stanthemanisgod

SnC, I dont know enough about the thought process to give a definitive answer but there could be any number of reasons why a RB was bought and defensive CM wasn't. It could well be that AMc regarded the CM options at the club with the addition of N'Zog and Jenas to be sufficent, whereas he might have considered a PL quality RB to be more important. You mention Cuellar doing a job but he's been injured and if it were not foe the injury he may well be north of the border right now. I certainly wouldn't trust Beye, Herd and Lichaj for a whole season. It may be that we attempted to sign a DCM but couldn't find an available player that met the requirements of club, perhaps we did and he didn't want to move with 30 miles of the training ground?? It might be we could find a DCM for £4m but his wage demands were too high, and given that we couldn't afford a DCM he decided the next priority was a RB?? All I'm saying is it isn't fair to simply point the finger at the manager.

I would the say the combination of MoN, Randy's money andthe excitement of chasing the top 4 rebranded the Villa product in such a way that more people wanted to buy it. I know people dont like thinking about Villa as a commercial entity but it is, Villa have done no more to retain our loyalty than say a person who only buys Rover(well did anyway) cars becauser their father and his father both worked there. If the matchday experience is more attractive then more people will buy it, and during those years there was a genuine excitement around the club which made us more attractive to those who aren't part of the die hard 25-30k that will turn up regardless. That's the reason there's Man Utd and Liverpool fans all over the world, its the reason in Kenya people paint Utd, Arsenal and Chelsea badges all over their buses and taxis, thses people dont have any historical loyalty to these clubs they just favour which ever brand gives them the most enjoyment. Call it glory hunting if you want but I'd ask what glory those extra fans that went to VP ever found, but ultimately if we want to improve our position as a club we need to attract more and more of these peolpe to the club. Whereas the last 18 months or so has gone the other way and driven them onto more attractive uses of their time and money.

Yes but it appears Newcastle had the £3.5m to spend plus whatever the wages were for his services where as we apprantly did not, we had to let one of midfielder's go out on loan just to get another loan signing in!! As for NRC I actually quite liked him in the side, couldn't pass for toffee but no worse than Delph has shown thus far and at least he could mix it up without the fear of a red card. However, reports were he wanted a significant pay rise in order to sign a new deal and the club didn't see fit to grant it. So I'd argue that we couldn't afford to resign NRC either. What I'm objecting to is the blame being laid on AMc's doorstep, when I am sure there were probably a few names he would have liked to have signed if he could have. But I guess it's much easier for those that like the simple answer to pin the blame on the man from sha that nobody really likes!!

Hey lets nto let reason get in the way of a good rant shall we?! Whilst I'm no McLeish fan I feel thats being overly critical, for a start on paper Luke Young and Huttin look similar, in fact many were appluading the deal as a good bit of business with Hutton costing us less each week and being younger than Young. As for the defensove midfielder comment I assume you can back that comment up with detailed accounts of all the negotiation we entered into with clubs and agents for players? Everyone can see what our midlfied is lacking, and if you and I can I'm certain professional manager can regardless of what we all think of him. But there is big difference between identifying a gap and being able to fill it, especially in light of the way we appeared to be conducting our business over the summer.

But his wages are less than Young's (allegedly) and he's playing so surely that represents a win in Lerner's eyes?

To be honest it has nothing to do with the amount of money that is being spent, but has a lot to do with the level of entertainment you can expect. I moved away from Birmingham at an early age so supporting the club has never been about season tickets and going to the games week in week out. That does not mean I dont care about what is happening to the club, it just means I dont purchase the product Aston Villa are selling as often as you do. For me to come to a game now (I'm posted around the UK a lot with work) is quite a logistical operation, getting tickets, travel, a place to stay etc etc. And it becomes very expensive, now if I was guaranteed an entertaining 90 mins (and not just from the away side) every time I turned up to Villa Park I might consider that outlay to be better value for money. But right now I'm reluctant to go to the effort of writing off a whole weekend and spending a couple of hundred quid on coming to the Villa. But as somebody else alluded to we support the Villa and go to games becuase we like football, for whatever reason something in our youth leaned our loyalty towards Villa, but it could have quite easily have been any other club. What we are left with is whether we choose to spend our hard earned money on going to the games or on other (more reliable) forms of entertainment like theatre, cinema, nights out etc. People talk about the club as a community, and whilst we probably do have more in common with the man in the seat next us at Villa than we do with the random you happen to sit next to at the cinema, we are still buying a product from a company ultimately looking to make money from us. And like in Cinema some films will attract larger audiences than others, any club can expect to have higher demand for tickets when there is level of expectation around the club and the performances on the pitch are backing it up, just like the films that sell out on the opening weekend. Equally when performances are disappointing and the media hype isn't there then clubs will struggle. Money certainly is one way to create the excitement required to bring people like myself back to the ground but it's not the only way and what we need to find is a way of making us and exciting and attractive option again.

