Paul Lambert

[AshVilla]

There's an awful lot of barrel-scraping going on in Lambert's defence lately. If he gets another year (and part of me is curious to see it) one thing is for sure, he'd better pull his socks up 'cos the job he's done so far has been inexcusably dire.

 

He won't get another year

 

If somehow he does he will be sacked by christmas anyway

 

A new owner will not put up with anymore of this shite next season that's for sure

[Big_John_10]

There's an awful lot of barrel-scraping going on in Lambert's defence lately.

That's because there's no much to actually use to defend him.

[Brumstopdogs]

IMO There have been too many bad performances under Lambert to warrant him getting substantial funds to spend.

 

The football is often one dimensional and dire to watch and the results have not been good enough.  

 

Lambert out - probably going to finish the season with 1 win in 9 games. Great progress there!

[Jarpie]

Handful of good or great performances doesn't make up for the utter shit performances we've seen over half of the games. It's great to win Chelski, Liverpool or Man City once in a while but the whole is what matters - two years in a row fighting against relegation with utterly inept performances and his own men **** up things (Karsa and Culverhouse) if the rumours are to be believed.

 

Also his tactical ineptitude is one of the most damning things IMO, if that was his own doing or Karsa/Culverhouse doesn't matter - he should've addressed it long time ago as he is the manager, same goes with the subsitions. We did play better against Swansea and Hull than we've had in the last six-seven games before that.

 

Even if things would start to go better now, as I've said before, I don't think he could stay given all what's happened. If the circumstances would've been different, he could've been good manager for us but alas things didn't turn out like all hoped.

[Risso]

I'd rather have lost to Arsenal and Man City, but beaten the likes of Fulham, Palace, Swansea, West Ham and Stoke, because we'd be then higher in the table and looking forward to a much higher share of the prize money on offer.

[Cliffy Biro]

There have been far too many average teams coming to VP and getting a win this season, not even a hard thought win either. I don't think even Lamberts supporters will be too surprised if he shown the door tbh.

[snowychap]

...probably going to finish the season with 1 win in 9 games...

Probably, maybe, perhaps not.

Why don't we stick to talking about the records already achieved (which are pretty poor and since perhaps the start of December very poor) rather than muddying things up by assuming we'll lose tomorrow night and at the weekend (I'm not sure it makes much difference to the appraisal what we do in those games)?

[coda]

He won't get another year

 

 

If somehow he does he will be sacked by christmas anyway

 

You don't appear convinced.

[villa-revolution]

Who was it that easily convinced our world class player & talisman Benteke to stay last Summer?

 

Well done Lambo once more. Take a bow son. Take a bow.

 

Who was it that convinced Okore that Villa were a better prospect for his long term development than Chelsea?

 

Can you guess boys & girls or are your brains still stuck in reverse gear?

 

I'll give you a clue. He is a top class Manager currently taking a bow.

 

Who tactically out witted Jose Bore-inho to wreck his Premiership title dreams?

 

Who tactically out witted Brendan Rogers at Anfield to wreck his premiership title dreams by attacking rather than parking the bus?

 

Who performed miracles this season by over coming long term injuries to key personnel & working within set parameters?

 

Who showed 2500 Villa fans at Crystal Palace that they don't know what they're doing?

 

You all know the answer & that keeping him makes sense.

 

To deny it is simply delusional.

[CrackpotForeigner]

How many times are we going to hear about the poor results?

 

There are reasons why we have been doing badly. Almost everyone seems to have forgotten these reasons.

 

Our best two strikers injured.

One of our best two defenders injured.

Our 9m winger/AM who is a match winner on his day, injured.

Gabby seemingly carrying an injury for about half the season.

A total of about 3m pounds of transfer window signings available for selection (Tonev, Bacuna). Three million over a whole year, and this year we don't have Benteke.

[AshVilla]

Who was it that easily convinced our world class player & talisman Benteke to stay last Summer?

 

Well done Lambo once more. Take a bow son. Take a bow.

 

Who was it that convinced Okore that Villa were a better prospect for his long term development than Chelsea?

 

Can you guess boys & girls or are your brains still stuck in reverse gear?

 

I'll give you a clue. He is a top class Manager currently taking a bow.

 

Who tactically out witted Jose Bore-inho to wreck his Premiership title dreams?

 

Who tactically out witted Brendan Rogers at Anfield to wreck his premiership title dreams by attacking rather than parking the bus?

 

Who performed miracles this season by over coming long term injuries to key personnel & working within set parameters?

 

Who showed 2500 Villa fans at Crystal Palace that they don't know what they're doing?

 

You all know the answer & that keeping him makes sense.

 

To deny it is simply delusional.

