What Aston Villa Need: The Proclaimed "Perfect Person"

For many of the Aston Villa faithful, the 2009/10 season appears as though it will end in yet another shortfall of expectations.

Once again, the UEFA Champions League looks as if it will prove too elusive for the men of Villa Park, and two trips to Wembley to contest for Carling Cup and FA Cup prizes ended in misery.

So what do Aston Villa need to boost their on-pitch performance? Higher fitness levels? Better players? Lionel Messi? Jose Mourinho?

Or perhaps they just need the right person in the background; a person there to help the team out and to make sure they're fully confident in their own abilities.

Perhaps Aston Villa Football Club need the man who is a fitness coach, psychologist, and motivational guru all rolled into one.

Steve Black currently works as a fitness coach at Huddersfield Town, a club playing in Coca-Cola League 1, the third tier of professional football in England. Not so special it might seem, until you hear about his career achievements, that is.

Black is a 53-year-old man from Newcastle, who first worked as a bouncer in the city before studying for a sports science degree and embarking on an incredible career in sport.

Growing up in a boxing background, he has trained boxers from nobodies to world champions; taken triple-jumper Jonathan Edwards to an Olympic gold medal; and earnt all the credit for making Johnny Wilkinson the rugby player he is today, having worked with him at the Newcastle Falcons.

Wilkinson recognises he owes Black a lot, giving him a glowing tribute. He says of the motivational genius, "He is the driving force behind my career. He draws on his experience in life and in sport.

"When you put that together with his personality, you get the perfect person."

In football, Black has also been credited as the driving force behind Newcastle United and Sunderland getting promoted to the Premier League.

Kevin Keegan describes him as "the best one-on-one coach in the world."

Currently working at Huddersfield Town, Steve Black's injury record as a fitness coach is also high up there among the best.

Terriers' midfielder Michael Collins is quick to praise his fitness man and says his "injury record speaks for itself" in that Huddersfield have only suffered two muscle injuries all season.

For any professional football team, that is very impressive and the truth is clearly evident when Black describes it as "the best injury record in the world."

Now for Aston Villa, an injury record like that would be a massive help to current Villa manager Martin O'Neill.

Imagine where Villa would be right now in the Premier League and FA Cup had Gabriel Agbonlahor, James Milner, Ashley Young, Stewart Downing, and Co. all been fit and fresh for important clashes against the likes Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Tottenham Hotspur.

And even without such an impressive injury record, with the belief and confidence Steve Black can generate in his athletes, such defeats Aston Villa have deleteriously suffered this season would merely be figments of your imagination, no doubt.

In October 2007, he joined a Norwich City team eight points adrift at the bottom of the Championship table.

Following his introduction to the coaching set-up at the club, the players went from relegation certainties to playoff hopefuls with a 15-game unbeaten streak.

So perhaps that is what Aston Villa need—the Steve Black effect. Turning the good into the great, potential into performance, and most importantly, a group of individuals into a team of winners.

Source: FourFourTwo Magazine