John_Lerwill Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 9 hours ago, John said: Nice to see you posting John! I can confirm Wiki is correct with those attendance figures (as checked with my copy of "The Essential History of Aston Villa"). As no doubt you are aware the Villa players were on high wages due to the bonuses they got for being top or near the top for much of the season (money well spent in my opinion) . Our attendances in 81-82 were ... But winning the league and being the champions of Europe were not enough to compensate for us being in £1m debt for Deadly so we cut costs rather than looked to build upon the best 2 seasons we had enjoyed as a club since the end of the century before that one. But all that is now water under the bridge. Our opinions of the previous custodian of our great club differ somewhat and have been debated between us or for many years now. Can we agree that neither our present or previous custodian can claim to be anywhere near to being another Rinder, that Deadly has taken more money out of the club than Randy now looks likely to ever do and that Randy should we be relegated under his watch is running Deadly a lot closer than we would have ever thought possible to the title of our worst ever club custodian? Thanks a lot, John, for confirming the 1981-82 attendances (and those of 1980-81). It was clearly the 1981-82 season I had in mind, just prior to Doug's re-entry onto the scene. Doug was clearly worried about the sustainability of paying such high wages against a backdrop of falling attendances (and below the break-even point), and though another chairman may well have been more creative to enable the club to build, Doug just took a pragmatic business decision - which was of course counter-productive. On whether Doug took more money out of the club than Randy ... maybe. But I have to go back to the 60s to recall the last time Villa were spending so many seasons trying to steer clear of relegation. And I've never known a Villa team to have such an awful and prolonged home record. So on those issues the present incumbent's record is inferior to Doug's, and in a substantially lesser period of time. I have stated (above, before) that we've not really had a good chairman since 1925 (Rinder), so we're in agreement on that score. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morley_crosses_to_Withe Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 John, who do you blame for the relegations in 67-68 and 70-71? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zatman Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 2 hours ago, PieFacE said: How often do clubs linger around the drop for a few years and then eventually push themselves up the table? I can't think of any in recent history, eventually you just drop, and we're the team to do it this year, and I don't think it will be a bad thing. Coventry, Wigan are best examples and at moment us and Sunderland really dont deserve to be in this league 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avfc1982 Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 Lerner knew what he was getting into when he bought the club all those years ago. We were his "play thing" but boy did he throw the toys out of the pram pretty quick, and who was left to suffer? Ill never forgive him for humiliating this club over so many years. He has practically asset stripped the squad over 5 long torturous seasons leaving us an embarrassing laughing stock and a pale shadow of the club we should be. He's somehow even managed to brainwash a once pro-active fan base into the passive support we have today. As I said yesterday the stick Ellis received in comparison to Lerner is incredible. Imagine if the tables were turned and it wasn't Villa who suffered the last 5 years of misery but it was other similar sized clubs like Everton or Spurs, do you really think their fans would be so laid back and as passive as we have been? No I think they'd screaming from the roof tops trying to put pressure on their billionaire owner to wake up and invest in their club. Why have we let Lerner get away with it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John_Lerwill Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 15 minutes ago, Morley_crosses_to_Withe said: John, who do you blame for the relegations in 67-68 and 70-71? Clearly not Doug ... he was not there in 67/68 (relegation from Div 1 in 1967) and 70/71 (relegation from Div 2 in 1970) happened essentially as the momentum for recovery was not yet fully in place after the club had been left to atrophy by the previous incumbants, particularly chairman Buckley. When Tommy Doc's appointment took place I think everyone was very happy ... but unfortunately his approach didn't work out, hence relegation in 1970. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 1 hour ago, Morley_crosses_to_Withe said: John, who do you blame for the relegations in 67-68 and 70-71? The board for 67-68 for allowing the club to stagnate at the foot of the table for far too long and for bringing our club to its knees financially (history now repeating itself for me). We were a club in free-fall following that relegation and I think the change from Taylor to Cummings was uninspiring. The Doc gave us the sort of new manager bounce that Tim did but he also could not sustain it during the following season. I do not think Deadly was ever happy with working with The Doc who was not his own appointment so there may well have been a lack of trust between manager and chairman well before Deadly took the opportunity to sack Tommy. By the end of the 70-71 season there were signs that we were getting the playing side right but it proved too late to avoid a second