HolteExile

I am not tied to any one individual. What I do understand is that at this time we have a manager who is very limited in his capability and that shows in the way the team plays. I would like, a coach who has taken time to look at modern coaching techniques and understands that a team can be better than the sum of its parts. A manager who can identify, coach and motivate a group of players to react to the various phases of a football match without the need for blame and shouting. I want the club to look past the end of its nose and implement a progressive policy of development, scouting and through club management that means that whether U10s or first team, everyone is technically and tactically coached properly with an eye on the mid to long term and ultimately, success. That is what I would like. Martinez and Rogers have a number of those attributes, but I wondered be disappointed if it wasnt them as a long as it was someone of a similar ilk. Before it sounds like I am off in some fantasy land, every FA course I do advocates a similar set up for grass roots football. We hold Clairefontaine and La Masia up as shining lights but any club can do it (Wigan try, Swansea have) if they develop and stick to the plan. The tragedy with us is that we already have so much of that in place, from scouting kids as young as 8/9 (Daniel Sturridge was on our radar when he was as young as that) right through to the Academy. The only weak link in the chain is the most important part of the whole thing, the starting XI. And the constraints they play under with such a duffer of a manager. The Academy has turned out some real gems in recent years, players who are technically competent and comfortable in possession. But what use are such players with McLeish's Alehouse tactics. In defence of RL (and I haven't said that too often recently) I'm pretty certain he made integrating the Academy prospects into the first team as one of the conditions of the job on hiring McLeish. And McLeish -desperate to get away from the circus at St Andrews- would have told RL anything he wanted to hear "Yes Randy, I fully agree the kids are the way to go. We are on the same page, you and I. Now about my salary..." Sullivan's quotes recently indicate that Big Eck was quite used to ceding ground on transfer related matters, hence the signings of Zarate and Benitez. According to Big Eck himself, Zigic wasn't his choice either (but then he would say that, wouldn't he). So it's no huge leap of faith to think he'd pander to the owners requests on other playing issues too. The thing is, if he's doing it under duress players pick up on that. Playing people for the sake of it (even out of position), just hoping to stay in with the boss. Weak management, in other words. Doesn't sound like a recipe for fluidity and organisation - and the results (and performances this season) bear that out. A competent manager would actively want to make the most of players like Bannan, Albrighton, Gardner, Delph and Ireland. He'd relish the opportunity to work with that kind of talent and get the best out of them. As it is, The two gems of the Academy -Albrighton and Bannan- have looked a shadow of the players we know they can be. Continue on this trajectory and don't be surprised if we lose both for nominal fees. Delph was sent out on loan and had made noises about wanting to make the move permanent and Ireland - despite upping his game and looking like our best player- seems to forfeit his place in the starting XI at the drop of the hat. If funds are tight as we're told ad nauseam we can't be so profligate with the talented players we do actually possess. Whatever sweet nothings Big Eck might have whispered in RL's ear about his belief in attacking, attractive football and the importance of utilising youth, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Nothing in his previous indicates such things were ever important to him and -crucially as far as Villa are concerned- nothing in his team selections and set up this year indicates he has done an about turn this late into his career either.

What you’re really saying is that the good thigns McLiesh has done in his career, i.e. somehow manage to win SHA a trophy, cannot be counted in an analysis of him. Your argument is as ridiculous as saying you cannot count SHA’s relegation against him. Well it really does buddy, and the facts are pretty clear: - Relegation is 38 games of showing what you are capable of. In other words, luck and unluck evens out. - A cup stroll with home games to Brentford, MK Dons, Villa and West Ham and then Arsenal at Wembley is more or less just lucky draws. A cup is a cup, of course, but it does not say anything about McLeish as a manager. Not at all actually. I do think that's a tad unfair - and I say that as someone who is no fan of McLeish. Yes, he had a favourable draw. But we've had favourable draws in years past and still made a balls of it. I can see why -on the surface- the board opted for McLeish and didn't let his current employers (as was) put them off. Managing Rangers to various titles in the CL and a national side looks impressive. If you ignore the decline he overseen in the former despite their natural advantages up there and the shit managers Scotland have had for the past 25+ years. Bagging any sort of trophy for a 3rd rate outfit like the B-lose looks like the stuff of miracles too -until you see their run to the final and the fortuitous nature of their winner. A board with a wee bit of football knowledge should have been able to see this, of course. But we don't have one of those. A quick skim read of his honours on wiki, a nice letter from Fergie and a few complimentary words from Ginge himself anytime we turned over his B-lose rabble was enough for RL and co.

