Tom Fox

[Eames]

9 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

 

Lerner must be removed from this club by any means necessary. 

Shame the only way he CAN be removed is by him volunteering to leave in exchange for multiple millions of pounds though isn't it?

 

 

[Dr_Pangloss]

2 minutes ago, Eames said:

Shame the only way he CAN be removed is by him volunteering to leave in exchange for multiple millions of pounds though isn't it?

 

 

Massive shame

[El-Reacho]

Don't think there's any agenda going on at VP. Lerner's been quite clear that he won't invest any more of his own money in the club. He's brought Tom Fox in to try to get the club to generate more cash of its own - which is what he's supposedly good at. That's Fox's strength so it's no wonder he keeps banging on about it. 

When we sacked Lambert - Lerner said he had done his job under the toughest of circumstances; which was keep us in the PL without him having to invest more of his own money. When you consider that Reilly was behind the Benteke signing (and supposedly pushed and pushed until Lambert signed him), who was the key person that's kept us up over the past 3 years you can see why Lerner put his faith in him again.

It's gone badly wrong this season, but in reality having Benteke was only really putting off the inevitable. We were never going to generate enough cash ourselves quickly enough to become a self sustaining PL club IMHO, unless the 'transfer committee' struck gold with another Benteke. 

[Marka Ragnos]

36 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

On that basis Sherwood started well as he won one of his first three games. Should have given him longer. Was a terrible decision in my view. 

I felt strongly at the time that the anti-Sherwood movement was misjudged, but do we really want to go down that road again? To mix metaphors ... the horse has not only been beaten to death -- it's been turned to a meaty blood-paste and extruded into rotten horse sausages. Enough!

31 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I think too much is made of the new Lambert contract.

I think it was probably a routine contract update based on certain criteria. [and] ... it's pretty much irrelevant anyway.

True enough!

[markavfc40]

6 hours ago, El-Reacho said:

When you consider that Reilly was behind the Benteke signing (and supposedly pushed and pushed until Lambert signed him), who was the key person that's kept us up over the past 3 years you can see why Lerner put his faith in him again.

Depends whether you consider that enough reason to put your faith in a guy who has been head of player recruitment/director of player recruitment on and off totalling three years since July 2011. It is interesting to note that the only player we have signed since 2010 that has been sold on for a profit is Benteke.

Whether or not it was the correct decision to put faith in Reilly can perhaps be better judged now and the fact that we signed 13 players over the summer that make up over half the squad that now sits cut adrift at the foot of the table would suggest that the player recruitment wasn't great. Reilly had a big influence alongside the manager on which players we purchased. Sherwood was sacked for not getting enough out of the squad, the current manager can get nothing out of it, so either both these managers are poor or this squad, which Reilly had a big influence in assembling, is really poor. It might be an idea for the club to look beyond the managers and perhaps Reilly should also be held culpable.

Edited January 6, 2016 by markavfc40

[a m ole]

For me the major issue is not the quality of our players (which may be a minor issue but I think most our fit match day squad are good enough to play in this league) but how they fit into an XI. every squad and player has weaknesses but a good XI counteracts those weaknesses with complimentary players.

so we've targeted some good players, some decent players and signed who we could. That's Reilly's job, as far as I'm aware, to find players with strong attributes to present to the manager. Surely what Sherwood's job in the committee was, you have to assume as the football manager in charge of tactics, to look at these players and say - "we can't sign him because he wont track back for this average player, these players won't work together as the current player isn't physical enough, we don't have enough pace in this partnership to sign him, there's not enough movement in the front line for him to be useful, we don't have any crossers of the ball to make the most of him" and so on.

Then the job for Sherwood was 1. to quickly integrate a number of new players into the team and into the country and 2. get them working in a system that suits them. He definitely failed number 1, and was on a hiding to nothing with number 2 due to the totally mismatched players he approved of.

The biggest failure in the summer for me was Sherwood's inability to spot what type of players he needed and in what positions to create a unit that worked.

[HanoiVillan]

4 hours ago, markavfc40 said:

Depends whether you consider that enough reason to put your faith in a guy who has been head of player recruitment/director of player recruitment on and off totalling three years since July 2011. It is interesting to note that the only player we have signed since 2010 that has been sold on for a profit is Benteke.

