El-Reacho

I have every faith that Lerner knows exactly what he's doing with AVFC from a business perspective. I would be pretty sure that unlike most of us fans he's not that bothered about where we finish in the league this season or next season, rather where we will be in five years, ten years, and fifteen years from now. That's the difference in his perspective as a business owner, guarding his asset long term, and our perspective as fans, wanting success for the club at all times. Like any large investment the short/medium term is pretty much negligible for him. He's looking at the long term. I'm sure his team will have drawn up contingency plans for all manner of likelyhoods that make take place in the PL over the next five - ten years. It's what they are paid huge amounts of money to do. I'm also sure that Lerner and his advisors, will have had contingency plans for relegation factored in from day one of their original five year plan, and likewise will have expected the goal posts to change with regard to CL qualification and the likes of Man City distorting things. They will simply adjust their long term goals for the club accordingly. I'm sure that Lerner and his gang will know the implications of falling attendances on the club's revenue, as is well aware of the reasons for the falling attendances. He knows that it will take two or three years of spending to get the team and likewise the attendances back toward the top of the table (in his view of things that would be more or less overnight). For all we know he might be planning this for the 2017-18 season. Villa is his asset, and as such he will be planning how to maximise it at all times even if it takes 20 years to do it. Also, I would be sure that Randy has access to all the capitol he would ever need to run the club. His divorce, global economic downturn etc will have had minimal impact on his access to money, despite what the press would have us think.

Randy probably won't have the balls to go after Lambert, given how he had his fingers burnt with the Martinez affair last season. It would be an attractive position though - it's not like a new manager has particularly big shoes to fill. No matter who it is he'll probably be a hit with the fans by simply not being Alex McLeish. It will also be win win for this hypothetical new manager - if he's a success great, if we're in the same position as we currently are under a new manager next season Randy will be under the spotlight in a big way.

Really? Good teams with bad managers..... West Ham, Liverpool, Chelsea,. Bad teams with good managers......QPR, WBA, Swansea, Norwich Don't really understand these...by what stretch of the imagination are West Ham a good team? And how are Swansea and Norwich bad teams? Ok they may not have star performers, but together they perform well, infact Swansea are widely acclaimed as playing fantastic football so I would say they are a good team. Leon Britton and Joe Allen are two of the most accurate passers in European football this season. I'm pretty sure Swansea are toward the top of the table for pass completion rates. I know that might not necessarily indicate a 'good team' but to me a team that passes it successfully is a good side.

He cost approx. twice as much but you carry on. He cost around £24 million to get him? Really? I think the figure was £15m to get him out of his contract. But Roman will have had to pay something similar in compensation after sacking him. Talk is that Roman has spent around £70m in hiring and firing managers since arriving at Chelsea.

i would have rather kept houllier than got mcleish in. houllier wasnt great, the football was not great but at least we tried to win games even when the quality was not there. mcleish is worse than houllier in every way, maybe he conducts himself better in press conferences but he is shocking houllier got walker on loan while mcleish signed hutton for 4m shows the difference eh? If the rumours are true, if Houllier had stayed last summer we would currently have Yoann Cabaye and Demba Ba playing for us, with Collins, Dunne, Warnock, ansd Ireland playing elsewhere. Add to that the performances we got from Bannan, Albrighton, and Clarke under Houllier.

Surely he's showing more intelligence there than the rest of the team put together.

Interesting that under Houllier - Bannan and Albrighton were easily as good as Baker, Lichaj, and Herd have been this year. If they were shipped out and played under a decent manager who will let them express themselves and therefore build up their confidence I'm positive they would be good premier league players. Will be gutted if McLeish's tenure at the club starts to cost us these players like Gary Cahill before.

