Phil Shaw: Taylor failing to keep Villa's star bright amid Midlands mediocrity

A poll of reporters in a Saturday night football "Pink 'Un" hardly amounts to empirical evidence. But the votes of the Sporting Star scribes which created a "West Midlands United" XI, based on the best players from the Birmingham and Black Country area, painted a broadly accurate picture of the humdrum state of the region's leading club.

Aston Villa – founder members of the Football League and European champions this time 20 years ago – supplied only Olof Mellberg and Darius Vassell for the newspaper's all-star side last weekend.

Claret-and-blue loyalists convening for today's home match with Bolton Wanderers might argue the merits of Gareth Barry and Thomas Hitzlsperger, at least among the substitutes. Yet there would be little dissent, except perhaps from the likes of the Villa chairman, Doug Ellis, and his manager, Graham Taylor, about the choice of four West Bromwich Albion players alongside two each from Wolverhampton Wanderers and Birmingham City plus another from Walsall ahead of their own men.

Incidentally, "all-star" may be over-egging things where the Midlands is concerned. Compared with London, Manchester, Merseyside or the North-East, it is a personality-free zone, bereft of the big names that sell tabloid papers. When I suggest as much to colleagues whose beat is Villa Park and St Andrew's, The Hawthorns and Molineux, who cut their journalistic teeth covering the exploits of Cyrille Regis, Trevor Francis and Andy Gray, they nominate ("at a push") only Birmingham's Robbie Savage.

If any local club were to possess such crowd-pullers, it ought to be Villa. Taylor's predecessor, John Gregory, reckoned they had the potential to be the "Manchester United of the Midlands" because of their traditions and fan base. This is a club, remember, that attracted nearly 50,000 spectators for a Third Division match against Bournemouth 30 years ago. A club which, according to folklore, could pull a crowd to watch the shirts drying on a line.

Villa supporters would, of course, settle for an all-conquering team that was short on charisma. The side Ron Saunders took to the title in 1981 was not exactly brimming with the household names that staffed the Liverpool squad. At the moment, however, they have the worst of both worlds: a solid, unspectacular team of cut-price buys and "Bosmans" hovering just above the Premiership's relegation zone.

In fairness to Gregory, who has been subjected to a lot of flak and innuendo lately, those who argue that 10 months is too short a time for Taylor to turn things around should be reminded of the last time Bolton breezed into B6. Villa's 3-2 win put them at the Premiership summit, and they went into November 2001 leading the entire league, just as they had entered the second half of 1998-99.

So Taylor's inheritance was not impoverished. He has now held the reins for four matches short of what would comprise a complete Premiership season and Saturday's 1-0 defeat of Middlesbrough was the 10th win in those 34 fixtures, against 16 losses. Not relegation form, but not top-end-of-the-table stuff either, which is what the Villa faithful expect and are accustomed to.

An affable, articulate, honest and decent man in a profession not renowned for such qualities, Taylor was a popular (and crafty) appointment by an unpopular chairman because of his previous success at the club. He came in making bold noises about a more adventurous style. If it is too early for definitive judgements, especially when he has been denied the funds available to Gregory, it remains a sorry fact that his Villa team average exactly a goal per game.

They have also won one of their 17 away games during his second coming, at demob-happy Chelsea a week after last season's FA Cup final, while the number of away goals by strikers during 2002-03 is also an embarrassing one. Having failed to make it into Europe via the Intertoto Cup, Villa are also out of the Worthington Cup after losing to Liverpool on the night of the great kick-off delay fiasco.

All of which makes this afternoon's visit by Bolton, not to mention Saturday's FA Cup home tussle with Blackburn Rovers, vitally important both to Villa's hopes of sustaining interest this season and to Taylor's continuing plausibility as manager. They are unlikely to be relegated, but the supporters' image of the club demands more than a new year push for mid-table respectability.

Therein lies the rub. It has long appeared to many, neutrals and devotees alike, that there is a chronic lack of ambition and vision at the top of the club. Gregory cited the aftermath of last season's visit by Bolton, when he appealed in vain for Ellis to invest from a position of strength, as a classic example. The septuagenarian chairman, for his part, refused to plunge Villa into the sort of debt now besetting Leeds United.

If the fans' revolt has lost momentum, it is because Taylor, a more diplomatic soul than Gregory, declines to fuel dissent by criticising his employer. There is also a widespread acceptance that he is doing his best in straitened circumstances and approval of the way he has revived Barry's career, promoted Hitzlsperger and brought on talents like Luke and Stefan Moore.

But at the start of 2003, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that Ellis's cautious stewardship means they have lost the ability to balance sound housekeeping with the core business of winning more matches than they lose – and maybe even exciting their public along the way.

Taylor, meanwhile, is shrewd enough to realise that the fund of goodwill is finite. For all the respect he is held in, he risks being seen as the "chairman's man" unless he can build a high-octane team on a low budget.

In their eagerness to avoid the financial whirlpool, Aston Villa are treading water again. They have lost sight of their potential – that word again – to be the Midlands all-star XI their history shows they should be.