Whether or not it was the correct decision to put faith in Reilly can perhaps be better judged now and the fact that we signed 13 players over the summer that make up over half the squad that now sits cut adrift at the foot of the table would suggest that the player recruitment wasn't great. Reilly had a big influence alongside the manager on which players we purchased. Sherwood was sacked for not getting enough out of the squad, the current manager can get nothing out of it, so either both these managers are poor or this squad, which Reilly had a big influence in assembling, is really poor. It might be an idea for the club to look beyond the managers and perhaps Reilly should also be held culpable.

Let's not forget he spent a period inbetween involved in Liverpool's embarrassing transfer failures, which have helped set that club back too. 

[New_Jersey_Villa]

8 hours ago, a m ole said:

For me the major issue is not the quality of our players (which may be a minor issue but I think most our fit match day squad are good enough to play in this league) but how they fit into an XI. every squad and player has weaknesses but a good XI counteracts those weaknesses with complimentary players.

so we've targeted some good players, some decent players and signed who we could. That's Reilly's job, as far as I'm aware, to find players with strong attributes to present to the manager. Surely what Sherwood's job in the committee was, you have to assume as the football manager in charge of tactics, to look at these players and say - "we can't sign him because he wont track back for this average player, these players won't work together as the current player isn't physical enough, we don't have enough pace in this partnership to sign him, there's not enough movement in the front line for him to be useful, we don't have any crossers of the ball to make the most of him" and so on.

Then the job for Sherwood was 1. to quickly integrate a number of new players into the team and into the country and 2. get them working in a system that suits them. He definitely failed number 1, and was on a hiding to nothing with number 2 due to the totally mismatched players he approved of.

The biggest failure in the summer for me was Sherwood's inability to spot what type of players he needed and in what positions to create a unit that worked.

This is, simply put, a fantastic summation of our current predicament.

[mwj]

For me the major issue is not the quality of our players (which may be a minor issue but I think most our fit match day squad are good enough to play in this league) but how they fit into an XI. every squad and player has weaknesses but a good XI counteracts those weaknesses with complimentary players.

so we've targeted some good players, some decent players and signed who we could. That's Reilly's job, as far as I'm aware, to find players with strong attributes to present to the manager. Surely what Sherwood's job in the committee was, you have to assume as the football manager in charge of tactics, to look at these players and say - "we can't sign him because he wont track back for this average player, these players won't work together as the current player isn't physical enough, we don't have enough pace in this partnership to sign him, there's not enough movement in the front line for him to be useful, we don't have any crossers of the ball to make the most of him" and so on.

Then the job for Sherwood was 1. to quickly integrate a number of new players into the team and into the country and 2. get them working in a system that suits them. He definitely failed number 1, and was on a hiding to nothing with number 2 due to the totally mismatched players he approved of.

The biggest failure in the summer for me was Sherwood's inability to spot what type of players he needed and in what positions to create a unit that worked.

Could not have put it better myself

[lexicon]

I sometimes think that people put too much emphasis on the role played by the board in football - you look at a team like Coventry, possibly the worst board in all of football right now and somehow they are 4th in league one and looking very good for a play-off place. 

[Kingman]

1 hour ago, lexicon said:

I sometimes think that people put too much emphasis on the role played by the board in football - you look at a team like Coventry, possibly the worst board in all of football right now and somehow they are 4th in league one and looking very good for a play-off place. 

 

Yeah give it 12-18 months and Lerner and the 3 unwise men should have us settled 4th in the 3rd Division! 

Great achievement!..

[Zatman]

3 hours ago, lexicon said:

I sometimes think that people put too much emphasis on the role played by the board in football - you look at a team like Coventry, possibly the worst board in all of football right now and somehow they are 4th in league one and looking very good for a play-off place. 

It helps they hired a good manager and signed a top striker on loan

[BOF]

3 hours ago, Zatman said:

It helps they hired a good manager and signed a top striker on loan

... and are a very big fish in a 3rd tier pond. 

[mykeyb]

So he announces that we are getting a new Chairman and possible a new director, since then silence.

 

I do wonder if our new chairman elect has got cold feet about the possibility of being used as a fall guy for our failures.

 

Another masterstroke from our idiot CEO

[Marka Ragnos]

2 hours ago, BOF said:

... and are a very big fish in a 3rd tier pond. 

A big -- ugly -- fish. 

Edited January 7, 2016 by Marka Ragnos

[Grasshopper]

5 hours ago, BOF said:

... and are a very big fish in a 3rd tier pond. 