Noticed during the ManUre game on Sunday that Utd were having a similar issue with Scholes. He was pulling the strings for them in the second half against QPR but Young, Welbeck, Valencia etc simply weren't capable of getting into the positions that bring out the best in him so he would just end up passing it sideways or to the touchlines. When he did feed clever through balls into them they fluffed their lines. Think he just got fed up and took matters into his own hands. I know it's not exactly the same scenario with us....

Totally agree. I really hope these guys along with Clarke, Bannan, Albrighton, Gardner etc. really grab hold of this team over the summer and make it their own. That would be a team the club could really be proud of. Would love to see one of the academy graduates be made captain next season. Gary Speed appointing Aaron Ramsey as Wales captain turned out to be a great decision. Maybe Clarke or Herd?

Just wondering what the general consensus is regarding McLeish's future at the club this summer. Feel free to add to the list below: Points that would indicate he will keep his job are: Randy will have to spend more money to get him out of his contract. We've been told that he has had discussions with Randy regarding next season's squad. He has also been allowed to sign Brett Holman. We were in this exact position this time last year. Perhaps Randy will point the finger at the common denominator (core of senior Players) rather than McLeish. Mitigating factors that might account for current position are injuries to key players. He's brought the likes of Warnock and Ireland in from the wilderness. Randy's stubborness to succeed with this appointment in the face of everything suggesting that he will not. Continuity - giving McLeish a chance to build his own squad. Lack of any real backlash from the mainstream press against McLeish. (It is generally perceived that the fans' problem is with his previous employment rather than his current performance). McLeish has had to deal with the departures of Ashley Young and Stewart Downing. Randy's track record in appointing managers (both in the PL and I'm led to believe in the NFL?) - may dissuade him from having to do it again this summer. Particularly if he needs to put a transfer kitty on the table to entice a new manager to come. McLeish is successfully bringing down the wage bill? Perhaps he's using McLeish to get the club back to the position we were in when he bought the club in 2006 before appointing a proper manager and spending big again? Points that would indicate he will get the chop are: Virtually zero support from the fans, hence a generally bad feeling around the club toward both McLeish and Lerner. Lack of any motivation of the team whatsoever. Wretched, negative football. McLeish's inability to learn from his repeated mistakes. Murmurings of discontent within the squad. Zog - Ireland etc. Randy has not shown any hesitancy in paying up to release Houllier or MON. Falling attendances - will take a significant toll on the club's income. Very poor signings - Hutton and N'Zogbia money arguably squandered. Younger players' (particularly attacking players) progress stalling. McLeish's willingness to turn up to Emirates, WHL etc set up to lose by as few as possible (Media have picked up on this - Keegan's comments on ESPN etc). Villa's performances this season close to breaking historical records of ineptitude. Randy now knows that managers with no PL experience can be successful in their first year, likewise managers with bags of PL experience can be unsuccessful. Randy should also now know that managers can be successful with a fraction of the money that he has given McLeish, Houllier and O'Neill. Paul Faulkner has talked about Europe being a realistic target for this season which could indicate how far below Lerner's expectations McLeish might finish the season. For what it's worth I actually think if we are lucky enough to finish one or two places above the drop zone Lerner will sack him and rightly so. If we finish strongly like we did last year he will stay.

Really gutted to see how well Hughton and Jol are doing with their respective clubs. They cost nothing to hire and have spent less than McLeish. Hasn't Hughton made a fortune selling all of McLeish's dross from BCFC?

I posted this the other day. Last season, Wigan were on 27 points and bottom with 9 games to go. Over those next 9 games they managed 15 points and finished on 42, sending SHA, Blackpool and West Ham down. People make the mistake of judging teams on how they have done up to this point. The reality is that they are fighting for their lives and they will always pull surprise results out of the hat. Not to mention, Martinez outwitted our leader at this stage last season. There is every chance that he will do it again. It is a surprise that QPR are down there given the strength of their squad. In saying that, they seem to click on Saturday and from what I have read, many fans are saying that was the best they have played all season. Bolton have improved, so have Blackburn. It will be interesting how they get on tonight against Man Utd. Apart from Wolves, it is not over yet. Yep, Martninez - never panics, sticks with his guns and always succeeds. A manager I like v much and was gutted when he turned us down. Read somewhere that when he buys a player he gives them a period out of the team to allow them to settle in. Is it just me or has Shaun Maloney come into the team 'on fire' after a massive spell out? To paraphrase Jamie Redknapp the boy is quite literally on fire at the moment. Agree with you about Martinez. Could have been a so much more enjoyable a season if he'd jumped ship....

