It’s been a while since anything surfaced here at Aston Villa Central, I know. The last post confirmed Ashley Young’s somewhat low key move to Man Utd and since then very little of substance has actually happened. Well, the Stewart Downing “situation” has threatened to develop into a “saga”, but aside from a couple of actual bids from Liverpool being reported, nothing has changed yet; Downing is still an Aston Villa player. For now.

McLeish has stated categorically that he’s “not for sale”, but it’s abundantly clear that the player wants out. With two years on his contract, we either cash in now, or keep a disinterested, mardy player for another 12 months. That will inevitably lead to a sale at a reduced fee next summer to avoid losing him for bupkis the year after that. Sound familiar?

Downing’s value on the balance sheet after amortisation is about £6m at the moment, I’d imagine that McLeish would likely get anything we receive above that to replace him. Whether he’d get the full amount (Liverpool are reportedly ready to up their bid to £18m) remains to be seen.

Big cost players tend to come with big cost wages. We may have removed the likes of Carew, Sidwell, Reo-Coker, Davies, Friedel and Ashley Young from the payroll this year, but I doubt there will be a rush to eat into much of the slack. Just in case you’ve forgotten; Aston Villa lost £92m over the course of the three seasons preceding 2010/11. I’m not getting too excited about a reduction in wages this calendar year; the words “pissing” and “ocean” spring immediately to mind.

Something that stands out on McLeish’s C.V. is the fact that his Rangers side picked up more silverware than Martin O’Neill’s Celtic side during the four full season period (2001-2005) their time in Glasgow overlapped. McLeish picked up two league titles, two FA Cups and three League Cups to MON’s two league titles and two FA Cups during that time. Rangers were cutting costs at the time, Celtic were spending.

I’m just joining the dots here, I could be way off the mark, but I’m sure you see what I’m driving at.

Clean slates

I said whoever got the Villa job would get a clean slate and fair crack from me, for what it’s worth, and I stand by that. I’ve actually warmed to McLeish a lot. He’s said and done the right things in the little we’ve seen so far. If frugality is a key quality in the manager at the moment, as I suspect it is, then he’s certainly ticking a few boxes there.

Necessity is frequently the mother of invention, but McLeish has rightly extended his own clean slate policy to the players who won’t look back on 2010/11 with much fondness. Chiefly, the two Stephens; Ireland and Warnock. We all know that both players have more than acceptable levels of quality within them, if McLeish can extract that once more, if you’ll excuse the cliché, it will be like a couple of new signings.

That’s a pretty big if though.

Squad numbers

Should Ireland stay to have another crack (and selling him on would be no easy task by the way), he’ll have a fight on his hands if he wishes to hang on to the 9 shirt he took when he joined last summer. Darren Bent clearly has his eye on it and I don’t blame him, he’s definitely our number nine in terms of role.

Robert Pires has vacated the 8 shirt, of course, but that was available last summer when James Milner left it behind to take Ireland’s #7 at City. I assume Ireland didn’t fancy it then, but will he fancy it now?

Speaking of #7, that’s also now vacant, but am I alone in hoping to see that go to Marc Albrighton? Maybe Ireland will grab the 10 shirt while it’s available, although I’m hoping – probably in vain – that Barry Bannan will add one more item to my “Scottish Messi” check list.

Obviously Downing’s 6 shirt might yet become free, the 4 is still out there and Friedel’s number 1 is still available, although Shay Given is likely to take that in the very near future by all accounts. Not that Ireland would be taking it y’understand, I’m just saying.

The bottom line is that there are a lot of primo squad numbers available at the moment and one or two existing players will fancy having them on their backs next season. I’m not sure when we should expect to hear any announcement on changes in bulk, but if it’s sooner rather than later, it may provide some clues on potential new faces coming in.

Actually, I say that, but if you consider the current squad and the Premier League’s 25 man squad rule, you’ll see there isn’t much room at the inn for new players in any case. Look out for another post shortly where I’ll explain that in a little more detail.

Overall, although there’s still much to be done, we can now finally put a tumultuous season behind us, it’s good to start looking ahead to 2011/12. We don’t have the busiest set of pre-season fixtures lined up, but it’s now less than two weeks until the first friendly at Walsall which precedes a trip out to Hong Kong.

UTV