suttonpaul

Your last point Oz is very insightful

Samjp26 If it were up to me I would try and get Nani and Young to support Benteke and bin Helenus, Bowrey and Weimann

That's 11 outfield players mate

You cant play two in the middle anymore unless you have a 4-2-3-1 The reason for this is every team packs the midfield now its been going on for the last 3/4 years now I hate it but you cant change it.

I want to put some things into context after reading the last 10 pages on here. First thing is first 3 years ago at the end of the MON reign we had a squad with some players with big values namely Milner, Downing and Young, the rest of them were average players on MASSIVE wages. We also played a 4-4-2 system. During this MON era we also tried to get into the champions league this didn't happen for three reasons..... 1. The Man City take over changed the rules so to speak 2. There were many takeovers at other clubs and those clubs started to spend a lot of money too 3. We didn't spend all of our money wisely on transfers and gave big contracts to those players. I think we can say all of the above is true nice and simple. Who is at fault for those things then? Well the first two no one really, you could argue Ellis could have sold to Randy a year earlier when he came in to buy the club and that may have made the difference but that is conjecture. Point three is definitely the Faulkner and Randy's fault. Faulkner decides on the fees and contracts and Randy is at fault for employing Faulkner to do so and also not employing other people at board level with more experience in football. We had the 6th highest wages and finished 6th each year so it wasn't a complete failure in that sense but everyone knows a club being run responsibly that has that kind of wage bill cant operate outside the top 4 unless they have very large merchandising revenue ala Liverpool for example. So that ended we employed monsieur Houllier kept the 4-4-2 system spent another 30 million badly he had heart problems got paid off wasting more money.... Now Makoun and Hutton are obvious wastes of money but the reason Bent is wasted money and the reason I have mentioned 4-4-2 twice is because the league as a whole has changed to a system where there is 3 central midfielders and teams play 3-5-2 or 3-4-3 or 4-3-3 unless you play 3-5-2 those systems do not support Darren Bent. In comes Alex McLeish now why Randy chose him I will never know.... I understand the reasoning for Houllier but McLeish is just weird. Never the less AM comes in switches more to a formation that we use now and is instructed to sell off players with high wages to get the club back to sustainability knowing we aren't aiming for the Champions League now. Anyone could have done a better job than McLeish it was just awful and he was sent packing with a payoff after one season. So now we get to Lambert the logic of getting a manager who can work with smaller budgets, who has built a team from scratch, who is grateful for the job is obvious. Lambert is given the objective of continuing McLeish's work of getting rid of players on high wages but buying players on the cheap who are young, have the potential to improve, have much lower wage demands and to keep us in the Premier League until this work is completed which it is largely is now with only Given, Hutton, Bent, N'Zogbia and Ireland left and the latter is out of contract in the summer but your still looking at the best part of 300k a week in wages there it isn't small change. Now where is the conjecture...... On the basis of Lamberts remit he is certainly carrying it out and doing it well however... 1. What happens once those 5 players have gone with regard to spending from the board? (are we still over spending on wages or will that best part of 300k a week/15m a year go to new players) 2. Now the squad is fairly filled out (we all know why he had to buy 16 players) will Lambert stop spreading his budget around and spend it on only 2 or three players to increase the quality of the squad? (The Spurs Model) 3. What is AVFC's long term aims (next 3 to 5 years) if Randy is to stick around? (A statement of intent would be nice) 4. Is Randy looking to sell the club and simply making us a more attractive opportunity for a fellow billionaire to buy? (Simply no one knows) I believe the above is the REAL questions that fans should be looking at not petty small results, three relate to Lerner and one to Paul Lambert. Lets just put it in context guys.

Its not our day guys the first goal would have usually come to nothing 19 times out 20 the pen was simply not a pen.

will you guys just shut up about petty crap who cares if he changed his opinion on something from a year ago? He admitted he now thinks he was wrong, gave his reasons which are valid that's the end of it. Talk about football.... In regards to this Ulver guy when fans disagree on stuff its usually not the completely diametric opposite views I have to say its taken me 3 visits over the last day or so to this thread to make it through the last I don't know 6 or 8 pages because I simply haven't been able to stomach another Villa supporters views like his. I don't want to argue about it in detail others will do it for me with the exact same points as I would. That's all I wanted to say

Few things, Young was never lazy he always tracked back, his diving is no worse that when he was here and as for his wages of course we wouldn't be paying his full wages like someone pointed out do you think Everton are paying Barry over 100k? What young will do for us is give better service to Benteke, cause more problems to defences than Weiman and he is more creative than Gabby & Weimann. No brainer.

