It’s hard to know where to begin at the moment, any thought I try to commit to the page risks spiralling into a 5,000 word mess. I’m sure you all have dozens of competing thoughts bouncing around inside your heads too. Whatever ends up here in this post, trust me, I’ve deleted more than remains. Chances are, this post doesn’t say now what I started out trying to say.

To keep things as brief as possible though, there are two subjects I want to touch on with this post, other thoughts may follow in due course.

Tapping up?

Firstly, the accusation from Birmingham City that we are guilty of tapping up Alex McLeish. This is a lose:lose situation, either way we’ll come out looking bad.

Doing so would be out of character to say the least given what we know about our approaches to other clubs during this process. Many things that have surfaced in the last couple of weeks make little sense, playing by the rules with everyone else while breaking them on this occasion is just one of them.

However, if we didn’t tap McLeish up, if we really are simply taking the unexpected opportunity to speak to a suddenly available manager because we’re bang out of other options, well it kills any last desperate hope that a carefully crafted plan was being carried out calmly behind closed doors.

The latest development is like getting a peek behind the curtain and seeing the “wizard”. It’s been a shock for a lot of people who really, really invested themselves emotionally in the belief that the wizard was real.

Hurt? Confused? Angry? Yeah, all of those for starters.

Most readers picked up on a tone within the recent communications – the official statement and comments attributed to General Krulak – which betrayed a certain irritation. It seemed to say ‘we hear and respect the fans feelings, but we run this club, not them’.

That’s absolutely correct too. Nothing worth running is run by committee, least of all a football club. Especially when that committee numbers tens of thousands, or hundreds with the biggest mouths and loudest voices.

But it leads me on to the second, and probably more important, subject…

The uphill battle

The subject of the new challenges faced when trying to manage a football club in the age of abundant and pervasive social media is something that’s been troubling me since the latter stages of Martin O’Neill’s time in charge. It’s a big subject worthy of its own post another time.

Nevertheless, however you might have felt about the appointment of Gerard Houllier at the time, I hope that you’re willing to accept that significant numbers were against him and publicly derided him at every opportunity.

Each of the numerous molehills – and they were numerous – were turned into a mountain and, without the results to negate them, those mountains formed a range. Houllier may be many things, Edmund Hillary he is not.

Yes, I’ll concede over and over that Houllier did things to make his own life difficult that he may not repeat if he could do it all again. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that he was fighting an uphill battle from the outset.

That was Houllier. You can take that hill and incline it to near vertical for McLeish. When it comes to the task ahead of him, I just hope he’s handy with ropes and carabiners. A Sherpa Tenzing or two among his team wouldn’t hurt either.

Autonomy

Randy and Paul Faulkner seemed to have painted themselves into something of a corner. Having reportedly responded to negative fan reaction to the news of Steve McLaren being a candidate, they are now facing a genuinely large backlash at the prospect of bringing McLeish in.

You don’t have to look far to find it; at least one moron chose to graffiti his or her feelings on the outside wall of Bodymoor Heath, an astonishing 15,000 people have “liked” an anti-McLeish Facebook group – although that takes no more effort than clicking a button – and a protest is happening right now at Villa Park for the delight of the cameras and amusement of neutrals watching at home.

Acquiesce to that pressure once again and it’s difficult to see how they retain the autonomy necessary to manage the club – although anyone but McLeish may become more palatable by comparison. That in itself might be a win, assuming they can find someone willing to be 7th or 8th choice, or whatever it would be by now.

Going against such unrest, as they appear determined to do, would effectively be a ballsy “all in” move that demands tangible success on the pitch to buy some space. And early success too. With fans more than likely helping to foster conditions for failure; it’s hard to see anything but disastrous consequences.

Ultimately, it’s all a huge mess and one that raises more questions than it answers. We’re right to hold the board’s feet to flames right now, but we should probably reserve some questions for ourselves. For instance, are we our own worst enemies when it comes to voicing our opinions? If you could have the chance over again, knowing what you know now, would you be so hostile towards the prospect of Steve McLaren being the next Aston Villa manager? If fit, how would Gerard Houllier look right now?

Hindsight is always 20/20.

I can’t pretend to find the idea of Alex McLeish managing Aston Villa as anything but abhorrent and I’m struggling to see the bright future we’ve talked about for so long at the moment. I’d like to think that there’s some possibility of someone else being handed the reigns, but all roads are currently leading to McLeish. Sadly. It looks bleak.

I said previously that whoever gets the job gets a clean slate and backing from me, for all that’s worth. I didn’t think that would include McLeish and I’m still absolutely stunned that he’s a probability, but I’ve seen various blogs churn out agenda driven negative drivel in the past and I stopped reading them myself. I’ve no intention of following suit, then, it’s counter productive in my opinion.

The lessons of the past are there to be learned by both club and fans. As George Santayana said: “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.