drop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Morley_crosses_to_Withe Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 The fans have let Lerner get away with it for a number of reasons, I guess. - Apathy from the protests from the previous regime. - Divides within our own fan base: I believe those that tried to organise protests previously got abuse from fellow fans. - That, whilst Randy doesn't seem to be a wholly pro active seller, the club IS up for sale. What would the message be? "Sell the club Randy"? but that would be like preaching to the choir. I guess it would have to be "Be more proactive, Lerner", but given that no PL club has exchanged hands since Fulham, I don't think there's much appetite to buy the wasteful money pit that is a Premier League club. I think some supporters would involve themselves in a protest (who knows how many, though) but nobody, for whatever reason, seems to want to organise one. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 8 hours ago, PieFacE said: How do you think he could have sorted it out? Hiring McLeish was really stupid, but he didn't even last a year. Hiring Houllier had good potential, similar to what we have with Garde now, but it didn't work for health reasons. I reckon about 90% of Villa fans wanted Lambert, but he eventually lost the plot a bit. Sherwood saved us from relegation, what was he supposed to do? Sack him in the summer? You would have gone crazy had he done that! And here we are with Garde, a lot of us are thinking its a good appointment, no doubt if he's awful you'll use that hindsight as a stick to beat Randy with. Fixing problems with hindsight is easy. No one expected Sherwood to be so **** useless this year, and no one expected this squad of players to perform to such a low standard. I'm sure Randy is just as mystified as we are. I'm not trying to defend the bloke, he's got us in this mess with what he did in the early years imo, been on a slow decline ever since, I don't think it's as easy as you state to just fix the problems. @DCJonah I think it's been a case of getting the wrong people in at the wrong times. And we continued to make the same mistakes that put us in trouble. Houllier ruined anything decent about the MON years. He needed us to smash our club record on spending to save us. Look at the money (while we were pissing money away) we've spent on darren bent. We then hire mcleish, easily one of the stupidest appointments in premier league history. And while we're meant to be cutting costs we give massive contracts to ireland, hutton, given and Nzogbia. How many of them have been value for money? And while 90 % did want lambert, i doubt 90% wanted him to be given the budget he was. Sherwood was a desperate appointment and now we're struggling with that. You make it sound like he's not made mistakes since MON when thats clearly not the case. MON left 5 seasons ago, you dont think 5 years is enough time to stop a team like us from going from 6th to the championship? Every major decision made by the owner has sent the club closer to relegation. Theres a reason why clubs like ourselves dont get relegated often, because its actually difficult to **** up a club like ours as much as this man has. Yet you seem to have sympathy for him. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maqroll Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 Welcome back, The Chronicler! John, what do you think of the idea of a supporter buy out of Lerner? Is it remotely viable in your opinion? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John_Lerwill Posted November 27, 2015 Share Posted November 27, 2015 1 hour ago, maqroll said: Welcome back, The Chronicler! John, what do you think of the idea of a supporter buy out of Lerner? Is it remotely viable in your opinion? Howdo, 'maq'! I'd love to see a supporters' buy-out of the club ... HOW it can be achieved is quite another thing. Back at the end of 1968 there was a deep-seated will to achieve change, but today I don't see the same commitment from the supporters. The world has become a different place entirely - I barely recognise it. Such a takeover needs a leader with strong commitment and some able lieutenants. And then there's the question of finding at least £150m. Thanks for asking me, and my opinion is that In the absence of the will being there, it doesn't stand a chance, I'm very sorry to say. With the will, virtually anything can be accomplished, even though difficulties may threaten the project. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PieFacE Posted November 27, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted November 27, 2015 (edited) 6 hours ago, DCJonah said: I think it's been a case of getting the wrong people in at the wrong times. And we continued to make the same mistakes that put us in trouble. Houllier ruined anything decent about the MON years. He needed us to smash our club record on spending to save us. Look at the money (while we were pissing money away) we've spent on darren bent. We then hire mcleish, easily one of the stupidest appointments in premier league history. And while we're meant to be cutting costs we give massive contracts to ireland, hutton, given and Nzogbia. How many of them have been value for money? And while 90 % did want lambert, i doubt 90% wanted him to be given the budget he was. Sherwood was a desperate appointment and now we're struggling with that. You make it sound like he's not made mistakes since MON when thats clearly not the case. MON left 5 seasons ago, you dont think 5 years is enough time to stop a team like us from going from 6th to the championship? Every major decision made by the owner has sent the club closer to relegation. Theres a reason why clubs like ourselves dont get relegated often, because its actually difficult