turvontour

Still preferable to Dwight Yorke.

I don’t think it’s wholly the manager, I think the manager becomes the problem on the surface of it after a few months of their appointment. Just two-three months ago, Bruce was seen by many as the saviour. He can’t have suddenly turned into a bad manager overnight, his record elsewhere is simply too strong for that to be the case. Based on what Dyche and Wagner have done at smaller clubs with no money, then yes presumably with their appointment we’d be back up and in the top half of the Premier league within 18 months. However, I feel that if Wagner had come in October, or Mclaren or Moyes, and we were where we are now, you’d simply have Dyche and Bruce on that list of replacements instead. Also, we shouldn’t even need a top manager that’s performed miracles to get a decent 90 mins out of this squad, the players are also hugely responsible for their collective actions.

Maybe we're the words removed.

Rotherham in my mind is the only match that we were in complete control of this season. Of the team that we fielded back in August there were only 2 of those players present in the line up tonight. Its staggering that we could be going to Rotherham in March with a different 11 to earlier in the season having spent a shed load of money and yet be severely weaker as a team.

Shit hawks flying round Villa Park, shitting on people.

Bruce is the obvious element of the club to change right now, so that we can have another go at getting favourable results. But will a new manager not want his own players and staff, and so any semblance of continuity is again lost and we are in effect starting again?

Unbelievable. Really?

People really still take the piss out of you at work? I just get sympathy.

I gurantee we would have had a serious look at Robinson in the window if it hadnt been us that released him.

Darren Bent shitting goals.

This is more or less where I am at the moment with things. It’s interesting your point re. sustaining a good start as manager, as Sherwood and now Bruce have had similar records in that respect. Coming in and doing everything we’d hoped for in the first few months before switching to complete dross. No middle ground. I think that the atmosphere of defeat around the club is weighing psychologically on the players, and is going to be a difficult one to turn around. I still don’t know how to quantify that in a behind the scenes of a football club sense, what does a bad losing mentality at a football club actually mean? Does it transcend from the manager, owners, directors, or is it the footballers that have been there throughout this spell? They’re just football matches and results that we’re looking for at the end of the day, and this is a very strong bunch of players that regularly improves (on paper at least). You’d have thought that the tide would change at some point, just by laws of averages. Its baffling. We’ve been in a rut of losing for so long that it has just become par for the course. Leicester have been a great example of this both positively and negatively in recent times and show how belief and confidence can more or less achieve anything irrespective of players. Has Ranieri gone from presumably the best manager in Europe last season (given the players at his disposal) to one of the weakest managers in Europe this season? Similarly to Bruce, it’s the same man that had us all dreaming of automatic promotion following that bounce in October/November. I’m none the wiser. My gut feeling is that this club needs continuity at the moment, so sacking Bruce in the next few months probably shouldn’t be an option. But if he has indeed been villafied (excuse the pun) then maybe giving him time will just make things worse. And we really haven’t got time on our side at the moment given how close we are to the business end of the season. Thanks for the responses by the way folks, really opened my eyes to a few things.

Forget relating the results to the amount spent, i mean we'll be one of the worst performing clubs of the last few years irrespective of the £100 million spent on players. None of the other 91 teams will have won just 3 league games last season.

Have to agree. I dont think we'll go down as there is rubbisher rubbish in this division. BUT, it doesnt bode well that given we dont win games away, we've seemingly stopped winning games at home. If that continues, we will be snookered.

I think we'd all agree, that there's something fundementally wrong at this football club despite the wholesale changes that have been made across the last year and im hoping that somebody who understands the club and football a bit better than me can provide a view as to why that may be. Is it poor training, staff, bad atmosphere, pressure through expectation, Lerner's legacy etc. Because we see all these excuses trotted out on here but accountability generally points back to the manager. What is it that goes on behind the scenes that makes our managers look inept and our exciting new players instantly fall in line with the rest? If Bruce (the great Championship club promoter) leaves here as a failure, is it truly him thats the problem? How many more failures would there need to be until we cant just blame management? So so few players leave Villa in a better fotballing position than when they arrive. Out of our last 50 players signed say, how many left Villa as a better player? A handful? No one would even be slightly surprised if Mccormack went on to get a goal every other game through to the end of the season for Forest. Or if Bacuna left, he suddenly start scoring free kicks regularly or goals from range again. Why is that? If Hourihane and Hogan turn out to be duds, would you be surprised? I joked on here before the Brentford game that it doesnt matter whether you have Mccormack or Rhodes up front, the team/club simply doesnt have the belief to win. Both players have scored in wins subsequently and Villa havent. Its depressingly inevitable.

