Optimism Gauge August Optimism Gauge

[itdoesntmatterwhatthissay]

I can't believe Albrighton is still getting stick on here. The only player we had last season who actually went past players and created some genuine assists from width. I'd be a lot more optimistic with him in this squad than the likes of Tonev.

It's always been the way, well for the last 3 years. Bad times under McLeish and with injuries he never really recovered...I thought he did well at the end of the season and with Bertrand was an influencing factor in staying up.

 

He's not shown anything to place him as a potential star but he puts the balls in dangerous positions, he crosses early and defending lines back up when he runs at them....strong attributes in a team scenario. He probably wanted too much to stay but when your talking about chance creation I am pretty sure Albrighton is better than both Gabby and Weimann who are both strikers.

[dakid007]

It will a typical villa season more lows than highs, unexpected wins against big clubs and nit being able capitalise on other teams messing up. Utv

[VillanousOne]

There is a good article about us/ season prediction in the Guardian

Basically it states so many negatives and complete unknowns but seems to suggest that the likely hood of Lambert being able to guide us into the light is pretty small.

He's talked about making more signings but so far it's just us loaning out players and no real links.

[Straggler]

17-20th for me.  I just have a feeling that Vlaar will go (simply because if I was him I would go to almost any half decent team).  I have seen nothing to suggest that our major faults of poor pass accuracy and awful ball retention stats have been addressed.  There is also a stink around the club with us being up for sale with no apparent takers.  It has to be demoralizing for all involved and I can see that contributing significantly to taking the little fight that there is in this team and extinguishing it. 

[osmark86]

although things are far from ideal by any stretch of meaning tied to that word, I doubt we'll get the knock this year. I do believe as long as we retain Vlaar in the team we have the ability to stay up, but I do not think we'll be able to hope for a top 10 finish. even with all the injuries last year we managed to stay afloat and I don't see that happening for the course of two consecutive seasons. only time will tell, but I'm not about to spell doom and gloom just yet.

[R.I.C.O.]

My optimism has been low since the middle of June, when it became clear that no-one was going to be taking us over. If they were, it would have happened by the time they went to the USA.

 

I've never felt so disheartened about a forthcoming football season. Everything with the club is a total shambles at the moment, we have begged our cast-offs to please come back and perform, appointed a nutjob as assistant manager, retained our poor, out-of-depth manager and signed three players who wouldn't look out of place in a team in the league below.

 

I'm actually going to be watching Halesowen Town next season instead and looking forward to their local matches full of heart and guts because I'm fed up of the fact that PL football is all about balance sheets, "super sunday", diving, keeping TV audiences happy by moving games around and stupid sponsorship deals (£50m to become Man Utd's Chinese biscuit partner etc). Everything is just so......sterile.

 

It wouldnt surprise me if only Man City, Chelsea and Man Utd swapped the title between themselves for the next 100 years. Where is the enjoyment in that?

 

I just don't enjoy football any more, and so I'm going down to non-league to get the excitement back again. I'll watch from afar at the slow-motion car crash that will be Aston Villa next season, wondering how much worse it can get.

 

Optimism: 1/10

Edited August 4, 2014 by R.I.C.O.

[vandaq]

I do wonder what the point is anymore. Sort of wanna drop it all together but I know that won't happen. But I am not excited for this season at all, just feel negative about the whole thing.

[Gillz]

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/aug/04/premier-league-preview-aston-villa

 

article on the guardian which excellently summaries our current situation. depressing reading admittedly but still a few optimistic notes. 

 

On the face of it, another survival scrap beckons unless everything spectacularly comes off for Paul Lambert at Villa Park

Share 141

 

Last season’s position: 15th

 

Odds to win the league (via Oddschecker): 4,000-1

 

Where to start? The owner wants out but has been unable to find a buyer, the manager has presided over two abysmal seasons and is on borrowed time with a section of the supporters, the only additions to the playing squad so far are free transfers, and the chief financial officer is running the club on a day-to-day basis after the chief executive made an unexpected exit. It is little wonder that words such as turmoil, crisis and rudderless get banded about at Villa Park.

 

On the pitch, Aston Villa have flirted with relegation in each of the last four seasons. A league table for the (13) clubs that have featured in all of those Premier League campaigns – based on the total number of points accumulated over that period – shows Villa bottom of the pile. In the last three years Villa have finished 16th, 15th and 15th, averaging a point per game in two of those seasons. It has been a miserable cycle of underachievement.

 

For now, Randy Lerner remains the owner of a club that has racked up cumulative losses of £217.7m since he took over in 2006 (last season’s figures are not yet available), brought him precious little in the way of success and stretched his patience to breaking point. “The last several seasons have been week-in, week-out battles,” Lerner said in a statement the day after last season ended, when he confirmed Villa had been put up for sale.

 

At the time, some of those close to Lerner questioned the merits of making his intentions public, even if it had become the worst kept secret in football and the constant speculation – not to mention criticism – was making life uncomfortable for the American.

 

Aston Villa owner Randy Lerner.

