stanthemanisgod

Posted this earlier in the thread but it semed to go unoticed, but I feel it still applies, he looked like your typical continental footaballer and certainly was well off the pace whenever I saw him play. I'd be more worried about Makoun in the midfield than Delph and I dont have many good things to say about him on recent performances. I wont argue that he had a decent touch and the ability to play simple balls to feet, but we already have a player with those atttributes in Petrov, what we need is somebody with a bit of drive, the ability to take the game by the scruff of the neck and make something happen. That's why I beleive why allowed him out on loan with Jenas coming in, unfortunately just as he was showing signs of being that player he got himself injured. Makoun for me would only ever be fairly expensive cover for Petrov this season, if he can prove he can adapt to the pace and physical nature of the league then he could be Petrov's replacement, but with the emphasis of the club of saving money I do not think he'll have long to prove his worth.

Yes he's often isolated, and I think he's frustrated by the type of ball he's receiving. But that also doesn't mask poor decision making on his account when he does have the ball, one time in particular stands out from yesterday where he received the ball on the edge of the box took a couple more touches than he should have to control the ball, still tried to beat to men, then evetnaully passed to Marc who was screaming for it out wide. By the time he did pass to Marc the opportunity to put in a decent ball had long gone. But yes he's being marked out of the game in the majority of cases because there is no cutting edge anywhere else in our team, especially when Gabby is not there. What we need is 2 effective wingers, then either a deep lying forward who can use the ball through the middle, or an attacking central midfielder who can cause a threat, ensuring a defence has to split it's focus 3 ways rather than going into a game knowing if they keep N'zog quiet they cancel out any attacking threat from us.

To be fair it's easy to to put 2 + 2 together and come up with 5 where Bent is concerned this season, the ingredients are all there for some lazy journalism, he's not getting decent service, not scoring many, he'll be concerned about his England place with a major tournament coming up in the summer and Villa of course are looking to save money at every opportunity. The issue being who'll buy him, we won't take too much of a hit on the fee (I'd have thought) aand not many clubs can afford his wages. Liverpool might be interested if they've given up on Caroll and he could link up with with Suarez, other than that perhaps Sunderland might try and get him back now they'll be flashing the cash to keep MoN happy? I think he's certainly be considering his options and we'd c;learly be happy to get his wages off the books so who knows. If it happens and it appears that ifi t does Zamora is being lined up as his replacement then that will be the final nail in Lerner's coffin and would see mass protests/boycots at the ground.

We sit safely in whatever league we're in knowing that income is in line with expenditure. I am certainly not expecting any sort of increase in expenditure once the highly paid but poor performaers are eventually out the door. Our current wage bill is unsustainable, and income certainly wont be increased anytime soon, so all I can see is more cost cutting unitl the wage bil is down to the right level, then attempts to buy decent players within that limit (which is very difficult with a poor manager and a club that isn't winning anything).

The defence wasn't great that's clear for all to see. But imo the midfield didn't do them any favours either. Abrighton, Delph and insomnia all did a sterling job of making Petrov look invluable in the middle of the park. It was nice to see the boys attempt to pass the ball about but they just looked completely out of their depth, for the most part it was proper schoolboy stuff, head down running with the ball, look up realise they've run to within a yard of another Villa player then play the 1 yard pass. Anything further than that was likely to go wayward. Liverpool knew we had nothing going forward and their fullback helped double up on ours, the ball kept coming back at the defence with little or no respite, imo good defenders would have struggled to keep a clean sheet yesterday and the players we have to slect from are far fom good. It's difficult to pinpoint where the blame should fall, and reality in probably falls upon a number of individuals but football is cutthroat, and as I said throughout the seaon last year on 606, the responsibility falls squarley on the shoulders of the manager, no matter what the players do, no matter what the direction is from the board, the only mman who is realistically going to lose his job is the manager. Now what happens over the next 5 weeks or so will indicate what the owner actually thinks about the manager's performance, but I'm very concerned that McLeish is actually meeting his objectives for the year and little will be done in Jan if anything. I fear this is what us fans can expect for a good few seasons to come.

