VillaAndLoyal

After Stoke, I said the next two games would determine where I stand with Lambert but unfortunately my patience cannot be stretched any further after that utter diatribe served up in front of a magnificent home support today. He is absolutely clueless and this club is in free-fall. But do you know what, this stems back to last season when one person and one person alone kept us in the Premier League: Christian Benteke. He contributed to a ridiculous number of goals, be it directly or with assists and it was only a matter of time that our one and only threat was targeted by other teams or had a period off form. Unfortunately for Villa this season, both has happened and this 'team' of dross is what we are left with.

Let's get one thing straight, and I can't believe no-one has mentioned it yet, but Lambert now officially has a WORSE goals and points per game average when playing at home than under Alex McLeish, a manager that many can't even bare think about. Paul Lambert I'm afraid has been given an incredibly easy ride up until now BECAUSE he succeeded AMC and for that reason only. The fans wanted OGS if I recall correctly, but when Lambert came in he was backed by everybody, as would any manager have been after the McLeish debacle. But he is now performing on a par and the football is just as bad as under a manager which many labelled our worst ever, so what does that make Lambert? Yes, he has had a small budget but I'm sorry that excuse just doesn't cut it anymore when you buy two players (Kozak/Helenius) for the same position and neglect to buy anyone for positions which really need attention (attacking midfield). Surely, if your budget is tight, you buy even more carefully? But Lambert has bought trash in terms of personnel and in terms of where that money has been targeted which are two major flaws of the "he's had no money" argument. Other people have said it but that team is just not Premier League standard, the only surprise is that we've already accumulated 19 points but without Benteke, who do we have to save our bacon this season?

Frankly, and this may sound defeatist, but we've been very lucky for a long time now. We should have been relegated long before now and 2013/14 is looking like our luck might finally run out as I can't think of three teams worse than us at present. This club is rotten from the very top down to the very bottom. Randolph Lerner was a mistake from the very day he walked into this club, knowing absolutely nothing about football and appointing non-footballing people to make the catastrophic short-term decisions which have resulted in the collective mess we see before us. However, I've argued that point for years and, alas, Lerner doesn't care what I or any of us think. We are his business.

In terms of manager though, i think he has to go and with immediate effect. When you have head coaches and players swearing at fans for daring to give an opinion, I think it just highlights what a shambles we have become under Lambert. We play no better football than under McLeish, are no further forward 18 months down the line, he seems completely unwilling to accept that anything is going wrong, nor able to inspire/motivate and try and change things to put things right. He is out of his depth, particularly, with the scale of the challenge presented to him at Villa and, for me, the statistics speak for themselves. His position is untenable. As I said in the Stoke thread, he comes out with lots of buzzwords, inspirational visions and bleats on about his "project" when the only thing he has achieved is to turn a really bad team, worse. The majority of our players can't do the basics such as pass and move or trap a football and I'm sorry, that is just completely unacceptable and is a legacy Lambert must live with. What on earth do they do in training? I can accept limitations and I don't think many Villa fans have 'unrealistic expectations' nowadays - I just want a half-decent team which can do the basics well and occasionally excite me, this team is way out on both counts and things appear to be getting worse, rather than this so-called 'improvement' Lambert bored us with for the first period of this season. Funny that Paul, I thought statistics meant very little to you?

Lambert out. Lerner and Faulkner, as I've been pleading for years, out.

After Stoke, I said the next two games would determine where I stand with Lambert but unfortunately my patience cannot be stretched any further after that utter diatribe served up in front of a magnificent home support today. He is absolutely clueless and this club is in free-fall. But do you know what, this stems back to last season when one person and one person alone kept us in the Premier League: Christian Benteke. He contributed to a ridiculous number of goals, be it directly or with assists and it was only a matter of time that our one and only threat was targeted by other teams or had a period off form. Unfortunately for Villa this season, both has happened and this 'team' of dross is what we are left with.

