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What's wrong at Villa?


turvontour

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6 hours ago, Mantis said:

I've said this many times before and I'll say it again: I think part of our problems can be attributed to mentality. It's hard to explain, but it's like there's an air of defeat and weakness around the club. It's an inevitable result of all these years of decline. Although we've changed everything, some things several times over, many of the same issues still persist. Most managers end up playing terrible, ultra-defensive football even if they don't necessarily have a track-record of it prior to Villa (e.g. Lambert). We never control games and we're never scoring lots of goals consistently, in spite of all this talent we have. We constantly squander leads and collapse when we concede. All these issues seem to persist despite the playing and managerial staff. Because we've become so closely linked to defeat, weakness and fragility, it gets passed onto new arrivals. It helps to explain why we so often buy players with good track records who then just don't deliver, before going on to do better elsewhere.

Put it this way. When we're holding onto a lead we as fans all know that we're likely to crumble at some point. We expect it. It's what we're used to and it's what Villa have been doing for years. Now if we expect it, why won't players expect it also? The last few years make the club a breeding ground for low-confidence and mental fragility.

Unfortunately I think the only way to "banish" this air of defeat and weakness is to put together a consistently good season of getting results and playing well, or at the very least half a season. So far every time over the past few years where we've looked like we might be turning a corner we end up going backwards. If we can start to be associated with something other than weakness or boring football then I think that's when things are finally getting better.

This isn't a "curse" by the way, nor do I think the manager or players are blameless (far from it). However, the mental side of football is over understated.

This is more or less where I am at the moment with things. It’s interesting your point re. sustaining a good start as manager, as Sherwood and now Bruce have had similar records in that respect. Coming in and doing everything we’d hoped for in the first few months before switching to complete dross. No middle ground.

 

I think that the atmosphere of defeat around the club is weighing psychologically on the players, and is going to be a difficult one to turn around. I still don’t know how to quantify that in a behind the scenes of a football club sense, what does a bad losing mentality at a football club actually mean? Does it transcend from the manager, owners, directors, or is it the footballers that have been there throughout this spell? They’re just football matches and results that we’re looking for at the end of the day, and this is a very strong bunch of players that regularly improves (on paper at least). You’d have thought that the tide would change at some point, just by laws of averages. Its baffling.

 

We’ve been in a rut of losing for so long that it has just become par for the course. Leicester have been a great example of this both positively and negatively in recent times and show how belief and confidence can more or less achieve anything irrespective of players. Has Ranieri gone from presumably the best manager in Europe last season (given the players at his disposal) to one of the weakest managers in Europe this season? Similarly to Bruce, it’s the same man that had us all dreaming of automatic promotion following that bounce in October/November. I’m none the wiser.

 

My gut feeling is that this club needs continuity at the moment, so sacking Bruce in the next few months probably shouldn’t be an option. But if he has indeed been villafied (excuse the pun) then maybe giving him time will just make things worse. And we really haven’t got time on our side at the moment given how close we are to the business end of the season.

 

Thanks for the responses by the way folks, really opened my eyes to a few things.

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Bruce made 2 huge errors in replacing golliNi with another inexperienced keeper and not getting in a striker on loan before letting gestede leave meaning we had to rely n gabby who has scored something like one goal in 30 games.

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Those who are better a designing a poster than me, but it should read:

 

Is your club on a losing streak?

Has your striker not scored for months?

Do you have a new player that has never played for your first team?

Do you have a player that used to play for small heath?

Do you have a player that has never scored a goal?

Do you want to break any records?

Do you want any of your players to have the best game of their career?

 

If the answer to any of these questions is yes - then come and play Aston Villa - they will oblige

 

 

 

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Not much.

We suffered from poor investment and an owner who fostered a culture of neglect which spread throughout the Club, and we exacerbated it by appointing some crummy Managers and maybe one, Lambert, who became crummy due to that self same culture.

We now have reversed that culture of neglect, and just need the right Manager to take us forward.

And we need to keep looking until we find the right fit.

 

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1 hour ago, terrytini said:

Not much.

We suffered from poor investment and an owner who fostered a culture of neglect which spread throughout the Club, and we exacerbated it by appointing some crummy Managers and maybe one, Lambert, who became crummy due to that self same culture.

We now have reversed that culture of neglect, and just need the right Manager to take us forward.

And we need to keep looking until we find the right fit.

I agree with one caveat. No, I wouldn't have picked Bruce either, but now we've got him we have to give him a chance. He inherited someone else's team after several years of utter rubbish. He inherited an unbalanced squad with a number of reprobates in it.