The Mirror reports today that Utd want to sell or failing that loan out Ashley Young we would be fools not to go in for him at least on loan IMO. He would be perfect as a wide striker for us.

I completely agree with you build a bigger stadium charge 20 quid and fill it.

Yea the game isn't must win at all it isn't like we are on course to go down however its the kind of game we need to be winning if we are going to finish in the top 10

I remain confused at the perceived lack of spending. The reality of it is PL has changed nearly the whole squad out for something like 30 to 40m, of which the majority are going to be worth the same or more if sold today that is a massive improvement on when he took over, there is a little way to go in midfield and getting rid of Given/Hutton and probably N'Zogbia but I think the next budget we shall start to see larger priced players coming in as he wont need to pad the squad out so much. If not the next budget then certainly the 2015 budget. Patience will pay off to put us back on the right track we are doing better than last year and have played 6 of the top 7 clubs. Smile.

Yes!

He isn't at a CL club now so what's the difference. His reasons for moving are to get game time which puts him in contention for the world cup, add to that he'd be playing with benteke gives us a good a chance as any. The stumbling block of course is fee and wages, now we have shifted the majority of dead wood and could potentially move on Hutton or given, we could go for him. Plus if we are to believe that the books are beginning to look good and we are slowly heading out of the financial constraints it would be a signing of intent from us. I must admit though there are a few big its in there. His likely wages would be way above what we seem to be willing to pay and as for the CL comments Spurs are a CL club. Being a CL club doesn't mean you are playing this year or maybe even last year to me. To me (and I suspect players) mean that they have a very good chance of qualifying each year if Utd missed out on CL this year we wouldn't say they aren't a CL club. We have no chance of buying a player like him.

People wishing for the supposedly 15m rated Dembele are dreaming he is a player that will surely go to a CL club. As much as I would love him to come to us I don't see what our draw to him would be other than a massive wage packet we wont pay him. As for signing cheap players I think we may have one more season of that even though I personally think we should be done with that this season and start to add just a few players per year with the funds provided which seems to be about 20m a season.

I agree with you-I put it down to ignorance & stupidity. Footballers know when they are not doing as well as they can, sometimes if it's just 2 or maybe 3, the team can carry them but when it's more, it becomes difficult. The booing adds to the pressure, especially to younger players like our lads. We know it could be better sometimes, and they know it as well. If the crowd could just accept what is happening & what is tryng to be achieved, it would take a lot of pressure away from the players. I thought we did this last season although it seems expectations have raised this time around & patience seems to be lacking. Maybe the crowd would prefer Ian Holloway for example? His games are often open & high scoring-He just doesn't win many of them. W look like we're becoming a bit more solid & a bit harder to score against. urley when we get this part right, people can work out that other areas of our play will be addressed? We're Aston Villa, not Man United or Arsenal-People placing these ridiculous expectations on young players need to wake up & smell the coffee-Or at least try to understand what it takes to maintain a top 6 position in the Premiership. What are these 'ridiculous expectations on young players' you speak of? I've seen no-one on here with anything more than just reasonable expectations to see a repeat of the style of football from the very same players produced at the tail end of last season. However what i do feel is more than unreasonable is to refer to our fans as ignorant and stupid when they have made their displeasure heard in the only way possible at probably the worst first half performance by the team this season and that criticism, as another poster has suggested, could have actually spurred the team on to perform much better in the second half. The standard of football produced is no worse than any other team from around 9th downwards. People want us to win & win in style. Man U are struggling to do that, as are Spurs-It's not just a case of telling 11 players to go out & win but win by entertaining you know. Many of our fans are ignorant, games against the likes of Cardiff are rarely going to be pretty & sometimes results need to be ground out which is what happened yesterday. I think there might be one or two fans from Newcastle, West Brom and Swansea who would disagree with that. No-one is expecting us to play to the same standard of Man U or Spurs either even when they have an off day and you seem to have the attitude that our fans are ignorant of what the project is here just because they booed despite how the fans backed both Lambert and the team at Villa park last season through a start which broke all the wrong records and if you remember Lambert commented on that at the time. So those boos you have commented on were not born out of ignorance but rather frustration at a first half performance which was well below what our team could provide and they proved that with their performance in the second half. If the people booing don't expect us to be at the standard you just said why are they booing after 11 games in 10th doing much better than this time last year after playing 6 of the 7 biggest clubs in the league?

