Mr. Randy Lerner, let me get this straight. The EPL team you own, Aston Villa, flirts with relegation a season after flirting with Champions League qualification. Your fan base isn't thrilled by the experience but is happy in the knowledge that they can head for their summer holidays content that cross-city archrivals, Birmingham City, actually did get relegated.
And what do you do? Reportedly hire the last manager in the world your fans would ever want in their dugout: the Championship-bound Blues' ex-boss Alex McLeish.
It simply defies belief.
Mr. Lerner, did you not learn anything from hiring Eric Mangini to coach your Cleveland Browns? The Penguin had posted a 23-25 record in three seasons with the New York Jets when you hired him. The Dawg Pound was howling, but you didn't listen. Two five-win seasons later, the fans took no joy in having been right all along as Mangini was shown the exit.
Back in Birmingham, the Holte End is up in arms at the McLeish appointment. Big Eck's mentor Sir Alex Ferguson is singing his old central defender's praises (which -- considering that Mangini's coaching mentor Bill Belichick could barely shake his hand when their teams faced each other in the NFL -- must be some kind of positive sign for Villa fans), but the good knight would probably say the same about Mark Hughes and Steve Bruce. And Villa fans have no interest in them either.
Being a soccer fan is an irrational experience (I'm a lifelong West Brom fan, I know of what I speak), but in this case the over-the-top emotional reaction speaks volumes to the Villa fans' worst fears: They don't want their team to become like the other so-called West Midlands sleeping giants, the Blues, the Wolves and my beloved Baggies, regular commuters on the EPL-Championship elevator.
Villa fans were sweating relegation for a time last season, which, while enjoyable for some of us, was clearly not for them. They probably take no comfort in the fact that every team from Liverpool down to West Ham spent some time last season contemplating a fate worse than an Anthony Weiner news conference.
It's not that McLeish doesn't have a solid pedigree as a manager; his record in Scottish football with Motherwell, Hibs and Rangers was outstanding. He did a good job with the Scotland national team and he won the League Cup with the Blues last season. His resume is pretty similar to Martin O'Neill's, and no one was marching down the Trinity Road when the former Celtic boss elected to sit on the Villa hot seat.
O'Neill worked wonders at Villa (and, by the way, would do the same for the U.S. national team if Sunil Gulati ever gets serious about beating the big boys instead of getting on FIFA committees), but Lerner wouldn't open his checkbook to support his shrewd manager's plans. When James Milner was allowed to follow another former Villa favorite, Gareth Barry, to Manchester City last August it was the last straw for O'Neill. And players (or at least their agents) can see the writing on the Witton End wall along with the fans. Ashley Young seems on his way to Manchester United, Brad Friedel's off to Spurs, and Stewart Downing could be heading to Liverpool.
Mr. Lerner, your fans are right to be worried. Of late, you seem OK with a parade of international-caliber players walking out the door each offseason. And then hiring retreads (both players and managers) to rouse the remaining troops. Your fans don't see that as a recipe for success, but as the latest EPL American-ownership nightmare.
Of course, they probably don't know what you know -- that the sainted Belichick once resigned as the head coach of the New York Jets and headed to AFC East archrivals, the New England Patriots, and won three Super Bowls (and counting.)
But Mr. Lerner, there is no draft in the EPL to turn a team around and put it on the road to a title. Only big money can do that, not Big Eck.