Let's get one thing straight, and I can't believe no-one has mentioned it yet, but Lambert now officially has a WORSE goals and points per game average when playing at home than under Alex McLeish, a manager that many can't even bare think about. Paul Lambert I'm afraid has been given an incredibly easy ride up until now BECAUSE he succeeded AMC and for that reason only. The fans wanted OGS if I recall correctly, but when Lambert came in he was backed by everybody, as would any manager have been after the McLeish debacle. But he is now performing on a par and the football is just as bad as under a manager which many labelled our worst ever, so what does that make Lambert? Yes, he has had a small budget but I'm sorry that excuse just doesn't cut it anymore when you buy two players (Kozak/Helenius) for the same position and neglect to buy anyone for positions which really need attention (attacking midfield). Surely, if your budget is tight, you buy even more carefully? But Lambert has bought trash in terms of personnel and in terms of where that money has been targeted which are two major flaws of the "he's had no money" argument. Other people have said it but that team is just not Premier League standard, the only surprise is that we've already accumulated 19 points but without Benteke, who do we have to save our bacon this season?

Frankly, and this may sound defeatist, but we've been very lucky for a long time now. We should have been relegated long before now and 2013/14 is looking like our luck might finally run out as I can't think of three teams worse than us at present. This club is rotten from the very top down to the very bottom. Randolph Lerner was a mistake from the very day he walked into this club, knowing absolutely nothing about football and appointing non-footballing people to make the catastrophic short-term decisions which have resulted in the collective mess we see before us. However, I've argued that point for years and, alas, Lerner doesn't care what I or any of us think. We are his business.

In terms of manager though, i think he has to go and with immediate effect. When you have head coaches and players swearing at fans for daring to give an opinion, I think it just highlights what a shambles we have become under Lambert. We play no better football than under McLeish, are no further forward 18 months down the line, he seems completely unwilling to accept that anything is going wrong, nor able to inspire/motivate and try and change things to put things right. He is out of his depth, particularly, with the scale of the challenge presented to him at Villa and, for me, the statistics speak for themselves. His position is untenable. As I said in the Stoke thread, he comes out with lots of buzzwords, inspirational visions and bleats on about his "project" when the only thing he has achieved is to turn a really bad team, worse. The majority of our players can't do the basics such as pass and move or trap a football and I'm sorry, that is just completely unacceptable and is a legacy Lambert must live with. What on earth do they do in training? I can accept limitations and I don't think many Villa fans have 'unrealistic expectations' nowadays - I just want a half-decent team which can do the basics well and occasionally excite me, this team is way out on both counts and things appear to be getting worse, rather than this so-called 'improvement' Lambert bored us with for the first period of this season. Funny that Paul, I thought statistics meant very little to you?

Lambert out. Lerner and Faulkner, as I've been pleading for years, out.

Mantis, can you ever contribute to a thread without getting engaged in an argument or taking offence at something?

Genuine question as every time I see your name on here you seem to be in some sort of conflict with someone. It's rather tiresome.

In answer to the thread: I genuinely don't know. I'd like to think not, but then Lambert's records just keep getting worse by the week. Does anybody know what his win percentage is? If we lose the next 2/3, this question may become irrelevant anyway.

I haven't posted on here for a while and I must say the amount of childish posts on this thread is staggering. People only interested in point scoring, belittling other posters, deliberately winding up others, carrying on 'grudges' that date back years, insults, people getting far too defensive - a lot of you need to grow up and realise that everyone has different opinions when it comes to football.

Right, back on topic. I've really tried to back Lambert since he came to the club and I realise there are bigger problems than him (Randy Lerner, to name but one). I also despise this managerial merry-go-round we have nowadays. Stability builds success, I fully agree with that sentiment. However, I'm very close to losing my patience with Paul Lambert now. He goes on about his "project" and how it is still early days but I'm sorry, I just don't see what he is trying to build and because of that I don't buy the excuse about timescales. Newcastle bought loads of new players last season and, at first, they struggled to settle. But this season Pardew now knows what his best team is and is playing a regular, consistent system and it is working for them. What is Lambert's aim with this "project"? I thought, initially, it was about bringing talented youngsters through who fought for the shirt and wanted to play football in the way it should be played. What I actually see at present, this far down the line, is a team littered with inexperienced players not up to the standard of the Premier League, not putting in 100% effort and not able to do the very basics in football such as passing and moving. We just simply have no style, no shape, and seemingly no strategy under Lambert and as many have said we appear to have gone backwards from the end of last season. I would bemoan the fact that we haven't got a Plan B if it weren't for the fact that I don't think we even have a Plan A.

Yes, the restructuring of the club and the small finances now available to Lambert have undoubtedly hindered him. But, that said, I still think his transfer market dealings have been both hugely disappointing and, in many ways, perplexing. Why buy Helenius and Kozak, two players of the exact nature, when we desperately needed a creative midfielder and further cover in defence? Why buy players like Bowery when blooding someone like Jack Grealish would seem the far more logical step? When he discovered Benteke it gave many of us hope that he had the eye for a good, bargain signing but players like Bowery, Luna, KEA, Westwood, Tonez, Helenius etc now maybe suggest the Benteke capture was a fluke. The players I've just mentioned are simply not good enough for a solid, mid-table Premier League side and some would struggle to cut it in the Championship.

Paul Lambert has already proven himself to be very stubborn, emphasised none more so than with his numerous falling outs with high profile players at the Villa. And I think it is this stubbornness which winds the Villa fans up with his boring, lifeless, nondescript post and pre-match interviews. He uses buzzwords and meaningless rhetoric which leaves fans such as me wondering whether he can really see the weaknesses in this team, or whether he just cannot see past this stubborn facade which has unnerving similarities to that of Martin O'Neill. Nobody wants him to publicly critisise the players a la Di Canio, yet plenty of managers manage to be full and frank in their assessment of performances and consistently telling us we were "excellent" when we clearly weren't is just fueling the fire I'm afraid. On the one hand, I thought one of the 'key criteria' of the PL project was to have the fans considerations at its heart and to create a good rapport between manager, fans and players, rather like his Borussia Dortmund side. And yet, by never holding his hands up and saying "we weren't at the races today. I'm not a happy man etc" he just loses any rapport with me and many others as I just find him unwilling to accept where we have gone wrong.

I think we've had more than our fair share of luck this season and (with the recent injuries) that luck is beginning to wear out. Today at Stoke, they were pretty bad but we were just worse and that is quite worrying. Generally, far too many players are either out-of-form or not up to standard at the minute and I'm struggling to take any positives from the Lambert regime, much as I'd like to. After the McLeish debacle, everybody was delighted to welcome Paul to the club and I think that naturally bought him some extra time and patience from the fans. But I have to admit to being pretty damn disappointed with where we are as a team now, some of the signings he has made, and some of the decisions he has made both on and off the pitch. From where I watch the games, we are not any further forward than we were under AMC and the football is almost as uninspiring.

The next three games over Christmas and New Year are massive for us and will probably go along way to me personally deciding where I stand with him. I think many fans share these similar views: I want to like him, and do still back him and the team, but when you look at the facts and the apathy around the club, it tells a different story...

I'm sure many will disagree with this assessment and that is completely fair enough, but it's where I stand at the moment.

Amazing some of the early comments on this thread calling it a "lame" end to the season, "shameful" and one person even glad they sold their ticket... err why? More fool you is all I can say!

Was a cracking last day of the season, the Villa fans were electric from start to finish! Petrov and Lambert coming on the pitch at the end was so emotional and - although the lads had made this a meaningless game well before today - they still got us a couple of goals to see the season out on a high! Fantastic atmosphere around the club at present, despite what Villa Talk would have you believe sometimes! And some of the fancy dress outfits were, well, brave! Credit to my one mate who went dressed as a Peperami!! 

"I don't care about Wigan! They don't care about me! All I care about: is AVFC!!!!!!"