 

[Risso]

Who was failed to win a single game against Fulham , Crystal Palace, Swansea, West Ham, Newcastle or Stoke?

 

Take a bow son, take a bow.  Who has been knocked out of cup competitions by lower league teams 3 times out of 4, including league 2 teams?  Take a bow son, take a bow.

 

I'll give you a clue, he's a mumbling, tactically inept poor excuse for a manager.

[Daniel]

Who was failed to win a single game against Fulham , Crystal Palace, Swansea, West Ham, Newcastle or Stoke?

 

Take a bow son, take a bow.  Who has been knocked out of cup competitions by lower league teams 3 times out of 4, including league 2 teams?  Take a bow son, take a bow.

 

I'll give you a clue, he's a mumbling, tactically inept poor excuse for a manager.

 

Don't do it to yourself. He's going for the reaction.

[Risso]

I'm waiting for the tumble dryer to finish, I've got time!

[villa-revolution]

 

Who was it that easily convinced our world class player & talisman Benteke to stay last Summer?

 

Well done Lambo once more. Take a bow son. Take a bow.

 

Who was it that convinced Okore that Villa were a better prospect for his long term development than Chelsea?

 

Can you guess boys & girls or are your brains still stuck in reverse gear?

 

I'll give you a clue. He is a top class Manager currently taking a bow.

 

Who tactically out witted Jose Bore-inho to wreck his Premiership title dreams?

 

Who tactically out witted Brendan Rogers at Anfield to wreck his premiership title dreams by attacking rather than parking the bus?

 

Who performed miracles this season by over coming long term injuries to key personnel & working within set parameters?

 

Who showed 2500 Villa fans at Crystal Palace that they don't know what they're doing?

 

You all know the answer & that keeping him makes sense.

 

To deny it is simply delusional.

 

 

 

Ash Villa - Please stop drawing the short straw.

[villa-revolution]

I'm waiting for the tumble dryer to finish, I've got time!

 

I'll get Paul Lambert to show you how to operate it. It might take you two years to understand the operating project as he explains it to you but that's fine because as you say, you've got the time.

 

If it packs in due to some unforeseen circumstance whilst washing Benteke, Kozak & Okore's kit don't blame Lambert blame your self.

[Mantis]

They do. 21 pts from 19 games is an awful return.

 

Indeed, now if only people mentioned that more and less of some silly little record.

 

[rjenkins]

I've held off from posting on this thread until now, but there have been some interesting points thrown up over the last few pages on which I wanted to share an opinion.

 

Tranfer Funds / Wage Bill / Spending

 

Lambert has had £20million per season to spend on tranfers by most calculations. That is not a lot in terms of our recent history but it's more than a lot of clubs around us in the league, of course it does come with a caveat regarding the wage structure, which may balance this out to some extent.

 

Overall, I think much of this could have been spent more effectively. Through our spell of selling our best players in recent years, it is the midfield which has suffered most. Barry, Downing, Milner and Young were stars of our team. You only have to look at the amounts we sold them for to see this, and yet our attempts to replace them have been poor to say the least. Our midfield is not without some talent, but unbalanced and lightweight. I believe our tendency to get over-run in this area puts unnecessary strain on our defence, forcing more errors and causing us to leak goals. Whilst we have some defenders who I do not particularly rate, I feel that our midfield issues are the principal factor here.

 

Under Lambert our midfield signings have been Bacuna (?), El Ahmadi, Sylla, Tonev and Westwood (excluding Holman as I believe he was a McLeish signing). That is not an impressive list as only Westwood is a signing who has been a mainstay in the team and a decent performer throughout. Bacuna has done well from right-back this season, especially in terms of goals, but I'm not the only one unconvinced that he has the technical ability to start in our midfield.

 

At the same time we have spent over £15million on strikers (37.5% of our total). Benteke is the best player at our club and I can understand the arguments that we needed cover for him. However, I believe that had we spent more on the midfield we would not have the play the strikers we do have out wide so often. We may also have been less reliant on a singular counter-attacking tactic.

 

In terms of the general cost-cutting exercise, then I have no complaints regarding Lambert as he has executed what was asked of him. I'm excluding rumours of loan deals for Barry, Hotlby and Lukaku from this as we have no idea whether we were really in for these players or, if true, how much of their wage we were offering to cover.

 

Tactics / Coaching / The 'McLeish' Effect

 

I do believe that, as a collective, Villa fans have consciously wanted to back Lambert for a reasonable amount of time. I believe this is down to the relative popularity of his appointment and the quick succession of previous managers. The instability at the club was partly blamed by some sections of supporters for our decline and as a rule I completely support the idea that managers need time to implement their ideas and build a squad. I also think that because McLeish was so unpopulr even before his appointment, this heightened the effect of wanting to keep hold of the man we had chosen.