I saw the PL trophy yesterday, it was at my work for some PR thing, anyway I looked at the inscriptions from 1992 onwards and couldn't help but ask myself what if....... And here lies the root cause of our problems today. We proved in 1992 we were good enough to challenge for this league, but where as our competitors realised the game was changing and invested heavily (except Chelsea and City) we got left behind and Man Utd grew into one of the biggest brands in the world. What we're asking for now as fans is players capable of challenging these clubs but with a fraction of their budgets and the maths simply do not work. Yes Beye is a donkey but who else was prepared to sign on less money? Yes Heskey wasn't great for the wages but again who else was interested ina move for less. Looking at TV revenue Liverpool had a valid point I think, I was in Kenya a couple of weeks ago and everybody out there supports an English team well 1 of 4 (can you guess which), and they genuinely only bother to watch the games when either one of those 4 are playing. Needless to say the bar showing QPR Vs Villa was empty with the exception of me and my GF. So if anything our TV revenue is more likely to go down than go up in the near future. But pretty much none of this is Lerner's fault, nor McLeish's. We're asking our manager to go out and buy a top 4 squad on a midtable budget and it simply is not sustainable.

Theres' a middle ground here. Yes we're short of playing staff but you cant pin the blame for that soley on the door of the likes of Beye and Ireland, or the people that brought them into the club. Our wages are limited by 2 factors: 1. The amount of income the club can generate. 2. The amount of that income we're prepared/permitted to spend. Unless football goes through another reform similar to when the PL was instigated we can do little to significantly improve our revenue, in fact we're lucky Liverpool failed in their TV money ploy. Now regardless of whether your name is Martin O'Neil or Arsene Wenger, good players capable of improving most PL squads cost a set amount of money per week. That amount will of course vary but with the way the business is now with agents and the like players will be well aware of what they can earn and who is prepared to pay it. Now no defence for MoN a large portion of his wage budget was wasted, but what we are being told now is that our wage structure as it stands is unaffordable, so even if those players were playing and lighting up the league we still couldn't afford their wages. That in turn has repocussions for our better players, for example why would Young wish to remain here with wages capped at say £60k a week when he can go to Utd on £100k a week and actually win something? Lerner can do little about that, and a director of football whilst he might veto some of the signings and present some slightly more fan friendly names will actually struggle to recruit real quality in the quantity we require given the budget of the club. I fear that unless something in football fundamentally changes, like a standard wage cap per squad regardless of income(which of course will never be approved) then our ionly hope is to follow the Man City model before UEFA close that door as well.

And think that's more a symptom of the players rather than the manager. Lets be honest our defenders as brave as they are have always been a bit kicky once of the business of defending has been done. I cant comment on the Wigan game, but what I saw in the QPR game was a midfield that was unable at any point in the 1st half and for periods of the 2nd to impose themselves on the game and take control of the ball. As a defender when you're seeing your midfield having their arses handed to them in the middle of the park it makes it a lot more diffuclut to play the ball through them with confidence, especially when you feel more comfortable playing a longer ball into the channels. It's hard to say how much of it is down to AMc though. Yes N'Zogbia has been guilty of giving the ball away but at least AMc had the bottle to drop him last game. But I'm struggling to see what options he has when it comes to personnel and that certainly isn't his fault. So whilst I accept people simply dont like the guy, I cant really see much he's done wrong since taking the job on.

What I find most amusing is the views of those who believe this is a temporary period of financial control anfd that all will be ok Once the evil Heskey and Beye have left the club. The point is (backed up in part by the article listed) is that the wage bill at current is not affordable if we are to comply with the FFP regulations. Therefore even when Beye and Heskey's contract are up we will not see any manager given leave to go out and recruit new players on £40k + a week contracts. The money saved by their departure will only go towards bringing us towards our target whatever that might actually be, but it's clear we're not there yet. So we either need Paul McGrath himself to come down and ensure the worlds most promising youngsters feel a sudden desire to relocate to Brum, or we cut our cloth accordingly and realise AMc, Hutton, N'Zog and a shed load of draws is as about as exciting as it's going to get to for a while. I'm not sure what people actually want Lerner to do, stand up in front of a half full VP and tell us all exactly how it is (when the majority of us who can think for ourselves can see quite clearly what is going on)? Bankrupt himself and the club by going out and spending more money on big(ish) names on big contracts, bearing in mind any manager will struggle to better MoN's transfer record considering the reputation of our club and location comapred to the clubs we'd be up against for these players? I'll put my hand up and say I didn't want McLeish, but to be fair to him he's doing a decent job considering contraints he's being forced to work under. I know many of you are asking about Hughes but do we really know the ins and outs of any negotiations with potential managers and I can understand why the club might want to keep it quiet when/if people turn the club down.

Whether you like the guy or not MoN did give Bannan, Clark and Albrighton chances, none of us know how many games they would have got under MoN last season given the injuries we had or what would have happened when those regular first teamers came back, so it's unfair to say they wouldn't have got games under MoN. As a few people have commented the players were 2 years younger when Mon was last in charge of the first team and they could (and in my opinion have) improved significantly during that time. Even still we've still see inconsistency in their performances and if we were getting beat regularly many of you would be questioning their involvement over the more experienced players. As for Cahill I'm probably one of the few who do not hold MoN responsible. I am in no doubt that MoN and many others at the club realised what a talent Cahill was going to turn into. But at the time he was rightly (imo) being kept out of the team by players who were performing well, he wasn't happy to wait for his chance and moved to the then lower placed club of Bolton in order to get his first team opportunities quicker. I'm fairly sure the majority of managers and clubs would have handled the situation in the same way.

