The Turn of the Tide

Being a Villa fan has been difficult over the last five years. They've gone from consistently fighting for a place in Europe to regularly fighting for Premier League survival.

A week ago today seemed to be an all time low for me personally. The manager had been sacked*, the players were starting to revolt, the club was cutting back costs more than ever and the new season was looking the bleakest I've seen. At that point I could see nothing other than relegation on the horizon.

At the point of writing this, there have been three parties expressing an interest in buying Aston Villa. Little is known about Athole Still's consortium but Randy Lerner is a billionaire and Michael Neville has made a £64 million bid with a (new) consortium of his own.

Could this be the changing of the wind?

Could years of deflation and embarrassment be replaced by pride and shear delight?

One thing is for sure, I won't believe it until the club is sold and a new manager is appointed.

If we do have some money for the new manager then there's a real chance we could get Martin O'Neill. Not only is he one of the finest managers in the land (though apparently not fine enough to manage England) but in hiring him there would be the added bonus of hiring a manager that rejected to work for both Manchester United and Chelsea.

As I've said, nothing is certain yet but I do have something I haven't had for almost five years... hope.

* No one has actually said the manager was sacked but I doubt he'd walk out on the job and loose all that compensation. Confidentiality agreements prevent DO'L from saying what really happened so we'll probably never know for sure. It's a fair assumption to say he was sacked though.

STOP PRESS

Lerner has just pulled out, this is a bit disappointing to say the least (Billionaires are usually better than millionaires) but as long as there is at least one interested party things are still looking up.