 

I feel that in terms of tactics Lambert has not helped himself. This is partly linked to the issue I raised regarding transfers but we are a one-dimensional team with a low level of technical abilty (particularly close control). There are managers in the Premier League who we would not think worthy of the Villa job who have not had a great deal of difficultly in working us out, and nullifying us completely as an attacking threat. This may only be my perception, but I also feel as though we don't make a lot of substitutions until we are already behind in a game, even in cases where pressure has been building for some time in a match or when one individual is clearly struggling with an opposition player/generally underperforming. I'm sure there are exampes we have done this successfully, but I can't think of many certainly.

 

I personally don't feel as though our players are progressing technically either, and if we are stuck with signing players on low wages for the medium term then this is a problem as we may have to rely on the lower leagues domestically and second-rate leagues on the continent for new recruits. I don't feel it is fair to speculate on the effect of the Culverhouse/Karsa situation at this stage as I simply don't know the whole story. Bullying happens in all industries and not every manager is sacked because of bullying by one of their subordinates. However, I don't believe they were doing a particularly good job of coaching our players before this anyway as I've stated above. Lambert has appointed backroom staff in both close-seasons for which he has been manager so he has had opportunity to address general coaching effectiveness in my view.

 

Conclusion

 

Even given the restrictions under which Lambert is operating that we know of, I believe there have been issues with his general performance as manager. With regards to coaching, tactics and game-management in particular I feel these are serious enough to warrant his dismissal at the end of the current season. I appreciate that the Aston Villa job is very difficult, and as has been pointed out in this thread very few managers go on to greater things after a stint in charge of this club. However, I feel that in a situation where it is necessary to purchase players for low fees and on low wages then the ability to coach them until they reach their full potential is of paramount importance and I see no evidence that this is a specialism of Paul Lambert.

 

This is not to say that I do not believe that he is a good manager; after all he has won several promotions already in a short managerial career. Rather, I believe we need a specific type of individual to work under the parameters set by our current board if we are to manage them successfully and Lambert has not demonstrated to me that he is perfectly suited to these parameters. If these circumstances change after a takeover, for exmaple, then given the difficult conditions he has experienced so far I would be happy to see him attempt to show what he can do under a less restrictive strategy, at least for a time.

[villa-revolution]

I've held off from posting on this thread until now, but there have been some interesting points thrown up over the last few pages on which I wanted to share an opinion.

 

Tranfer Funds / Wage Bill / Spending

 

Lambert has had £20million per season to spend on tranfers by most calculations. That is not a lot in terms of our recent history but it's more than a lot of clubs around us in the league, of course it does come with a caveat regarding the wage structure, which may balance this out to some extent.

 

Overall, I think much of this could have been spent more effectively. Through our spell of selling our best players in recent years, it is the midfield which has suffered most. Barry, Downing, Milner and Young were stars of our team. You only have to look at the amounts we sold them for to see this, and yet our attempts to replace them have been poor to say the least. Our midfield is not without some talent, but unbalanced and lightweight. I believe our tendency to get over-run in this area puts unnecessary strain on our defence, forcing more errors and causing us to leak goals. Whilst we have some defenders who I do not particularly rate, I feel that our midfield issues are the principal factor here.

 

Under Lambert our midfield signings have been Bacuna (?), El Ahmadi, Sylla, Tonev and Westwood (excluding Holman as I believe he was a McLeish signing). That is not an impressive list as only Westwood is a signing who has been a mainstay in the team and a decent performer throughout. Bacuna has done well from right-back this season, especially in terms of goals, but I'm not the only one unconvinced that he has the technical ability to start in our midfield.

 

At the same time we have spent over £15million on strikers (37.5% of our total). Benteke is the best player at our club and I can understand the arguments that we needed cover for him. However, I believe that had we spent more on the midfield we would not have the play the strikers we do have out wide so often. We may also have been less reliant on a singular counter-attacking tactic.

 

In terms of the general cost-cutting exercise, then I have no complaints regarding Lambert as he has executed what was asked of him. I'm excluding rumours of loan deals for Barry, Hotlby and Lukaku from this as we have no idea whether we were really in for these players or, if true, how much of their wage we were offering to cover.

 

Tactics / Coaching / The 'McLeish' Effect

 

I do believe that, as a collective, Villa fans have consciously wanted to back Lambert for a reasonable amount of time. I believe this is down to the relative popularity of his appointment and the quick succession of previous managers. The instability at the club was partly blamed by some sections of supporters for our decline and as a rule I completely support the idea that managers need time to implement their ideas and build a squad. I also think that because McLeish was so unpopulr even before his appointment, this heightened the effect of wanting to keep hold of the man we had chosen.

