A Deadly Overdose

This is the time when every football fan is looking forward with eager anticipation to the new season - scanning the fixture list, checking out the friendlies, lapping up all the gossip about transfer comings and goings.

Everyone, that is, except the Villa fans – because this great old club is stuck in a rut, paralysed by indecision, devoid of activity and utterly drained of optimism. Signings? There’s no sign of them. And while players anxious to move on continue to be priced out of the market there won’t be any money for them either.

There was talk of new investment, but it’s said that Chairman Doug Ellis has so overvalued the club that all the interested parties seem to have faded into the shadows. Their reluctance to pay over the odds to rescue a club so steeped in gloom and despondency is entirely understandable, just as the Chairman’s grim determination to cling to power well into his dotage is not. ‘Deadly Doug’ is in decline and he’s taking Aston Villa down with him.