stanthemanisgod

Are you sure? I'd like to think he would but what if we went and lost our first three games of the season against fairly easy opposition because his style, formation or tactics weren't working with the players? A lot of people though, and still think, Houllier was sensible appointment yet his style failed and regardless of his health issue a number of people were calling for his head. I guess my point is as Villa fans how do we define a sensible appointment? You might think Poyet is very sensible, the next guy might question what he's actually achieved at the top level and might be expecting failure. It seems to me that even when things are going well we're happy to have a moan, so what chance will any manager have who doesn't get off to a flying start?

Just a question for all those championing a young up and coming manager... How long do you think they'd get if results didn't start wellbefore people on these boards start claiming we should have got somebody with more experience and that Lerner didn't know what he was doing? The reason I ask is I assume you're all calling for said managers because of their reputation for playing decent footy, but with our squad that's not likely to wield results instantly (if at all) I'd love to see Guardiola trying to teach Collins and Dunne how to pass!! So unless they canliterally change the majority of the playing squad, again not likely to happen, I dont think we'll see any real benefit in the first half of next season. So how long a period of grace do you think the likes of Poyet would enjoy before people start writing him off as not being up to the challenge of such a big club etc? By the way I'm not pro or anti Poyet et al I'm just curious.

The problem I have with this statement is we don't actually know who the players wesigned were in negotiations with when they signed for us, how do you know there wasn't other clubs offering them similar amounts when we negotiated terms? We also signed a number of London based players, or players from London clubs, Harewood, Young, Luke Young, NRC, Ashley Young, Sidwell just to name a few, granted not all of them turned out to be decent signings, but they still only cost what was needed to attract them tothe club.

We signed vastly better players than we had when MON took over, granted some of them were'nt anywhere near as good as hoped, but we had to spend our way through a regeneration. Look at City as the ultimate example of what we were attempting to do. They still have a batch of players from thei first wave of new money signings they can't get rid of, people like Santa Cruz and Bridge. City had the power to spend through their initial lack of success, whilst we didn't. Yes a differnt management team might have bought different players but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking they would have been significantly cheaper.

This, We wanted MArtinez - got turned down. We then wanted to speak to McLaren - We protested so thinned him out. We then had to settle for McLeish. What on Earth makes you think we can afford to turn Lambert down and 'aim higher'?

Risso, Where are you getting your figures from? I know spurs generate a higher income than we do, but there over all wages bill wasn't far off ours a couple of seasons ago. Would expect the % to be lower but not sure I'd have said as low as 55%. Similarly with Newcastle, there income is not as high as Spurs and they've made a few signings which granted wont be on proper big money but must all be around the £30k a week, and if they're not already they'll need to be with the interest the players are getting from the bigger clubs. Just interested to know where you fihures came from?

I think there's a lot of clubs that whilst maybe not as high as ours was/is have wage bills that exceed the UEFA regs. City will definatley have to do something, although I think they're now firmly established as one of the top clubs they'll cope, selling half the squad that dont get a game will almost do it for them. I'd be interested to see what Sunderland's, Stoke's, Newcastle's and even Spur's wage bill is as a percentage of income. I'm not saying that anybody will fall as hard as we have over the last 2 years, the manager situation has compounded that, but other clubs will have to adress the way they operate, and if we've already sorted our house out we may, repeat may, be in a position to benefit. Of course it could be that Lerner just doesn't want to spend any money, but it would be nice if the majority on this thread at least acknowledge an alternative argument.

it's not really the transfer fee that's the issue it's the wages. I could see £7-10M players coming in provided they're not asking for more than around £30k a week.

which is why I think giving him the captaincly was meant to be a kick up the arse going into the final part of the season. He's certainly no natural leader so that's my guess as to why he was given the armband. If it worked it would be a good piece of management imo, afterall you'd still expect the vocal members of your team to remain vocal whether they're captain or not.

MoN didn't put a wage structure in place. He did what any other manager in his position would have done, he signed the players he wanted, on the wages it took to get them with the approval of his board. The wages were never an issue until UEFA decided to pander to the established big clubs who were getting worried by the City's, Malaga'sd and PSG's of the world. The only discontent I heard from the board was regarded highly paid players that were seemingly frozen out of the squad, such as NRC. We are not financially in a mess, we're losing money yes but that cannot come as a surprise to anybody at the club given the money we were spending, money that was freely offered up by the owner. We only owe money to our owner, so no real mess to speak of. And yes 3 6th place finishes, a cup final, and an FA cup semi-final, are a relative success for a club that had been midtable at best for a long time. What last cup final before that was when 2000? last trophy 96? last UEFA cup place... I actually cant remember.

