The Rémi Garde thread

[Demitri_C]

11 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

I'm losing more and more respect for Collymore.

He's talking absolute shite these days.

I think Mortimer talks more shite these days than stan. He saying Remi isnt the right man. What chance has Remi been given when he was lied to and not backed? He seems to be scared to say anything bad about lerner or fox. at collymore is willing to stand up and speak against lerner and the rest of the clowns running the club. 

[Stevo985]

13 minutes ago, sexbelowsound said:

I don't think the recruitment policy is completely flawed but I'd say it was naive. We tried to run before we could walk. We tried to mimic Stoke's recent policy and to some extent the Liverpool and Spurs approach post star asset leaving. 

if we look at Stoke they've managed to add flair to their established Premier League squad of solid, proven players. We tried to add the flair without the solid base. 

EXACTLY this.

If we still had Delph, then Gueye and Veretout woudl look like much better signings.

If we still had Benteke, then Ayew and Gestede as backup would look lke much better signings.

If we still had a fit Ron Vlaar, then Richards and Lescott would look like better signings.

If we'd signed a good goalkeeper then our window in general would look better.


The problem is we bought a supporting cast, but we didn't have the core of established players for them to support. The players we bought are ok. Ayew, Gana, Veretout, Adama, Richards (at RB), Amavi, Gil, even Gestede if we played to his strengths are all decent players, but they're not good enough/adjusted enough to make up the backbone of a premier league team. Yet.

Edited February 17, 2016 by Stevo985

[markavfc40]

10 hours ago, DCJonah said:

I usually agree a lot with you Mark but I do think the quality of this squad is easily the worst in the league. We may have a few individuals who aren't too bad but overall its terrible. You combine a serious lack of quality with mental weakness and usually a lack of desire and fight and its no surprise we are where we are. 

I am not so sure mate. Obviously other teams strengthened in the transfer window but almost certainly before that I don’t think Norwich, Bournemouth, Sunderland had better squads than us and I personally don’t rate West Brom. You look at Bournemouth and the amount of injuries they had almost right from the first few games and yet they find themselves 12 points above us. They are not 12 points better than us on paper. I think it is down to the attitude of the players and the way they have approached way too many games with a lack of intent and desire and failed to really get into other sides and instead have stood off them and let them play. Whether that is solely down to the players or the way they have been told to play or a bit of both I don’t know.

I do think in terms of attacking play we look absolutely clueless and have a lack of direction in what we are doing and that may well be down to the manager. On Sunday I am in no doubt the players were told to allow Liverpool to have the ball and we sat way too deep instead of pressing them. The fact we did that to a man tells me that is what they were told to do. It was the opposite of what was needed to me as you give Liverpool players time on the ball and they will hurt you. Their weakness is defending yet we never even tried to trouble them and left Gabby completely isolated up top and every time he won the ball in the air, which he did on numerous occasions, he had zero support. That negative overly cautious way of playing has happened way too often under Garde for me. I understand the need to have tightened up defensively but in our predicament and the desperate need for three points from games you still need to have a go. I’d rather have gone down all guns blazing knowing we had a real go at it rather than as we are with a whimper.

Edited February 17, 2016 by markavfc40

[theboyangel]

The problem with the summer recruitment was using the money generated from selling Benteke and Delph to bring in 11 players, instead of being used to replace those two players and maybe Cleverley.

The club spent approximately £8m in the summer and yet again, good transfer fees (a la Downing, Young, Milner) were squandered on mass buying instead of recruiting suitable replacements for those who left.

Lerner is to blame, he holds the purse strings but has tried to do it on the cheap - the money from Delph and Benteke should have supplemented a £20m transfer kitty. This is why we're in the shit.

Remi came aboard a rapidly sinking ship, with the promise of being backed in January. In fact, we lost more players and now have a threadbare squad with hardly any selection options (look at our midfield for example - we can only pick from Veretout, Gana, Westwood, Sanchez (injured) and Lyden (youth) - the rest of the squad is in just as bad a shape)

I like Remi - he has improved us and the recent form guide illustrates that. However, we're still not picking up enough points.

The club obviously see us as relegated and I feel this apathy has affected the players - who appear to be going through the motions each match.

[Keyblade]

The sad thing is, last time the money wasn't wasted on massive buying. Instead we sold Young and Downing for 40M and got N'Zogbia, Hutton and Given (and Jenas on loan but the less said about that the better). Just sad.

[Papillon]

27 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

I think Mortimer talks more shite these days than stan. He saying Remi isnt the right man. What chance has Remi been given when he was lied to and not backed? He seems to be scared to say anything bad about lerner or fox. at collymore is willing to stand up and speak against lerner and the rest of the clowns running the club. 