Graeme Souness and the Wally with the Brolly have also potted a league cup since we last won a trophy. I wouldn't want them managing the club either.

What in his past record marks him out as a manager who - given time- will oversee a massive upturn in fortunes? Ferguson had an incredible record at Aberdeen and Moyes at decent one at Preston. Also, using Ferguson as an example of giving a struggling manager time is almost always flawed, as it ignores the fact that Fergie took United to 2nd place in his second season in 88. I have a sneaking suspicion that any Villa manager who oversaw that in his second year might be given a bit more time too. Big Eck's stint at Rangers is without question the most successful period of his CV -and even there it's pretty obvious to spot a major decline under him. From 100 goals in a season to finishing 3rd in a two horse race. Impressive. His stint as Scotland manager can be considered a success - of sorts, I suppose. Despite failure to qualify for a major tournament. Some impressive victories and draws against more fancied nations. But 10 men behind the ball, hacking the ball away under pressure and nicking it with a James McFadden wonder strike against the run of play is a perfectly acceptable approach to adopt for a minnow. For a club like Villa, we expect a wee bit more. Not trophies (or even competing for them) anymore, sadly. Sign o' the times. But we do expect to at least have a go and take the game to the opposition, particularly at home. After the initial shock and disappointment of an appointment so unambitious, I think most were willing to give him a chance. Yet going into mid March this year we had won a grand total of three games at VP. Now four. That, primarily, is why he takes the stick he does. Not his past associations. His past associations merely highlight his limitations and demonstrate why he is unlikely to be a success here.

A cheap and nasty Ikea wardrobe would be more use than Heskey in the squad. It would stay upright, for one thing.

That's setting the bar a bit low, isn't it?

That away kit is outstanding. Even if it didn't differ enough from the home colours when we play the kit stealers, it would be fine against most of the other sides in the league (Mn citeh apart). Might be a decent option as a third kit.

Maybe there's more to Makoun being loaned out that meets the eye. Ability wise, there wasn't a lot wrong with him as far as I could see. He was particularly impressive v Man U away and Fulham at home. His form tampered off after that, so maybe he was playing on adrenaline originally. He did miss a big chunk of the season for Lyon prior to signing for us. But even during his 'iffy' phase, he was still capable of playing that defence splitting eye of the needle pass. As witnessed v Wolves at home when he put Ash through and Newcastle at home when Bent was marginally given offside. I had certainly seen enough to think that with a decent pre season he could be a big player for us. But if he was unsettled (and GH's departure wouldn't have helped in that regard) it's not just about ability. That said, it would be nice to see what a more progressive manager might be able to do with a midfield containing any 4/5 from Petrov, Makoun, Ireland, N'Zog, Albrighton, Bannan, Gardner, Clark and Delph. It's not a bottom 5 midfield by any means, even if it does require a bit of tinkering. I would think most mangers outside of the usual suspects and maybe Newcastle would be quite happy to trade their midfield options for ours.

Exactly Risso. I'd have been quite happy to take Foster and Dann off their hands last summer, for example. His previous association with that lot means he would need to be of a decent enough pedigree to bridge the divide. The issue for me was, on that score, he was never good enough in the first place. I don't blame him for taking the job though, and I don't particularly hate him. Many say he was on a hiding to nothing, but as far as I can see it was win/win (for him). Manage to equal (or surpass) B-lose best ever PL Finish of 9th (with a group of far better group of players) and most neutrals would have said he'd done well. Considering we lost Ash and Downing last summer. Fail dismally (which looks more likely at this point) and he'll be sacked with a nice juicy payoff. Having already doubled his salary compared to what the plebs down the road were paying. For a manager whose star was already on the wane, that's not bad going.

Please read the first post in the thread

It's a legitimate concern. I'm not sure they're willing/ able to make a great appointment, sadly. But they'll really need to go some to make one as provocatively bad as last June's effort.

No. And I say that with a heavy heart. Chopping and changing managers so often is never a good sign, but he knew he was on a hiding to nothing when he took the job. There was never going to be a honeymoon period as such (he and the powers that be surely knew that) and he needed to win a substantial amount of the support base over. He's failed to do that with his negative tactics and selections. All self inflicted.

The positive thing about that is those kits don't have that weird Special Olympics logo on. Just about every other Macron kit I've seen has that. And weird, shitty looking collars. Simple, traditional claret shirt with blue sleeves for the home (the template using the non league kit a few pages back was actually quite decent). Experiment with the away kit by all means.