Aston Villa owner Randy Lerner. Photograph: Nick Potts/PA Archive/PA Photos

Eight weeks later Lerner released another statement, saying that he was turning his “full attention back to Villa matters at hand”, having committed to Lambert at the outset that he would “become completely focused on the upcoming season should there be no agreement to sell by the time players and coaches return to training”.

 

In short, everything remains up in the air, with the rumour mill offering tantalising glimpses of a brighter future without anything close to confirmation. In the meantime Lambert is flying blind, entering the final 12 months of his three-year contract with no knowledge of how long Lerner will be around. According to the bookmakers, the Scot will start the season among the favourites to be the first Premier League manager sacked.

 

If that feels harsh in the context of what is taking place at the club now, the truth is that Lambert has endured a dreadful two years. He has the worst Premier League record of any Villa manager and that is before we get to the humiliating defeats against lower-league opponents in cup competitions. Financial restrictions have been in place but it is often overlooked that Lambert has spent close to £40m.

 

The former Norwich manager believed that he could revive Villa through bringing in young and hungry players from the lower leagues and overseas, rather than recruiting, or utilising, Premier League experience. At the outset Lambert made it clear that it was his choice, not Lerner’s, to go down that path – “The football decisions are mine, I’ll take responsibility for that” – and expressed his conviction that it would work. “I have a great belief that the young lads can do it. I have no trepidation that they can’t do it.”

 

Come the end of last season, Lambert was singing to a different tune. He recognised that Villa needed experience, which (along with Lerner severely tightening the purse strings) has influenced a change in approach in the transfer market this summer. Villa have brought in Joe Cole (aged 32), Philippe Senderos (29) and Kieran Richardson (29) on free transfers. They are not the most inspiring signings but, realistically, were never going to be given Lerner’s position. The balancing act for Lerner is that, while he wants to limit spending quite understandably, he also needs to make sure that Lambert has enough quality at his disposal to keep Villa out of the mire, or what has become a hard sell will turn into an impossible sell.

 

Kieran Richardson

Kieran Richardson poses at Aston Villa’s Bodymoor Heath training ground after his transfer from Fulham. Photograph: Neville Williams/Aston Villa via Getty Images

Of the new recruits, Richardson offers versatility, and assuming he is deployed at left-back or left-wing back, should be an improvement on what has gone before in a problematic position for Lambert – it is bizarre to think the Villa manager has signed a left-back in each of his three seasons and also brought in another, Ryan Bertrand, on loan during that time. Cole, with his craft and guile, is just the sort of player Villa need if – and it is a big if – he stays fit and demonstrates that he is still capable of influencing matches in the twilight of his career. In his second spell with West Ham United, Cole started brightly and showed flashes of real promise but injury curtailed his contribution and he became a bit-part player, completing only one Premier League match last season.

 

As for Senderos, the much-maligned Switzerland international is, to put it kindly, a strange addition to a defence that has conceded 130 league goals in the last two seasons. To put it unkindly, Senderos’s arrival is a symbol of just how far Villa have fallen. Perhaps we should reserve judgment until he has had a run of games.

 

Lambert, who is targeting another couple of players including a defensive midfielder (Ki Sung-yueng remains on the radar) and possibly a wide man, has made arguably his most significant signing in the dugout. Roy Keane, Martin O’Neill’s No2 with the Republic of Ireland, has replaced the sacked Ian Culverhouse as Lambert’s assistant at Villa. It is an intriguing appointment and it will be fascinating to see what impact Keane has.

 

 

Roy Keane: I think I can bring something to the party

Keane will take the majority of the training and the word is that he has already impressed a number of the players, including Bent, the club-record signing who is back in the picture after being jettisoned from the first-team squad last summer. Alan Hutton, who has never played under Lambert, is another to have been brought in out the cold – further evidence of a significant shift in approach, which Lerner is understood to have supported.

 

With Charles N’Zogbia fit and seemingly wanted again after a year on the sidelines with a ruptured achilles, and Jores Okore back in action after recovering from a ruptured cruciate ligament, the Villa side at the start of the season could have a very different feel to the one that limped over the line in May. Libor Kozak, the Czech Republic international who broke his leg in January, is another due to return in the near future.

 

While all of that news is positive, it is imperative that Lambert holds on to a couple of key players, starting with Ron Vlaar. The Dutchman was one of the outstanding defenders at the World Cup and there are no shortage of suitors for a player who is in the last year of his contract. Vlaar, by his own admission, endured a difficult first 12 months at Villa but he was much improved last season and held Villa’s brittle defence together at times.

 

Ron Vlaar

Ron Vlaar in action for Holland. Photograph: Jamie Mcdonald/Getty Images

Then there is Christian Benteke, whose hopes of starring at the World Cup were shattered when he ruptured an achilles tendon in April. Benteke is making decent progress with his rehabilitation and could well be fit in September. The Belgian’s second season at Villa may not have lived up to the first but he still plundered 10 Premier League goals in 24 starts, despite going 11 games without scoring at one stage. Villa are desperate to keep the striker but it would not be a surprise if their resolve is tested before the window closes.

