PB

The point about the length of the season is this. If this was the "worst last 7 games to a season, ever", no=one would really care, they would focus on where we finished. If it was the "worst 7 games around Christmas ever", then again, no-one would give a monkeys, except perhaps expressing some concern over our form. The worst start ever thing only attracts column inches because people have nothing else to measure it against. So its not even objective, its just a meaningless stat. it would be more meaningful to say "Im concerned about our form". If you said that, you'd find most people in agreement.

Exactly,its not the first 7 games that count, its the first 38

P26 W3 D11 L12 Pts 20 This is Aston Villa's record in this calendar year since the 3-1 win at Chelsea on New Years Eve. This isnt down to Lambert (who has only managed 7 of these), but is clearly relegation form. If that was a league season you;d be saying we'd need 20 points from the next 12 and realistically well, you know, good bye Premier League. I know thats a theoretical situation, but I post it merely to highlight the scale of the problem that Lambert inherited. Yes, I accept that he has as yet failed to improve results, but he needs to be given time. We need him to succeed, if he doesnt, we are gone,

I think the first thing to say is that he took over a side who really, truly should have been relegated last season. I still cant quite figure out how we stayed up. So lets not underestimate the size of the task. We arent very good. He has made the bold decision to go with young players who he feels have the hunger and desire to learn and will be the backbone of the team for years to come. The other (maybe safer in the short term) option would have been to bring in a few old stagers. Results might have been better in the short term, but wages higher, and frankly no long term vision to that. Thats a sticking plaster solution. Lambert has gone straight for bypass surgery, recognizing how ill the patient is So its brave, and its risky, and it might go horribly wrong. I dont think it will though. I have no doubt that this season we will finish closer to the bottom three than the top six, but Im sure we will survive, and we will then have a young hungry team with a bit of experience and a bit more cleverness. Just now its all a bit raw and naive. They will learn, and when they do, they have a chance of being a proper team Going to be a long hard season mind you, might as well prepare yourself for that

Good stuff People dont like tippy tappy in this country, but its the way to go. Will take some time to get our players used to it. We need to add pace and urgency to our passing, and more mobility from our front players. It will come, patience needed. Hope lambert sticks to these principles and doesnt get sidetrscked by the short term need to win. Im hoping the Holte end will give him the time he needs. Im not all that confident of that tbh.

I agree with what you are saying bri, but the next big thing isnt going to throw his career down the notorious Villa Park drain. Managing this club has destroyed the reputations of just about everyone to have sat in that dugout over the past thirty years with only one or two exceptions. Managers graveyard. Coming to Villa would be a huge gamble for Lambert, esepecially given the state of our finances, and to be frank, if I was him I wouldnt touch us with a bargepole. Much more likely to be Rodgers imo, as Martinez is surely going to bigger fish than us also. There is also the matter of last summer's debacle where Martinez played us for the fools we appear to be. i think it would be a mistake to go back there after that, he doesnt seem to respect the Villa based on that

I'd like to believe that Villa had a clue as to who to replace him with, adn that there was somewhere in all of this a football strategy to move us forwards. past experience makes me somewhat skeptical about this. What do we need from a manager? We need someone young, someone hungry, the kind of person who will take the flak that will inevitably come his way with humour and strength of character. We need someone who's teams play football what modern commentators call 'progressive' football but have that strngth of purpose and willingness to fight for their shirt. We need someone that properly understands the complexities of how to develop the brilliant young talent we have coming through and someone who, given teh current austerity that seems to be our lot at the moment wjho is canny and clever in the market and can unearth the gems that can move us forwards. We also need someone who understands that 1982 isnt a millstone hanging around our necks, an impossible to follow dream, but is for the fans of thr club an icon for pride - someone who understands that pride from the terraces and instills that same pride in the players. They are playing for a club that has won the European Cup, a genuine giant of the world game famous in all four corners of the globe. To whoever the next manager is, we dont expect to win everything, we just expect our manager and our players to understand the privelidge that pulling on that claret and blue shirt conveys and act and play accordingly.

People are seriously comparing Ellis to Lerner? Randy has made alot of mistakes, his first big decision being the biggest, but the key difference between the two is that Doug took, while Randy has given. Regardless of the competency of the individuals concerned, that for me speaks volumes. I'd rather have Lerner every day of the week and twice on Sundays, anything else, IMHO, is nostalgia for a time that never was

if we are going to go around binning managers after less than 20 games then we might as well have Doug back in charge. Step away from the short term 'next result' mentality, and unite behind something. Even at the height of the anti Ellis thing, we ALWAYS, all of us, 100% backed the manager and the team. We are, after all, Villa fans.

