Matt Maher: Captaincy approach feels a short-term fix for Wolves and Walsall

With the competitive season now underway, both Cesar Peixoto at Wolves and Walsall boss Lee Grant have so far declined to name a permanent skipper for their respective teams.

Peixoto this week suggested he will be selecting who wears the armband from a group of “four or five captains” on a game-by-game basis.

Grant echoed similar sentiments leading into the Saddlers’ terrific Carabao Cup win at Bristol City on Thursday night.

“If I feel it’s right to give the armband to somebody on Thursday then it might be a different person on the next Saturday,” he explained.

“I’m not going to promise you that it’s not a completely different person against Grimsby after that. We’ll see how we go is the honest answer to that.”

Rotating the armband is not totally unheard of, yet it remains highly unusual and it is probably unique to find two managers based five miles apart considering the same tactic.

Should it work - and Grant could hardly have gotten off to a better start - we may one day come to reflect on them as trendsetters.

On the flip side - and surely far more likely - is both positions are simply a reflection of the current situation which sees two new bosses still getting to know much-changed and still changing squads, content for the moment to let things develop organically and wait for an obvious leader to emerge.

There’s always been a healthy debate to be had on just how much captaincy actually matters in football.

You certainly wouldn’t find anyone claiming it to be so important as it is in cricket, where the role defines so much of the in-game strategy. Football is far too chaotic and quick for a captain to have the same level of tactical impact.

Yet there must also be a reason why, in more than 150 years of the sport, the most successful teams have typically had a clearly defined on-field leader. Bobby Moore, Roy Keane and John Terry can all be connected by the same, never so easy to define, talismanic quality. For some more recent local examples, see Chris Brunt, Conor Coady or Jack Grealish.

The latter was given the Villa captaincy by Dean Smith in 2019 in a decision which ranks among the most significant in the recent history of the club. Villa won the first 10 matches in which Grealish wore the armband on route to claiming a remarkable promotion back to the Premier League.

Smith’s move placed more power in the hands of his best player and a figure who could unite what was then a divided dressing room.

It was born of a pragmatism similar to that shown by Pep Guardiola last summer when he pulled rank and named Bernardo Silva as Manchester City’s captain for the coming season.

That was a notable move as Guardiola, widely regarded as the finest manager of his generation, had typically shied away from selecting a skipper, instead preferring to delegate the decision to his players.

City always had a leadership group of four or five players though, perhaps tellingly, it was only one who ever wore the armband, whether it be Vincent Kompany, Kevin De Bruyne or Kyle Walker. That suggests most teams prefer to have a clear leader.

A similar tactic was deployed, albeit not so effectively, by Unai Emery at Arsenal.

After replacing Arsene Wenger in 2018, the Spaniard announced his intention to have five captains, though Laurent Koscielny was effectively named “captain of the captains group”.

The desire to spread out leadership responsibilities and make the whole group stronger as a result is surely what Peixoto and Grant hope to achieve now, yet the Emery example carries with it a warning.

His reluctance to name just one skipper was later used as ammunition by critics when things turned sour at the Emirates. A sign, they claimed, of general indecision.

It is maybe interesting to note that in nearly four years at Villa, Emery has never selected a captain, though his decision to stick with the one he inherited, John McGinn, can be viewed in hindsight as a major call considering the Scot was at his lowest ebb when the manager first walked through the door.

Having skippered the team in the Champions League and then to Europa League glory, McGinn is on course to being remembered as one of the club’s greatest-ever captains. His standing both on and off the pitch makes him the perfect figurehead for Emery’s team. When times are bad, team-mates know McGinn will be the first to front-up. That’s another key reason managers and players like having a defined team leader.

It is true McGinn heads up a leadership group at Villa which includes other experienced heads in the shape of Ezri Konsa, Tyrone Mings and Ollie Watkins.

A similar situation feels by far the most likely outcome at Walsall and Wolves. Perhaps there will be some rotation of captaincy in the season’s early weeks but eventually, you expect a clear leader who will take the armband for good to emerge in both teams.

Anything else really would be quite unusual.

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Villa’s second appearance in the European Super Cup will be very different to their first.

Back when they became European champions in 1982, the Super Cup wasn’t played until the following January, when the season was in full swing.

A full strength side beat Barcelona 3-1 on aggregate over two legs.

In contrast, next Wednesday’s meeting with Paris Saint-Germain in Salzburg will come just 24 days after the World Cup final, with both teams likely to be under-cooked and under-strength.

No doubt Unai Emery, fierce competitor that he is, would baulk at the suggestion it will in effect be a glorified friendly.

But with the scheduling, it’s hard to see it any other way, even allowing for the fact another trophy can be won at the end of it.