Godders

Not necessarily... "We're not remotely near the finished article. I've got a busy summer ahead" could be read as he will be busy working with this team to get them into the finished article. The mention of the summer clearout could be incidental in the main to the work he's doing with the team. Not saying that is the case, just pointing out it's another way of reading into his comments.

I think he's talking more about players leaving if I'm honest. I don't think he's talking about another wholesale changing of the guard. In previous weeks he's talked about getting in a handful of players with a bit of quality. He's also talked about how we're still paying for players who aren't even at the club. A handful in and a fair few out fits with his messages recently, and this one as well (especially when he says "a huge clearout job to continue"), so that's what I'm expecting this summer.

It's a fair point to make. The ones I briefly looked at were generally from early to mid August, so up to the Chester deal really. Some specifically reference the McCormack deal, which at the time was a record transfer. So, doubt I'm looking at anything that was done after all the summer transfers, but certainly would include judgements made after signing a prem player or two and the Championship player of the season for the previous two seasons (if memory serves).

Well if you were expectating us to be comfortably in the playoffs, then I can see your disappointment. Most predictors/media at the start of the season look like they had us playoffs, or top-half but outside the playoffs. The sky fan predictor, where people vote a team up or down had us finishing 9th. So, like I said, we're not a million miles away from where the general expectations were at the start of the seasonm, and we've done it under Bruce even after being a quarter season off the pace.

We're 12th out of 24. Moving up 1 place in the league puts us in the top half. Our next two games are winnable. A point in the last game looks doable too assuming Brighton have the title wrapped up by then. That's on track in my book.

I've just had a look at the 'where will we finish?' poll that was run right at the start of the season, mainly as I was interested to remind myself what our expectations were at the start of the season, before a ball was even kicked. The overwhelming expectation was playoffs, but a not insignificant number of folks here thought we'd be top half but miss out on the playoffs. Bruce is currently on track to deliver a top half finish, and probably not too far off the playoffs. This is arguably broadly in line with preseason expectations, despite giving the rest of the league a quarter of a season head start. Regardless of what is said about style of play, I don't think this can be overlooked. I'm sure if that poll was rerun when RDM was sacked, the expectations would have been lower, which makes a top half finish even more impressive IMO considering pre-season expectations and where we were when Bruce took over.

Are you Rio Ferdinand? Are we getting merked?!

Just to be clear, we're talking about the same Sherwood who's only experience of building a squad is building the one that got us relegated last season? The same guy who several weeks into the season, when we were struggling, was moaning that the players he bought weren't good enough? That same Sherwood, you think, would get us promoted if he had carte blanche to throw money around?

GH, he's averaged 1.5 points per game in his time with us. Whichever way you cut it, over the course of a season that's a win or two from a pretty much guaranteed playoff place. And he's achieved that despite taking over a team with no confidence, no midfield and hovering around the relegation zone. With a solid pre-season to work with the players, trim some off he doesn't want, make a couple more additions, it is not unreasonable to expect even now that he will achieve the same return next season plus the necessary small improvement required to have us in the promotion frame throughout the season. 75 points is the absolute bear minimun we should be expecting next season, which should see us in the playoffs. Obvously we want to see far more, I'm Bruce and the club do too, but as a minimum benchmark, that serves our purpose. That works out around 1.65 points per game. After 5 or 6 games next season, we can take stock. If we're averaging more than 1.65 PPG in those first few games, we're on track to for the minimum expectations at least. If we're averaging far less than that, then the Club should really be thinking about making a change before it's too late unless there's real mitigating circumstances that could explain the poor performance.

What would be the criteria you'd look at to shortlist a manager if you were in charge of recruitment at the club?

We've also conceded 46, a defensive stat bettered by only 3 teams at this stage. I'm with Sharky. We have a core there. Work needs to be done, of course, but there is a core there.

Who's your idea of a banker?

You got in before my edit. This, in bold, is the key point. Better teams use the ball better. A team that uses the ball better in the opposition half, creating chances, will naturally force the opposition deeper, which in turn gives more space in the opposition half. More space and front-foot football = more possession than the opposition who are forced to defend deep. I do not disagree that better teams use the ball better than us and ergo have better possession stats. I disagree with the notion though that better teams play possession football. Their possession is a result of the fact they use the ball better in key areas of the pitch. It's not a result of the manager saying "our style is to play possession football". Look at Paul Lambert at the end of his tenure with us. He had us playing possession football. We did f*** all with it though.

This is getting a touch tedious if I'm honest. Possession has f** all to do with who wins a football game. I want us to dominate games as much as you. If I look at stats and see that we've created far more shots/shots on goal than our opposition, and see that the ball spent most of the time in their half, I would consider us to have dominated the game. I couldn't give a flying f*** if we do that with 30% possession because they've spent 60 odd minutes passing the ball in their half between their back 4. It's probably far more accurate to say better sides create more chances with the possession they have.

