Top Four Part 3: I don’t believe we can crack the top four

By: Martini Extra Dry | November 2nd, 2008

How bad is that?
- The player who spent all summer long trying to leave Villa is confident in our Champions League potential.
- Alex Ferguson, the manager who usually only defends his own team, has confidence in our top four potential.
- I, a hardened Villa fan all my life, have doubts!

It’s not that I’m a miserable bastard or a non-believer in our quality, I just feel that the top four are too far away from the rest to be caught right now. We are currently within reach of third place, I know, but come the end of the season I see fifth as our realistic goal.

However, with the way we have been heading for the last few years and with the apparent intentions and determination of Randy Lerner, Martin O’Neill et al, it does look like we can begin to break in this season and then next season make it our main goal.

Oooh love, it’s gonna cost you
It isn’t going to be easy and it’s definitely not going to be cheap, but if we buy shrewdly next summer and hold on to our key players (Gareth Barry and Ashley Young being the main two that teams will target) we should have way more chance than anyone else. Even Man City.

With Man City, I don’t see the dedication that Abramovich gave and I also don’t see Mark Hughes doing the job that Mourinho did. Sure, he can go out and make ridiculous offers on the greatest players on earth but there is a heck of a lot more to football than buying 11 stars. Martin O’Neill is perfect proof of this.

Good management acumen
O’Neill bought a young winger (Ashley Young) from bottom of the league Watford, and everyone said that he’d ben ripped off for such an unproven quantity, but he turned out to be one of the most instrumental players in our team. He swapped Milan Baros, one of the most useless wastes of space that I’ve ever seen (being able to control the ball would’ve been a start for him), for John Carew, another instrumental player in our team. He also brought out the best football of his career from Gareth Barry; he moved him into the middle of the park and made him captain, two moves that not just made him phenomenal for us but also re-ignited his England career, culminating in him being a regular in the national side.

What O’Neill has forged at Villa is a ‘team’. Not just a group of players all playing for themselves, but a unit that work together and play a team game.

It’s not just on the pitch either. The backroom staff and the fans are all loving these good times at Villa Park too. The buzz around every game is fantastic and even if we don’t make top four, achieving fifth will be a great season for us.