Martin O’Neill offered £30 million to bring in the good times

By: Martini Extra Dry | October 16th, 2008

Well at least that’s what the rumours claim. In reality, this appears to be a story created by the Daily Mirror to make a stir and sell papers. But thats not to say it isn’t true. Of course it’s true. Randy Lerner has already made it clear that he is willing to spend a lot of his hard earned wonga to bring in good quality players with the intention of bringing back the good times to Villa Park.

Breaking into the top four
The Mirror says that O’Neill and Lerner held a meeting earlier in the week and discussed Villa’s plans to break into the top four and play some Champions League. Well, it’s certainly a way to help Randy recoup some of his cash but is it plausible? Can we really make it into the top four?

It’s a tough one to call really, maybe we could but it’ll take a few years, at best. And the rumours flying around link us with Kevin Doyle, Emile Heskey and Joleon Lescott, who aren’t really of the ilk that will raise us up to top four. They are more the kind of players to maintain our top six position.

The gulf between fifth and fourth being as big as it is means that the olden day style of boosting morale and managing better etc are now totally outweighed by buying power. The top players nowadays will just flat out refuse to join anyone other than the Big Four. What about Robinho then? I hear you say, well OK, he didn’t join one of the Big Four but if anything it just proves my point because he only joined Man City when they were taken over by Abu Dhabi United Group and became the richest club in the world. Prior to that twist of fortunes he was set to join Chelsea.

Years back a team could be promoted from the second division and the win the top flight the following year. Each year gave a possible list of five or six teams who you could well imagine winning the league and that list would change every year. These days we have four, which is the same four every year and of that four you could usually round it down to two most years.

In the Prem’s 16 years it has been won 10 times by Man Utd. Blackburn are the only team outside the Big Four to have ever won it. Liverpool have never managed it, so even being part of the Big Four can still leave you a long way from title winning.

Money seems the only way top break in. It’s how Chelsea did it. They were floating around third spot before Abramovich came along. Do we have the kind of money that will make us good enough to compete for a top four place? Sadly the answer is ‘Most likely not’. Especially with Man City now vying to buy their way into it too. (For the uniniated, Abu Dabi United Group have ’slightly’ more money than Randy Lerner)

But that doesn’t mean we can’t do it, it just means it will be a lot of hard work and patience… and a LOT of casheesh! The fans need to be supporting us to the hilt, the ‘twelfth man effect’ we can create at Villa Park will help a lot and Martin O’Neill will need to be very very shrewd in the transfer market.

Transfer market shrewdness is something he has already proved he’s capable of though, take the example of John Carew. We got him in a swap deal for that bumbling oaf Milan Baros. I tried to be a Baros fan when we signed him but it was a struggle, then after watching him totally fail to control a ball, never mind hold it up (or, god forbid, put it in the back of the net), it just became all too easy to hate him. By the time he left us he was beyond useless, diabolical would barely even cut it to describe how bad he was… and then O’Neill managed to swap him for Carew! OK Carew isn’t the best sriker in the world but he’s bloody good and he was free. In fact he was better than free, we got him in exchange for some old rope that was hanging around and getting everyone down!

Morale needs to stay high and the transfer budget needs to stay high. Then, and only then, can our league position stay high.