Well that's not true. The tv money has gone up and our wage bill continues to decrease. All historical data for every premier league club shows that whenever new tv deals come in over the next year or so the wages of players at that club also rises in line with it.... As for our club players with big wages are leaving that is true however for a club making losses and spending money in the summer with some rises in pay for quite a few players over the summer I am willing to bet that the finances of the club are just about right at the moment. No, just the worst period of football I've experienced as a fan. Luckily for Lerner there are fans like yourself that don't mind it. Then you cant have been a fan that long it was much worse in the last years of Ellis reign. Do you really think the issue most of us have is that we aren't winning things or have the best players in the league? No one is demanding or expecting us to be like Chelsea or City. Yes I think fans are unhappy that we aren't challenging for anything. Which Lerner can be partly blamed for. Just curious how you felt when Doug was in charge regarding this? Completely disagree the only way for this club to make significantly more revenue is to be in the champions league. No they shouldn't, however when their mistakes have effected the club then I think their main concern shouldn't be ensuring they're ok when it comes to selling the club. Again I wonder how you felt regarding this when Doug was in charge. Surely this should also make you want Lerner to sell because if it's not his own money, what is he bringing to the table as an owner? Don't you see that your first sentence is one and the same he is just making the club run on an even keel. Doug was wasting opportunity's when a lot less money would make a big difference to the club Randy probably wouldn't have failed if he brought the club 18 months earlier when he wanted to. Again, what was your reaction like regarding this for the years and years fans wanted Doug to sell? And you don't want someone to bankroll us so surely in your opinion it's easier for Lerner to sell the club. Doug and Randy are completely different character. I would love someone to bankroll us as long as the liability's the club would enter belong to the chairman and not the club like at Man City. I've asked it lots already but what were your expectations when Doug was in charge? And if a self sufficient mid table team is all we aspire to be what was all the fuss about with the last owner? And i know you produce your table but we aren't a consistent mid table finishing team yet. When doug was in charge a self sufficient team when he sold up then the top four however when many other clubs were then brought within a year that kind of went down the toilet all the short answers are above I really cant be arsed to write an essay response. Unfortunately for Villa to be self sustainable it wil be likely that we will be forever run as a midtable club in the premiership, as our attendances and club profile dictates this. A unvirtious circle I suppose. But I would take midtable this year big time. Yep best you can hope for is an Everton situation and wait for a white knight buyer.

Answered them several times before.

Do you mean the financial situation over the last 12 months which has seen Lerner sell the browns for $1 billion and the money given to premiership teams through a tv deal rocket up? This financial situation that we are making losses with an owner who no longer wants to bankroll a business that doesn't breakeven. Even you must realise with each new TV deal most of the money goes on new deals for wages the way you go on you would think the club makes money and randy uses the profits to fund third world wars lol. The difference between you and I is I am not happy that we don't win things and have some of the best players in the league but I realise three key points, 1 we don't make the cash for those ambitions to be realised, 2 an owner shouldn't have to bankroll a club unless he wants to ala Chelsea or City and 3 If someone wanted to buy us who did want to bankroll us we would have been sold. Therefore you adjust your expectations to fit reality and that is mid table finishes and before you say but we aren't even finishing there, that is what my post with the table on there was to show. I also answered your other comment with the answer above I am sure however you will still argue the case that I am completely wrong lol

Nice post, you must also accept that Birmingham, Portsmouth and Wigan have gone down the toilet whist doing what you said and Swansea are the only exception at the moment. As for Phil Dowd best not speak his name around me after that Utd game.

Yea and that is fair enough but at the same time you must accept that isn't going to happen under this owner in this financial situation.

There isn't really much of a solution to this moaning though, is there? In the current economic circumstances, nobody wants to actually buy a half-decent football club, so we're stuck. If Kenwright can't sell Everton, then you'd better get used to the disappointment. Bingo!

This barely makes sense. And that is a generous interpretation,. The fact you cant tell what is being said in that post and the other one it was linked to makes me feel sorry for you not only that you couldn't understand it but you also took the time to say so in such a sanctimonious way.

17 points will do nicely.

I don't necessarily agree that position has always been based on income though as Everton have proven with a good manager who generally purchased good players creating the right balance within his team. Fair point Everton have been the exception to the rule I have been speaking about and it is clear why this is. Firstly they take a little more than us in revenue but so what its only a couple of million the real difference has been the same manager for 10 years buying players in to fit his side. This manager was anointed the successor to the most successful manager in British history for a reason but it certainly helps if you have one guy in charge for that length of time.