I’m getting a little irked with a lot of the reporting around Villa in recent times. Let me be clear; I couldn’t be happier that Nigel Reo-Coker is going to be wearing the armband and will also be negotiating a new contract at the club, regular readers will know I’m a fan. However, you’d think from the way it’s being portrayed that NRC had been exiled to Siberia and was literally coming in from the cold.

Obviously Reo-Coker isn’t top of Martin O’Neill’s Christmas card list, and we know the way things were going it looked very much like he’d be seeing out his contract and would be off next summer, but to paint the man who remained the club’s vice-captain as entirely persona non grata is certainly pushing the boundaries of accuracy.

That alone wouldn’t be too bothersome, I can understand the need for journalists and bloggers to pad their work with an interesting narrative, but it’s part of a general theme I’ve spotted where situations at Villa have been credited as change-under-a-new-regime when they’re nothing of the kind.

Here are a few examples of developments that became patterns during pre-season, but weren’t even brand new during the summer:-

• Ashley Young played behind the main striker, or “in the hole” as it’s frequently described.
• Aston Villa played variants of 4-5-1, even the 4-2-3-1 I love so much.
• Marc Albrighton played. A lot.
• Villa played some nice, possession based, passing football.
• Nigel Reo-Coker played.
• Nigel Reo-Coker captained the side at least once (Walsall) and took over the armband at other times.

[All the blog posts from pre-season are archived here]

I’ve absolutely no desire or need to detract from anything that Kevin MacDonald or Gérard Houllier brought to the first team, or, indeed, to paint O’Neill in a better light than he deserves, but it’s just a case of credit where it’s due.

It may have only been pre-season, but everything in the list above happened and was wisely continued into the season proper, despite MON spitting his dummy just five days before it kicked off, but somehow has been cited as evidence of the changes both KMac and GH were able to install in just a matter of days at the helm.

No. Sorry if you weren’t paying attention during the summer, or over the last couple of seasons either for that matter, but much of the good work on the pitch lately, heralded as something never before seen at Aston Villa is nothing of the sort.

I’ve even seen credit for Monday’s open training day being assigned to Gérard Houllier. Even if the club had never done it before, would it be the manager or the marketing department who would most want to let the public and cameras get a look at the team “training”?

On the other side of the coin, to explain our poor position in the league, I’ve seen the blame pointed squarely at the decidedly “average squad” that MON assembled and GH inherited. The same squad that are largely responsible for finishing in the top six of the top flight three seasons in a row for the first time since 1933. A top flight that’s more difficult to crack into than in any time in history. Yup, that’s a crap team alright, how could we expect them to be anywhere other than mid-table?

So I don’t know whether a lot of what I’ve read lately is just an attempt to create compelling copy, a real attempt at revisionism or just borne out of pure ignorance, but it certainly doesn’t have much grounding in reality very often.

Of course, there are clear changes and improvements at Villa Park which are extremely welcome and Martin O’Neill certainly had his faults, but to read some opinions floating around you’d think all MON’s side did was hoof it to the big man and all Houllier’s side does is pass it around like a Brummy Barcelona.

As ever, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle, but the loudest voices are always at the extremes.

Rant over, thanks for indulging me.