 

All in all, Lambert faces one hell of a challenge to pull everything together, whether that be getting the best from his free transfers, motivating players he had previously discarded, convincing the club’s stellar talents to stay on for another season, extracting every ounce from those whose contracts are running down (Fabian Delph, an industrious midfielder Villa can ill afford to lose, and Gabriel Agbonlahor are both in their final 12 months, along with Vlaar), or coaxing a little extra from some that lost their way last season, such as Andreas Weimann.

 

As for the rest, are Nathan Baker and Ciaran Clark good enough? Is Ashley Westwood able to take his game to the next level? Can Gary Gardner put all his injury problems behind him and make an impression? Is this the season that young Jack Grealish breaks through? And, with or without good cause, will the man sat behind me in the press box ever stop berating Karim El Ahmadi?

 

Whether there will be any improvement in the style of football, through a change in personnel, tactics or Keane’s influence on the training ground, remains to be seen. Possession might be overrated in football’s new age but it still feels unacceptable that only West Ham and Crystal Palace made fewer passes than Villa last season, and 39 goals from 38 matches hardly qualifies as entertainment.

 

Aston Villa players during the 3-1 pre-season defeat to Chesterfield.

Aston Villa players during the 3-1 pre-season defeat to Chesterfield. Photograph: Craig Brough/Action Images

The proof will be in the pudding when the new season gets under way at Stoke, before home games against Newcastle United and Hull City. Then the computer software that devises the Premier League fixtures decided to have some fun with Villa. The next five matches read: Liverpool (a), Arsenal (h), Chelsea (a), Manchester City (h), Everton (a). A trip to Loftus Road offers some respite of sorts before Tottenham Hotspur visit Villa Park. All of which means that Villa play last season’s top six, and all but two of the teams that finished in the top half, in their first 10 matches.

 

Villa, in fairness, won at Arsenal on the opening day last season, beat Manchester City and Chelsea at home and drew at Anfield, so we should be careful about condemning them to a bad start before a ball has been kicked. It is hard, however, to be optimistic about the campaign ahead when the club is in such a state of limbo. On the face of it, another survival scrap beckons unless everything spectacularly comes off for Lambert.

 

The club’s loyal supporters – it is remarkable to think that the average attendance has remained above 35,000 during the last two seasons, when Villa have lost a record number of league games at home (19 in total) and served up some dire football – deserve so much more. Their football club needs re-energising but that will only happen with a change of ownership.

 

 

[McGrath1874]

The last few seasons have been so painful. I'm not sure I've got the strength to cope with another season like last. Such a depressing state of affairs.

[momo]

I think we will finish somewhere between 17 and 20. But I feel optimistic about this season. I have a sneaky feeling we will be better than last season with the players coming back from injury.

[GENTLEMAN]

I think we will finish somewhere between 17 and 20. But I feel optimistic about this season. I have a sneaky feeling we will be better than last season with the players coming back from injury.

I kind of get this optimistic feeling too. I think we can do what Everton did a few years back when people were expected them to get relegated but they finished fourth instead. However, I do not think we will qualify for the Champions League but much higher (top 8-10) than people are expecting. UTV.

Edited August 4, 2014 by GENTLEMAN

[Ikantcpell]

Ive been a villa fan for 25 years and i have never felt so negative about an up coming season as now...i think there is a huge chance of us being relegated..

[Ikantcpell]

Delph and Benteke are the only two players good enough..the rest should not be playing for a club like AVFC

[GENTLEMAN]

Ive been a villa fan for 25 years and i have never felt so negative about an up coming season as now...i think there is a huge chance of us being relegated..

A victory against Stoke and a few new signings will change the mood considerably. Keep the faith.

[Nabby]

 

Ive been a villa fan for 25 years and i have never felt so negative about an up coming season as now...i think there is a huge chance of us being relegated..

A victory against Stoke and a few new signings will change the mood considerably. Keep the faith.

 

 

Stoke who beat us 4-1 last time ...

 

New players ..I'll believe it when I see it 

[Rob182]

That Guardian article is a good read, and one that probably echoes a lot of our concerns.

I think we'll do better this year than last.

This isn't a bad team, and is actually one I would look forward to watching.

- - - - - - Bent - - - - Gabby - - - - - -

- - - - - - - Cole / N'Zogbia - - - - - -

Richardson - Delph - - - KEA - - - Bacuna

- - - - Clark - - Vlaar - - Okore - - - -

- - - - - - - - - Guzan - - - - - - - - -

Our problem is that after the first team and a few select others (Benteke, Kozak and hopefully Grealish) we don't have a lot of quality, which is why we've been very average in friendlies.

[McGrath1874]

I think we will finish somewhere between 17 and 20. But I feel optimistic about this season. I have a sneaky feeling we will be better than last season with the players coming back from injury.

We have a starting 11 which could get some points. If we have any injuries to key players, then we are screwed.

[The Fun Factory]

15th and 8 home defeats. Possible transfer of club in about 10 months time.  2 defeats to Manchester United, And thats about it,

[Giro]

130 goals in two seasons........ Wow

[villa89]

I think we'll be relegated because of 1. Poor manager Tactics/defensive organisation 2. Poor signings 3. General terrible vibe that surrounds the club now.