Twitter went a bit silly last night when the odds on Tim Sherwood becoming the next manager were slashed and some of the papers were reporting that he was in advanced talks to become the next Aston Villa manager. I saw this as an opportunity and someone on Twitter suggested I bet against it not happening on Betfair.
Sure, I knew you could do this, but I'd never done it before so I logged into my account, deposited some funds and let people bet on Sherwood happening and as long as it doesn't, I stand to win a very nice return.
And I'll tell you why it wont happen in really simple terms; not even a 6 month old CEO would make the mistake of appointing a 6 month old manager. And that wouldn't happen before Tom Fox started asking questions of Sherwood and heard some of the stories we've all been hearing and reading about the last few days.
Tom Fox made a mistake recently, when telling supporters it was a false narrative and that we knew nothing and he knew more. He isn't going to make another mistake so soon after. Tim Sherwood is too big a gamble on keeping Aston Villa up and while I think the right man can easily do it, I think employing someone like Sherwood, if even half of the rumours are true, could be a disaster.
And it's not the cocaine, the relationships with the press or the backstabbing at Spurs and I should stress, these are all just rumours. For me it's how he comes across. He comes across as a wide boy who got lucky and he's taking his chance and I'm sorry, I've dealt with plenty of people like that in the past and it's not someone I want for Aston Villa, it's someone I want to build my new garage or to look after my garden.
In short, Sherwood is too big a gamble to risk our future on. Sure, if was the start of next season and we'd survived I'd be all for letting him have a crack. I don't have much confidence in him, but I think he'd keep us up, but I'm fairly confident he'd not really take us anywhere and he'd be gone in three seasons, but why not waste some money on him. You never know, I could be wrong and in two seasons we're fighting off relegation again or maybe even challenging for top four.
There is no transfer window
So seeing as I've got that out of my system, I just need to stress something that quite a few seem to be missing and it's this; if a manager doesn't have a job, there is usually a very good reason for that and more importantly, there is nothing to stop us approaching any manager so why look at the Job Centre?.
There is no transfer window for managers, so basically we can approach anyone. And right now that is what we should be looking at doing.
We're Aston Villa Football Club and even though we're in a horrible place right now, the right man will know it's a false position and that with the remaining games we can easily win the five needed. The right man will also know what is possible at this Football Club, so if we're to believe anything that Tom Fox says, it should be a manager that impresses.
And that's why it wont be Sherwood. The cost of relegation is so great that it's worth spending the money on the next few games and with no restrictions on who we can approach, we'll know the real Tom Fox vision when he appoints the new manager.