villabromsgrove

I think that the end of this season will be a defining moment for Randy Lerners stewardship of the club. Will he rise to the challenge? Doing nothing is no longer an option.

Villa cannot rebuild under AM/PG because their clueless kind of football is awful to play and watch. The manager/coach needs to take players back to basics and introduce a system that is based on comfortable possession and entertaining football. A three/four year job for Roberto Martinez imo. Whoever replaces McLeish needs to start this summer, before we damage the future development of some potentially very good young players.

This is similar to what I said 2 pages back. The longer Mcleish stays the bigger the mess will get, and then the harder it will be to rectify the situation when he does leave. He needs to leave on May 18th. And Randy can bugger off too. The cancer was cut out summer 2010. It is the secondaries that we are suffering from now. What a horrible analogy this is from start to finish especially with the current Petrov situation. The human condition is fascinating Trent. Diseases like cancer kill more people than they should because people are afraid to confront them. I've lost more than my fair share of family members to cancer and I dont take it lightly, neither do I treat it as something that should not be mentioned. The word cancer is defined both as an illness, and as a destructive blight .... in the community, objects, concrete, groups, society etc. etc. I wish Stan all the best in his fight against leukemia, but I'm not going to tiptoe embarrassingly around the word because it has affected a much admired sportsman. My analogy was meant to point out the apparent "heads in the sand" position of RL/PF in reaction to the blight that is affecting Villa at the moment. Finally I was proud and impressed by the worldwide reaction to Stans diagnosis, but I'm also aware that it was a totally over the top reaction to one mans misfortune. That also is part of the fascinating human condition.

double post

That's the main reason I'm concerned for Darren Bent's future here. However, Gabby has demonstrated the aforementioned ability for months and months within teams that regularly attacked the opposition. Hopefully the captaincy will focus his mind and if 'doing it for Petrov' can offer any more inspiration and motivation then all the better. We need everything for the run-in. Spot on BOF.

Legover legend!

It must be quite depressing being a "striker" in a team that isn't set up to get out of its own half more than a few times a game.

Congrats Gabby, I think that this indicates that we will try to move on several senior defenders this summer.

Sadly I won't be a season ticket holder next season. I am now reasonably healthy and I'm going to try and stay that way. Villa ST's should carry a government health warning at the moment! 8)

I can't believe that I was cheering and punching the air when Man U scored against Blackburn last night! That's what the threat of relegation does to you. :oops:

It might be a painful analogy at the moment, but it's made me think .... if a person has cancer then action and treatment is immediate, and because of the speed of reaction it is often effective. If a club clearly has a serious and potentially dangerous football health problem, then ignoring the symptoms could prove fatal. Prompt action is needed Randy, the day after this season ends.

Vj, It's a bit gay for the UK!

I was invited to one of the marketing think tanks when Randy first took over AVFC. I described Villa at the time as a "Marks and Spencer" type football club, with a solid respectable history and a reasonably respected product. If I was asked for my opinion today I would have to say that we are currently like a boring "Matalan" with poor quality product and an out of town location. What a difference five years has made.

You're right Stu, the best "footballing CEOs" are guys who've wheeled and dealed in a footballing environment for decades.

The law of averages suggest that we have to pick up some points during our run in. What worries me is that AM/PG managed to bugg*r up the law of averages last season!

Really??? I can see us losing every game quite easily. To be honest if anybody deserves to down from this league its wolves and villa. both played terrible football all season and the leadership from both boards has been dreadful. Villa at the moment are too much of an embarrassment to represent the english premier league. the whole club is a joke from top to bottom. The obvious link between Villa and Wolves is the woeful management and poor coaching. Neither Steve Morgan or Randy Lerner have covered themselves in glory either! Wolves will go down, but Villa might well survive due to the daunting remaining matches of a couple of lower clubs.

There are very few "professional football brains at executive level" out there. Most clubs have people with a business grounding, rather than football experience. Some do eventually become "football executives", such as Dein or Kenyon. And, much as I am not a PF fan, i would venture that he has better rounded business experience than Steve Stride, despite the age gap. You make a good point Trees. However, a footballing background may well have stopped the disastrous appointments of Alex McLeish and Peter Grant. Also good footballing contacts, and phone numbers in a footballing CEO's "little black book" are gained over a considerable number of years, and however hard working Paul Faulkner is he cannot have the worldwide intimate contacts that made someone like David Dein so good at his job.

Trying to make some valid Randy Lerner points on here guys. :?

That was a great summer of signings - even if most of them turned out to be flops. We got Mellberg, Schmeichel, Hadji and Kachloul and Balaban - all just after we'd signed Angel the Christmas before. Think we were close to getting Lampard too that summer. Doug must have had his medication changed that summer.... It was an exciting summer, but Doug didn't have his medication changed enough though. I seem to remember that both Hadji and Kachloul had clauses in their contracts that meant Doug had to pay an extra fee should they play a certain number of games. I seem to recall that we stopped playing them so the old skinflint wouldn't have to disturb the moths in his wallet. I thought Balaban actually looked quite good in his very limited appearances. His career stats after he left us show what a natural striker he was, so why did we stick him on the left wing? I was praying that we wouldn't sign Lampard because he was a regular smoker at the time. Shows what an idiot I am!

The reason why we haven't been thrashed yet is down to AM/PG type football. They don't send a team out to attack, so we are set up for damage limitation and hopefully a draw with the possibility of snatching a win from set pieces. It's how Birmingham played after Peter Grant joined them, and it was a key reason why they got relegated, according to my Bluenose season ticket holding mates.

The simple fact is that AVFC is being run as a business, by businessmen. There is no professional football brain at executive level which is why Aston Villa is lurching around like a rudderless ship. It should not have taken five years for RL to identify and address this lack of expertise. If we hang on to our Premiership status this season (as I still expect us to do) then maybe RL will finally accept that spending money on an experienced "Steve Stride" type of senior executive would be a step in the right direction.

I remember one fine summer evening at the turn of the century, standing on the terraces at an early pre season friendly at Bromsgrove Rovers waiting to watch the "famed" Gustavo Bartelt who had just joined us on loan from Roma. Wow! .... this guy was sh*te!!!! If it hadn't been for the fact that his passport was as dodgy as his footballing skills Gregory would have spent 4 MILLION on him!!!! The signings of Carl Tiler by Brian Little, and Mark Kinsella and Oyvind Leonardson by DOL also left me distinctly unimpressed. I agree with others that the signings of Harewood and Heskey were stomach sickening moments. Hutton and Jenas (on loan) left me feeling ill as well. I also remember signing another Argentinian called Oscar Arce back in Tommy Dochertys' day. I think he'd written his own creative CV and was soon kicked out. He was played in the same midfield as Barry Hole (snigger).

Wigan have a good coach/manager!

A good positive post TRO. My only problem with this is that this summer AM will seek to bring in a number of "AM" type players to play "AM" type football. This will mean that even if AM is sacked due to continued failure say in January next season, the next manager would have to work with a limited bunch of "AM" footballers for at least the next three seasons.

I've said that Villa would stay up .... not by our own efforts, but because I couldn't see three of the teams below us getting enough points to claw their way above us. I have to admit that I'm revising my opinion rapidly! We seem to be relying totally on other teams failing, rather than rolling our sleeves up and battling like crazy.