Harry

Ask again in about six games time. Personally I think he will be fine, not as good as Given but good enough.

Two thirds would not renew because of the manager. Now that's quite a scary statistic for Messrs Lerner and Faulkner.

I would agree with that. Our 'lofty' position is entirely artificial.

400 people have voted and 87% want McLeish out. That is all you need to know really.

With a heavy heart I have voted no because of the football under McLeish. I buy two adult tickets for myself and my 15 year old son. I buy two adult tickets so I can take friends if my son does not want to do so that's £1,050 the club will not get off plus I don't think the mate I go with and his son will renew either so that's another two. I'm lucky in that its not a money issue but its sheer torment seeing the rubbish served up at Villa Park now. I had no enthusiasm for the Man U game at the weekend as the outcome was just so so predictable and very little I saw changed that. We gave it a go in the last 20 minutes but beyond that I watched a seemingly demotivated bunch of players go through the motions. I can't help but think a better manager would get so much more out of the players some of whom IMO are not at all bad. Whether I can resist renewing come April time I don't know but as of now its a definite no. The other thing that pisses me off is with all the offers you could see all the game for less money!

Given how he has proved himself to be quite a prolific liar since then I think it was something McLeish decided to say on his own. Why would the board lie to McLeish/ask him to give false reassurances when they knew he would be sold a couple of weeks down the line anyway? I think its more likely he was told Downing wasn't for sale unless a substantial offer was made. £20 million for Downing is good money - he made a naive comment prematurely about "not going anywhere" . The board made him look a prat . After all the club told us McLeish is a good manager. He isn't. We were told he would be fully backed in the summer. He wasn't. Story I heard was Downing was happy to stay but when the £20m offer came in Lerner insisted he was sold. I agree McLeish is a piss poor manager but the board have also shafted him.

Agreed, I've been there a quite a few times to see Bristol Rugby Club who share it and whose ground it originally was so the pitch will be shite too. The ball will be in the air for the vast majority of the game so the pitch won't affect much :winkold: :winkold: What capacity is their ground? Being in Devon (and having young kids), it's not easy getting back for a lot of games but Brizzle is only an hour away and I know a Rovers fan so might try and get along to this I'm guessing 8,000 ish. Last time I went there there was no stand at the one end!

You can probably add my son and and myself to that list. I probably won't renew for the two of us based on what we are seeing on the pitch. My mate and his son who we go with are unlikely to renew and I was talking to another mate before the game yesterday and he and his mate were thinking about not renewing. All in all that's another six. Might be a good idea to get a thread going with a poll to see who amongst VT posters will not be renewing.

Agreed, I've been there a quite a few times to see Bristol Rugby Club who share it and whose ground it originally was so the pitch will be shite too.

I just can't believe 8 people voted for him. Definite no from me

Maybe just maybe that had something to do with the clowns that were booing every time he got the ball

I'm in the unsure camp at the moment. He's had more pluses than minuses over his ownership but he needs to sort the problems we have very soon. With the manager we have we are heading towards disaster and I'm not sure he can see that which I find very worrying.

I have mixed views about what I witnessed yesterday at Villa Park. I thought we would get stuffed so in some ways only losing one nil does not seem too bad. BTW its a sad condemnation of the state of Villa that I actually think that. As for the game we were appalling in the first half but I thought we were better in the second particularly after the introduction of Heskey and Petrov. I know they are both well hated by most on this forum but they did introduce more stability and Heskey in particular added some much needed strength in the midfield. I totally agree that his 'finishing' is shite but we looked a better side in the last quarter of the game with him on the pitch. In fact I will stick my neck out and say we looked OK in that last 20 minutes or so and could have nicked a point. United were definitely not at their best and we did actually nullify a lot of their attacking players for most of the game. Having said that their goal was yet another defensive howler where we have four defenders in the box who collectively managed to not mark three United players. There were two United players unmarked behind Jones had he missed it. The real concern for me that was amply demonstrated yet again was how poor we are going forward. I genuinely feel sorry for Bent as he gets next to no service such that its a waste of time having him on the pitch. Gabby works very hard but gets little support as the link up play between the strikers and the midfield is non existent. For me the problem area is the midfield. We actually have some good players in that area but that just do not gel together in any way and we are probably short of a real midfield enforcer. Overall its just too lightweight and frankly lacks creativity. As for McLeish he inspires no confidence in me as a fan and I find it very difficult to believe he inspires any confidence in the players. You can't help but think that the players were sent out today to try and not get beaten too badly although I will give him a little credit for starting both Bannan and Albrighton. As a manager he is simply not good enough and he is leading us towards disaster. Whilst I don't want him back I feel genuinely envious of the feel good factor at Sunderland over the appointment of MON. We never had that with McLeish which tells me everything about the calibre of the manager we appointed. The only viable option for us is to get rid of him now before its too late but sadly I can't see that happening. Final thought on the game. Why were some clowns booing Young when he got the ball? Utterly pathetic. A player who gave his all for us for four and half years who we sold for a handsome profit and to be blunt to a bigger and more successful club than us. I was nice to see him getting some applause when he took his first corner

