BG_Villa_Fan

Some of the GOOD things are very very subjective, what nice style? Worst defense a Villa team has had in the Prem and one of the worst attacking teams to boot. I don't find 50 yard passes that cut right through our defence to be anything near being a nice style, but that's just me. These GOODs and BADs sound a bit like : Bad : - small boobs - short legs - ugly face Good : - nice personality - can cook pizza - good with kids Anyway, don't want to get in an argument, but I find your stance a bit too aggressive. Fwiw I think Lambert should stay mostly because I don't think Villa would be able to attract a better manager, whether we stay up or not, and because I hope he's learnt from his mistakes, but there's no denying he's been terrible tactically and apparently isn't very good at inspiring a team too.

Apart from the obvious Ireland answer, I'd say Darren Bent. 20+ million for 20 goals and likely being sold for peanuts in the summer.

You mean like improving the wages to revenue %? Oh wait...

So why did the club continue to give outrageous wages to players after MON left?

Richard going HAM

Lambert has done really bad, but sacking him now is not the answer. He should be given the whole season. Hell, even McShit got the whole season ( though he was doing a much better job if we're honest ). Only a month ago, after the l'pool result, people were discussing how none of the players could be replaced cause apprently they were all that good and talented, now it's all doom. A couple of good results will swing the mood again. We need a couple of decent january signings to survive, not even that expensive, a CB and a DM, someone like Parker on loan and maybe a Distin. Our squad is bad but it's not that bad, especially the attacking options, we just need to be more organized and get a result or two to help raise the morale. That said, if we manage to survive, most of the players Lambert bought should be shipped out. Bennet, Lowton, KEA have been awful. Westwood is alright but hasn't shown anything special yet. Benteke is good, but we shouldn't just hoof it to him. It's OK to try to play a young side, it's OK to play 3 or 4 youngsters at a time, but what he's trying to do is never going to work, not even Mourinho could get results with a defence consisting of Lowton-Clark-Baker-Bennett, shielded by Delph and Bannan. Like someone said, Lambert must have believed his own hype. These results would have hopefully brought him down to earth.

0:8, 0:4, 0:3 -> clearly moving in the right direction. Expect us to even get a draw in a few games.

Oooh you're a year ahead in time

That's like saying we were twice as good as against Chelsea because we only lost 4:0. Stats from last season's game : Possession : Villa 54%, Tottenham 46% Shots : Villa 12, Tottenham 23 Corners : Villa 7, Tottenham 9 Compared to last night's : Possession : Villa 39%, Tottenham 61% Shots : Villa 4, Tottenham 20 Corners : Villa 2, Tottenham 16 Stats taken from BBC. How some people have the audacity to accuse others of being biased, I will never know...

Well we're twice as good as last game. Going in the right direction people.

What's with all the negativity? We even had a corner in the end. Surely that's a sign we're moving in the right direction! We're still a work in progress, can't you see? In the second half we're probably even going to have a shot on goal, what else could you want against these top half teams? Doom mongers

His wages would be, for most clubs.

I'd be happy with 2 home wins against Wigan and Soton, anything else from the next 5 games would be gravy.

How much is minus zero? Is it less ot more than zero?

Well, it obviously is a balance between what the manager wants and what the board can afford to get. The key is to negotiate and find this balance. It's very easy to blame someone, say the board gives O'Neill a budget of 200k per week for the transfer window and he buys Beye on wages that are high but within the set budget - then who's fault is it? I say both are wrong. Every football club has a team that should be both financially aware and with enough footballing knowledge, so that they would make the decisions in the best interest of the club. Now, obviously they'll make mistakes, but overall they should be steering the club forward. This hasn't been happening at Villa for a while now and with quite a few different managers. Also, as much as I agree that managers don't want to be controlled by the board, it is very naive to think that the manager himself does all of the transfer business, from the fee negotiating to the contract detials. As for Chelsea, they have been successful because Abramovich has more money than common sense, but I'd argue they would have been even more successful if he had let Mourinho do his thing and hadn't fired him.

Well, according to your logic a football club cannot be run in a financially responsible manner unless the guy who provides the money also has the footballing knowhow to do all the deals himself. I don't find this to be the case in most teams and wherever this happens, cough Chelsea cough, the results are rarely positive. In business, management delegates responsibilities to people, who work within a predefined set of rules to the best interest of the club or owner. Whether the responsible people are a number of advisors, or a director of football or the manager himself is up to the higher management - and so is the overall responsibilty for the business results. In Villa's case - if Lerner hasn't been able to hire people with the good footballing knowhow to do good deadls, then that's his problem and his responsibility.

How about this : - The manager names the players he wants - The board gets them players if available and if on a contract that the board find financially acceptable

Tbh, I agree with most of this. I'm just waiting for Lambert to show some of this superduper amazingness I only read about because his gametime decisions and results so far have certainly left a lot to be desired.

The transformation of old Richard into an IanRobo clone in the space of a couple of months is mind-boggling

Don't believe this is true because it's the games head to head and not the goal difference that matters most when two teams have equal points. Thus Chelsea are already behind Shakhtar no matter what and Juventus only need a draw to be ahead of Chelsea too.

Very harsh on Di Matteo. Whether he had luck winning the Champions league or not is irrelevant. Why keep him in the job in the first place if he'd be on such a short leash? I hope whoever comes next fails miserably, this is not how a manager should be treated.

Can't be too big a rivalry when 'Smäll/Calmed' always get beat.

Very much the same as it is now, one of the biggest site meltdowns was after the 1st day of the season Wigan loss. It was epic, haven't seen anything remotely similar in the past 3 seasons. Of course then we went on to beat Liverpool at Anfield.

Top post Mark, spot on!

Very true. The levels of hypocrisy in some comments are laughable, especially when people say Lambert should be backed even if he relegates us. McShite didn't do it and he had much less resources than Lambert. If we go down this season it'd be 100% on Lambert. That said, I doubt it, cause I believe he can become the good manager that people think he already is.