No more using the unbeaten at home record to put a positive angle on this season. Shaping up to be as bad as the last few. As others have said, this club remains rotten despite the changes.

Ive seen absolutely nothing to suggest that we would be a good League 1 side.

Preston casually put 4 past Brentford, who put 4 past us. Cant even be bothered to try and remember the last time we scored 4 goals. These clubs havent got any money. Pathetic.

The pride of Birmingham? Akin to the wooden spoon of England.

The Carbone song. Was that the last and only played song that we had for a player? And Alpay towards the Holte End before games. You could buy into that.

I remember being in the Cap n Gown about (wow) 10 years ago when we beat them 2-0 and there was celery flying everywhere.

Why the nicer that food tastes the less healthy it is for you.

I don’t disagree with you, if we go unbeaten in the next five winning four of those then great, and then maybe win four out of the next five. It’s just that this season to date we win just better than one in four, so we need to see a monumental shift in performances/results for that to materialise. Out of interest, what do you mean by playing without fear, and is that what you see as the problem at the moment? For me, if the players can’t perform at Griffin Park and a half empty City Ground then I don’t fancy our chances of getting out of this division! If I was an ex-Premier league player I would relish going to these pokey mid-table Championship grounds (on the assumption that it was just for one season) just so I could display my talent and enjoy winning matches again. I think we’re seeing just how far away from Premier League quality some of these players are.

Agree with all of this except for the last sentence. Its absolutely critical that we end this season on a high - there’s a huge difference between finishing 9th and 17th for me, if for no other reason than that it would mean that we win a fair few of our remaining games. Also, I don’t believe that we’re suddenly going to go from a 30% win rate to a 60% win rate just because we have a collective pre-season and add some more players (I know you’re not saying this here, but I’ve read similar sentiment), I think it’s far too big a leap to expect from the rut we’re in now. I mean Christ, it’s the start of February and we already know that we won’t be beating Preston, Brentford, Wolves, Leeds and Forest this season! Read those names again, all clubs that we should at least be going toe to toe with at this level. 10 games – and what 4 or 5 points, you’d be looking at it at the start of the season and saying 15-18 points minimum from those. it’s absolutely appalling. Psychologically, we want to be playing these teams next season knowing that we gave them a game (ideally a hammering) the previous year. Otherwise, we start getting into the routine that we used to against Man U and Arsenal where a win felt like a miracle. I can just see it now, "that’s a good point at Brentford, last season we got thumped there remember." Players associate matches with past performances, I’m sure of it. Perhaps a contributing factor as to why we were so strong at places like Sunderland and to a lesser degree at Anfield, I don’t know. If we just treat the rest of the season as an experiment, and give the kids a go, I feel that it would have the potential to dent the current morale in the camp further.

A clear out on that scale wont happen, but im more on board with that sentiment than to just hope things improve. The go again mentality. I just keep coming back to Alan Hutton and away games for some reason (i appreciate he didnt play yesterday, could prob use Bacuna, just Hutton seems more amusing). If you're Hutton, and you've been on 76 away coach journeys (38 games, so there and back) and youve won two of those games, surely your beyond giving a hoot how you or the team perform, within reason. It really worries me for the new players who mix with them and will with time adopt a similar mentality. I said before the Brentford game that the players in the line up are largely immaterial at present while the team collectively is so broken. Westwood or Lansbury. Mccormack or Rhodes. Doesnt matter. I really cant fathom a solution to it though which is frustrating, but then its not my job/responsibilty to do so.

Its the club thats the problem. It cant be the personnel; there's been too many changes of team, tactics, manager, players etc that it must must run far deeper than that. Ive just read someone say sack Bruce because he's got a sh*t away record. They've ALL had sh*t away records!