Whether the appointment of mcLiesh was a ridiculous one or not, it was none the less the decision the board reached. Alex mcleish IS the manager of Aston villa, he isnt going anywhere anytime soon and so the football club sinks or swims with him, so personally I'm all for him being successful, which means him being given the tools HE wants, not the tools i want him to have. If bent isnt right for him, then we stand a better chance without him. As i said, i wish it was different, but wishes dont mean jack.

I think we have to be a little pragmatic. whether you like McLeish or not (and i dont particularly) I think we need to accept that Lerner has already shown that he sint really the type of owner to sack managers lightly. Indeed, i would say the opposite is true, when things get tough he has shown his willingness to back his manager. Whether we like or hate the manager concerned I also think thats a good thing (mostly) - the owner needs to back his decision to appoint McLeish, its important from a stability point of view. mcLiesh needs to be given the chance to build his team So, acceptimg that McLiesh is here for the forseeable future, the question to ask is whether Bent is the right kind of striker for the style of football we are currently employing? If McLeish doesnt think so, if he thinks he can get more out of someone else, then the right decision is to sell for as much money as we can get. I'd rather things were different, but the situation is what it is

I dont think he's all that brilliant to be honest, certainly not good enough to be mentioned in the same breath as Yorke, Milner, Barry and Young. Yes, his goalscoring record is very good, but as you correctly point out ... There is also the 'Mrs Redknapp' syndrome he suffers from. His goalscoring record isnt down to his finishing, which is frankly crap, its down to his outstanding movement and reading of the game, which gets him a huge number of chances. He misses ALOT of sitters, and this for me is why the top clubs wont ever touch him. Also as you say The top clubs want good technical footballers, strikers have to do more than score goals. To be top of the league, you need 11 players all the time, not 10 plus a goalhanger. For me, Houllier had done alot of work on this side of his game and he looked a different player. Even Capello commented that Bent had improved vastly in the period after signing for Villa. this season? Not the same, not the same at all. Who is there that can afford him and would want him? I suppose QPR is possible, but i cant see us wanting to lose too much. £15m i'd have thought.

I understand that people are disappointed, but in truth there only ever is ONE possible strategy to succeed in modern premiership football - you have to chuck money at it. OK, you need more than that, as we have seen ourselves, you also need people in key positions at the club performing as expected, but essentially you have to have money. No club is going to break the top four without massive investment in their squad. And you know what? Even that route to success is being taken away by the FFP. Even if tomorrow we swapped RL for an oil sheik there isnt enough time for that money to make a difference before the FFP kicks in. Man City are in a different position; they have this season and next to build their revenues from a position of strength. Yes, they may, depending on how UEFA interpret their stadium deal, have to make some adjustments but they have a headstart. We missed it. We had a huge chance, and we missed it. So what do you want us to do? Magically increase our turnover by 50% overnight? How? Even at the height of O'Neill mania there were too many empty seats and too few season tickets being sold. Yes, I know the figures were better than they have been before or since, but still no way good enough for a club wanting to compete. The big clubs have waiting lists for season tickets and you cant get in for love or money on match day despite these clubs charging 50% more than us for tickets. As soon as the board made nosies about putting up ticket prices the fans complained and ticket sales fell off. How is anyone supposed to make such a club successful? There is all this talk of potential, but I wonder how realisable that potential is, I even wonder how realistic such talk is. The days when 'Sold out' signs went up at Villa park on a regular basis are a long time ago. if you are looking for epople to blame, instead of pointing the finger at Randy, point it at the people who were running the club in 1996. In 1996 we had a brilliant team. We could compete. We were right there, even living comfortably within our resources up there with the very best. Maybe one or two players short of a title team, riding the wave of all the new money coming in and we were getting more than our fair share. There was a golden chance, and we missed that chance too. That was a chance for us to grow organically in teh way Arsenal and united have done since. Every year since then it has grown harder and harder for a club like us, and is now to all intents and purposes impossible. Time to stop living in the distant past imo, and accept that in todays football world we are a second tier feeder club. We are like other similar sized clubs, Everton, Newcastle, Sunderland. Unless something radical changes in the way football is financed, thats it, thats all. And thats not so bad, its where we've been for most of my 40 years as a fan.

