In this weeks pod myself and the mercurial Ollie briefly touch on how poor the bottom two EPL sides are. Yes you guessed it, Aston Villa and Newcastle. Both teams have had impressive campaigns in the past with cup finals and title challenges and we all would of ‘loved it if we beat them!!’, but recent years have been unkind to the huge fan bases of these two giants of Football’s past. All l can say as a fan is, they both brought it on themselves. 

Newcastle have been relegated from the Premier league and by some sort of irony it was Villa who sent them, and then interim manager and Toon legend Alan Shearer, packing to the Championship. As for Villa, we are one of those elite teams that have stayed in the mix from its inception but have just broken the record for the lowest points tally this far into the season. An award taken from Derby’s ill fated season stay in the big league. 

I’m now going to find reason in why Newcastle are up the Tyne without a paddle and Villa are as dead as British Layland. Well I think it’s a couple of things and both their troubles start when it should have been more promising times, when both clubs were sold!! Doug Ellis and Sir John Hall both sold their control in the clubs for different reasons. Hall had a health scare and gave control to Freddy Sheppard but sold most of his share to Mike Ashley, and an ageing deadly Doug was feeling the pressure from the Villa faithful and sold to Randy Lerner. Both these moments set the wheels in motion for both clubs decline.

With Newcastle it was trouble from the top. Right when Ashley became the main share holder he made a string of poor managerial selections and hardly any investment into the squad. He ran it like a business, a good business, but we all know in the world of the EPL you need to spend big on players and also on a manger these days, so the toon went down. Yes they came back up but never really recovered and are back in trouble again. Steve McClaren maybe forever immortalised as the “wally with the brolly” but he is a half decent tactical coach but not even he can get those players going. The Newcastle players are not there for the club or the fight but the wage in my point of view.

As for Villa it is a tiny bit different.  When Lerner came in he did invest and pushed for the Champions League which we failed to achieve. So with the then manager Martin O’Neill expressing his wish to buy some more quality, Lerner shot him down and sold off the remaining good stock of players and went cost cutting because he realised that running a football club is expensive. Now look where we are, bottom of the biggest money spinning league in the world and looking very much doomed. He is trying to sell the club to “help the fans” and no one wants it because of two reason.

-The investment needed in the squad.

-The asking price for a team that has been fighting relegation for five season.               

It’s not an outstanding deal is it, and being on five points from fourteen games with Christmas coming we could be all but done by the end of January. I know both sets of supporters are proud, I am a Villa fan so I know, but do both clubs deserve to go down! Yes, I say they do, because one thing that rings out is the myth that these two clubs are big, massive, huge clubs because in all fairness we are nowhere near. History is nice but both clubs history won’t keep them in the league. Only points can do that.

MS