I really don't think he was particularly shrewd in the transfer market: Knight Maloney Shorey Davies Salifou Heskey Harewood Beye I'm sure there's a few more that deserve to be listed with these. Credit is due with Ash, Milner and Downing, but who else would be considered a shrewd signing? Luke Young, Dunne, Collins, Warnock and Cuellar were mediocre signings...Delph hasn't really panned out. He let Cahill walk, too. It's not like a huge club came in for him. We sold him to Bolton, FFS.... Exactly, yes we signed some cracking players some of whom we eventually sold for a big profit but we also signed some very average players, as Maqroll has quite rightly pointed out, for big fees and then put them on big wages. MON should have bought better given his experience and the Board should have set proper limits on what he was doing. IMO MON is a good manager but not outstanding, not as good as the media think he. I would totally agree he did great things at the club and we had some great times and he took a relegation threatened club into the top third of the table. For me though, at least, I doubt we would have got any better or higher as I think we had reached the limit of his capabilities. I would hazard a guess for every great game we had when we beat one of the bigger sides could be compared to one of the disastrous games we had. That was MON though, great highs and lows. Think beating Man U away and then think about losing to Wigan at home or surrendering a two goal lead at home to Stoke compared to winning at the Emirates. I could on..... It do find it quite irritating that some fans are still having a love in over MON. In his last season at Villa I seem to remember that was a big proportion of fans who were massively critical of MON as Kazzam said over things like favourites/no subsitutions/no rotatating/no youth/1 dimension football/not buying abroad,etc. Overall over his tenure he was great for the club but its all in the past The manager we have now and his capabilities are actually a totally different discussion. My view on that is quite simple, we aimed far too low in terms of the calibre of manager we sought and eventually got. Put simply there were and are far better managers out there that the one we have got.

. And that comes from the manager and if we adopt anything like the shambles we saw at Spurs it will be a rout.

They signed an unemployed premiership manager desperate for a job, so desperate in fact he's prepared to live within a constraint that he could not accept at his previous club. The short list was two; MON or Hughes. Hardly showing ambition in my book. OK I would agree that maybe we have seen something different at Villa but that's a different argument.

As far as I recall we were never in for Scott Parker. Or is this wishful thinking about players we should have tried to get in? On that basis can I suggest the following change:

News to me; obviously from the mouthpiece of MON’s no. 2 fan; Pat Murph And that just proves the media love fest that MON always manages to create. As I said on a post above MON is a good manager but not nearly as good as the media think he is.

I'll be very interested to see how MON gets on particularly as has apparently committed to work within 'budget constraints' which is the generally accepted reason why he left Villa. IMO Bruce is Mr Average as a manager and was always out of his depth at Sunderland. I also think he signed a load of crap over the summer with the Bent money so MON is going to have his work cut out to shape them into a decent outfit. Having said that I think MON is a decent manager who should definitely be able to get them a top ten finish. But for me at least and after spending lots of money MON would never have got us any higher in the league Man City or not. That will also be true at Sunderland. As I said he is a good manager but certainly not as good as the media think he is nor as good as he thinks he is. I'd also have a cheeky bet it ends in tears too.

The simple facts are we overpaid both in wages and transfer fees for a player at the end of his career and three full time managers and two temporary managers have not thought him good enough to start games or even be on the subs bench most of the time. The Hutton comparison is a red herring. I agree Hutton looks piss poor to me and a waste of money but that's separate to Beye. Cuellar will do a better job at RB as will Herd who looked very good in that role and we we have Lichaj back from injury eventually too.

How can you keep banging on about this and ignoring the points out forward? Our issue was not the money we spent. Our issue was the money we spent in relation to how much money we brought in. Please explain why mon would have known about all the ways we make money more than the owner. Please explain how MON should have known future forecasts than the owner? Did MON have anything to do with ticket pricing, corporate deals, merchandising, sponsorship, tv deals? Please explain. What a successful business does is have the key personnel working and planning together. This clearly wasn't happening during O'Neill's time in charge. It looks like Lerner didn't realise the full extent of the costs being run up, and O'Neill didn't realise that Lerner couldn't afford to keep backing to him the same extent. Then when both realised the full extent of the other's actions, the relationship fell apart in dramatic fashion. In other words, an utter shambles. edit: and now in the latest example, we have Faulkner and McLeish clearly not on the same page. How hard can it be to actually talk to each other. I think that pretty much sums it up for me.

He's now saying on the BBC website that he wants to stay at Doncaster for the rest of the season. Not surprising really. http://tinyurl.com/c2uxy6t

I don't think he has taken all the money back has he. I'm no apologist for Randy Lerner but if we are going to have a debate about money surely we should be looking at the net investment he has made since owning the club. As for interest on loans those loans come from a family trust so I would very much doubt the Trustees would or could allow them to be interest free. I would not worry too much about that bit of the financing personally anyway as I suspect its tax based. I agree the club needs to be run on more commercial lines which it clearly has not been for the past few years. Sadly for many fans Lerner has now become a bad owner just because he is trying to control costs in the club. Having said all that I do think he has made a cataclysmic error in appointing such a poor manager. What fans wanted was someone to inspire them. Either an experienced name or better still for me at least a good young manager who could stay with the club a few years. What we ended up with was an average / poor manager who will drive fans away. Hardly a great shout when we need to balance the books. The bit I just cannot get my head round is that all we could seemingly come up with as new managers were McLaren, Martinez and McLeish.

Did not see the game as I had to watch my son playing football and I would hazard a guess I saw a better game and they lost! It shows how far Villa have fallen when I was actually pleased we got a point. Bottom line for me is McLeish is a nice guy but a very poor manager and sadly I think we will achieve nothing with him in charge.

Good post Alec. My feels entirely. I think your 'journey' with McLeish as our manager pretty much mirrors my own.