We'll soon be that same but bigger fish in a smaller pond

[VillanousOne]

most of the players we signed in the summer were embelishments, players who would have thrived in the squad IF it had a decent backbone already. But none of them were instant replacements for what we lost, all of them needed/need half or a whole season to come good - maybe longer. Law of averages probably dictates that at least one would fail completely and one would get injured. In our case Amavi injured, Crespo and Ilori utter failures - (maybe Crespo is injured but he's started one god damn match). Ayew took about a quarter of a season to come good, Gestede started sort of brightly and has done nothing since. Gana is a failure so far, Vertout is borderline. Traore will probably not start another game this season.

Bare in mind even when we had Vlaar, Benteke, Cleverly and Delph we were still mostly shite, the good old days were us circling the bowl, now someone has flushed.

To use a car metaphor - we basically sold the engine, replaced it with bike pedals, but bought some really nice wheels, wheel rims and the best cup holder money could buy.

A large chunk of our squad is also not featuring and will not feature this season eg. Cole, Senderos, Gardener, Robinson, Baker.

Even with Guzan being crap, there is no faith in his backups Steer and Bunn. At least we had Given last season who i thought did better than Guzan for a short time. Jack 'i'll only play for Sherwood' Grealish!

Then there's dead wood such as Gabby or Nzogbia. Ok so Gabby might appear again in an act of desperation along with Kozak if we can't flog him .

take a bow Tom Fox, Reilly, Lerner, Sherwood, Pam the tea lady.

what a **** shambles 

[nick76]

14 minutes ago, VillanousOne said:

most of the players we signed in the summer were embelishments, players who would have thrived in the squad IF it had a decent backbone already. But none of them were instant replacements for what we lost, all of them needed/need half or a whole season to come good - maybe longer. Law of averages probably dictates that at least one would fail completely and one would get injured. In our case Amavi injured, Crespo and Ilori utter failures - (maybe Crespo is injured but he's started one god damn match). Ayew took about a quarter of a season to come good, Gestede started sort of brightly and has done nothing since. Gana is a failure so far, Vertout is borderline. Traore will probably not start another game this season.

Bare in mind even when we had Vlaar, Benteke, Cleverly and Delph we were still mostly shite, the good old days were us circling the bowl, now someone has flushed.

To use a car metaphor - we basically sold the engine, replaced it with bike pedals, but bought some really nice wheels, wheel rims and the best cup holder money could buy.

A large chunk of our squad is also not featuring and will not feature this season eg. Cole, Senderos, Gardener, Robinson, Baker.

Even with Guzan being crap, there is no faith in his backups Steer and Bunn. At least we had Given last season who i thought did better than Guzan for a short time. Jack 'i'll only play for Sherwood' Grealish!

Then there's dead wood such as Gabby or Nzogbia. Ok so Gabby might appear again in an act of desperation along with Kozak if we can't flog him .

take a bow Tom Fox, Reilly, Lerner, Sherwood, Pam the tea lady.

what a **** shambles 

I agreed with the start of your post and while not agreeing with everything else I agree with the essence of your piece.  I actually think that Amavi, Vertout, Gana and Ayew will become really good players.....whether that is mid table type players or european place challengers I'm still borderline on.  I think the first part of your post is the key around that we had no backbone and we expected these young(ish), foreign, from a weaker league, who have definitely showed huge potential at their previous clubs to suddenly gel, step up and be the real deal in the premiership, which is arguably the hardest league around.  

 

We had a complete overhaul of our team and then expect them to perform straight away, it was just insane.  To be honest I actually think it's the established players that have really let us down like Richards, Lescott and Gabby.  Ayew and Amavi I've been impressed with and with my glass half full glasses on I've seen glimpses from both Gana and Vertout that suggests that their is something there.  Richards and Lescott I have been bitterly disappointed with and Gabby has been sliding for years.  

 

The big thing for me though outside of this is that we never brought a real striker.  Ayew plays wide and we can argue that Gestede was going to be that player, did any of us at the time believe he was going to be that No.1 striker.....at the time we thought Adebayor was going to be the main striker (whether we wanted him or not).

 

So I'm laying off the foreign contingent as I dont think they have been the real problem...the experienced players we have/brought in and the lack of striker for me from a playing side has been the issue this season.

[TRO]

16 hours ago, lexicon said:

I sometimes think that people put too much emphasis on the role played by the board in football - you look at a team like Coventry, possibly the worst board in all of football right now and somehow they are 4th in league one and looking very good for a play-off place. 

Spot on.

[lexicon]

15 hours ago, BOF said:

... and are a very big fish in a 3rd tier pond. 

Debatable really - historically they're bigger than the division they're in but they've been a nothing team in that league for a few years - finished 17th last year.