There was a note of caution as well as plenty of optimism in Tim Sherwood’s message as he heralded a “new era” at Aston Villa on the back of a summer of change and he stated his belief that this will be the season when the Midlands club breaks a miserable five-year cycle of fighting relegation.
Full of praise for Randy Lerner’s financial support in the wake of the high-profile departures of Christian Benteke and Fabian Delph, Sherwood said that Villa supporters were entitled to turn up for Friday night’s sell-out home game against Manchester United with a spring in their step after seeing the best part of £50m invested in rebuilding the squad.
In keeping with a fresh approach to the transfer market, and an emphasis on identifying emerging talent from overseas – where Sherwood believes there is much greater value – Adama Traoré is set to become Villa’s 10th new signing of the summer, with the 19-year-old Barcelona winger on the verge of joining in a deal that could be worth up to £10m.
The word inside the club is that Lerner, who has spent the last few years looking to sell up without success, has been happy to support signings who are part of a more creative and thorough recruitment strategy, as opposed to approving deals that end up with players being discarded by the manager a few months later, which is what happened at times in the past.
“It’s good that the club have backed me,” Sherwood said, reflecting on the club’s transfer business. “Change is what was needed. We’ve sold a lot of players, so we needed to replenish. And we brought in a lot of money, so the owner has not put that back into his pocket, he’s invested into the squad, which we’re all very excited about.”
Sherwood said prior to the end of last season that he was convinced Villa would not flirt with relegation again if he managed to keep them up – they finished one place above the drop. Mindful of the fact that Benteke, the leading scorer in each of the last three seasons, and Delph, the captain, have departed since he made that statement, Sherwood was asked whether he still stands by his comments.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know it’s going to be difficult, and we have to realise that. We lost two very influential proven Premier League footballers. But it’s up to me to make sure that the ones we bring in to the club gel as quickly as possible. If we can consolidate this season, we’re only going to improve in the seasons ahead because it’s such a young group.”
Villa got an immediate return on one of their new signings when Rudy Gestede, a £6m recruit from Blackburn Rovers, came off the substitutes’ bench to score the winner at Bournemouth on Saturday. Sherwood made the point that Villa’s starting XI against Bournemouth showed 10 changes from the team that faced Arsenal in the FA Cup final less than three months ago – the revolving door at the club has also seen 11 players depart – and he has been involved in football long enough to know that everything is not going to fall into place overnight.
“It’s very early days,” he said, when asked how the current squad compares to the one he inherited from Paul Lambert. “We lost 47% of our goals last season with one player [Benteke]. So we need to start finding goals from other positions and winning games. The signings are only going to be any good if you start winning.”
In many respects Villa feel like something of an unknown quantity this season. Micah Richards and Scott Sinclair, both of whom have joined from Manchester City, are well known to English football fans, but the same cannot be said for several others, including Idrissa Gueye (£9m, Lille), Jordan Veretout (£8m, Nantes), Jordan Ayew (£10m, Lorient) and Jordan Amavi (£7.7m, Nice), all of whom were playing in Ligue 1 in France.
“Some of these foreign boys we’ve gone for are better than the English ones, they’ve played a lot more games at a very young age,” Sherwood said. “You look at the English boys, they’ve played five games and they cost the same amount as a guy who has played 200 games in Ligue 1. It doesn’t add up.”
At the same time, Sherwood recognises his foreign acquisitions will need a helping hand from the more experienced Premier League players. He reeled off a list of names, including Gabriel Agbonlahor, Ciaran Clark, Ashley Westwood, Brad Guzan, Alan Hutton and Richards to illustrate his point. “They’re going to have to be the big brothers in this period and make sure they help out this group,” Sherwood said. “There’s going to be times when [the players new to English football are] looking at each other and thinking: ‘What the hell is this Premier League all about? This is a tough place to be.’ And sometimes they need some reassurance from those guys who have played a lot of Premier League games, just to say: ‘This is normal, just calm down.’ They’ve got those guys to lean on and they’re going to be very important.”
Sherwood is anticipating a special atmosphere under the lights at Villa Park and said that his team, who will once again be without the injured Jack Grealish, will “fancy themselves” against United. “It will be packed to the rafters, Friday night football, a wonderful occasion for this football club, and a new era,” Villa’s manager said.
