing. For want of a better description, we’re clearly in a bit of shit right now. I could point the finger of blame squarely in MON’s direction for that, and he should probably accept some of the blame, but it is really the nature of the straw that breaks the camel’s back coming when it comes, frequently at the most inconvenient of times. What can you do?

As I say, there will be plenty to discuss soon enough, but I’d like to close this post by sharing my biggest confusion. How can we have gone from a set up which is arguably the envy of the Premier League with a generous, but not extravagant owner employing a smart manager and largely giving him license to get on with the job, to this apparently dysfunctional house?

Right now, we look a total mess. Players half way out the door. Replacements far from half way in. Massive uncertainty about the likelihood of funding for squad strengthening. No manager. And the first game of the season just five days away.

At the end of last season, I genuinely believed that we were just a couple of players short of being a very dangerous unit next term, especially with the continued emergence of the youngsters. Now look at us.

Yet, if everyone can muddle their way through for a short while, Randy doesn’t rush things and makes a smart appointment to replace O’Neill, the new blood might be the breath of fresh air required to build on the foundations MON has laid. Even Gordon Strachan was able to take what MON had built at Celtic and emulate his success for a while.

I hope everyone is prepared for that not to be the case though. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be, we have a fundamentally strong squad, but we may have to take a step or two backward in order to get on track. Villa fans haven’t shown much appetite for patience though and it may well be that we look back on MON’s four years of steady growth and stability as the good years.

For my part, I was about to start writing my season expectations post to go along with the survey readers have been completing. That’s something I’ll need to give more thought to. Fortunately I didn’t waste any time working on it so far, will MON’s work over the last four years turn out to be wasted effort?

I hope not.

And as a final, parting thought: Without wanting to start the ball rolling on an infinite regress, is it not possible, based on what we think we know at the moment, that had Sheikh Mansour not swung into the blue side of Manchester, we might not be where we are today? If so, just shows how far the ripples that pebble has cast on the pond surface.

Speaking of the blue part of Manchester, here’s today’s soundtrack, let’s hope Tuesday is decidedly less blue:-