We have no idea what kind of players Remi Garde would have brought to Villa Park in January, even if backed properly. Few players would like to play for a club with absolutely no chance of staying up this season. Also, what we do know about Remi Garde is that his team has lost 0-6 to Liverpool over the weekend, they were 11th in the table or something at the time. Liverpool is not Man City, Arsenal or Tottenham, they are not even close to being as goos as them, and we lost 6-0.

A manager can't make players dribble better or pass smarter over the course of a month or two, but he can change other important aspects. He can make them fight harder, run longer, run faster, tackle harder and fight until 90+ minutes are over. Remi Garde did not manage to make our players run harder than Liverpool at all, which tells me he is nowhere near good enough to be a manager.

[Adbo9]

10 hours ago, TRO said:

Just been watching a profile on Brian Clough.

OMG

.......Just reminded of the simplicity.

But apparently the game has changed since them days............. last time I looked it was still 11 v 11 with two goals at each end........... its just played by complete rocket polishers these days.......... Not much has changed for the better, its just sky will try and have us believe it has..............

[DCJonah]

49 minutes ago, sexbelowsound said:

I don't think the recruitment policy is completely flawed but I'd say it was naive. We tried to run before we could walk. We tried to mimic Stoke's recent policy and to some extent the Liverpool and Spurs approach post star asset leaving. 

if we look at Stoke they've managed to add flair to their established Premier League squad of solid, proven players. We tried to add the flair without the solid base. 

We've been difficient defensively for years and it was clear we needed improvements in defence and in goal. I don't associate Richards, Lescott, Crespo and Bunn as solid replacements.

As much as I like Veretout, Ayew, Gana and Adama we spent a massive amount on forward minded players and a pittance on defensive improvments.

Completely the wrong way round.

The biggest flaw of all however was allowing Sherwood to have the final say on our most important and biggest squad overhaul in years.

The club will be thrilled people still think Sherwood was the man responsible. 

And if our summer plan was to try and add flair then it was a spectacular failure. We're the worst attacking side in the league.

[Adbo9]

12 hours ago, dn1982 said:

Stans a prat! The signings have been our better players and are all looking better than what we had. The squad is majorly unbalanced. We bought players without filling the areas that needed looking at or buying the sufficient quality to get goals. Collymore will stick up for Lescott but hammer Okore and makes everything about him. He is anti the club cause he lost his column. The blame for our predicament is solely on the board though and their recruitment policy but it's not to do with quality it's the filling out of the squad. The positions Garde was trying to address in January are the same we needed dealing with in the summer. Whoever came in would have the same problem. Garde has been stuffed and so have us the fans. 

Playing Devils advocate - was Garde targeting the right players or has he got as much pull as he thinks?  As by all accounts, Doumbia knocked us back for less wedge at Newcastle....... Sometimes I feel its not as simplistic as "the board haven't backed him" - how do we know they haven't, they mite have been willing to stump plenty of money on the right lads, but if Garde cant talk them into signing - I'm not sure what the board can do - as is proven with Doumbia

[briny_ear]

The club will be thrilled people still think Sherwood was the man responsible. 

But maybe a bit disappointed that MON is no longer sharing the blame. [emoji6]

[DCJonah]

35 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

I am not so sure mate. Obviously other teams strengthened in the transfer window but almost certainly before that I don’t think Norwich, Bournemouth, Sunderland had better squads than us and I personally don’t rate West Brom. You look at Bournemouth and the amount of injuries they had almost right from the first few games and yet they find themselves 12 points above us. They are not 12 points better than us on paper. I think it is down to the attitude of the players and the way they have approached way too many games with a lack of intent and desire and failed to really get into other sides and instead have stood off them and let them play. Whether that is solely down to the players or the way they have been told to play or a bit of both I don’t know.

I do think in terms of attacking play we look absolutely clueless and have a lack of direction in what we are doing and that may well be down to the manager. On Sunday I am in no doubt the players were told to allow Liverpool to have the ball and we sat way too deep instead of pressing them. The fact we did that to a man tells me that is what they were told to do. It was the opposite of what was needed to me as you give Liverpool players time on the ball and they will hurt you. Their weakness is defending yet we never even tried to trouble them and left Gabby completely isolated up top and every time he won the ball in the air, which he did on numerous occasions, he had zero support. That negative overly cautious way of playing has happened way too often under Garde for me. I understand the need to have tightened up defensively but in our predicament and the desperate need for three points from games you still need to have a go. I’d rather have gone down all guns blazing knowing we had a real go at it rather than as with are with a whimper.

