Gerard Houllier’s appointment concludes a summer of dithering at Villa

The summer break afforded to football is at first glance an annoying distraction, as hungry fans of the beautiful game are subjected to dull and unnecessarily lengthy sports involving bats and rackets and everyone wearing the same colour.

Its purpose seems to be to provide tabloids with an opportunity to dig up dirt on footballers who have been scoring out of wedlock and occasionally stealing a cheeky smoke, as everyone waits impatiently for the return of the club season.

It does though serve a practical use, but if anybody is searching for any evidence of this at Villa Park they will have a long and extensive hunt on their hands.

Moving with all the elegance of a rhino in tap shoes and a tutu, Villa have struggled through a summer that was seemingly mired in treacle.

However, after extensive dithering and refusing to make big decisions the club can now look forward to the rest of the season with Gerard Houllier as manager.

The former Liverpool and Lyon gaffer’s appointment should finally conclude this indecisiveness, as the club can now begin to make choices with someone at the helm.

The departure of Martin O’Neill could be blamed for most of the clubs dithering, but even his atrociously timed wandering off from the club, doesn’t explain the whole lot.

From the end of May until the transfer window closed at the end of September, Villa managed to avoid engaging in any business that wasn’t a branch of a part-exchange, due to an internal wrangle between O’Neill and Lerner that took over two months to resolve.

No one was seemingly willing to take a strong stance and address the looming elephant-in-the-room of a problem and instead opted to tip-toe around it for fear of waking it.

Since Randy Lerner took over the running of Villa in 2006 though, positive and decisive decisions have been made for the benefit of the club, but seemingly this ability faded from him in the summer months and along with O’Neill, the pair blindly buried their head in the sand until they were both suffocated by the issue.

Perhaps in honour of last season’s sixth place finish and two trips to Wembley, the club has been seemingly stuck in an alternate paradox, where nobody wanted to make a decision and progress the club forward and away from the memory of those halcyon days.

This ability to stretch out the excruciating has only ever been seen once before in the form of Carlton Palmer’s career that inexplicably propelled him into the England squad. Fans of his have claimed that he was a workhorse on the pitch and he covered every blade of grass, but that was only because his first touch was crap.

Gerard Houillier’s appointment is at least a silver lining on the dithering cloud that has hung over Villa Park, as he’s a manager of great repute, who was won trophies at Liverpool, PSG and Lyon, but don’t mention his time as the French national coach to either him or David ‘because I’m worth it’ Ginola.

Undoubtedly a noted coach with an impressive track record across Europe, Houllier is rightly admired as an accomplished figure. His reputation precedes him and the prospect of having a manager who can attract players from beyond these shores is an exciting prospect.

Whether he’ll bring the trophy winning glory days of his time at Liverpool and Lyon is yet to be seen, as there is also a chance that his predilection for overpaying for some of Leaguer 1s worst could make a return a to the Premier League.

Hopefully Villa Park will be spared the likes of Bruno Cheyrou, Bernard Diomede and Igor Biscan, as Houllier looks to stamp his authority on a club that could build further upon the groundwork that O’Neill has laid.

Now that the dithering has ceased and the basics have been sorted out, fans will be able revel in any future glory at the club and show their support for the players by wearing the clubs new shirt. Soon. Ish.

Posted By Dan Mobbs - Thursday September 9, 2010.
Tags: Aston Villa, Premier League