Filed under: Aston Villa, Premier League, Football
Stan Collymore was no stranger to walking out on one club to join another during his career as a player.The TalkSport pundit famously made excuses to leave Nottingham Forest because his team mates were not good enough for him and did not understand him.
He ended up leaving Aston Villa because he claimed he was suffering from depression, something which was treated with derision by John Gregory, who was manager at the time.
Despite leaving the club he claimed to have supported as a kid, Collymore retains a soft spot for Aston Villa and speaks from the heart when dealing with issues at Villa Park.
His concerns about the leadership vacuum at the club, because of Gerard Houllier's illness, have been aired on numerous occasions.
Crucially for Collymore, the situation is creating an air of uncertainty which he believes current Villa players will be quick to seize upon and use as an excuse to seek employment elsewhere.
Ashley Young, Stewart Downing and Nigel Reo-Coker are just three players who fall into that potential category, with the latter already claiming interest from a host of foreign clubs who will be playing Champions League football next season.
Randy Lerner, the club's American owner, endured one difficult summer 12 months ago, losing his manager Martin O'Neill, a departure from which the club have been suffering the fall-out for the last nine months.
If he has learned anything from the difficulties which have accompanied the loss of the Northern Irishman, then he will not allow Villa to suffer from a lack of leadership again.
Lerner obviously has to be sensitive over the Houllier situation, but a definitive answer has to be given on whether the Frenchman will return to the technical area, before the players leave for their summer holidays.
Managers are already being linked with the post, such as David Moyes and the latest potential candidate is Quique Sanchez Florez - the highly-talented Atletico Madrid coach, whom Spanish newspaper AS believes is looking for work in England and is on Villa's radar.
Luke Young has endorsed Collymore's fears about the leadership issue, saying: "It is going to be another summer of no-one knowing what's really going on for a while.
"I would hope the manager, first and foremost, is healthy and he comes through the trouble he has been having with his heart.
"But I think also we need to know what we are doing, who is going to be taking the club forward, who is going to be making the decision on which players stay and go and who is going to be in charge for next season."
Decisive action needs to be taken soon, before the doubts and uncertainty fester further and players take leadership into their own hands and go elsewhere.
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