There is nothing to be gained whatsoever from getting rid of Bruce this season. There is much to be lost - specifically furthering the disruption of repeated managerial changes, delaying again the "settling down" of the cub under a set of people running it. Bruce has to be allowed to find a team from the squad he's now assembled and to drill them into playing winning football.

The best chance of properly turning the club round is stability, the worst chance is to keep changing managers like Leeds did under that mad italian fella.

I suspect we have similar feelings on Bruce as a manager, but I really belive we need to settle down, get the players and manager used to each other and working properly. I'd change the coach before the manager.

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In turn I'd like to agree with that.

I certainly agree if at all possible we should stick with Bruce.

However I can't support what he's doing at the moment. If what in my view are poor tactics, selection, and approach, continued I'd like him hone at the seasons end.....or sooner if in five games time we are plummeting to League 1.

Whilst I fully agree stability is best it can't mean a poor performing Manager is retained for over half a season.

Id be willing to keep giving guys half a season until one delivers, which of course (hopefully) Bruce may yet do.

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24 minutes ago, blandy said:

I agree with one caveat. No, I wouldn't have picked Bruce either, but now we've got him we have to give him a chance. He inherited someone else's team after several years of utter rubbish. He inherited an unbalanced squad with a number of reprobates in it.

There is nothing to be gained whatsoever from getting rid of Bruce this season. There is much to be lost - specifically furthering the disruption of repeated managerial changes, delaying again the "settling down" of the cub under a set of people running it. Bruce has to be allowed to find a team from the squad he's now assembled and to drill them into playing winning football.

The best chance of properly turning the club round is stability, the worst chance is to keep changing managers like Leeds did under that mad italian fella.

I suspect we have similar feelings on Bruce as a manager, but I really belive we need to settle down, get the players and manager used to each other and working properly. I'd change the coach before the manager.

Last line is the key for me - Bruce has never worked with calderwood before - since he started taking training we have regressed - ditch calderwood and get Bruce's old number 2 mike phelan who is now available.

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Bruce has never built anything more than a sandcastle. He is the classic short term manager. Now, while I disagreed with his hiring, I could clearly see the logic in trying our hardest to go back up at the first time of asking. But, since he has clearly failed in that regard, why are we keeping him? He's not going to put in place a structure on which the first team can progress over the next 3-5yrs. All he has ever done is wring all he can out of a first team and then bring in a new purchase to paper over his limited ability until even that trick stops working. Then kaboom. He deserves credit for not being as thick as Alan Pardew and not a great deal more. In current football parlance, he's the classic PFM caricature of a manager. 

Edited by villakram
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Bruce is the obvious element of the club to change right now, so that we can have another go at getting favourable results.

But will a new manager not want his own players and staff, and so any semblance of continuity is again lost and we are in effect starting again?

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Bring back MON... Offer him a shit-ton of cash to come back and give us something to cheer again...

We all know the last time we properly cheered was when he was here... and he only left when Lerner bottled it and wouldn't bankroll us anymore... The prick!

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1 minute ago, DJ_Villain said:

Bring back MON... Offer him a shit-ton of cash to come back and give us something to cheer again...

We all know the last time we properly cheered was when he was here... and he only left when Lerner bottled it and wouldn't bankroll us anymore... The prick!

How I long for those days of being part of the top 6 and actually looking exciting and dangerous with players who actually cared. 

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1 minute ago, Genie said:

It's like a worse version of England with the golden generation, why are they so shit as a team? Nobody could figure it out.

Sort of. Except England's golden generation were knocked out of tournaments by the likes of Germany and Portugal. We are losing at home to Ipswich and Barnsley.

******** Barnsley!!!

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10 minutes ago, Tommo_b said:

How I long for those days of being part of the top 6 and actually looking exciting and dangerous with players who actually cared. 

They were good times right? Remember the feeling of looking at a fixture and thinking:
'We can turn those words removed right over!'
Now, I get shit scared thinking of playing Rotherham...

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Just now, DJ_Villain said:

They were good times right? Remember the feeling of looking at a fixture and thinking:
'We can turn those words removed right over!'
Now, I get shit scared thinking of playing Rotherham...

raw

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17 minutes ago, DJ_Villain said:

Bring back MON... Offer him a shit-ton of cash to come back and give us something to cheer again...

We all know the last time we properly cheered was when he was here... and he only left when Lerner bottled it and wouldn't bankroll us anymore... The prick!

This is almost as bad as the bring back Sherwood argument.

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5 minutes ago, Mantis said:

This is almost as bad as the bring back Sherwood argument.

Why? Because Sherwood gave us top 6 finishes, brought players in to make them play as a team and got them into the England squad?
No, he didn't... He fluked getting us to an FA cup final (which we took a hiding in) then got found out...

At least we had something to cheer about under MON

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