My point is with the apparent lack of a natural captain (I'll accept Collins is the nearest thing we have) he may have used it as a tool to try and get some better performances out of Gabby at a time when we need him firing on all cylinders. I'm not saying it has worked or that it was the right decision just giving a possible explanation for why the decision might have been made. It's now up to Gabby to decide how he reacts to the extra responsibility of being captain.

MoN was MoN, I dont buy into the theory that everything stems from him. Yes he made some duff signings but let's not forget the success we saw was still under his reign. Even though we were spending money we weren't spending the kind of money to get the really good players and we weren't buying from a position of strength until towards the end of his reign. I would argue with MoN still in charge and the same level of funding we'd still be challenging for the euro spots, maybe even doing better as we may have attracted better signings after a more prolonged period at the right end of the league. For me it all comes down to the money, the signings, the sale of players, the appointment of managers has all been driven by the need to reduce expenditure. Whether you're more pro or anti Lerner depends on why the expenditure has been reduced so quickly.

I dont now if it's been mentioned previoulsy (cant be arsed to check through the thread) but it might be a man management ploy from the manager. Granted Weiman has stepped up but when the decision was made McLeish would have been looking to Gabby as the main source of goals for the side, and as many have mentioned he's not been banging them in recently. So you give him a bit of extra responsibility, give him a reason to work that little bit harder for the team and hope it inspires him to put in the performances. The other point is there's no stand out alternative, I dont think Given is vocal enough and Collins isn't all that popular with the fans.

It would depend if something came along and fundamentally flawed your business model, such as some new legislation. His plan was to come in and attempt to buy a measure of success for the club and for the most part it was working, steady imporovement in points totals, cup finals and semi-finals, european football. we just failed (for a number of reasons) to clear the final hurdle. The problem with that plan is if the money dries up then things go stale very quickly, as we have seen. So the real question is has he stopped the money because he's decided he no longer wants to fund the dream or because in a season or 2 if we'd have carried on as we were we wouldn't be allowed to enter an european competition we'd qualified for. If it's the former then you're entitiled to criticise his ownership, if it's the latter then it could be argued that he made the tough but responsible decision. They way I see the situation is a bit like an F1 Grand Prix, we might be 15th in the race but we're the only car to have made it's pit stop, once the other's come in we'll move back up the pack.

It's all well and good saying he didn't listen but that only applies to this situation if there was somebody else he could have employed. Now I can sit here and list any number of managers that in my head should have been interested in the job but it seems they weren't. When your list of serious candidates is Martinez, Mclaren and McLeish, one of which refused to discuss terms with the club it goes to show there wasn't a que of good managers waiting in the wings. As for next season... I dont know what was stipulated in McLeish's contract but I would assume that if we avoid relegation, and I think we will in fact a couple of wins and we can climb the table a bit, then he will not be sacked. And to be honest we should be careful what we wish for because if he is sacked after appearing from the outside to meet the terms of his contract I shudder to think who, if anyone, will be in line to replace him.

WHislt the Chelsea and Everton stuff was getting of topic the argument was made that our owner's incompetence have been highlighted by what has happened at other clubs, namely Chelsea and Everton. That said I dont agree with the points being made. Personally I odnt think he's done that bad a job, just because things have slipped in the last 2 seasons we cant simply forget the good he did for the club whan he came in, when the majority of us were holding him up as the model example of a foreign owner. As I argued before I genuinely believe that the spped at which we've tried to address the wage issue is to ensure we comply with the UEFA regs, not because he's lost his bottle, or wants out. I would expect thatother clubs will also have to look at their income to wages ratio and when they do our 'fall from grace' wont look as bad as it currently does.

Do you really think, even with Heskey, that Newcastle's expenditure on wages is much lower than ours? And whilst we might be able to 'afford' them can you guarantee they'd fit within the UEFA regs? Newcastle have always had a good fan base and a good income for the size of club, I would bet quite a lot that under the UEFA regs Newcastle will be able to outspend the Villa regardless of who owns the club. Everton we've always been close to in terms of income, but this season they're currently 10 points off 6th, so it would appear that Everton can''t 'afford' a top 6 squads wages either.