Just out of interest what happened to the days when you'd expect both central midfielders to play defensive and attacking roles? Why is it now essential we have one player solely focussed on defensive play and one focussed on attacking. For what its worth the only time you should ever have a defensive midfielder is when you're playing 3 in the middle as part of a midfield 5 in my opinion. Petrov is a valuable player, and a well respected Captain (by the players at least), yes he could be replaced by somebody better but that person is not currently playing for our club on current form. He was criticised for bein MoN's pet but since then 3 other managers have continued to pick him including the hallowed football genius that is Houllier, so he muct be at the very least an ok player.

I could say the same for Warnock as an England international that cost nearly £10m. By the way I'm not saying he couldn't/shouldn't be playing better but I dont think we'll ever see him hit the form of Ash and Downing.

The problem is with Zog is that he was expected to be our shining light before he even kicked a ball. We've seen our 2 most creative, if not best, players leave and be replaced with the Zog. People are always going to expect him to hit the ground running and to light up the league like our former players are doing at their new clubs. He'll be a decent player, but I'm afraid that'll be about it, dont think he's suddebly goign to turn into world class, and therefore will probably be labelled a flop as a result.

Davies, NRC, Cuellar all played their part and at times have been first team regulars. Dont let the last season of his tenure cloud your judgement. I doubt he ever signed anyone on £30-40k a week with the intention of putting them on the bench, but sometome signings dont work out, that's football. What we should be asking ourselves is why the likes of Shorey, Beye and Sidwell demanded such high wages to join us in the first place? Or do you think Martin looked at their £20k a week demands and decided to double them out of the goodness of his heart?

To be fair that doesn't prove it isn't propaganda, a lot of the Nazi propaganda came straight from the top. Without knowing who these sources are or what they could could possibly gain from discrediting MoN I'm afraid your statement doesn't prove anything.

No Stu it wouldn't which is why I believe the whole affair is a lot more complicated than many of us believe. I dont know why he was paid compensation but the fact he was would indicate the terms of his contract were breached in some way. That's why so far I've not joined the bandwagon of those out for his blood, untill I know, emphasis on the know part there, know what actually happened I'm not prepard to judge him on his departure.

The way he left the club has definately left a bad taste in the mouth's of many but you cannot point the finger solely at one party. We have been kept in the dark about a lot of the goings on and as such people have made their own minds up. But I doubt very much if MoN, Houllier or even AMc feel as if they owed or owe the fans anything. At the end of the day no matter how much we might take a vested interest in all things Villa the manager's job is just that a job. I think it's fairly safe to assume, based on the fact MoN got compensation from the club, that there was more too it than MoN just sulking and deciding to leave. And while I believe neither side is blame free it's simply not fair to blame it all on MoN. If anybody actually witnessed the conversations that occured or was present at the tribunal then please feel free to correct me.

Anyway you're off the point. I was saying that Bent was much more a MoN TYPE signing compared to what Houllier's benefits were meant to be. Many like yourself were convinced we'd be using an extensive network of foreign scouts to sign players MoN had never heard of. Just because MoN didn't actually sign Bent does not mean Bent was not a typical MoN signing.

So you know for sure that Randy had free'd up that much for one signing? I'd love to know where you're getting your information from, or are you just assuming that as he moved during that window we had the opportunity to sign him? Perhaps he did, perhaps he thought he was guaranteed a start at sunderland, perhaps he preferred the area then, perhaps we didn't want to meet his wage demands. Again you're assuming a lot. If I remeber correctly Harewood was signed before Bent left Spurs.

Really so a proven British based PL player, a fairly big wage wasn't a MoN type signing? Here's a question..... Can you prove we indeed did have a chance to sign him when he left spurs? Here's another... Can you prove he didn't try to sign him when he left Spurs?

I was a MoN fan, I wasn't overjoyed with Houllier and I'm unsure about McLeish. The one thing that pissed me off with Houllier was he came into the club and from the first minute of the first day he completely destroyed the ethos of the squad. Bang! everything changed. No for that to have worked he would have need carteblanche to sell, sack or otherwise get rid of the players he couldn't,wouldn't work with and go out and buy those he could. And that was never going to happen. What you cannot do is completely change the set up of an established squad, asking players to do something their not neccesarily confident with and expect to get results ina very competitive league at the same time. He tried the senior members, when it wasn't working or they got injured tried the kids and when that didn't work he went back to the first lot of players. People herrald his european scouting network then chuck numerous plaudits at him for signing Bent ( a MoN signing if I ever saw one). Houllier's approach may have worked in the long run but the way he was going about it he was never going to be here long enough to reap any benefits because we'd be in the Championship.