I agree that we've been far too negative at times and I also would have liked Garde to have gone for it a bit more in matches. And I get what you're saying, when you look at other squads they do also look very poor.  But I still think we're the worst. Both keepers we have are not good enough for this level, what ever defence we put out, they make simple mistakes that no other team seems to make. We have no midfield players that can dominate a game or create regular chances. We have no wide players that can cross a ball well on a regular basis. We have one striker who can create his own chance and the rest are easily some of the worst players in this league.  There's just no real quality anywhere in that squad. 

[HanoiVillan]

10 hours ago, dont_do_it_doug. said:

I think the lack of leadership, mental toughness and general unity within the team is startling. I find if frankly ridiculous that people expect to have seen more from Garde with what is generally accepted to be one of the worst squads in Premier League history. Not necessarily on paper granted, but those intangible qualities DO matter. We signed some players with some ability in the summer, almost to a man they are deficient in character. I'll give a free ride to Ayew in that respect, but it's simply not enough. Garde cannot find in them what simply does not exist. 

They botched it ad have been botching it for years. It's a disgrace. 

Sorry, who's been botching it for years? The players we signed in the summer? Or Tom Fox et al? 

[Stevo985]

23 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

The club will be thrilled people still think Sherwood was the man responsible. 

And Sherwood will be thrilled that people are still absolving him of blame

[mwj]

12 hours ago, Stevo985 said:

I'm losing more and more respect for Collymore.

He's talking absolute shite these days.

The guy is a absolute w******

This is an excellent reply to his current stupidity from another fan (which Stan didn't take well as can be expected):

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1soanoq

Edited February 17, 2016 by mwj

[mwj]

25 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

The club will be thrilled people still think Sherwood was the man responsible. 

And if our summer plan was to try and add flair then it was a spectacular failure. We're the worst attacking side in the league.

Well its his team, his transfers, his tactics, his substitutions, his comments in the media, his 7 games without a win, etc etc

But sure, it was someone else's fault.

[Keyblade]

17 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

And Sherwood will be thrilled that people are still absolving him of blame

Sherwood is not to blame, but we're losing games because Garde is not positive enough.

[HanoiVillan]

12 minutes ago, mwj said:

The guy is a absolute w******

This is an excellent reply to his current stupidity from another fan (which Stan didn't take well as can be expected):

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1soanoq

Great reply, agreed with almost all of it. 

The thing that irritates me about these discussions, when they turn to recruitment, is that the blame seems to quickly be attached to those new signings who are actually in the team on merit, and not the time-wasters who have already left because they were so shite (Ilori, Crespo) or the players who nobody wants back in the team (Sinclair) or the people who brought in the players (Fox, Reilly, Sherwood). It is always ignored in these discussions that the squad was threadbare last summer because the previous summer our total incomings were Cole, Senderos and Richardson for less than a million pounds, two of whom have already left the club with the other leaving in June. 

Still, that would require analysing the situation and dealing with the direction of the club over many years. Far easy to blame it all on a few Frenchmen in their early twenties in their first year in the league. 

Edited February 17, 2016 by HanoiVillan

[BOF]

16 hours ago, TRO said:

I basically agree with you, but it's more than a bad day at the office...This team is brittle and capable of anything as poor as the Liverpool result even on the back of a confidence boosting 2-0 win....The Sunderland result was poor too.

Confidence drains out of this team at a click of your fingers.

The improvement is marginal and for me , there is no indicator that we are on the road to recovery.

On the fragility of this side we completely agree, but I think that's almost unavoidable in a side who are that far adrift.  At best they're going to be on tenterhooks.  They know the only way out is if everything goes their way.  So an injustice like a stone-wall penalty being denied, or a flukey goal etc, could absolutely knock the stuffing out of them far more than would be normal for most teams.  That's the nature of the beast.  It's the position they and others have gotten themselves into.  I wouldn't be too damning on them being fragile tbh.  It's the other stuff I'd hold more stock in.

[DCJonah]

31 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

And Sherwood will be thrilled that people are still absolving him of blame

I don't think many absolve him of any blame. It was clear to see he was out of his depth this season and doesn't look like he's good enough to be a manager at this level. But quite clearly the lack of quality in this squad and the shocking results and league position are down to much much more than Tim Sherwood. 

[Stevo985]

1 minute ago, DCJonah said:

I don't think many absolve him of any blame. It was clear to see he was out of his depth this season and doesn't look like he's good enough to be a manager at this level. But quite clearly the lack of quality in this squad and the shocking results and league position are down to much much more than Tim Sherwood. 

"Clearly" in your opinion.

Sherwood is far from the only factor. But he was a huge one last summer.

Edited February 17, 2016 by Stevo985