Paul Lambert's sacking will at least change the mood around Aston Villa

When the news of Paul Lambert's sacking broke, I found myself able to joke about Villa for the first time in a while. The past couple season Villa have been terrible but I've had no problem making jokes. But this recent run was different. They were so bad that even dumb jokes about how bad they were weren't funny. The goal-less streak seemed to sap any remaining fun that was left in the club.

But when I saw the news pop up that Lambert was gone, I was relieved. Not only do I think Villa now have at least a fighting chance of staying up, but I no longer felt a sense of dread when I thought about them. And it wasn't just me. My Twitter timeline filled with jokes about ridiculous candidates to take over. I threw my hat into the ring with a suggestion of Jed Steer being player manager. Then it turned out that goalkeeper coach and 7500 blog favorite Andy Marshall was one of the people taking charge in the interim. Then there were a bunch more jokes about how this man was now partly responsible for managing Aston Villa.

While there are certainly many exceptions, I don't think Villa fans have any great dislike for Paul Lambert as a person. I don't even think he's that terrible of a manager. It's just that what he was doing with this set of players wasn't working and we don't have any time left to see if he can turn it around. If Villa are going to save themselves and stay up, it needs to start happening right now. And as long as Lambert was in charge it wasn't going to happen.

We have no idea who Aston Villa are going to bring in to replace Paul Lambert. Hopefully, it will be someone with some new ideas who can get the players going and turn the team around. Whoever they get may very well not be able to do anything with this team and we may be doomed anyway. It's not just Lambert's fault that Villa have only scored one goal in 87 games, or whatever the run they're currently on is. That's partly on the players. But now it at least feels like the club cares what happens. They know what was going on wasn't good enough if we want to stay in the Premier League. And no matter what happens in the remainder of this season, we can at least support this team knowing that the club is still trying to change the terrible nature of this season.