Got a pic. I did put a actual collar on my home kit It's a bit West Ham, isn't it? I know it might be hard to be vastly different to a club who have the same colours and now the same kit manufacturer, but -generally speaking- our kits have generally looked a bit sharper than theirs over the years. Rather than the rounded collars, and all the other OTT detail, I'd like to see us replicating the simple kit a few pages back, from that non league side. Maybe stick with the black socks too for the time being.

You might want to go read Blandy's posts I believe in the Randy thread but we didn't lose the tribunal and no judgement was made either way. From what I remember it was settled out of court. It was settled by a football arbitration panel and if the club thought that they could have got away with not paying they would have done just that. You don't settle out of court if you have no blame, you settle out of court because you know if it goes to court you will have to pay and going to court will cost you more in the long run. That applies to both parties though. Similarly, if O'Neill had thought that it was a slam dunk, he would have refused to settle, unless of course the club offered him more than he would have been awarded. You settle out of court to avoid costs and the risk of it going against you. Exactly. One of the many theories/ fantasies tossed around to justify Magic Martin storming off like a child and taking his ball home with him was that he did so on a point of principle. That he was unhappy with the sale of Milner, the possible sale of Young, interference from Faulkner. And so on and so on. Yet if the job description had changed, if he had to cede authority that was in direct contradiction to the original terms of his contract, he'd have surely wanted his day in court? As per Curbishley. A cash compromise - no matter how sizeable- wouldn't have carried the same weight as the panel finding in his favour and making it clear where they felt the blame lay. As it is, it seems reasonable to conclude that the dispute was one of a remuneration/ notice period nature. He joined us in early August 2006 on a rolling contract and left in early August 2010. He might (and I stress might) have purposely left just after the start of a new period (rather than July) and claimed a full years pay. In those circumstances, RL and co would -quite understandably- be reluctant to pay him anything. Hence arbitration.

Spot on chap. Can't disagree with a word of that.

Yeah. Cart before the horse. That's how these things should work.

As much of a strain it will be to have those 3 stripes removed from the arms, I think the fact that Warrior were paying £12m more per annum than Adidas make that particular pill a whole lot easier to swallow The difference there is it's an exclusive deal. Macron turn out cheap and nasty looking tat for a whole host of lower division English sides already. We'll have to wait and see the terms, of course. If it's a payday remotely close to the Spurs or Liverpool one that will change the picture. But combined with all the other recent goings on, it does seem to be indicative of a club on the slide, and with diminishing appeal.

No way MON would accept being told what he can spend and how much to pay them. Unfortunately Randy trusted him too much. This old myth I don't think you can call those signings a myth, they definitely happened. Of course we all wish they hadn't. You can't just sweep them under the carpet, and ignore the fact that they contributed both to MON's departure and our current position. If MON had put a decent European Scouting network in place, or listened to the scouts he had, we might have unearthed some decent European talent rather than paying over the odds (in both wages and transfer fees) for experienced premier league players. Lerner must shoulder a large portion of the blame for not tackling MON earlier, but MON must also share the blame for some very poor transfer dealings, and for what appears to be tantrum throwing when he was asked to address the situation. Agree 100% chap. I sympathise with Lerner to a degree. For years I think many of us got carried away with Magic Martin, Martin the Maverick. The guy who could get more from less, who could take a team and make the whole greater than the sum of it's parts. Turns out he was pretty moral afterall. Martin the Myth? I think the feeling was, if you have a special manager, you try to make his job as easy as possible. Don't get in his way and he'll deliver. Read any book from the likes of Clough, Fergie and co and they'll talk about their run in's with directors, people who think they know football bit don't really. RL never pretended to be an expert on the game, more an enthusiast. He provided his end of the bargain, but it turns out O'Neill -when given a free hand and favourable conditions to work with for 4 years- ultimately couldn't deliver. Not a dismal performance by any means - being 6th best in the country. But not the kind of performance that deserves to be lionised either, lest we do the same for O'Leary and Gregory too. MON deserves a degree of blame for the chaos we found ourselves in pre Houllier appointment. But for me the expiry date on that blame was last summer, when we had ample opportunity to source a decent replacement for Houllier. Pretty much any big decision affecting the club post August 2010 (with the exception of the Bent signing and the Genting sponsorship deal) the board have made a hames of.

