briny_ear

This is the bit of the argument I never can get. I don't see how we are getting into decent financial shape. We have sold off all our top stars, haven't replaced them adequately, and are changing into a mid table club with little ambition,unadventurous football, lower crowds and probably less attraction for players looking to move to premier league clubs. That may be shaping us to survive at the levels Lerner is now prepared to invest in the club but how is making our finances decent?

Not the topic of the thread, I know, but the most interesting thing about that is what you think will happen at the top. Man U to win it by 6 points? :shock: I don't think so.

Hmm. Barry on for Balotelli.

Have you ever glanced down at his sig.?What's that got to do with anything?Oh, sorry, nothing. The fact that Mark is pointing out in his sig that McLeish is as useless Houliier was obviously has nothing at all to do with a question about why he doesn't criticise McLeish the way he does Houllier! I take it you don't read Mark's post. Even he himself admits he criticised Houllier a lot more.You may not have read his post. He's saying they are equally poor but he's realised there's a deeper problem with the board of which they both Houllier and McLeish are symptoms. However, this discussion really really really should close.

Have you ever glanced down at his sig.?What's that got to do with anything?Oh, sorry, nothing. The fact that Mark is pointing out in his sig that McLeish is as useless Houliier was obviously has nothing at all to do with a question about why he doesn't criticise McLeish the way he does Houllier!

Have you ever glanced down at his sig.?

Spurs dont have a top four wage bill. Are you sure ? Even Man C want to get Adebeyor off their wage bill and players like G.Bale cant be cheap I am sure the main thing at spurs is that they have a wage cap and have done for a long time. the best thing about spurs is that their wage bill is only 46% of their revenue unlike ourselves who stupidly managed to let wages become 83% of revenue. Round and round it goes. Spurs have significantly higher income than us so that helps significantly to keep their wages to revenue ratio lower than ours as well as the wage cap. I do agree however that it was foolish bordering on reckless for Lerner to let wages get up to 83% of revenue before realising he couldn't sustain the position. Just wondering what all this has to do with McLeish? There is a separate thread on finances.

I expect that's MON's fault as well. Every other bad thing in the world is, it seems from this thread... :winkold: Hardly, all I've read is that people stating he spent a shitload of money on average players. Also, that he didnt take the Europa cup seriously. Both to which are true. Not really sure what you're on about really. Apparently he is also responsible for our performance last season and this season, a remarkable achievement considering he wasn't managing the club. :winkold:

you missed one important fact, we arent allowed to spend buckets of money because we dont have buckets of income and thats not AMC, GH, MON or randys fault... Well, I think I might blame randy just a teensy weensy bit for not spotting that as the fundamental flaw in his plan to blast us into the top 4. :winkold:

I expect that's MON's fault as well. Every other bad thing in the world is, it seems from this thread... :winkold:

Yes. He also scored one against Ghana - luckier.

I hope he can hit the ground running - very fast, because it's looking like he will be pelted with rotten eggs as soon as he takes the field. "Boo, go home you Eredivisie-winning, goal creator and scorer for the Australian national side. We don't want your scum at the mighty Villa." :winkold:

Yeh, I bet Steve Morgan is really pleased he sacked McCartthy now.

Most of those were pre war, especially with regards to the FA Cup and league. Pre-WW1 for most of them! How many do you consider to be most of them pre-WW1 then? Total league wins = 7 Pre WW1 = 6 Total F.A. Cup wins = 7 Pre WW1 = 5 Actually, 5 of the league wins and 3 cup wins were before the end of BOER WARS - the pre-First World War record looks like modern history by comparison!

Since you may not have read the full thread, let me help. The main discussion here has been about the introduction of Weimann in the 71st minute for N'Zogbia and whether Agbonlahor or Albrighton should have come off instead because they weren't playing well. I was suggesting the sub was tactical, to change the shape of the attack, so it was a question of taking off a player who wouldn't fit in with the new shape, and that was N'Zogbia. Barry's Boots didn't agree because he can't accept on principle that Alex Mcleish could possibly think tactically (at least that's what I think he was arguing). Now, as to the later substitutions, they were both tactical, i.e. not forced by injury. Bannan came on in the 82nd minute, Gardner in the 90th minute. In the 92nd minute, Bannan slotted an excellent pass through to Gardner, who shot at goal; Schwarzer fumbled it and Weimann bundled in after two attempts. If you're saying in some way the substitutes DIDN'T make a difference to this game, I am mightily puzzled, since they combined to create the only goal. I am waiting with wonderment to hear from you how the substitutes didn't make a difference...

We know of old there is only one person manning the ticketing phones - initials of NK, I believe, The rest are divided equally betwen the scouting and PR departments. :winkold:

Ha ha, TRO, you may just have raised the the :confused: :confused: point in my earlier post FFS at least let's give him a chance to put on a C&B shirt before writing him off.

Nor was it the utterly average and mediocre achievement that some on here - primarily you, now I come to think of it - claim it to be with tedious regularity. When you say things like I marvel at your ability to skew statistics. It's true of course if you look very selectively at the stats but looking at the whole picture, it is clear that all our other premier league managers were inconsistent and left with performance on a downward curve (except GT MkII who only had one full season): Atkinson - (Out of 22)2nd; 10th; 19th (when sacked) Little - (Out of 20 ) 4th; 5th; 16th (on resignation) Gregory - 6th; 6th; 8th; 7th (on resignation) GT MkII - 16th O'Leary - 6th; 10th; 16th MON - 11th; 6th; 6th; 6th KMac/GH/GMac - 9th AMc (so far) - 15th Looking at those stats, only John Gregory really has a record to match MON's and even he was moving gently in the wrong direction. If you take the results for the past 10 years - a reasonable time frame for an ambitious club - MON's time stands out even more as a period of sustained success that no other manager came near delivering. I don't think anyone is saying it was wonderful, and the failure to hang onto a top 4 place was disappointing, but it's certainly not as routine as you make out.

For pity's sake... Click this

That's a shame.

Getting back to the Villa youth team, I was surprised to realise this week they haven't been much involved in the FA Youth Cup this season. Must have gone out quite some time ago. What went wrong?

Umm...are you new to the site? :winkold:

At the end of the day, the main cause of the deaths was surely the utter failure of the police (and I guess whatever stewarding arrangements they had at the ground) to recognise that a crisis was developing and deal with the overcrowding by letting fans onto the pitch. It's a long time ago now but I'm pretty sure I remember images of the police actually forcing those fans who had managed to escape back into the crush. Now, the chief of police in Liverpool wasn't going to brief the PM on those lines, was he, and so the attempt to portray it as the result of drunken fans behaving in a disorderly way was born. The main point for me, is that this was a terrible tragedy that happened quite some time ago. The main culpability of the police, footballing authorities and clubs was fully exposed in the Taylor report and in subsequent reporting and I don't think many people now believe the Liverpool fans were mainly to blame. Many lessons have been learned and the police and footballing authorities have changed the way they manage crowds very significantly. The human spirit usually manages in these sorts of incident to heal the wounds, dim the memory and move on. It's part of what helps us to survive tragedies in life. The puzzling thing about Hillsborough is that there seems to be an instinct from within Liverpool to refuse to forget and to constantly reopen the wounds. These leaks seem almost to have been siezed on as a chance to drag out all the misery into the open again. As some others have commented, this is mystifying and, I think, a bit distressing for the rest of us.

^^^They deserved to get relegated just for thise haircuts.

In this case, I think there was some clumsy blundering with the "quote" button. I found about 4 posts in the exchange impossible to follow as a result.