HJ

I'm sure the players have asked Carew what the new gaffer is like....somehow I can't see Big John praising the guy....

someone said he has already praised him in a Norwegian news paper a couple of days ago.

Well he's not going to dig his own grave now.

Not happy with the appointment but he's here now so welcome and good luck.

Well let's think about it, Our transfer windows will be much, much , MUCH more entertaining! Even the general commented once saying "I'm sure you know who used to run the footbaslling side of things, as well as transfers and his timing etc." Hail the foreign signings! Bundles of talent around Europe for less and less wages!

Still need the money. Houllier must have been promised some in JAnuary I would think.

i think money has always been there just RL was sick of it been wasted

I'm sure everyone Houllier buys will perform brilliantly! Problem solved.

He's able to win a football match so he might win a cup for us, just like any other manager linked to us that has a pulse might have, depending on luck. He's experienced and I'm fairly sure he'll get us top 10 finishes. He's well connected which might help bring some bargains from abroad.

I'm worried about his ability to build a team or improve us. Not impressed with his transfer market activity at Liverpool, spent a shitload of money and they were treading water in the league.

But there's **** all wrong with his transfer policy. Granted, cheyrou and diao are turkeys but kewell was being chased by man utd and arsenal and diouf

diouf was one of the stars of the 2002 world cup. Every manager has purchased the odd duffer. Look at the shit our previous manager wasted money on.

Not just Cheyrou and Diao though. What about Ferri, Kippe, Song, Traore, Camara, Meijer, Diomede, Arphexad, Vignal, Sjölund, Biscan, Baros, Le Tallec, Sinama Pongolle and Luzi Bernardi? :winkold:

Every manager out there has their fair share of poor signigns, but that's quite an extensive list.

6 years at pool, Monny had 4 years at villa so lets take 2/3rds and say he bought 12 not good enough in a 4 year for a good liverpool side. Lets look at Monny (who i supported, and still thank for reviving us before i get slammed) and list his failures for a side that werent at liverpools level under Houllier:

Maloney, Routledge, Salifou, Davies, Knight, Carson, Harewood, Sidwell, Shorey, Heskey, Guzan, Downing, Beye.

All managers buy players who dont live up to expectations for one reason or another.

Houllier didn't buy as many players per season as MON did, he never needed to because he took over an excellent team. Houllier spent £131m on players, in 2010 terms that would be £245m, bought one brilliant player, a few useful ones and an awful lot of rubbish and took Liverpool from 3rd to 4th.

How do you work out the figures? An excellent team that did finish third but was on the wane and finished 7th the next (with Houllier/Evans for 1/2 a year).

Our team wasnt great but we had some decent players, who he shipped out i.e. Cahill for little and replaced for little better for alot more money.

Im not trying to downgrade the work of MoN but just to say he won alot, bought some decent players and obviously knows what he is doing most of the time.

Wouldn't say the team was on the wane at all having Owen and Carragher just broken through and Gerrard just about to as well.

The football inflation adjusts transfers values so they are comparative across years. I just nicked the Houllier adjusted value from a blog so I don't know what system was used but one system is adjusting the values as a percentage of the current transfer record.

But there's **** all wrong with his transfer policy. Granted, cheyrou and diao are turkeys but kewell was being chased by man utd and arsenal and diouf

diouf was one of the stars of the 2002 world cup. Every manager has purchased the odd duffer. Look at the shit our previous manager wasted money on.

Not just Cheyrou and Diao though. What about Ferri, Kippe, Song, Traore, Camara, Meijer, Diomede, Arphexad, Vignal, Sjölund, Biscan, Baros, Le Tallec, Sinama Pongolle and Luzi Bernardi? :winkold:

Every manager out there has their fair share of poor signigns, but that's quite an extensive list.

6 years at pool, Monny had 4 years at villa so lets take 2/3rds and say he bought 12 not good enough in a 4 year for a good liverpool side. Lets look at Monny (who i supported, and still thank for reviving us before i get slammed) and list his failures for a side that werent at liverpools level under Houllier:

Maloney, Routledge, Salifou, Davies, Knight, Carson, Harewood, Sidwell, Shorey, Heskey, Guzan, Downing, Beye.

