I don't want to get rid of Lambert, I like his vision for the club and aspects of his transfer policy.
However, his comments really irk me and I can't accept some of the things he says. One of the most unbearable things is when says we've been playing well when we haven't.
His answers taken from a piece in the Mail really annoyed me:
"Q If Villa go down would it be a disaster?
Listen, you don’t want to go down by any stretch, no chance.
What you are asking me, a load of other managers are probably being
asked the same thing. There’s a right handful of teams in the same
situation.
We know we have to fight like hell to get out of this situation. You roll
up your sleeves and get on with it, or you just roll over – and we’re
not going to roll over."
Surely the correct answer is, YES it would be a disaster as we're a massive club who have been in the Prem for its duration. Instead he's comparing us to smaller clubs in a similar situation. I know this means little, but you have to make fans aware you know the size of the club.
As for not rolling over, that's EXACTLY what we've been doing!! Not buying muscle for centre mid really has not helped this. Before anyone says Lerner isn't backing him this month, he spent a lot of money in the summer, this should be enough to cover our problem areas. He hasn't addressed all of them however, and we're suffering now.
"Q Queens Park Rangers, Southampton and Newcastle are buying. Is it
frustrating because they are trying to spend their way out of trouble?
Yes they are, but I think that’s everybody else’s prerogative. I
don’t think I can ever worry about what other teams are doing. I can
understand teams doing it.
But if you don’t manage to stay in the league and you’ve spent loads
of money then what does that do to your club if it goes down?
Does that put the club’s future at risk? I don’t want to do that to this club, that’s for sure."
So rather than saying we have to do everything in our power to avoid the drop, he's saying IF we go down, we won't bankrupt ourselves. Well that's very reassuring...
If we stay up and Lambert can address 1 or 2 key positions in the summer, I do think we may have a bright future. Because of this and a lack of alternatives available, I probably wouldn't sack him.