Paul Lambert

[Rugeley Villa]

I was talking to the Stoke lads yesterday, and I said he wasn't all bad. His hands were tied, especially near the end, and I thought in the circumstances he did ok in a sense. He kept us up on a championship budget, bringing in championship players for the best part of his stint. I could see what he was trying to do at villa, but near the end he was a broken man. It will be interesting to see how he gets on. 

[DCJonah]

3 hours ago, Keyblade said:

Do you agree that 47M in 3 seasons is nowhere near enough backing to expect to stay in the PL? 

Not sure. I don't think spending that much always guarantees relegation so its a miracle if you don't go down. Did mcleish perform a miracle the year before?

It also ignores players he inherited, while not top class he had premier league players to add to. And many fans felt happy with the replacements he made to the squad that had survived previously. 

Like i said, this is one of those villa things i don't get. I still think it is down to who he replaced and the fact we all wanted him. 

[DCJonah]

1 hour ago, Rugeley Villa said:

I was talking to the Stoke lads yesterday, and I said he wasn't all bad. His hands were tied, especially near the end, and I thought in the circumstances he did ok in a sense. He kept us up on a championship budget, bringing in championship players for the best part of his stint. I could see what he was trying to do at villa, but near the end he was a broken man. It will be interesting to see how he gets on. 

Or he slowly started to send us down. 

The fact Tim Sherwood could take the same squad to survival and an fa cup final would support this view rather than the miracle lambert performed. 

[bobzy]

24 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Or he slowly started to send us down. 

The fact Tim Sherwood could take the same squad to survival and an fa cup final would support this view rather than the miracle lambert performed. 

Not at all - as Sherwood was infinitely worse tactically (hence us being utterly shit when his “new manager bounce” had **** off). 

Lambert didnt perform miracles at all, I agree. But he didn’t do as badly as it seemed given how little he had to work with.

[Demitri_C]

Sherwood was x10 worse than lambert no question for me

[Keyblade]

2 hours ago, DCJonah said:

Not sure. I don't think spending that much always guarantees relegation so its a miracle if you don't go down. Did mcleish perform a miracle the year before?

It also ignores players he inherited, while not top class he had premier league players to add to. And many fans felt happy with the replacements he made to the squad that had survived previously. 

Like i said, this is one of those villa things i don't get. I still think it is down to who he replaced and the fact we all wanted him. 

Well, for the second time I'm not saying Lambert performed miracles. I said that it was a miracle we managed to survive with a Championship squad and budget. Which means it was a combination of things and not just his management.

Lambert deserves credit yes (and to answer your question, McLeish even less...he had a much better squad at his disposal), but some of it seems in spite of them including a huge slice of luck.

Also I think you are forgetting the cost-cutting mandate from our dear Mr. Randolph. Some of the revisionism here states that Lambert got rid of our established players and made the bomb squad simply because he was a shit manager and couldn't handle established players and egos. The way I remember it was he had to get rid of them because of their contract and wage situations and was ordered to isolate them from upstairs.

That first window he had to get rid of many of the highest earners, and thus had to revamp an entire squad. You know how much he was given to do so? 20M from what I remember. Even back then, 20M got u 3 maybe 4 decent bottom half players. We had to buy around 10. Spending about 2-3M per player is relegation funding no matter how you slice it.

[lapal_fan]

Denying money has no correlation to league positioning is a strange stance to take. 

[DCJonah]

46 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

Well, for the second time I'm not saying Lambert performed miracles. I said that it was a miracle we managed to survive with a Championship squad and budget. Which means it was a combination of things and not just his management.

Lambert deserves credit yes (and to answer your question, McLeish even less...he had a much better squad at his disposal), but some of it seems in spite of them including a huge slice of luck.

Also I think you are forgetting the cost-cutting mandate from our dear Mr. Randolph. Some of the revisionism here states that Lambert got rid of our established players and made the bomb squad simply because he was a shit manager and couldn't handle established players and egos. The way I remember it was he had to get rid of them because of their contract and wage situations and was ordered to isolate them from upstairs.

That first window he had to get rid of many of the highest earners, and thus had to revamp an entire squad. You know how much he was given to do so? 20M from what I remember. Even back then, 20M got u 3 maybe 4 decent bottom half players. We had to buy around 10. Spending about 2-3M per player is relegation funding no matter how you slice it.

Don't get me wrong. Lerner is the devil!!

But for me Lambert was awful, i wasn't expecting top 6 finishes under him but dire football, losing 50% of the time and averaging 1 pt a game after 100 games is abysmal stuff. He played his part in our downfall and for me personally, at that point took away a lot of enjoyment i had for the sport. 

[Keyblade]

3 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Don't get me wrong. Lerner is the devil!!

But for me Lambert was awful, i wasn't expecting top 6 finishes under him but dire football, losing 50% of the time and averaging 1 pt a game after 100 games is abysmal stuff. He played his part in our downfall and for me personally, at that point took away a lot of enjoyment i had for the sport. 

He was definitely awful. That first season broke him and turned him into McLeish v2.0 due to the fear and trauma of losing  . But that doesn't mean there weren't extenuating circumstances.

We had no right staying up those years. In fact, it probably might have been better if we went down because it would mean Lerner would have sold earlier. Instead we had to suffer for 3/4 more years

[DCJonah]

2 hours ago, Keyblade said:

He was definitely awful. That first season broke him and turned him into McLeish v2.0 due to the fear and trauma of losing  . But that doesn't mean there weren't extenuating circumstances.

