Other articles may feature more literary quotations. This one, in a statement of the blinding obvious, will quote Wikipedia and its definition of association football, otherwise known as football or soccer.
“The object of the game is to score by getting the ball into the opposing goal,” it reads.
Someone tell Aston Villa. Someone tell manager Paul Lambert. His team did not score on Saturday. It scarcely qualifies as news when they do not. Earlier this season, Villa equalled their club record by going five league games without a goal. Now they have failed to score in their past four.
They display astonishing levels of impotence. In 21 league matches they have scored only 11 goals this season, the fewest in all four divisions in England. They have managed only one in two Cup games against lower-division opponents. They have mustered fewer than QPR’s Charlie Austin, a forward who had never previously played top-flight football, has managed on his own this season.
Villa couldn’t hold a goal-of-the-month contest in October. They didn’t score a goal in the month. Gabriel Agbonlahor was September’s winner by a process of default. He scored their only goal that month. Yet Agbonlahor is an England international forward. Andreas Weimann, the other joint top scorer, is a fine finisher. Christian Benteke is a striker who has attracted the attention of much wealthier clubs.
It is not as though they are particularly profligate. Villa don't score goals because they don't create chances. They have had fewer shots on target and attempts in general than anyone else in the Premier League. They don't offer excitement or entertainment, just a strange sense of never-ending futility.
Supporters called for Lambert to be sacked during Saturday’s 1-0 defeat at Leicester City. They are unlikely to get their wish not least because, in one of the season’s strangest decisions, the Scot was granted a new four-year contract in September.
If the two prime requirements for supporters are a few goals and a few games to savour at their own ground, Lambert has failed abysmally on both fronts. Villa have won only 13 of 48 home league games in his two-and-a-half year reign. They have only struck seven times at Villa Park this season.
Needless to say, it is the lowest tally posted at home in the country. It is why, as Villa somehow have 22 points, despite scoring 11 times, the revolt about his management is not actually about their league position (13th, although only three points above 19th), nor the finances that some use to excuse Lambert’s ongoing underachievement. It is because Villa are often unwatchable. Because their manager, who looks mildly bemused when asked anything, seems to have few answers.
In Lambert’s first season, there was talk of transition. Now there is not. Villa are either going nowhere or going backwards, even if their habit of pulling off the occasional high-profile triumph means they are unlikely to go down.
Nor are there any obvious principles underpinning his management. He started with young players. Now he has an experienced side. He used to play a counter-attacking style. The problem was that Villa were strangers to the ball. Now they have possession without penetration. It is a different sort of mediocrity, a Tom Cleverley-coated blandness.
It prompts the question of where it will end. Much like Alan Pardew’s relationship with the Newcastle fans, Lambert’s standing with the Villa supporters appears beyond repair. At the moment, his major skill is surviving.
Besides losing games, over the last year, Lambert has lost his chief executive, Paul Faulkner; his football operations manager, Gary Karso; two assistant managers, first Ian Culverhouse and then Roy Keane; and even his press officer, Brian Doogan, who joined Everton. Come the summer and he will surely lose his best defender, Ron Vlaar, and his most coveted midfielder, Fabian Delph. Both are out of contract and admired elsewhere. They have few reasons to stay.
So perhaps it will be just the supporters left, paying excessive prices to watch uninteresting football. It is little wonder they chorus “we want our Villa back”.
Villa are former European Cup winners, seven-times champions and veterans of 104 seasons in the top flight. Lambert’s tenure has provided some of the lower points in their history. Fans often get accused of harbouring unrealistic expectations or of being impatient when they call for a manager’s head. But why should they want more of the same?
sports@thenational.ae
Follow us on Twitter @SprtNationalUAE