The difference Richard, and i suspect you know this really, is that under Ellis Villa didnt have the means to survive in this league. [...] We were angry about missing the boat that was sailing without us. Ellis not only didnt see it, he denied it, claiming that Villa were perfectly capable of competing with United and Arsenal for titles.You'd have to be alot more deluded than old Uncle Doug to make that assertion in 2011. And, being totally fair, Randy at least tried to get us on the boat. Doug didnt even see it. PB I agree that it is different now than under Ellis but it feels like we are now reverting to type. Your comment about why so many Were angry then holds today. Irrespective of Randy Lerner's attempt to get us "on the boat" he failed and to continue the maritime theme, the good ship Aston Villa now appears rudderless yet again. I understand the point Mike, but I'm not sure we are rudderless in quite the same way. I dont think we are plumetting towards the lower divisions as we were. Certainly we are as far behind United et al as were were ten years ago, but really the time to get with it was then, as with every passing year the big clubs have got more and more powerful. I think people forget just how bad things were. A month or so before Randy rolled in the players and manager were in open revolt against the board. You'd have been a brave man to bet on us staying up the following season. Things arent that bad, or even likely to get that bad any time soon. We have a solid if unspectacular team more than capable of punching our weight. No, we arent going to challenge the top four any time really soon either, but to do so requires more than what we as a club are capable of.

The difference Richard, and i suspect you know this really, is that under Ellis Villa didnt have the means to survive in this league. Had Doug stayed we would have been relegated, and stayed down. So apart from the Villa tattoo, which is frankly irrelevant, Randy provided the investment to keep us in this league. Yes under Ellis we finished fourth, and second, but I suspect you also know that was in a different era, a whole different world, and that comparing like for like does your argument no favours at all really. When we protested in 2000, it was under everything else because as fans we could feel that United and Arsenal were stretching away from us and that Chelsea wouldnt be far behind. We were angry about missing the boat that was sailing without us. Eliis not only didnt see it, he denied it, claiming that Villa were perfectly capable of competing with United and Arsenal for titles. You'd have to be alot more deluded than old Uncle Doug to make that assertion in 2011. And, being totally fair, Randy at least tried to get us on the boat. Doug didnt even see it.

To a point I agree, although I think its fair to say that o'Neill also bought some outstanding players. Although he did waste alot of cash on players who werent all that, he had a team that when you look at it now really should have done better than it did. Young, Downing, Milner, Barry - all these are top class players. I think the team O'Neill had was every bit as good as the Spurs team that finished fourth. All that ammunition. All that money spent on providing chances. All that money wasted on average defenders. All those hours on the training pitch perfecting a counter attacking style of play. I am left wondering what would have been had he had a nose for a striker. Buying Heskey was perhaps the defining moment of his Villa career. Imagine if that had been Bent? Ah well, its gone now.

I think when he first arrived he thought he could do it all, and post Ellis these things were important, a sign that years of decay were being swept away and that the club wanted to connect with and energise the fan base. In retropsect, given the collapse in his personal fortune, these things look like errors, especially to him I'm sure, but I think thats the benefit of hindsight.

I know people are really hacked off and feeling elt down, and I guess thats understandable to a point. As I see it, RL came in with a plan to get into the top four. He appears to have put up the money that all things considered should have given us a really good chance. For two or three years there he provided massive, unprecedented for Villa sums of money for transfers and appears to have authorised a very large wage bill. For whatever reason we didnt quite make the step up. RL is a man of relatively modest means (when compared to some club owners these days) and so such expenditure was clearly unsustainable without a massive injection of income from football, the kind of injection only really available to those clubs playing in the Champions League regulalry. There wasnt really a decision to make was there? The decision was made for him by our failure to qualify for the champions league. The only thing that could be done was to rein our expenditure back in to within our means as a club, to make the severe cuts to our champions league sized wage budget to bring it into line with the club we really are, an upper mid table Premiership outfit. Yes, alot of mistakes have been made, especially with the way we have gone about appointing managers, but I'm not at all sure that it is fair to accuse RL of financial mis management. Ultimately of course it is his fault, as the guy running the ship, that we didnt qualify for the Champions League. But as far as I can see, he did his bit, he put up the required cash, and was let down by others. He trusted people he shouldnt have. We're now paying the price for that.

but every club is like that except big Spanish 2. Look at Arsenal they are a feeder club but regular Champions LEague. Spurs as well who rebuilt from their sales Villa have ben a feeder club, a stepping stone, from the moment Dwight Yorke went to United, if not before.