All managers buy players who dont live up to expectations for one reason or another.

Houllier didn't buy as many players per season as MON did, he never needed to because he took over an excellent team. Houllier spent £131m on players, in 2010 terms that would be £245m, bought one brilliant player, a few useful ones and an awful lot of rubbish and took Liverpool from 3rd to 4th.

Shame about Thompson - I think he would have been a greatly beneficial addition

So would I. I actually thought that was the best of part of the Houllier appointment..

Also Cheyrou was labelled as new Zidane before he went to Liverpool

Yes. By Houllier.

all im saying is,people shouldnt be going on like he set up some great youth set up, because he didnt.

He did though Fran. He revolutionised their youth setup. It's in the link on the previous page.

Well it does look like a revolution when the academy that had produced the likes of McManaman, Fowler, Owen, Carragher and Gerrard hasn't produced a decent player in 10 years since Houllier laid his hands on it..

Many teams have a good cup run, nobody get's lucky over 38 league games that's why we've only ever seen the best win the Premier League, thats why cracking the top 4 is so hard.

But isn't that what Houllier did, quite a few times?

Has Jol done it?

Just as a reminder, Houllier's record with Liverpool was:

1998-99 - 7th

1999-00 - 4th

2000-01 - 3rd

2001-02 - (not counting as he was taken ill in October, but they were 3rd)

2002-03 - 5th

2003-04 - 4th

If we had a manager who had done that for Villa over the period, we would regard him as a success in the league competition, surely?

Liverpool! Villa! Why does no one see any difference between the expectations/possibilities between the two. If Houllier achieves those positions as a Villa manager I'll eat my cock.

but ask and Liverplop fan and he'll tell you Houllier destroyed modt of the youngfellas at their club but not being a man manager which is one of the main things up and comming players need IMO.

I have asked Liverpool fans and they know about the failures, the Biscans, but they also point out Carragher and Gerrard and his total transformation of the youth setup, and Hyypia, Hamann, McAllister as transfer successes. I don't disagree that young players need an arm around and that's why I'm just as excited at the news that K-Mac might be hanging around because he has a proven track record of developing the youth. Whatever it is they need, he seems to have it in spades. So I think we have everything in place now.

Gerrard and Carragher went through the youth system before Houllier got there, they became 1st team players at that time (Carragher a year before really). So if Houllier changed the youth set up it wouldn't have affected those two.

Since Houllier did such a fantastic job making Liverpools youth system brilliant, why have they not got a single good player out of since he Houllier touched it?

Instead of saying that they already had a good squad when he took over, look at what Benitez did with some similar players.

Won the CL, beat Liverpools highest ever point total in PL twice

"Please play Michael Dawson" (said the day before we played you and he scored)

I'm with you, very few outfield players have the kind of hand control he does.

What's more important? That we might sign a few shite Frenchmen or that we might win a few trophies? People seem hell-bent on criticising someone who wins things. It must be very therapeutic for them but Villa live in the real world and, if we get him, we will have hired above ourselves IMO.

We aren't going to win trophies by signing shite Frenchmen because we don't have Owen, Gerrard and Carragher waiting for a team built around them. He had the makings of a title winning side there and failed to surround them with anywhere near the same level of talent.

I emailed Ladbrokes after my 1st post as I've a few quid on with them and this is what I got back in return.

Ladbrokes state ; Winnings bets will be paid on the basis AVFC appoint a full time manager. If a DOF is announced and a coach appointed to handle squad selection and 1st team affairs and NO one person is know by the title AVFC 1st team manager all bets will remain valid until a 1st team manager is announced.

To me that's confussing because if we appoint a DOF and I've got £50 on say Moyes my bet will remain valid as we haven't got a manager. Does this mean that If we got Moyes in 2 years and during that 2 years my bet remained valid will they pay me out ?? :confused:

Yes exactly

However, it's a safe pair of hands and that's exactly what we need right now.

Why do we need a safe pair of hands? To stabilize ourselves to midtable? Safe pair of hands is exactly what I don't want to see, get someone excellent or who has the potential to be excellent. If the potential goes wrong and we're 15th for a season or two then so be it, at least we gave it a shot. Just plain old safe isn't going to get us anywhere in the current league, not even a Euro spot.