to **** up a club like ours as much as this man has. Yet you seem to have sympathy for him. You say Houllier destroyed everything MON did, and I just can't agree with that. He was trying to change the philosophy of the football club, and this was never going happen over night, but the complete lack of patience from our fans to see the transition through really didn't help. McLeish I will give you, that whole thing was a complete balls up from Lerner and giving the players the contacts he did was utterly stupid. But on the other side of the coin, he blindly trusted and backed the manager, which is what a lot of fans do want from him. Now, at this point the club is completely on its knees in terms of finances, and with financial fair play there was no way Lerner could provide more funds to Lambert than he did. We were still making a loss year after year and Aston Villa as a business couldn't afford anything more. A football club *should* in my eyes be a self sustaining business, and we weren't that. So what would you have Randy do in that situation? Put loads more money and put the club in further danger of collapsing similar to what happened under MON? We were still suffering from that overspending, the fix wasn't to spend more. I don't really understand what people expected him to do? He had to fix the root cause of our problems and that was to strip back until Aston villa could become a self sustaining business and I believe we have only achieved this as of a year ago? Please correct me if I'm wrong? A lot of the criticisms of Randy under the MON era was that he gave the manager too much control and should have hired people to try and control the finances and make sure we don't sign players such as Nzogbia and Beye again, and he's now done that and the same people are criticising him for doing that too. Don't get me wrong, he's completely ballsed up avfc, but I guess my point is that the main reason for that is the early MON years and we've been climbing a very steep up hill battle since and we've only just recovered. Unfortunately the position we find ourselves in since recovering is a much worse position than when he originally took over and it doesnt look like we can get out of it. Tl;Dr.... We're ****. Haha. Edited November 27, 2015 by PieFacE 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted November 28, 2015 Share Posted November 28, 2015 We were still suffering from that overspending, the fix wasn't to spend more. I don't really understand what people expected him to do? He had to fix the root cause of our problems and that was to strip back until Aston villa could become a self sustaining business and I believe we have only achieved this as of a year ago? Please correct me if I'm wrong? [/quote] I don't think we were. I think we were suffering because for 2 more years we hired wrong managers and wasted much more money. If we were suffering from MON spending we wouldn't have signed Bent on £80,000 a week. We wouldn't have paid the scum millions for their manager and given out ridiculous contracts to average players. It was after all that when the cuts were made quickly. What did I want him to do? Well maybe aim for becoming self sufficient over a larger time scale. Because doing it the way he has will cost us premier league existence. As owner, he has a responsibility, and if that means him losing money for a while longer until we became self sufficient then that's what should have happened. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodgyknees Posted November 28, 2015 Share Posted November 28, 2015 On a par with Doug now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cliffy Biro Posted November 28, 2015 Share Posted November 28, 2015 Well when we go down i hope it bankrupts him for ruining us, the absolute clown. Don't care now, i feel like it is personal the way hes running us down and im just sick of it now. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Dr_Pangloss Posted November 28, 2015 Popular Post Share Posted November 28, 2015 3 minutes ago, DK82 said: On a par with Doug now. He's comfortably worse than Doug. Randy deserves to be lynched, this **** prick has relegated us. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodgyknees Posted November 28, 2015 Share Posted November 28, 2015 1 minute ago, Cliffy Biro said: Well when we go down i hope it bankrupts him for ruining us, the absolute clown. Don't care now, i feel like it is personal the way hes running us down and im just sick of it now. We are in for even more cuts now. It's not over from him by a long mile. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr_Pangloss Posted November 28, 2015 Share Posted November 28, 2015 4 minutes ago, Cliffy Biro said: Well when we go down i hope it bankrupts him for ruining us, the absolute clown. Don't care now, i feel like it is personal the way hes running us down and im just sick of it now. Fat chance of it bankrupting him, but I do wish the very worst for this guy in all of his personal and business affairs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phumfeinz Posted November 28, 2015 Share Posted November 28, 2015 B-but he paid for that tapestry outside the Holte and renovated the pub! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodgyknees Posted November 28, 2015 Share Posted November 28, 2015 Just now, Phumfeinz said: B-but he paid for that tapestry outside the Holte and renovated the pub! Don't forget the tattoo! A real fan! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr_Pangloss Posted November 28, 2015 Share Posted November 28, 2015 1 minute ago, DK82 said: Don't forget the tattoo! A real fan! Someone needs to hold him down and tattoo word removed on his forehead. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts