Neil

I keep hearing this, but we've yet to have a single sought after long standing proven really great manager to compare. We'll be stuck scavenging through bins for a while longer and may never find out. Most of our signings came with reputations for being sought after players though...

Judging him by the end of the season, without doing the maths, would be giving him more games than Tim... No?

So he has all his teeth and no artificial limbs, sure that's probably good enough for me to - because it's the best of a pretty bad bunch I suppose is what you're saying. I can agree with that, and no problem with it really - just can't take people talking him up as a messiah. That was wrong then, it's still wrong now - but he could become it.

Don't really see it, he was part of a youth academy that was successful - not really any measure for success in management. All that's on his CV of any relevance is 3 years management where he unspectacularly achieved equilibrium with Lyon. Admittedly in the face of players being sold, but to the reality is he achieved just under average league position finishes for a club pretty much used to finishing up the top. Lyons league finishes in numbers :- 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 1, 1, 1, 3, 2, 4, 4, 3, 5 I am not against Garde, and I make none of these posts to attack him or denounce him as the man for the job. I simply want to make the point that he's done nothing, or achieved nothing in his career to get excited about - nothing that would say he was definitely the right choice at all. All except the fact he continued a steady ship with the youth players with best players being sold, which is a situation we find our selves in. However, up to now for Aston Villa he's been very much below par - his results have been failures which has seen during his tenure go from a position with a lot of games to play making you still in the hunt to really not enough games to dig ourselves out any longer. Not all his fault of course, we have poor players, but to me he's made mistakes that undoubtedly come from his clear lack of real management experience (3 years total, with one club in the french league, is piss all). I hope and believe he'll improve, and I hope he turns out to be the right guy as I've said many times. I want to give him till the end of the season, more so because there is little other option. But I want to call a spade a spade, he's a relatively inexperienced manager and he was a big risk - but we have to take risks in our posiition because we can't attract the pep type managers of the world and we have to find the next "big thing" or go with mediocre stability rubbish. We've gambled on the next big thing here, so let's hope it works out.

What in particular makes him right? Not a great deal to say one way or the other in my opinion.

That talk about wages increasing through appearances raised its ugly head again today on the radio. I'm sure I even read about whether the injury was even real somewhere. Where do people dream this stuff up

Same, I think it will become exponentially harder each year and I think we're looking at a minimum sentence of a few years to get our self destruction going.

A lot of points here, I don't know whether you're addressing me specifically or not but you quoted my post so I have to assume so. I think it's a given that we completely disagree on whether this team can be improved between now and the end of the season, that's fine. However, you mention to quantify improvement and raise the subject of improving enough to escape relegation. I think that would take a miracle, and I do not expect this of him. I do expect that he will improve us to the point we'll win a few games and pick up twice as many points in the 2nd half of the season as we have in the 1st. To quantify that into numbers, 24 points. I am including the fact he has an entire January transfer window to add to the squad to improve it. And I expect as a minimum he must improve this season or come the end he won't be the man for me. Other points regarding only giving him 9 games before "castrating him", again I don't know if you're still addressing me but my stand should be perfectly clear because I've said countless times that I expect improvement by the end of the season. And I've made a point to say we might as well just stick with Remi until then.

YEah, we meant the same thing...so I am expecting minimum of 24 points and a demonstration we are improving and showing character / fight to take into the championship.

Yep, the kind of improvement I would also like to see before the seasons out for me to be convinced he's the right man for the championship.

I would say about double of what we already have with the last half of the season. That would be 16 more, so about the same

No, totally disagree with this in every sense. Not only should he improve them, he must. We will not get funds for better players than we have now. Garde has even less experience of "overhauling" a squad than he does improving on the one he already has. So on every count, if he fails to improve them - wrong man for the job in every sense. It's widely accepted he's made mistakes, even with selection - so to say the team cannot be improved by anyone is ludicrous. We also haven't had a proven, really good manager, so how can anyone say they cannot be improved by anyone. We have nothing to measure that by.

Is there usually any kind of dispensation that you can easily dump player contracts when you get relegated?

