ciggiesnbeer

I am not even sure they are planning for the Championship to be honest. You would start that build now. It looks more like they are planning for a new lower quality manager to come in over the summer who can "work within the framework of the club" IE: on the cheap.

He might cost us money. That is against the new policy.

Thank you!

When did he say that? Gives me a bit of hope.

On the other hand they would have "played in the Premier League" on their CV which would be a plus to a lot of players. My assumption is new players have not come because the board do not think it is a priority and not willing to spend any money.

I am so angry at Lerner, Fox & hollis right now. It is unacceptable when players surrender on the pitch and even more so when the owner & board do it off the pitch. They should be ashamed. Put me with the Lerner out brigade. This is the final insult. This current regime has relegated our club by its austerity. They need to go now. Even a poorer new owner would be better than this.

Money alone might not fix us, but other factors without money won't. Fox, Randy & Hollis seem to have convinced themselves that they have tried to spending big and it didnt work. In fact what we have tried since MON left is trying to spend a bit while also reducing the wage bill. this led our actual strategy to be buying the unproven, the cast offs and the past it. Each kind is a gamble, a couple paid off, then left, leaving us with the rest. For me the low risk strategy it is not more austerity, it is buying proven quality to build a squad around. Thats what we should hav been doing this window. Just when , to their credit, they finally hired a manager worth backing they pulled the plug entirely on spending. Now the most likely outcome is we get relegated and garde walks due to being hung out to dry with no new players. I do not enjoy moaning about my club, but dammit the boards lack of investment this window is incredibly short sighted and foolish.

"That's not how you party Jack, THIS is how you party son."

Fair point. I find it very hard to believe however that we are anywhere near being in a problem area after so many seasons of austerity. I certainly think we can afford to have a net spend this season of more than 8 million quid. Spending an extra say 20 million this window is very unlikely to see us in breach of any FFP rules. That would be a prudent amount for a club that wants to fight relegation or build to get promoted again first try. Unfortunately it seems once again we are going to half ass a transfer window and get neither survival nor players we need to come back up.

Why not spend big? God knows we are in a relegation scrap because we have been cutting costs for years in a row. We can afford it now, spend on getting in good players. While we still can.

If the club's board wanted to try and stay in the premier league or hell even keep Garde around then obviously they would spend big this window. The fact that they haven't tells you all you need to know about their plans. So far anyway. about a week left....

I am in a miserable mood and could be talking utter tosh as part of my general sourness. Lets hope its that

I would keep every last one of them. Relegation is not a magical place where your costs go down, highly paid crap players leave and you can recruit better ones. Your revenue collapses, the good players leave and you can only recruit the dregs of players who have already been turned down by the bottom placed Premier league clubs. We are not going to get better players than the ones we have after this window is gone, which is why this window is so vital. That and Garde will probably walk if he continues to be starved of any signings. So keep em all, we wont be able to recruit any better in the Championship.

Wont boo. But I will drink. Heavily.

If that right? if so then wow, that actually cheers me up a lot!

Spot on. As a side note I am delighted Sherwood proved completely wrong the notion he would buy overrated British players or Spurs deadwood.

He is too good to be associated with the crapshow that is the England national team. After he had led us to Champions League victory is when he can rest on his laurels and go waste his time managing England.

Minority of 3. I thought he did a good job for us last season. I feel better having someone like him in the squad, also the idea of strengthening a relegation rival is a bit crazy(he is miles better than any of their players in the positions he can play) . Richards in!

Any article analyzing Villa in the ManU game that doesn't have the phrase "Of course lets remember Villa were playing a team that cost hundreds of millions more than them" or similar within it is pretty much meaningless. You can't write a tactical analysis of that game without pointing out the fact that the premier league is not a level playing field. They have vastly more expensive players. Arguing about how Sherwood should or shouldn't have handled that massive gulf is all well and good but the imbalance in the league should be front and center for any self respecting analyst.

#Hull2015 never forget

Watching Tony Daley play. Made me a Villa fan.

I think we are done till we shift someone else. Which is fair, 9 in and 9 out is a pretty damn busy window by any standard.

The source is Marca mate. Even less reliable than a Pat Murphy story. Hope its true though

I'll tell you something ,I will love it I would, love it! No kidding. I don't much care for the mags but Keegan's Newcastle was bloody brilliant.