The way I see it is I know next to nothing about the internal or external mechanics of a car but that does not prevent me from being a bad car owner. It simply means that I am forced to rely on the expertise of other people, usually employed or contracted by mysefl to conduxt routine maintnenance etc. For me Randy is the same only now he's feeling the pinch a little, or perhaps has decided that paying for formula standard mechanics when you're driving a Porsche Boxster isn't the way ahead. So as a result the quality of the people he's relying on to assist him are perhaps not of the same quality than they were before. But does that necessarily make him a bad owner? I'm sure that if you asked him in all honesty he would believe he is acting in the best interests of the club. He'll tell you (and I think he believes it) that he appointed the best manager available given the drive to be more cost effective. So what we come down to is ultimately either a difference of opinion in terms of personality or a desire for him to be able to afford better people to help him out. I mean what does Mansour know about football but I'm sure if you ask the majority of City fans they'll think he's a fantastic owner. I know some on here are keen to distance themselves from those that are asking for Randy to start spending loads of money but I really dont see how he could really attract the kind of people we'd all like to see without serious amounts of cash being made available for a complete overhaul of the club.

John, That's admirable but I dont see how it's relevant to the situation of the club now. I use technology that makes my life easier, I have one device that acts as a phone, camera, music library and internet web browser. Yes I expect things quicker than people of an older generation might but that's because the technology is in place to make that a possibility. I can easily turn your argument and say that about people who cant imagine a life without electricity and running water, or a time when cars were widely unadffordable, or before a democratic government. History is a useful tool to tell us about how things were and why things happened the way they did, and 30 years ago Villa were in a postion to field a side strong enough to win the league here and then win the European Cup. But because circumstances allowed it then does not mean we have a devine right to expect it now. Saddly for those like me that have never had to work in an office without e-mail, or had to rely on the post to receive important information we cant imagine what life would be like without these things. Equally we can barely (if at all) remember supporting the club before the advent of the Premier League and if I cant at 28 (pretty much past it in terms of footballers) then how do you think we are regarded by those inside the game? by the players we might want to attract to play for us? Unfortunately memories are short in the game and something we won 30 years ago will not make us a house hold name to the players we want to attract now. We are not a sleeping giant in fact we're barely a big club in the PL now, there are plenty of teams that attract as many if not more fans to their grounds, in fact a number of Championship clubs are giving us a run for our money this season. So on that basis Randy is doing all he can imo, and if we want more on a more consitant basis in the current climate (and it seems most of us do) then we need a man with money to burn.

John, It's nearly 30 years ago. Whilst you and the rest of your generation remember it well and hope that Villa return to that level, there a whole generation of supporter like myself that weren't even born when that happened. In the years I've been a Villa fan the only success we've had is 2 League Cup wins, and the last of those was 15 years ago. The beginning of the PL and then the CL has changed football for good and since that revolution we as a club have fallen further and further behind the curve. I look back and think what could've been if we'd held on and won that first PL title, if our board had taken the risks with money that Utd's did. You and others maight expect us to replicate our former glories but I'm part of the Villa generation that were as surprised as the rest of the footballing world to see us competing for the top 4 places a couple of season's ago. Lerner had a go at waking the 'sleeping giant' as you put it but guess what it didn't wake up, we weren't regularly selling out the ground, we didn't have waiting lists for season tickets, we couldn't generate larger income for higher wage bills. We are no longer the club you remember just as Forest are no longer the club a number of their fans remember and even to some extents Liverpool are no longer the club they were.

The FFP regs will not make it easier to compete all they will acheive is fixing the status of teams. I notice Utd's quartlery turnover is nearly as high as our annual, therefore the regs will secure the teams that are already big and successful and are designed to appease the Utds and Barca's against more City anfd Malaga style take overs. Depending on how the regs are enforced then Lerner selling to the Qatari Royal Family will do little to help our lot. Sure we could probably spend what we have more effectively and a new CEO might help with that but it certainly wont give us the instant fix we're all hoping for.

Do you think taking Chelsea and City out of the league would level the playing field? Utd will still have vastly more money than anybody else, Liverpool and Arsenal will go back to having a nailed on CL place, and Spurs would probably the club to drop into 4th and dine out on the CL money. Especially if UEFA succeed in preventing more City style buy outs. The only true way of making the league equal is to apply a wage cap to all clubs regardless of income, but even then who's to say a player chosing to play for city wont end up on £20k a week wages and a £200k a week sponsorship deal negotiated by the club?

Trent/Barry, I see your point but other are inadvertantly asking for that level of spending, and I'm fairly certain that if the spending hadn't dried up people would be a lot more willing to let the other things slide. For example the communication from the board, how many other clubs communicate their intentions to the level people on these boards are expecting ours to? Why do people want a statement from the club? Well it's probably because the money has gone? People unhappy with the appointment of McLeish, well why do you think we had to settle for a manager like McLeish? I bet it would have something to do with the amount of money we have to spend. People criticise the other members of the board, well nobody seemed to care who was around when we were spending money and pushing for 4th with half the England squad. So the majority of the things people are moaning about can only really be fixed by money. We can debate all day long about how we got to this point and whether that make Lerner a good owner or not, but it's down to simple maths now, we can only spend what we earn and we dont earn enough to put us in a strong enough position to be able to consistently reach the level we as fans aspire to. It's the reason Newcastle are trying to sell the naming rights to their ground, they know they dont have the spending power to maintain the level they're currently at and are tyring everything possible to increase that.