 

I feel that in terms of tactics Lambert has not helped himself. This is partly linked to the issue I raised regarding transfers but we are a one-dimensional team with a low level of technical abilty (particularly close control). There are managers in the Premier League who we would not think worthy of the Villa job who have not had a great deal of difficultly in working us out, and nullifying us completely as an attacking threat. This may only be my perception, but I also feel as though we don't make a lot of substitutions until we are already behind in a game, even in cases where pressure has been building for some time in a match or when one individual is clearly struggling with an opposition player/generally underperforming. I'm sure there are exampes we have done this successfully, but I can't think of many certainly.

 

I personally don't feel as though our players are progressing technically either, and if we are stuck with signing players on low wages for the medium term then this is a problem as we may have to rely on the lower leagues domestically and second-rate leagues on the continent for new recruits. I don't feel it is fair to speculate on the effect of the Culverhouse/Karsa situation at this stage as I simply don't know the whole story. Bullying happens in all industries and not every manager is sacked because of bullying by one of their subordinates. However, I don't believe they were doing a particularly good job of coaching our players before this anyway as I've stated above. Lambert has appointed backroom staff in both close-seasons for which he has been manager so he has had opportunity to address general coaching effectiveness in my view.

 

Conclusion

 

Even given the restrictions under which Lambert is operating that we know of, I believe there have been issues with his general performance as manager. With regards to coaching, tactics and game-management in particular I feel these are serious enough to warrant his dismissal at the end of the current season. I appreciate that the Aston Villa job is very difficult, and as has been pointed out in this thread very few managers go on to greater things after a stint in charge of this club. However, I feel that in a situation where it is necessary to purchase players for low fees and on low wages then the ability to coach them until they reach their full potential is of paramount importance and I see no evidence that this is a specialism of Paul Lambert.

 

This is not to say that I do not believe that he is a good manager; after all he has won several promotions already in a short managerial career. Rather, I believe we need a specific type of individual to work under the parameters set by our current board if we are to manage them successfully and Lambert has not demonstrated to me that he is perfectly suited to these parameters. If these circumstances change after a takeover, for exmaple, then given the difficult conditions he has experienced so far I would be happy to see him attempt to show what he can do under a less restrictive strategy, at least for a time.

 

This is a great post because it is well reasoned, thoughtful & not OTT. I agree also that the central problem is indeed the midfield & that this leads to our defence being over run at times. Again though, I believe Lambert is well aware of this but with only £20 M to invest he is restricted with his options. Had Lambert spent more on midfield as you thoughtfully suggest then he would not have had any cover what so ever for Benteke. As it turns out even Benteke's cover gets injured too.You need to take into account that had Lambert invested more money in the Midfield area & these players had become injured then what then? Fans being fans would then have slated Lambert for over spending in midfield & not investing in covering Benteke's injury.

 

In other words Paul Lambert is damned if he does or damned if he doesn't no matter which way he twists. The fans will always have perfect hind sight.

 

One of the most important aspects of the Lambert project is that it is a slow burner. This Summer, with our finances now slowly being turned around the Manager could well find him self armed with a much more serious war chest to address some of the problems you have identified. If new owners come in they may want to do things their own way which is ultimately their prerogative but propinquity to & dialogue with Randy Lerner may underline Paul Lambert's considerable merits to them.

 

However, ultimately where I believe your post falls down is because Randy already acknowledges that Lambert has indeed worked well under the parameters of the current board that you allude to here.

[il_serpente]

 

 

Well, duh.   You state quite clearly that the only reason some people thing McLeish was worse is because of his history with Blues.  I think that pretty clearly dismisses any arguments that Lambert is better as being attributed to only anti-blues bias.   Forgive me, if the poster you responded to (Trent, I think?) and I misinterpreted, but that's how I was taught to read.

 

 

 

Have any of them posted on here?

 

 

You dismissed a whole group of people's opinions ("a lot of people" from your original post) of the relative merits of Lambert and McLeish based on their dislike of SHA.  Not sure how it's relevant whether they've posted on here, though I guess the answer is at least one (me).   I'm not from Birmingham and am unable to experience the strong sense of rivalry and animosity toward Blues and toward McLeish as a result of his association with them.   I think Lambert has been better than McLeish, and it has nothing to do with McLeish's ties to SHA.

 

That said, I wasn't offended by the post and am not trying to slag you off.   I just found it ironic as I was reading the responses and was pointing that out in good fun.  I've no wish to get in an argument or clutter up the thread any further with it.

 

Cheers, and good night...