We had no right staying up those years. In fact, it probably might have been better if we went down because it would mean Lerner would have sold earlier. Instead we had to suffer for 3/4 more years

His fear of losing clearly wasn't strong enough. 

I find the idea we broke him as ridiculous as the miracle claims. 

 

[TheAuthority]

3 hours ago, Keyblade said:

 

Also I think you are forgetting the cost-cutting mandate from our dear Mr. Randolph. Some of the revisionism here states that Lambert got rid of our established players and made the bomb squad simply because he was a shit manager and couldn't handle established players and egos. The way I remember it was he had to get rid of them because of their contract and wage situations and was ordered to isolate them from upstairs.

 

I guess no fan really knows for sure why the bomb squad happened. I even remember Given being interviewed about it and he said that he wasn't given a reason why he was bombed out. (Of course he could have just been BS-ing.)

If the orders did come from upstairs (i.e. Lerner) because of wages, I don't understand why Sherwood suddenly allowed to re-integrate Given, Hutton & NZogbia?

[Keyblade]

1 minute ago, DCJonah said:

His fear of losing clearly wasn't strong enough. 

I find the idea we broke him as ridiculous as the miracle claims. 

 

There was a huge difference between the dour Paul Lambert at Villa and the exuberant Paul Lambert at Norwich. Or even between the way he approached games in his first season vs afterwards. Just think back to the last game under McLeish when we played his Norwich side and our fans were singing Paul Lambert's claret and blue army. We weren't singing for 2014 Paul Lambert that's for sure. 

[Keyblade]

2 minutes ago, TheAuthority said:

I guess no fan really knows for sure why the bomb squad happened. I even remember Given being interviewed about it and he said that he wasn't given a reason why he was bombed out. (Of course he could have just been BS-ing.)

If the orders did come from upstairs (i.e. Lerner) because of wages, I don't understand why Sherwood suddenly allowed to re-integrate Given, Hutton & NZogbia?

I'm pretty sure Lambert himself (and McLeish) stated multiple times that he had to slash the wage bill. Yes, we'll never know exactly the reasons, but given what we knew about the club at the time and the fact that they all happened to be our highest earners, the most likely reason was because of our financial situation. Occam's razor and all. Was it an effective method? I don't know, I'd personally put them in the shop window and just play them. But that's a separate discussion.

Regarding Sherwood, I imagine he was allowed to use them in the short term purely to see out survival. They were all bombed out that same summer and Sherwood himself intimated that they would in that infamous interview after we got humiliated in the FA Cup final.

[villalad21]

I think his time at Villa really broke the man, especially towards the end.

I don't think he has yet recovered. I don't think he will do well at Stoke. A loss and he will be on low confidence and start to panic.

[Xela]

Many times I've heard the line he was a broken man at Villa (not aimed at you @villalad21 just in general)

He was only there 2 and a half years and he was paid a big salary for managing us

Makes it sound as though he's an Auschwitz survivor! If he can't get his head right after Villa then he needs to give up managing and work at B&Q instead. 

Edited January 19, 2018 by Xela

[TheAuthority]

28 minutes ago, Xela said:

Many times I've heard the line he was a broken man at Villa (not aimed at you @villalad21 just in general)

He was only there 2 and a half years and he was paid a big salary for managing us

Makes it sound as though he's an Auschwitz survivor! If he can't get his head right after Villa then he needs to give up managing and work at B&Q instead. 

Hello, I'm looking for a hammer and a socket wrench set.

"Mumble, bumble, well I think really excellent, mumble, between aisle 1 & 25, mumble, we go again."

[Stevo985]

2 hours ago, DCJonah said:

. 

I find the idea we broke him as ridiculous as the miracle claims. 

 

Why are you persisting with this?

@Keyblade has clearly clarified what he meant by the miracle thing, and it wasn't that lambert was performing miracles.

[Mantis]

I think there's certainly a lot of debate to be had about how bad/good Lambert was but it should be unquestionable that he's a far better manager than Tim Sherwood.

[TheAuthority]

39 minutes ago, Mantis said:

I think there's certainly a lot of debate to be had about how bad/good Lambert was but it should be unquestionable that he's a far better manager than Tim Sherwood.

[VillaChris]

I think it's worth remembering the circmunstances when Lambert was appointed.

I hated the McLeish year as much as anyone else but we'd been comfortable mid table for much of the season and only plumetted when Bent got injured.

If he'd been available rest of that season I'm sure we'd have finished higher than 16th as we still drew plenty of matches after he got injured.

Anyway the point I'm making is I don't remember on here in May 2012 the only expectation of him was to avoid relegation. The general feeling on here was he'd shown at Norwich he could spot a bargain and build a very competitive side that play decent attacking football and had finished mid table in the premier league.

So the assumption was he'd do that here. He'd get more out of Ireland and certainly N'zogbia.

Just ditching all that experience was a mistake. We needed another experienced CB to help Vlaar settle in, couldn't foresee Dunne getting injured (although he was declining anyway at that point) but released Cuellar and Collins anyway.

Freezing out Warnock and Hutton straight away was an error imo.

Another was with Stan ill not getting an experienced premier league midfielder. Weren't we interested in Barry one of the Lambert seasons but he chose not to persue it.

I liked what I saw of El-ahmadi and Holman early few games but neither amounted to much.

It seems him leading us to record defeats and scoreless runs is seemingly cancelled out by keeping us up narrowly in the two full seasons.

The expectations to me were so much more than that.