Spot on. If the shirt (and by extension our image) isn't really that important, lets just play in a nice shade of hearing aid beige. Or maybe that weird vomit effect that B-lose had early 90's. Clubs with similar colours to ours (West Ham/ Burnley) have generally had inferior, cheaper looking kits over the years. Apart from some of the Hummel monstosities (and the checkered effort last year) ours have looked a bit more respectable, more befitting a club of our status. The merchandise is a key point also. Yes a company like Macron, Hummel or similar might offer us more money up front, but unless it's seriously lucrative (in excess of £4/5 million per year) we might be better off taking the Nike teamwear deal. The training range and general popularity on the brand will always ensure it sells well, and the overall units could exceed bigger initial payments from inferior brands. I'm not sure a comparison with the Tottingham deal stands up to scrutiny either. They are effectively breaking Under Armour into the domestic football market. West Ham already have that dubious honour with Macron.

Nike let us down in terms of the release date -more than once too. We always seemed to get news of our kit far later than most other sides, regardless of who their manufacturer was. And last seasons kit was a mess. But -against that- they have produced a few home kits that will probably be remembered as classics in years to come. The 2007/08 and the 08/09 Acorns effort in particular. Even this seasons kit is pretty nice and professional looking. Macron produce the kind of cheap kits that used to clog up that weird Sportswear shop just up from Harry Parkes. Spall, Matchwinner and other classy efforts.

Well a Championship side must have a Championship kit. Ye Gods.

If you deliberately tried to tarnish all your good PR work and do away with any goodwill credit you had built up over the previous 4 years, you STILL probably wouldn't arrive at some of the big decisions/ mistakes RL has made post MON walk out. Equally as disturbing for me was the other candidates who we looked at in the summer, McLaren, Martinez and McLeish. Sometimes we can be just a tad delusional as supporters (Villa fans? Never!) but most neutrals I spoke to were surprised at those choices. And were as gobsmaked as were that we appointed McLeish. Then there is the way we conducted both recent manager searches. The first one should have set alarm bells ringing, treating the position like a McJobs vacancy, interviewing 3/4 people of questionable suitability. That's rarely how it works. Most clubs decide on the manager they want, find out if he's receptive to the move in the first place and then go all out to land him. Speaking of which, the approach for Martinez smacked of naivety too. Writing a really nice letter to Whelan requesting permission- before even establishing whether Martinez actually fancied the job. I do genuinely wonder if we spoke to the more likely candidates, the Moyes/Hughes/ Benitez types and they were initially keen -until they actually spoke to Faulkner and RL in person. If fans sense a certain degree of amateurishness - surely others would pick up on this too. People who aren't as automatically pro- Villa as us in the first place and will -lets be honest- just view the thing as a job. Despite all this, I like RL. I'm grateful for the training facilities completed on his watch. Grateful for the Holte Hotel. Grateful that he put up the necessary sums to see us realistically compete for CL for two of his first four years and qualify for Europe three times, and grateful that I got to see the likes of Ashley Young, Milner and Downing go from promising to amongst the best players in the country during their time at VP. None of that would have been possible without his input, so I'm not going to join the hordes looking for his removal. Against that, the last 18 months have exposed as severe lack of football savvy, getting a manager like GH on the way down (and with a long-standing health issue to boot) selling Ash and Downing without suitable replacements and finally, of course the McLeish brain freeze. Downing might have been a bit of a tit, might have had an agent making all sorts of noises. But the bottom line is he would want to be part of the England squad who goes to the Euros, and had we insisted that he remained until at least then, there is very little he could have done. Instead, we took the money -which might have been more than he's worth, but has firmly imprinted this idea that we are just a club who sells it's best with minimal fuss. The Milner deal just looked good value at the time, Ash's contract situation and interest from Man U meant that was only going to end one way. But Downing should have been our line in the sand moment. As for McLeish -when you combine that clanger with the compensation we've had to fork out over the past 12 months- if this doesn't ram home to RL that big footballing decisions aren't his forté, nothing will. As a few others have said, get someone with genuine football knowledge on the board. Better than that, make him MD. Let RL tend to the flowerbeds rather than micro mismanagement. Even if the criteria is that we have to operate on a budget, there are ways of doing that and still being more aesthetically pleasing and competitive than we have been in recent times.

If it's out on the next console, what would be the issue of including a few cities? So it could well be San Andreas, Vice City AND another. The money aspect was one of the most disappointing things in the last game, you could make money sure. But not take over the city to the same extent as you could in past titles. If they're including dollar bills even in the early marketing shots, there's a fair chance finance plays a big role in this version.

Chicago in the 20's - although there is the obvious problem with audio available in cars. And lack of variation in cars themselves. Mafia II was as good as anything to provide that GTA 'fix.' Way too short in missions, but had an authentic New York 40's and 50's feel to it- complete with decent score.