Pretty sure GTII was responsible for this pair. For all of DOL's faults I think he signed really good players for the amount of money he had. He was just a bit of a clearing in the woods.

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....

Bouma was an exciting signing. Was a well known Dutch international that had just gone to the latter stages of the CL with PSV, and was in his prime as defender. Turned out to be a great signing - particualrly under O'Neill.

Think it was around about then that we started to speculate on the number of chairs at the press conferences. I think we thought that we were going to do something like City did.

Would surely be one of the youngest PL players ever if he made it onto the pitch, let alone score? Getting ahead of myself here..... Hopefully a Villa and ROI legend in the making though.

Has to be Harewood. We'd just spent the season struggling by with O'Leary's squad - had got Stan, Carew, and Young in and all the talk was about Schnjeider, Miguel or Bosingwa signing as it would be the first transfer window where O'Neill could really splash the cash on Europe's top talents. Then we signed Marlon... Emile a close second, given where we were in the table and so desperately needed a good striker.

Guardian saying tomorrow's game is going ahead at Stan's insistence. Really hope the fans make him proud. Absolutely devastating news.

I don't know if anyone listens to the Guardian's Football Weekly Podcast but last Monday Evan Fanning was talking about Villa in light or the Arsenal result and said something along the lines of - if there's any justice in football Villa will be relegated this season. He reckons the other teams are busting a gut to stay up but Villa are not even trying. McLeish is happy with mediocrity. They also said it's well known that the players are very unhappy with him too. Said he felt sorry for the the fans and the players. Refreshingly there was no mention of fans discontent due to McLeish's previous employers.

Think it may be Keane trying to engineer his way back to a PL club.

As far as I'm concerned Lerner has made only one mistake (albeit a fairly big one) which I fully expect him to rectify in the summer. Unless I'm mistaken didn't Ellis have all pictures of 1982 removed from Villa Park as he was not part of it. Says it all.

I think it will take a massive finish to the season for McLeish to save his job. Houllier was sacked after a really strong finish, despite the fact he needed paying off, and he had much more support from the fans than McLeish currently has. He had been given the all clear from his Doctor. His signings were settling well (Makoun excluded admittedly) - yet Lerner still sacked him. He also tried to play positive football with the younger players. Mcleish really has nothing to fall back on: Attendances down, the media on his back now, the fans on his back, talk of player mutinies, and his signings have not performed. Also the likes of Warnock, who Paul Faulkner said McLeish had brought back to being one of the best LB's in the PL a couple of months ago has now reverted back to being utterly useless. If Lerner is twice as patient with McLeish than he was with Houllier then he'll still sack him this summer based on the above.

He'd only joined WBA a few months previously. He's definitely not the type to jump ship like that. Would have been delighted if he'd had though.

I seem to remember O'Neill's first season as being something we had to get out of the way so we could start spending money on people like Wesley Schneijder and Miguel the next summer. That season was full of excitement and hope rather than negativity. Then we signed Marlon and we all had to re-adjust to realise that MON's targets were rarely particularly exciting, exotic, or interesting. There's none of the excitment and hope this time around - even after McLeish said about spending money this summer. I think everyone's panicking about who he'll waste it on... I have to admit that last year I felt that once Houllier had a summer to get rid of the ones who were going against his policies and tactics we'd see the best of him as a manager. His transfer targets were also a bit more interesting - at least they were people we'd never heard of like Fofana etc.