When Aston Villa fans endured the desperate tortures of recent years, they could never have imagined they would see a week like this one.
When they watched their side go ten hours without scoring a goal – or even consider creating the conditions where they would have the opportunity to score a goal – they would have felt it preposterous to suggest that days like these would come.
They have suffered much, but last week Aston Villa fans had to contain themselves when David Bernstein and Adrian Bevington were reunited. And at their club.
For years, people had said that if only these guys could get together again in the same room then millions would rejoice. This is how previous generations felt when Simon & Garfunkel walked out at Central Park.
Surely they have had their differences – which creative partnership doesn’t? – but Villa can at last think about better days now that Bevington & Bernstein are on the case.
Their previous experience with England may have some relevance, but they are entering a new world at Aston Villa, a world which would challenge even the finest. Maybe especially the finest.
Before the last World Cup, Bevington appeared on Sky Sports and calmed the hysteria that always builds in the country at this time.
“I’ve heard some rumours about mattresses and beds,” the presenter said as England began to expect, to lose itself in the endless possibilities of what might be.
“We might take bedding,” Bevington said, lowering expectations in that assured way of his, and confirming nothing in the controversial and now topical area of sleep.
Bevington went on to explain that the search for good communal areas in a hotel was “an absolutely crucial element of what we do”. He was a man in complete control of his brief.
Bevington was, of course, managing director of Club England, a title which needs no further explanation, while Bernstein became chairman of the FA shortly after the World Cup in 2010, when there may well have been good communal areas in the hotel, but they were nullified somewhat by the players’ fear that they might encounter Fabio Capello in those areas.
If working with England so successfully is about managing expectation, then Aston Villa is surely about finding something – anything – to be hopeful about. Right now, a good communal area in a hotel is a distant dream.
Villa have been worn down and destroyed. The sad reign of Remi Garde became a story of relentless and pointless grind, a statement about the futility of life like some Scandinavian film about an assistant undersecretary in the Department of Lights who leaves an empty house each morning to go to work silently in a joyless office, while waiting patiently and mournfully for the winter.
Garde was a marginal figure, even as he took this central role, a man who deserved more than this, like so many do, a manager whose most creative task was to find another way of talking about every inevitable defeat.
But that is in the past. Bevington and Bernstein are conducting a review into Aston Villa’s season and where it went wrong.
“I think up to now there’s been a surprising lack of football expertise at board level,” Bernstein said last week. “It will be for us to look at the structures we’ve got here and just get things into shape. Like with any organisation, we need to look at the whole thing from top to bottom in terms of personnel.”
The review will be interesting because the problems at Aston Villa haven’t been hiding in plain sight. They have simply been in plain sight.
COMMENT: The day Martin O'Neill was allowed to walk was the day Randy Lerner doomed Aston Villa, possibly for good https://t.co/lMswprtbzA
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) February 19, 2016
The Telegraph reported last week that Garde was not the only man in trouble. Paddy Riley, the head of recruitment, may soon be on his way.
“Riley is responsible for organising and appointing Villa’s scouting network and it is alleged that head European scout Jon Bickers, whose main focus is players in the Bundesliga, has emigrated to Australia,” the Telegraph said. “Simon Ward, the regional scouting manager, is studying journalism at university although his remit is to watch players in La Liga and Portugal.”
It is a global game now so maybe it is possible to allegedly emigrate to Australia – or actually emigrate to Australia – while keeping on top of the Eintracht Frankfurt left-back’s progress this season.
Villa could argue that these are matters of perception, that it is also possible to study journalism and watch players in La Liga and Portugal, without any real loss of focus.
But they seem to point to a greater confusion. A year ago Villa were moving forward serenely into sunlit uplands that were a central part of the management style of Tim Sherwood. In the summer they decided to marry the enthusiasm and plain speaking of Sherwood with more cerebral forces, taking some steps away from the instinctive passion of Sherwood, in truth an instinctive passion for himself, and towards a better world. In theory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzhC0sNYtuU
In reality, they continued to become a case study – one of many – in how to destroy anything that is good, or half-decent. The Bernstein & Bevington review may well become compelling reading for anyone who wants to understand that culture, the prevailing culture of our time, where creativity is replaced by austerity, not just as a necessary measure, but as a means of destroying the talented and creative, and replacing them with a new level of malfunctioning bureaucracy.
Villa may have become bloated under Martin O’Neill, but most of what has occurred since demonstrates what happens when the dead hand of austerity becomes the only show in town.
The last eighteen months has seen Villa become a shining city upon a hill for this new culture. They flocked there with the promise of impressive job titles which conceal more than they reveal. Bernstein shouldn’t have been surprised by the “surprising lack of football expertise” because expertise is often viewed suspiciously in this world.
But Villa supporters can now believe in change. They have Bernstein & Bevington on the case, the Clough & Taylor of the detailed internal review. Things can only get better.