Haha! Fair point. Should have clarified I'd want to see success in that environment. He also wouldn't be on my shortlist since he'd fail on my first criteria in that he's not had success at a club where the expectations have been massively high.

I dunno. He's averaging 1.5ppg since he's been here so far, which is 69 points over the course of a season. While slightly below what we should be looking at (If I were Xia, I'd be mandating 75 points absolute minimum next season), considering the team he inherited and the position we were in at the time, he's just about done enough to be here next season for me, regardless of what happens in the last 3 games. I'd want us to show good points returns and a half decent goal difference after the first month or so. That's when I'll start judging I think.

There's often talk of this being a big job for anyone - Bruce has called this his dream job, and has also I seem to remember spoken about the huge expectations that come with it. Especially next season when promotion is the only objective. It can take a special type of character to be able to deal with that level of expectation: The worst thing for our manager to do would to be to have a crisis of confidence when the fans are laying into them after 2 losses. I would want to see a manager with experience of succeeding at a club where minimum expectation has been promotion/long cup run. Neither Monk or Wagner have had that experience. I'd also want a manager with experience of playoffs, or high pressure knock out games at a big stadium like Wembly since the approach to those games are completely different to others. Again, neither Monk or Wagner have that experience, so both are a no from me.

This is a sentiment that I can't really get my head around. Our job at the moment is to get promoted. Steve Bruce has been promoted from this league more times than any other manager. He has done so without having to spend hundreds of millions on players each time. His name was bandied around in the press for the England job when Allardyce was appointed. On paper, he was arguably the best man for the job when we appointed him. A few questions then - did you want Bruce in to begin with? If not why not? And if you were in charge of recruiting a new manager for Villa, what would your criteria be?

Very frustrating to watch, but then again Fulham are a good side still in the hunt for the playoffs, so of course their going to be bang up for it. I don't like the way we're playing, but if Bruce is getting good info out of this for next season then I'm reasonably happy. If we're in this same situation a month into next season, then my voice will be joining the detractors I think.

Well, it is how we bought our players for a while.

This seems to be a very emotive point at the moment so I've really given some effort to try and see things from Sheepy's and GH's point of view. The crux of the argument, as I see it, is that since the most successful teams in any league are generally the ones that play a possession, free flowing type of game (I'll call it possession based), and since Bruce doesn't seem capable of getting us playing like this, then we're not going to be successful under Bruce in this league and he should go now, replaced by someone who can get us playing this way. Logically though, I can't see this as a reasonable argument. Bruce has already gotten 2 teams promoted from this league. Now to do so, based on the Bruce out arguments premises as I've read them, he would have had to have got them playing a possession based game. Given this, it really suggests the 2nd premise (that he can't get us playing a possession based game) isn't correct given he's working with some of the better players in this league with us. There is nothing reasonable to suggest that he could do it with SHA and Hull, but not with us. Or, he didn't get them playing possession football. He still got them promoted though, which means the 1st premise would be incorrect since Bruce seems to have been successful with teams without playing a possession based game. Either way, the Bruce out argument because of the style of play does not hold much water for me. For it to do so, we'd need to make an assumption that he has lost his ability as a manager to see the same level of success as before (unlikely imo as he went up with Hull last season), or he's delibarately sabotaging us (which I'm dismissing on the grounds of that suggestion being ludicrous). There may well still be merit to a Bruce out argument, and I'll be interested in seeing it. But arguing for Bruce out now because we're not playing a possession based game is illogical and unreasonable for the reasons I've given above.

To me, it makes sense that promotion was the objective at the start of the season. RDM got us into a position where it was very unlikely promotion was going to happen, so Xia sacked him and bought in SB. Now, SB is starting at a disadvantage to RDM as we're already some way off the promotion pace. A pragmatic approach for Xia would be to agree that, given where the club is in the league, promotion is not a key objective for SB this season. Reading it that way would mean that he didn't move the goalposts part way into SB's tenure in order to not sack him (which, had he done so, would be a reflection of a very poor people manager imo), because promotion was never a key objective for him in the first place. Do you not think that reading of things better fits what we've seen, rather than Xia deciding to lower the bar just so he doesn't have to sack Steve?

Was this the club's objective for him when he came in though? I haven't seen anything from the club to suggest it was. I may have missed it though so correct me if I'm wrong. With the greatest of respect, SB is employed by the club, and his job is to meet or exceed the club's expectations, not yours or mine. If, when he sat down with Xia when he first came in, they agreed that realistically promotion this season was an outside shot given we were in the relegation zone, and that the target is to hit a top half finish with a squad that only needs minimal investment over the summer to mount a serious challenge from the off next season, then for my money he looks on track at the moment.

Nah close it as a symbolic gesture, an acceptance that we're turning the corner. We've had relegation threads for so many seasons now, binning this one off could be like the metaphorical Phoenix rising from the ashes.

Reading some of the posts on here, I fear you may not be right. I hope that's not the case though. There's something incredibly sad about hoping the team you support fail just to be able to post "see, I told you so" on an internet forum.