I honestly dont think it's fair to blame MoN for the Cahill thing. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but then again how long ago did he leave us and it's only in the last season or 2 Cahill has really started to attract an interest. At the time the manager wasn't prepared to pick him regularly, at the time our defence was solid and I dont recall seeing many people calling for his regular inclusion in the team either. That season the Davies we've grown to hate was being comapred favourably to Rio Ferdinand and all was good. Now a few years down the line Cahill improved and Davies never fully recovered from an injury (possibly because he played through it for so long) it has become yet another weapon for the I hate MoN brigade. It happens, I bet a fair few Barce fans were upset they let Fabregas leave theri youth academy to join Arsenal, it's just one of those things in football.

Barry, Fair enough but imo opinion you take just as much (if not more risk) on the up and coming players as you do with those that haver say spent a season on the bench at a bigger club/richer/more succesful club. If they reach the their potential then yes you've got a bargain but there's never a guarantee they will, Delph may well prove that. Just as there's no guarantee that the players coming down from big clubs will ever recapture the form that got them the move there in the first place. But you know that the ability is there somewhere so perhaps that represents less of a risk? If we're talking players that cant get into Spurs's side yes you might have a point, however clubs like City and Chelsea have vast amounts of very talented players and with the constant strwam of players coming into City there's no reason club's like Villa shouldn't be looking to attract some of the surplus, provided we can afford them!!

5 points clear at the top of the table, look like they'll get out of the groups in the CL, able to put out a second string 11 that would beat most PL teams. Able to threaten to leave a player they pay £250k a week to in the reserves. If they're not a big team they're certainly acting like one and I'm sure the majority of their players would consider Villa a step down.

I think the argument seems to balance on how you assess the current financial/wage situation and the reasoning behind the change in policy. Those that think the wages have spiralled way out of controll and the club is on the verge of going bust will argue Lerner is not a good owner. Those who think Lerner took a punt on increasing the club's revenue, and therefore the pot put aside for wages, but now is looking to reduce the outgoings because of the failure to achieve this think he's a fairly decent owner. There is also the UEFA FFP regs hanging over the club's head so even if he wanted to spend more on wages he couldn't and still expect Villa to qualify for UEFA competitions. So in my opininion regardless of who it is sat on the bench, Villa would still be looking to reduce our expenditure on wages this season, because we failed in significantly increasing our income to support a high wage bill. But we do not have HMRC issuing winding up orders, we are not in the position where a bank is like to call in hundreds of millions in loans, and the tightening of the belt is being brought about internally due to the way Randy wants to, or has to run the club. Would people still think he was a good owner if he carried on paying the level of wages we were/are if we did manage to finish in the top 4 for UEFA to ban us from entering the competition? FWIW I dont think he let anything spiral out of control, he approved the wage budget he thought would allow us to expand the earning potential of the club, for a number of reasons that failed and the result was the requirement for a more modest wage bill. Unfortunately what we are seeing is that good players still want big wages and therefore our ability to compete is being hampered by our inability to fund a high wage bill from what is a relatively low income compared to those clubs we wish to displace in the top 5 or 6.

Interesting to see the 'the harder games are yet to come' argument, and whilst they certainly are harder games to come it's difficult to look at the fixture list and pick out easy or hard games. Anybody else hear the interview with Joe Hart after the City - QPR game? According to the City players it was the first time they've felt like they've been in a game of football all season, and they've played a number of the harder teams, including Utd. So by that should we now assume QPR away is one of the harder fixtures of the season? It'll all even out, and as Bolton proved at the weekend even the bottom clubs are capable of big results.

I personally will never criticise a manager for not picking a certain player. Yes there are always players some of us would like to see more of, but the manager and the coaching staff see these guys everyday on the training pitch (or however often they train) untill I pack in my job a watch the training sessions full time I'll never pass judgement on what a player has or hasn't done to get selected or keep his place in the team if selected. Albrighton on his day is a good player, no world beater as many of us have painted him to be but if he's not showing enough in training to get a starting place then he only has himself to blame. Same with Ireland, Delph, Clark and anybody else we may or may not want to see play more often.

