Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

To be fair, if he was alive today, in all probability Shakespeare would have been a Villa fan, after all we’re blessed with a celebrity fan base just about every other club in the world would be jealous of. Kind of.

If old Will was still getting the train from Stratford into Snow Hill, a quick pint down the Troc and onto heavenly Witton then you can imagine his thoughts on Steven Gerrard on a match day.

“Shall I compare thee to a Steve Bruce?”

Now before we go any further there is one point to make, Bruce was good to Villa, without his arrival we could quite easily have trailblazed for Sunderland, he steadied the ship, collected some players who still provide fond memories and helped us look up again.

Admittedly though there was little else, unless you count moaning, blaming, whingeing and belly-acheing as a bona-fide route to the top.

And you see that’s where we think Shakespeare would make his comparison: for Steven Gerrard is genuinely morphing into Bruce.

Now we know Gerrard is rubbish at tactics, rubbish at communicating, rubbish at judging players*, rubbish at substitutes, rubbish at press conferences.

Yet we also know that Gerrard is especially good at one thing: that is repeating the same ridiculous words ad infinitum:

reset,

identity,

quality

to name but a few.

But what Gerrard hadn’t been doing until recently - albeit his press utterances have always been as equally vacuous as Bruce’s - is to make a litany of excuses for his own failings.

However, in recent weeks as his departure has become as inevitable as that other incompetent Liz Truss, Gerrard has started to reach out into Bruceland, and boy does it not land well.

Take today’s latest pearler:

“We live in a world where in this league you get judged because it is the best league, there’s a lot of eyes on it, a lot of focus, social media.”

Yep peeps, that’s right, it’s all social media’s fault.

Just like it was when all those pesky avatars left Villa Park with ten minutes to go on Sunday.

Just like it was when all those darn non-playing-characters booed Gerrard from the pitch at the City Ground last Monday.

Social media can be blamed for a lot of things, Gerrard being shit though? Nope, not that.

As Shakespeare himself would have shouted from the Holte:

“I am sick when I do look on thee”

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*rubbish at judging players*

One more startling fact about Gerrard is that he has personally signed three players who have as yet played just once for the club.

Although that's not hugely unusual in a big squad in modern day football, it surely is for Villa.

• Firstly we do NOT have a big squad.

• Secondly, the players in question are 26, 28 and 32

• Thirdly, they have all been at the club as form has collapsed amongst the small available group of players so if not them, now then realistically, when?

And don't forget each was personally signed, endorsed and foist upon the club by the current manager only to then be effectively ignored.

But that is not all:

The last player over the age of 26 to make a single appearance for Villa was Tommy Dodds, aged 27, in August 1946.

Indeed in the 148 year history of the club there have been just Charlie McEleny, 26, December 1899, Joe Nicholson, 28, August 1926 and the aforementioned Dodds to get to that age with just one appearance to their name.

The fact is that almost every other player to make just one appearance since George Ramsay became the first in 1879 have been aged between 17 and 22.

That we now have three players, simultaneously in the squad, brought into the club by the current manager, resulting in their predecessors being shunted downwards or out, and who are then judged to be of such low stock that they remain way off the first XI, and who are, in historical terms, ancient, is yet another damning indictment of the incompetence of Gerrard.