This is hardly news. the wage bill remains too high. i thought this had been discussed to death on here several times? Whats more interesting is where the mirror got their figures from. Who's been talking?

I accept all of that. I dont think randy is all that savvy. I just also dont think O'Neill was quite the genius his reputation made him out to be. As was said, we gave it a shot, didnt make it; we had a Champions league wage and transfer budget, and a Europa League qualification. Either Lerner kept on moving money in or he stopped. As it happens, he seems to have had little choice other than to stop, as he isnt anything like as rich as he was when he took over (and to be fair to him, events in the world financially would have been unforeseeable at the time he took over Villa). Does any of that justify O'Neill stomping off? I just dont see it, especially not at the time he did, especially not after a preseason that he reportedly just didnt really turn up for in any meaningful way. That smacks, to me, of a deliberately vindictive act. Of course, we'll likely never know what was said between the two, so can only speculate.

Well thats all well and good if it can be afforded. We couldnt. Spending money you dont have, well thats reckless. Still, not his money, not his club, why should he care? Then, when the game is up, and the money runs out, and all you've done with 'most of the England team' is finish sixth, you can run off, not your problem any more. If he was doing it to protect his reputation then that was a massive fail wasnt it? His reputation went down the toilet just about as fast as Randy's bank balance.

I understand that people were hacked off about this, I was too. But still, we need to look beyond these things, right? If I could ask you jon, as an apparently avowed opponent of the GH regime, to try and find two positives from his reign, what would they be?

Young and Downing were going anyway, blaming that on GH strikes me as being unfair. The deal with United for Young was more or less set up last summer when Ash was persuaded to give it one more year. once Liverpool were in for him, Downing was only ever going there, unless we'd have finished top four last season. I think, FWIW, that Downing improved hugely under GH, as did Bent. Both, imo, were different players, different class even. Even Ash seemed to come on quite alot. The defenders? not so much, but then for the most part, the defenders we have at the club arent all that good. They look good when the team is set up to defend and when they are protected by a couple of deep sitting midfielders, but as soon as they are at all exposed their true worth comes out. GH's style of play imo exposed Dunne especially, but also Collins and Cuellar, as the journeymen they really are. GH got alot wrong. Mostly, I think he tried to do too much too quickly. Alot was wrong when ONeill left, and in order to be a successful club we needed to change those things. We needed to get away from the very British 'lads' culture for one thing and instil a degree of modern professionalism in the place, and naturally that was going to rub up some players the wrong way; specifically those that like a good drink I'd imagine. Still, softly softly skins the monkey I guess and GH went about it with a sledgehammer. He wasnt a Villa man? He didnt 'get' Villa? Welcome to the modern world. Football is all about mercenaries. They come, take a wedge of cash, do their job, and then sod off somewhere else. Some are possibly better and pretending .... GH wasnt one of those for sure, not as good at it as ONeill definitely. Fans, despite the protestations to the contrary, like to be lied to in this way. Personally, I think GH was starting to get more things right than wrong by the end. I was looking forward to the new season, looking forward to seeing who he would sign this window. I think we'd have taken a big step back in the right direction. McLeish, well, he's more the kind of manager for the kind of club Villa is now (as was ONeill I suppose). Set us up as hard to beat, get the lads to graft hard, run about alot, play it simple tactically so that limited players arent asked to do too much, buy players cheap, develop them, sell them on for a profit. This last part, the developing players and selling them for a profit - how well we do this is the main thing we have to do in order to stay in the second tier of clubs. If AM is good at it, we'll be fine, 6th-10th long term, if not, then we'll struggle. With AM, as with MON, we are never going to break through the glass ceiling. Would we have under GH? I dont know, its a huge ask, but I think at least we had a chance in the medium to long term. Fans arent interested in medium to long term though are they?

I dont know what its like where you work, but where I work these kind of apparently minor costs relating to employees are also being enforced. When margins are squeezed by increasing costs and decreasing revenue employers will do everything they can to shave pennies. Welcome to the recession.