It's about the player and his motivation. Given is classic example of a player sat on a big club's bench that has dropped to our level and who wants to play. I really dont understand the hate for the Davies signing, when we bought him, he played, a lot, and was doing well enough to keep a young Cahill out of the side. I would argue that Delph was an on the up we took a chance on that hasn't really paid off. He cost a fair chunk of cash and has not even begun to pay that back yet. So easy to say that no matter what the approach some signings will be better than others.

Yep. Looking at the league and the teams above us, with perhaps the exception of Newcastle I think we're at the right end of where most of us expected to be. Yes we can all sit here and debate playing styles, tactics and starting line-ups (show me a set of fans that dont) But being a manager is a results business and so far we're doing alright. I'm certainly not about to start criticising him for not being somebody else, that's hardly his fault and the flak he's taking should imo be aimed at the board.

Depends on who's posts you read. There are plenty of people slating N'Zogbia so define giving him a chance? If you mean he's still playing well I cant think of many wide players at the club challenging him for his place at the moment, and even the manager hasn't started him every week regardless of form. I dont think he's playing well and if we had alternatives I'd be arguing the case for dropping him, we dont so we have little choice but to pick him and hope he plays. Makoun was not playing well either, but was in a position where we did have a degree of cover. He perhaps wanted a move away and we definately would have been interested in saving his wages (provided Olympiakos are actually paying his wages). For me he looked a player that needed the extra time you get on the ball in continental football, he always seemed a yard or 2 off the pace in the Prem and whilst he may have adapted the question was undoubtedly whether his wages could have been better utilised elsewhere. I'm assuming that as he was allowed, perhaps even encouraged to leave, that he wan't going to be part of the first team any time soon. And the fact he's not regularly starting at his loan team would indicate that perhaps it was the correct decision.

Pires was missing from our game even when he was on the pitch. The major diffrence between Arsenal when Wenger took over and Villa now is there are more 'missing parts' than dots at Villa. Also Wenger was rewarded with success, the CL was open to him and reinforced that behaviour and opened the club up to talent that wouldn't have previously been available. Even if Deschamps did fill the gaps and join the dots we would still be in the positon where at least 5 clubs in the league are ahead of us. Without the extra income the money dries up, without the wage budget the 'missing parts' become harder to recruit. Without trophies the existing 'missing parts' begin to look elsewhere.

THen why was he signed on a playing contract and not a much better value for money coaching contract? Makoun wouldn't make the bench for any of the top four clubs in this league, it's the reason he signed for us for around £5m and not Utd for double that. He might play the right kind of football but he's simply not up to the task, there must be a reason why he's struggling for game time at Olympiakos. Cabaye does look decent but it's still far too early to say if he'll ever have the consistency to play for a top 4 club on a regular basis. And please where was it ever stated by anybody at the club that Cabaye was ever going to join us? We do get how scouting works and how it can find players that would represent better value for money but come on this crusade to prove that Deschamps could turn us into European Champions based purely on his knowledge of the French game is making you look like a clown.

Here I think we will always disagree. whislt I accept that he could find enough talent at a young enough age to nuture into a strong team he will never be afforded the luxury of enough time to do so. Arsenal are in real danger of losing their CL placve this year, they lose that status and the income it generates and the wheels will very quickly fall off the wagon. That's why he signed players like Arteta this summer not some awesome 12 year for a packet of chocolate buttons. Deschamps might find a few good players if he ever came to the Villa but imo he would not be able to enough, quickly enough to keep those players here in order to build a team around. As soon as they begin to look decent in a team finishing 6th the likes of City and Utd will snap them up, as we have seen over the past few seasons. Wenger could do this before because he was able to adapt a team with a solid base quickly, when there was an opportunity to be exploited. What opportunity is there for Villa?

So now it's nothing to do with the manager but about the amount of time he spends in France? If MoN was now residing in France doing nothing but watching youth team games, you'd have him back in a flash would you? And I'm curious why it has to be France, cant remember them performing like a worldclass national side at the last world cup. Cant see them outperforming Spain or Germany at the next Euro. I mean why didn't the French just put any 11 of the world class young players out of the thousands on the production line on the pitch and win the World Cup at an canter?

If this was as far as your argument went I'd be a lot closer to your viewpoint than I am now. I still disagree that Deschamps would continually go out with £4m of Aston Villa's money and get top 4 quality players. If it was that easy the top 4 would all be scrambling after Deschamps to go and buy a top 4 capable starting 11 and bring them change from £45m! If the argument is would I prefer Deschamps to McLeish then yes I probably would. But do I think appointing Deschamps will be enough to make Villa a dominant force in Europe? No I dont, I cant see him even getting us into the CL without a serious amount of money to spend, money which isn't available. But first and foremost I cant even see him agreeing to manage us.