Saturday comment: Promotion or no promotion – Aston Villa would be best off keeping faith with Steve Bruce
While Villa’s present focus is on winning the promotion which might well deliver a brighter future, this week brought a reminder of how the club is still to fully escape its past.
The £5.5million sum shelled out to agents during the last year gave further indication of the misdirected largesse once passed off as business strategy within the walls of Villa Park.
Less than £700,000 of the total figure accounted for deals done during the past two transfer windows, with the majority made of up historic agreements which the current regime had no option but to honour – including the eye-watering £1.5million given to Adama Traore’s representative despite his client being no longer at the club.
Senior figures have been keen to stress Villa now do business in a very different way, with the past 18 months in particular seeing the club make strides toward getting its house in order.
Nevertheless, these remain precarious times for the club in a financial sense. What happens over the next few weeks on the pitch could well define the next decade off it.
Securing a return to the Premier League – and the guaranteed riches which come with it – would allow owner Tony Xia the opportunity to make good on his promise of putting Villa back among the top-flight’s elite.
By stark contrast, a third season in the Championship would leave them operating on an increasingly tighter budget.
It is in the aftermath of such a failure the position of Steve Bruce would come under increasing scrutiny.
The manager will next week have been in post for 18 months – a relative lifetime compared to many of his predecessors in B6.
Only in the last three months, however, does it feel as though he has finally won the majority of supporters around, with Villa enjoying their most consistent results of his reign and supporters finding an affinity with their team not seen for several years.
For the first time in a long time, there has been a genuine feel-good factor around the club and Bruce is the man chiefly responsible.
Yet this is Villa, where fans rightly demand success. Should their club miss out on promotion, those critics of the manager who have gone quiet will once more find their voices and almost certainly grow in number.
The main charge against Bruce – and it is a hefty one – will be failing to escape the Championship with the most expensive squad the division has ever seen.
Circumstances will play a factor too. It would be difficult, for example, to make a case for Bruce staying should Villa miss out on the play-offs.
But such a scenario is highly unlikely and there is surely a much bigger picture which needs considering.
Most pertinently, no-one has been more important than Bruce in turning Villa’s fortunes around.
When he arrived, they were sitting near the foot of the Championship, still sliding following relegation and having won just five of the previous 51 games.
The pace of change might have been slower than either supporters or Bruce himself would have liked.
But the fact that change has taken place is undeniable and the team spirit now celebrated by fans is primarily down to the manager's work on the training and in the dressing room.
While it is also true Villa have also spent big, very big, in their attempts to win a Premier League return, Bruce is responsible for only part of that outlay.
In truth, he has been forced to operate on a restricted budget since he arrived. Only during his first transfer window, in January last year, have Villa spent more than they brought in. In the last two windows they have made a considerable profit.
It was Bruce, meanwhile, who was able to tempt John Terry into the Championship. It was Bruce, again, who played a huge role in Robert Snodgrass choosing Villa over a host of other suitors.
Make no mistake, missing out on promotion this season would be a serious blow to both Villa's esteem and resources.
It would surely be foolhardy, though, for the club to move on from Bruce and risk both the progress made and the stability he has built?
If they are in the Championship next season, Villa would be best served having an experienced manager with extensive contacts who might make the most of meagre financial resources.
Surely, in those circumstances, the board would conclude that man is already in the building.