I personally think it is about the financial fair play regs. At the time the move to lower wages commenced we had qualified for Europe, had done the previous 2 seasons as well, therefore the regs def would have applied to the club and we were some way off meeting them. As I said it looks like we've tried to address the problem a season or 2 earlier than most clubs in the league, and that may have been inspired in some way by Lerner wanting to keep hold of some of his cash, but when players are on 3,4 or 5 year contracts you cant slash your wage bill overnight. I think what we will see over the next season or 2 is a number of other clubs looking to reduce their expenditure in order to comply and therefore our relative position will increase. Granted it might not be as strong as it was before inder MoN, but that is simply down to our income, and therefore spending power, as opposed to other clubs. On ther other hand there would be little point in continuing as was, or employing only a slightly reduced expediture, and not being able to play in europe had we qualified. If randy genuinely is not prepared to foot the bill then he'd simply cut his losses and sell. I may be wrong but it's just how I read the situation, I think things will be very different once clubs 'have' to comply with the regs, can't wait to see what city do with their squad.

I dont get the hysteria surrounding Lerner's 'supposed' lack of control over his spending. As far as I can tell he hasn't been too upset about the club running at a loss, we dont have HMRC knocking on the door and we're not subject to the whims of some bank. The only thing I can see that has fundamnetally changed our approach to wages is the advent of the UEFA Financial Fair Play Regs. It seems as if we took action to comply earlier than many other clubs and as such we're feeling the effects before many others do. The thought process was probably the sooner we addressed the issue the sooner we can look competing within those rules. I honestly believe that prior to news of the UEFA regs Lerner was quite content with what we were spending and his only real gripe was having highly paid players frozen out of the squad, which is understandable.

The issue here is a disconnect between what we consider to be underperforming and what the owner considers to be underperforming. Inthe Chelsea case the owner and the fans were celarly on the same page, it's very clear what's expected and the funds are in place o ensure that is possible. At Villa we tend be reluctant to accept that due to financial contraints we have fallen behind other clubs we were regulary finishing above previously. There is a much larger grey area around what is wanted and what is the minimum that is sustainable. Whilst i honestly belive the board thought we should (and I agree) be higher up the table, I dont think they're prepared to sack the guy for finishing 15th. I also think they will have remembered us being around the drop zone for a while last season until a strong finish had us up to 9th. I'm not saying that will def happen again but I think the owner would be reluctant to sack McLeish at this point given our position of relative safety. Where we finish on the last day of the season may or may not give Lerner a tough decision to make, and I think if we're any closer to the drop zone he may look to replace the manager, but a lot of that will depend on what has been said between the 2 behind closed doors and what managers might be available to us if we were to sack McLeish.

Plus the fact KMac made it quite clear before he didn't want the job!

It depends on how you interpret his comments, I didn't take them as a criticism of the current players as such, but more a statement that the team had lost qualityc omapred to that of last season, and they struggled last season too. It's basically him saying I'm doing ok because I've got a weaker side than last year but I'm in the same sort of position. You might not agree but I would imagine if you gave Mancini a weakened squad and he wasn't challenging for the title he'd say something similar.

To be fair to McLeish he's probably feeling like he's having to go on the defensive. Nobody likes to admit they're shit at their job, I bet the majority of us if we had our boss come up to us now and say something we did was below standard we'd instantly think of an excuse (whether or not we'd use it depends on our own moral courage). With McLeish the difference is it doesn't seem to be his boss that's telling him he's doing shit, it's a load of people he has no formal connection to that in his opinion have little or no knowledge about his job specification and his goals and objectives. If a load of strangers came up and told me I was doing a shit job I'd probably tell them to do one! Plus a lot of the stuff he says is accurate, whether you think he should be claiming it in his defence or not. The side is weaker than it was last year, we do have injuries to some key players (look at our bench for the Chelsea game!!) those of us that were realistic at the start of the season knew this campaign would be a struggle. Whilst it's easy for us to sit here and criticise the tactic, the style of play, the performances, none of us are at the training ground everyday, none of us are in the dressing room before, during and after games we don't know what is down to him and what is down to players not being committed. What is apparent though is it's not our opinion that matters, and as long as he continues to meet the obligations of his contract I cant see us getting rid.

Yeah but thats not saying a lot when our goal scoring is so woeful. My point is due to the way we play, or have been playing a different striker might have scored the same or more and not cost anywhere near the price Bent has. It reminds of buying a ferrari to nip to the corner shop and back.

It depends on your viewpoint. Have we benefited from his goals? yes definately many would argue his goals kept us up last season. But ultimately this year we've had a £20m+ striker in the squad who has scored how many goals exactly? Now people could argue that a £10m striker and a £10m midfielder might have contibuted more goals to this team than Bent who frankly hasn't had enough service to be effective this season. The reality of the matter though is if we do need to generate some cash we havn't really got anybody else to sell.