SO this is how it feels to be left standing at the altar… Just days away from the big day, with everyone counting down the hours, and bang! We get unceremoniously dumped.

Oh the humiliation. Everyone is laughing at us, everyone is predicting we will go downhill fast because the Bride has upped and left and even the human disaster Paul Merson feels sorry for us.

The media narrative this week is that Aston Villa will never get another manager better than Martin O’Neil. Pundits have been lining up to have a pop at Randy Lerner all week and that we are now a crisis club who will fade away in to mid-table obscurity. All Villa fans are supposed to be despairing.

Well not me. I feel reinvigorated. This what it is meant to feel like as a Villa fan. We don’t do stability. My blood is pumping claret and blue and I am so excited because the stakes are so high. The next two weeks to make or break our club. We could end up with no players and the world most boring manager Alan Curbishley or we could have Germans flocking to play for a metrosexual megastar like Jurgen Klinsman, how can you not be interested in the Villa now? The possibilities are endless.

To tell you the truth I had some pretty big nagging second thoughts about Martin O’Neil. Don’t get me wrong I was not one of those Villa fans who were on his back all of the time and calling for his head when we failed to break in to the Champions League.

I liked the fact we had a charismatic leader who was a clever cloggs and had a penchant for a serial killer or two. And I think he was a good Villa manager, the best since Brian Little.

In any other era the O’Neil / Lerner axis would have brought us silverware but alas we live in the most boringly predictable period of the game ever.

The top four of the Premiership was set in stone for years on end with the same teams getting stronger because they were the only ones getting the Champions League dosh. Only an insane oilman with billions to burn has mean another winner’s name might be etched on to the Premier League’s tacky trophy.

The rot set in for our Martin on that night in Moscow last year. Martin could do no wrong until then but then shock horror he decided that qualifying for the Champions League was more important than the diluted Europa League.

We failed to beat Stoke at home and Arsenal went on an unbeaten run until the end of the season and that was that. The closest we ever got to the Champions League. It was a brief enjoyable affair with a bird who we knew we couldn’t keep, and that was about it.

Anyone who went to the home games last season will testify we were pretty poor most games and we never had ‘a plan B’, after our plan A (pass the ball to Ashley Young) failed.

I was not looking forward to this season because it was all getting a bit boring and predictable.

We start the season well, have a great winter and spectacularly fall apart in the Spring because Martin thought he was Ron Saunders and only ever plays 13 or 14 players.

This despite paying massive wages to his signings who must have been only bought to stop the benches getting cold.

And this is why I am firmly on Randy Lerner’s side, you know the bloke who sent Doug away and has invested millions and millions of his own cash into the infrastructure of the club. I mean, he even opened The Holte pub back up!

Everyone else (except Man City) has had to cut their cloth accordingly since the Credit Crunch so it makes sense that the club owned by the bloke who owns a credit card does so too.

The wage bill is believed to be 85 per cent of our entire turnover so it is not surprising Lerner asked MON to bring them down. But the stubborn Irishman did nothing. He just wanted more money. He bought badly and the club is paying for that. Don’t get me wrong he bought some great players in but the Harewoods, Shoreys, Sidwells and Beyes of this world can break a club’s finances especially if they are even getting a run out as sub.

MON knew the state of play in May so why didn’t he resign then? Instead he’s left it until the week before the season before doing a disappearing act. Leaving us no chance to get a decent manager in or the time to bring players in. But I’m not despondent. I think the Ireland and cash for Milner is a great deal. Milner wont have a season like that again and Ireland can be the midfielder we have needed for years.

And the new manager? I reckon they will give Kevin McDonald a few weeks and then who knows but whoever it is, besides Alan Curbishley obviously, then they will get my backing because they manage my club.

Whatever happens it is going to be interesting. After all anyone who has ever been dumped knows three things can happen after such a public rejection - we could find ‘the one’ and live happily ever after or we could go on the rebound like a rubber ball and sleep with anything that moves, which though lots of tut tuts would ensure a lively time.

And last but not least, and what I hope Aston Villa Football Club doesn’t do, is we could find someone and settle for second best spending our life looking back with rose tinted spectacles at the bride who dumped us.

Bye bye Martin, thanks for the memories but it is time to move on.

Up the Villa!