Same here, jesus I would be desperate for even gordon the gopher to be a success...anyone, I just want to see us improving and something to live for man. This has been the most depressing time ever as a Villa fan.

I'm going to go further and say the guy HAS to improve what we have now, and we MUST improve before the end of this season or the manager has been a complete failure. This team of new players we have now cost, as people point out, a lot of money - money we got from selling Benteke. We will not have that chance to spend this kind of money again. On individual merits, plenty of the players that came in have shown some individual signs that they can play well. Jordan Ayew, touted our best player...Jordan Amavi (injured of course) has shown great signs. Vertout and Adama, both showing they can do things and signs that say they most certainly can improve from where they are now. We will not be able to spend this kind of money again, and we won't get any players with similar prospects - so if he completely fails to organise them playing better before the end of the season than that spells huge trouble. "Improving the side" should be quite straight forward, and a good manager/coach would improve this side before the season is out. If Remi can't do it, time for the bin. I expect, and believe, that he will improve this team even if he's shown no signs of it till now.

Not if you constantly churn out players you can sell for a lot more than you've paid for them, and then replace with of suitable quality. If you've nothing left to sell, then the net spend...or external investment is everything.

I think their biggest sponsor was the etihad airways thing that gave them loads of money, which I think they own too right? And it was £43million fine for City as they did breach FFP somewhere. So I suppose, if you've got truck loads of money you could just spend **** loads and then argue for the same £43million fine and pay that off. Randy won't be doing any of that.

Shame he doesn't still own a massive credit card firm huh?

Man City were up for being punished, but they bought there way out of that right? Money given directly from the director to the company, even gifted, can't be included in the budget from what I recall?

I would like to preface the following with "I have ziltch sympathy for Randy Lerner, he deserves everything he gets it's just a shame he's dragging us down with him". Alas, I think he's between very much a rock and a hard place. I think he realises he would have had to allow that money to be reinvested, because his investment was at stake and taking any money out is likely to hurt him even more financially. I believe now, this proposition isn't even on the table. He's probably been briefed that relegation is likely, and he'll want as much financial damage limitation as possible - which won't include pumping any further funds. I guess his two options are go flat out trying to stay up, or batten down the hatches and ride through the storm. The 2nd option requires no further input or crucially investment from him, the first would be gambling hugely. That's how I see it, at least. You're probably right in hindsight. We lost our main goal outlet, crucial goals that kept us in the league...I always believed (still do) that with such a poor team around him we could make a better team with his money (and without Benteke). It hasn't worked out like that, and now we have no one else to sell to give that idea another go. With no-one left to sell, having to prepare for the championship and FFP a consideration I believe the shoe string budget will be back in full effect.

We only spend 52 milliion, because we sold Benteke...is more the point. Who are we going to sell to raise that again? There is another discussion about FFP, I'm not even sure we can spend much more without making sales. Who is there to sell. The money we've actually spent that wasn't raised through sales has been one of the lowest in the prem for some time*, kind of where we are in the league reflects that. Actual investment of surplus isn't coming, I am pretty certain of that, many other clubs are making bigger "net spend"* than us and our budget is shoe string by comparison. *Based on a table I'm sure I remember seeing where net spend compared with other teams was plotted, and shown ours to be low.

Definitely more interesting than anything that will come of it...

Which is sidetracking the issue at hand, we're in a mess..we have a high wage bill on shite players...so how do we get out of it? We need to look at re-investment, spending more wisely yes, but spending more money as defacto. FFP may be stopping us from spending more money, period. Which (what I believe) is more what the original poster is alluding too.

The point about Financial fair play isn't really around how well you do with what you spend, it's purely how much you've spent and how much you make...and how much more you're able to spend. Clearly doing better will generate additional revenue and allow you to spend more, but my finger in the air guess is our wage bill compared to what we bring in probalby doesn't put our books in a good place for spending more.

Financial fair play, kind of an oxymoron because if you have enough money you can buy your way out of the punishment for falling foul. I'd like to hear a bit more on the FFP in the championship, from what I gather - this could be a real problem for us.