Year Three
Ian Symes - June 1, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
So, we firmly established last week that last season was bloody excellent and we’re very happy with our lot, thank you very much. Martin O’Neill has always said he’s got a five-year plan to take the club back to the top, and it all seems to be on track so far. 2006/07 was all about consolidation, and steadying a previously doomed ship. 2007/08 saw us joyfully leap five places in the table and qualify for some sort of European competition for the first time in six years. So what’s next?
Well, there’s some obvious short-term goals during the summer. Number one is to keep hold of Gareth Barry. There aren’t many better players in his position in the Premier League, nay the world. There are a small proportion of players in our squad that are already Top Four quality, and we’ve got to hold on to the ones we’ve got if we’re ever going to increase that proportion.
We also need to be prolific in the transfer market. Three consecutive transfer windows of caution need to give way to serious reinforcements. We need two right-backs, one to fill in Mellberg’s role and one, y’know, just so we can have a right-back. We also need one or two keepers, depending on whether Carson stays and whether Stuart Taylor’s prepared to spend another season on the bench. A right-sided equivalent of Ashley Young would be a godsend, and I think we need one more striker, left-back, centre-back and central-midfielder for strength in depth. So that’s a net gain of eight players between now and September required. Optimistic? Certainly, but not beyond the realms of possibility.
But here comes the nitty-gritty of our goals for next season: where do we want to be at the end of it? Well, by my reckoning there’s four things we’d like to see happen next year, and we need to achieve a minimum of two of these things in order to view the season as a success. Doesn’t matter which two, as any combination would maintain the steady yet overwhelming progress that Martin has made so far.
#1. Consolidate Sixth Place
This should be the bare minimum, really – we’ll definitely have gone wrong if we finish any lower than we did last year. We need to prove that we’re not one of those teams that skips between mid-table and Europe without much chance of breaking the borders of either extreme. Plus, the law of averages states that next season sixth place will probably be enough to qualify for the UEFA Cup – all it will take is any team finishing in the top five to win one or more of the League Cup, FA Cup or UEFA Cup, and I can’t see that scenario being avoided two years running.
So what will it take to get us there? Just… not being shit, really. Everton will be there or there abouts, and I think either Spurs or Newcastle are due for one of their occasional sojourns away from mid-table. Pompey will be lurking ominously, as will Blackburn and possibly Man City, depending on what their loony human-rights-offender of a chairman is up to. The Premier League as a whole will be, in my opinion, of a slightly lower quality next season, in terms of the twenty clubs involved; Reading are arguably better than West Brom, Blues are (just about) better than Stoke, and Hull are one of very few clubs that Derby would fancy their chances against. If we avoid slip-ups against the piss-poor teams, and improve our record against our fellow Europe-chasers, we should be alright.
#2. Win a Trophy
It’s been a bloody long time since we won one of these, I tell you. There have been opportunities since we demolished Leeds 12 years ago, most notably against Chelsea in the Cup Final that will be forever etched in the memory of nobody whatsoever. We’ve fallen at the penultimate hurdle in the League Cup a couple of times too, both of which were down to comically poor performances against average teams in the semis. Other than that, we’ve mostly conspired to get ourselves knocked out against lower division opposition in recent years, and have always ended up kicking ourselves.
It’s the League Cup that probably offers our best route to silverware in the coming season. Despite a lot of top four presence in recent finals, you get the feeling that if we managed to compose ourselves enough to reach the final, we’d fancy ourselves on a neutral venue. The FA Cup is a different story all together, with the weight and the pressure of not only the 2000 Final but the last 51 years of cup failure on our shoulders. But who knows, maybe if we don’t get fucking drawn against fucking United in the third round again, we could at least put a decent run together.
And no, the Intertoto Cup won’t count if we win that… just look at Paul Merson’s embarrassed face when he had to lift the roll-on-deodorant-shaped curiosity in 2001.
#3. Have a Good UEFA Cup Run
Of course, we’ve got to get through the Intertoto Cup and the qualifying rounds first, but let’s just assume for a moment that we do get through the competition proper (not least because the alternative is too hideous to contemplate). The UEFA Cup has such a weird format at the moment, like the bastard offspring of its former self and the Champions League, bulking itself out with an unconvincingly tacked-on group stage. Five teams in each group, playing each other once each, with three teams going through to the knock-out stage, where they’ll be joined by eight Champions League drop-outs in a pool of 32.
So, we’ve got to fancy ourselves to get through to the knock-out stage, haven’t we? Our eventual success or failure will fall largely on the size of our squad, but the players we’ve got so far are good enough to see us through. From that point on, anything could happen, but note that my aim is for a “good run”, not necessarily to win the competition. No matter how far we get, the main thing we want out of the campaign is one of those nights. Beating Inter 2-0 at home was glorious, even though we lost the away leg 3-0. Beating them again on penalties was even better, even though it was only in the first round and we got knocked out against a piss-poor Turkish side in the second. Beating Athletico Madrid in the quarter finals was one of the best games I’ve ever been to, even though we went out on away goals. That’s what we want from Europe, and I can’t wait to see if we can recapture that spirit.
#4. Break in to The Top Four
You may scoff, but it could happen. Everton did it a few years back, and Spurs would have done a couple of years ago if they hadn’t all eaten some dodgy lasagne. Even we nearly did it in 2004, when we went into the final day of the season still having a chance of finishing fourth, and that was under O’Leary! All it takes is for, say, Arsenal or Liverpool to have a wobble, which seems entirely possible to me. Even Chelsea aren’t as cosy as they’d like to think, with Abramovich seeming to creep ever so gently closer to getting bored with his plaything and demanding his six hundred million quid back. We want to challenge for the highest honours at some point soon, so we need to make the breakthrough sooner or later.
Admittedly, qualifying for the Champions League does seem like somewhat of a pipe dream at the moment, but the progress we’ve made in the last two years has allowed us to dare to believe. If you look at our current team, you’d be forgiven for saying that Villa in the Champions League would be like Derby in the Premier League. But bearing in mind everything that’s happened so far, the Villa team of two years from now is another matter…
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