Panto_Villan

You couldn't make it up. Oh, wait.

Our free kicks are looking the same as always.

We're looking reasonably composed so far.

Is that poster watermarked by THE Con? Where are the heat maps?

Hutton?

Btw - how was Lambert's performance in the charity match?

I voted Yes. It's our proven ability to score from corners and throw-ins that convinced me we have turned into Stoke.

I think irrespective of how things turn out, Lambert has at least got me excited about Villa for the first time in ages. Perhaps it will just be transitory (and losing to Newcastle would indeed burst the bubble a bit) but it's more than could be said for McLeish et al. People are of course entitled to dislike Lerner or Faulkner if they believe the negatives outweigh the positives, it just gets my goat when they suffer a bout of amnesia and conveniently forget their achievements or failures entirely.

What's that gif from, PandaMac?

This thread is in equal parts brilliant and traumatising. For what it's worth, I tend to mix and match both. Mostly a standing man though.

Some just have to find someone else to deflect the blame from our current owner. I'm very much in the "Randy Lerner gets a lot of unfair stick" camp, but I haven't seen many people at all defending him hiring McLeish and I certainly do not. The only thing that people say with regards to the matter is that if he's going to crucified for hiring a bad manager, he should also receive credit if he hires a good one.

So he's almost entirely responsible for McLeish but not eligible for any credit for Lambert? Seems fair.

I hope in future windows we will add quality rather than quantity, but I've been happy with the business done in this window. We've got backup that we didn't have last year, and a squad of good but not exceptional (with a few notable exceptions) players who are young, hard-working and willing to play football. A lot of the bomb squad is gone too. Oh, and Benteke stayed too - I'm very pleased about that. I'm glad we didn't get relegated and it seems Lambert has been given reasonable amounts of financial freedom to buy the people he wanted to buy, and not sell anyone he didn't want to sell. He's had a year to learn the ropes and get things set up the way he wants them; now he's got to deliver on it. I'm a big fan of his and I'm confident he will do well. However, if he does not, he's got nowhere to hide. Knock 'em out, Hipster Lambo!

Goodbye, Barry. I didn't rate you much, but I wish you the best in your new career. I'm feeling better disposed to you now you've moved on.

Thank god.

£7m? Wow. I was joking earlier about thinking he was going to be a white Benteke but that price tag puts a bit more weight on his shoulders; if he turns out to be poor then that's quite a bit of cash wasted. I wonder if this will stop people complaining about Lambert not being backed by the board? Probably not.

Thanks! I'm going to take "pale imitation of Benteke" to mean "a white Benteke" and go to bed a happy man

I'm really glad this thread contains so much discussion about the whether the manager is being backed or not, because there's no other threads on the board where that has already been done. At least the Luna pun thread was amusing (even if it made it hard to find anything out about the player). So, this Libor fellow. Has he actually signed, or is this still speculation at this point? Is it meant to be a loan deal or did it turn out to be permanent? He's a big Benteke-style striker?

That isn't what your original post said at all. Your original post claimed that teams like Cardiff and Southampton are spending £12m on players and therefore next season they'll do better than us and will be sniffing around Westwood and Lowton and we'd do well to keep them. I'm saying that spending lots of money doesn't by itself guarantee success, and can indeed even be unhelpful in the long run (as our recent history suggests). I really don't believe that the fact we're not buying expensive players means we're going to be losing our good players to other mid-table teams any time soon. Whether Lambert gets backed is a different question. For the record, yes, I think Lambert would do well if given a big pot of money. However with the club in the current state it is in I can understand why the management may not want to do so, and the fact he is able to buy good quality players cheaply is probably a major factor in why he got the job in the first place. You were being overly dramatic to illustrate your point, essentially. I do partially agree with the point you were making, but not the logic you were using to justify it. EDIT - removed the massive multi-quote.

And in terms of unsustainable money - if teams are going to be able to pick the best players out of teams that are in relatively similar league positions to their own (and that seems to be what you were worried about here) then they'll have to be willing to pay well over the odds for them, as the player is going to need a reason to leave and the selling club is going to need a reason to cash in. If they're doing that, they're almost certainly spending money unsustainably. We're always going to lose players to the really big teams but just assuming we're going to have mid-table teams nicking our players is a bit much otherwise, imo.

And then three years later those teams will be managed by Alex McLeish and fighting relegation, wishing their spending hadn't been completely unsustainable without Champions League football. Guesswork. The point I was making is that we were in that position five years ago and it ended rather badly for us, and we're only just picking ourselves up out of that mess. Saying "why can't we just spend some big money on a player for once?!" is both forgetting the big money we've spent on players in the last three years (i.e. Darren Bent) and also forgetting what happened to us after MON left.

And then three years later those teams will be managed by Alex McLeish and fighting relegation, wishing their spending hadn't been completely unsustainable without Champions League football.

I think we really are suffering from not being able to shift Hutton, Ireland, Given, Bannan etc. I'd have been really, really disappointed if we'd shifted all of them and not got more people in (preferably a really quality player), but I can kinda see that the club might not want to go for a pricey signing with that lot still on the books. It's a bit disappointing, but I do think it's understandable.

I find it amusing that even in the "positives thread" you've listed one positive and three negatives.

Luna doesn't exactly look like he suffers from anxiety attacks, unless it's anxiety to go sprinting into the opposition half. I am much more comfortable with Bennett's role at the club now Luna is here - the fact that we have an alternative to him means there's less dread when you watch him play...which means you can enjoy the nice bits of his game rather than concentrating so much on the mistakes he makes.