Do not under estimate the upheavel of the past few weeks, along with the eventual addition of new coaching staff and methods.

A new manager tends to result in a honeymoon period where the results are better than average more often than not. I don't think the chance of getting ourselves relegated with a manager appointment at this moment in time is one worth even considering.

However, it's a safe pair of hands and that's exactly what we need right now.

Why do we need a safe pair of hands? To stabilize ourselves to midtable? Safe pair of hands is exactly what I don't want to see, get someone excellent or who has the potential to be excellent. If the potential goes wrong and we're 15th for a season or two then so be it, at least we gave it a shot. Just plain old safe isn't going to get us anywhere in the current league, not even a Euro spot.

He won some trophys though and took over a pretty poor side.

A side that had just finished 3rd and had young Owen, Gerrard and Carragher coming through, how is that poor? The only truly class player he added to those was Hyypia and then rode their backs to a few cup victories.

If its so difficult to find a manager because the timing is so bad then let the caretaker go on, hire a few coaches for him and hire the next manager when the timing isn't oh so terrible anymore. Spurs for example have appointed their last 3 managers in Oct/Nov. Why September is so much worse than Oct/Nov I have no idea though.

I've heard a lot about GH buying foriegn players that flopped. So if they were English and flopped it would be ok would it? It seemed to be for MON. There is something slighty xenophobic in that attitude if you ask me.

His flop percentage was far far far higher than MON's.

I aggree, but alongside all those FLOPS were some gems, like all managers at any level of football - but the key thing is - MON had flops and won nowt, Houllier had flops and won 6 trophies in 6 years..........

not too mention his 5 major trophies in French Football

Houllier took over a side that had finished 3rd and MON took over a side that had finished 17th.

Of course he's going to bloody win trophies if he's managing Liverpool or Lyon, doesn't make him a genius suddenly or make it likely he'd win anything at Villa. I suppose everyone bringing that up would have Houllier over Moyes because Moyes hasn't won anything?

Regardless of who it is, we should back them, and regardless of the seir sucess or failure we should accept it's been done the best way given the circumstances.

There can be a vast difference between trying your hardest, which I'm sure Lerner et al are doing, and doing it the best way.

only 104 pages to go until my prediction is up. At this rate the manager needs to be in by early Sunday morning

There's going to be 100 pages in a few hours when it gets confirmed or close it

The "Reo-Coker can't pass for shit" myth is one of my favourite down the Villa Because it's entirely that of course, a myth...

Just like the "NRC tackles a lot" myth. No he doesn't anymore.

And there's more to passing than just about managing to roll the ball to someone to make it a successful attempt in statistics. There was a time on Sunday when we were breaking, Albrighton running on the wing and it needed a crisp ball to space from NRC. Instead he slowly rolls it behind Albrighton who has to stop, defenders mark the forwards, the whole thing dies down. And its not isolated, he does that.

I'd be reasonably happy with Houllier and MacDonald as his number two, if only for the fact that we'd have half a chance of signing some players from Ligue 1.

Djimi Traore

Titi Camara

Vladimir Smicer

Bernard Diomede

Gregory Vignal

John Arne Riise

Anthony Le Tallec

Florent Sinama Pongolle

El-Hadji Diouf

Bruno Cheyrou

Salif Diao

Those are the players he signed from Ligue 1 while in Liverpool. He's a train wreck in transfer market.

John Arne Riise was great for Liverpool, Smicer wasn't that bad either...The others yeah wasn't that great, but even Diouf even now has his good moments...He's just a hothead.

He was managing Liverpool who aimed to challenge for the title and the best he could do was a good left back and a decent squad winger, it's just not good by any standards.

I'd be reasonably happy with Houllier and MacDonald as his number two, if only for the fact that we'd have half a chance of signing some players from Ligue 1.

Djimi Traore

Titi Camara

Vladimir Smicer

Bernard Diomede

Gregory Vignal

John Arne Riise

Anthony Le Tallec

Florent Sinama Pongolle

El-Hadji Diouf

Bruno Cheyrou

Salif Diao

Those are the players he signed from Ligue 1 while in Liverpool. He's a train wreck in transfer market.