Well, that’s it then, it’s official. After one of the most protracted and very public management searches ever, the club have confirmed that they have appointed ex-Birmingham City manager Alex McLeish as Gerard Houllier’s successor at Villa Park.

Frankly, it’s an astonishing move that has already upset the overwhelming majority of fans. It’s also a move, right or wrongly, that takes some extreme guts from everyone involved. If nothing else, you must have some respect for McLeish’s willingness to take this on.

In yesterday’s post I described it as an “all in” move for all involved; am I wrong?

I can’t pretend to see the logic at this stage, but I’ve said that whoever got the job would get a clean slate and support from this blog. I’ll stick to that and wish him every success because he’s got a monumental task ahead of him and failure is in none of our interests.

The summer ahead looks hectic with many important items jostling for immediate attention on the to do list: Ashley Young will obviously complete his move to Man Utd in due course. Stewart Downing is allegedly eyeing the exit door himself; good luck persuading him to stay. We have a pressing need for a goalkeeper amongst other positions. We only have three pre-season fixtures confirmed at the moment.

Not that it’s really much to do with McLeish, but we also have two shirt launches coming up. As I recall, the away shirt is due this month, the home shirt next month.

One plus point; the defense will at least get the overhaul required. McLeish’s ability to successful bolt our potent attacking force onto that back line is the cause, I believe, of biggest doubt among those of us scratching our heads at this appointment.

I will of course take a detailed look at his record when time allows and try to get a better feel for his approach to football. We all know he’s defensively minded, but there has to be more to him than that. Right? Right? Anyone?

There’s obviously lots more to come over the next couple of months, we’ll get through it all in time, but this isn’t Armageddon. The world won’t stop spinning. The club goes on. Let’s all just try to relax for a while and see what happens.

2011/12 Fixtures

Every year I tell myself I’m going to fly in the face of the archaic copyright laws that prevent me publishing the fixture list in full without paying an exorbitant license fee and every year I decide against it. This year will be no different, but if you haven’t seen the full list yet you can find the BBC’s list here.

What I will say is that the opening game will be at Craven Cottage (phew, lucky we didn’t appoint Hughes; that would have awkward), never an easy one, and that’s followed by two games at Villa Park to complete the August programme; Blackburn and Wolves. Could have been worse, could have been a little better.

As usual, it’s December that looks the most daunting with Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Man Utd all in the schedule, as well as trips to Bolton and Stoke. Obviously McLeish will need to have Villa in a reasonably comfortable position by then. We all saw the pressure Houllier was under as we flipped the calendar to 2011, 2012 could be the end of the world for one Scotsman at least.

But it shouldn’t come to that. We’ve now got just under two months to prepare, there’s no reason why we can’t be in good shape for next season. We’ll always score goals, however we play, and if we can stop shipping so many, we’ll pick up points. We’ll be fine.

As I’ve said in the past, whether you think McLeish can be successful in the job or not, there’s no question that it’s an impossible task if everyone works against him. He’s the manager of Aston Villa now, it’s the club we love and the right thing to do is provide support.

We might need some songs along the lines of Spurs fans when they couldn’t bring themselves to sing George Graham’s name though: “Man in the raincoat’s blue and white army”, they sang.

I wonder what we could come up with…

UTV and welcome to the best club you’ll ever work at Mr. McLeish!