Christian Purslow

[DCJonah]

11 minutes ago, Steero113 said:

Grealish saga was handled exceptionally well imo. 

I'm not sure you can say exceptional. 

It was a release clause, it was out of our control. I'm not sure how it could have gone differently. 

They also seem to have made a right mess with investing that money to replace him.

[Steero113]

12 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

I'm not sure you can say exceptional. 

It was a release clause, it was out of our control. I'm not sure how it could have gone differently. 

They also seem to have made a right mess with investing that money to replace him.

Yeah, I would agree that there have to be questions over how the money was reinvested, but the actual process given the media frenzy surrounding the whole saga was done very well. 

It all started with the release clause being agreed in the first place, which secured maximum value for the club. The fact that City paid £100m in the first place is now looking comical given how much he actually plays for them. He wasn't even needed.

[PerryBarrPet]

6 hours ago, TheAuthority said:

He owns a share of AVFC and NSWE are the gravy train he bought a ticket to be on.

However much he thinks he loves Liverplop and Stevie G, he loves his retirement fund more.

He will sack Slippy once he has a replacement ready to be announced. Purslow knows he made a mistake. I think he'll be more determined than ever to get the next one right. 

Agree with all of this. We all know, including Purslow, that we cannot afford any more nasty surprises.

[0Lamptey]

I think this is the right thread, on the basis that Christian Purslow is in charge of ‘appointing excellent people’ (his words) to move the club forward, whether that is on the playing side, or in wider operations. After 3-4 years, if you look beyond the PR, a lot of things are starting to worry me.

I’ll acknowledge that some good things appear to have been happening at the Academy, with sensible appointments, and some results being seen already, but it’s starting to look a bit of a mess elsewhere.

Over the weekend, I started thinking about some of the things that have gone wrong over the last few years, why these might have happened, and how these issues might relate to key appointments.

Overall, despite the the big talk post-promotion, the on-pitch strategy is difficult to discern. Obviously, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and all clubs have hits and misses, but, it’s equally easy to get caught in a wave of positivity and blindly trust Club decisions and PR.

Pitarch Era

Jesus Garcia Pitarch apparently did a good job at Valencia/Atletico in the 2000s, clubs challenging for champions league at the time. I’m not sure how that was ever going to be transferable to a team trying to rebuild a whole squad and survive in the Premier League.

Yes we needed to sign a lot of players due to the state of the squad, but on the whole the quality of signings was pretty poor. A majority seemed on the risky side with limited English league experience (Mings, Targett, Konsa, Heaton and El Ghazi were relatively safe bets/ known quantities). While players like Trez did a job, the majority of the imports took a long time to settle and delivered little to nothing and have little or no resale value.

Other mid-low table teams signed a range of lower risk options with decent experience that year: Ings, Webster, Bowen, Che Adams, Craig Dawson, James McCarthy, Dean Henderson (Loan), Walker Peters (Loan) Gary Cahill (FREE), Wellbeck (FREE), Callum Robinson, Maupay, Billing etc. You could argue that some of them such as Bowen wouldn’t have come to us at the time due to precarious league position, others were not long-term solutions, but all seemed viable options at similar or in most cases much less money than we spent. All offered at least one element that we lacked, such as physicality, pace, guile, or experience. On the riskier side, it’s worth noting that Sarr and Saint-Maximin both arrived from France that summer for £27m and £15m respectively.

The reluctance to use the loan system and ‘develop other club’s players’ now seems particularly naive and perhaps arrogant given the situation we were in. Arrogance seems like a recurring theme when considering some of the major strategic decisions made over the past few seasons.

Lange Era

Johan Lange is a 42 year old technical director who had previously only held that position at FC Copenhagen between 2014-2020. That team hasn’t finished outside the top 4 since 1999, more often than not winning the championship. Lange has been in post for 5 transfer windows now. I haven’t seen any evidence of any unknown players signed for a relatively small amount that could develop, no hidden gems. 

Of the group signed in summer 2020, only Watkins, Cash and Martinez worked, which is around a reasonable 50% success rate. But tellingly, we did not properly address squad weaknesses: size and physicality through the spine of the team, or pace and creativity out wide. Eze, Raphinha, Soucek, Loftus-Cheek, and Dawson all moved that summer to promoted or previously relegation threatened clubs for around £15m or much less, and could have added those elements to the squad.

The Club must have suspected Jack Grealish wanted to leave prior to signing the big contract with the £100m buy out clause. The Club said they always had a plan for life with and without Jack, but I’m not so sure.

It’s easy to say now, but where was the plan for a direct replacement (a powerful ball carrier playing from the left with Prem experience such as ASM, Zaha)? At least then the team shape and playing style wouldn’t need to be changed so drastically.

It’s early days but both Brighton and Leeds have just sold not one but two of their key players (perhaps in both cases their two best players). They have both either identified and signed direct replacements, or promoted squad players, and neither team have experienced the immediate down-turn in form you might have expected, and that we suffered. This might be good recruitment, a clearly defined system, or more likely a combination of both.

Buying 3 players to replace Jack’s output sounded very clever on paper, but it doesn’t really make sense. Despite patchy form in claret and blue, I believe that the three players are all high quality. But even at the time, it was difficult to see how they would fit into the same team. Ings in particular seemed like a PR signing to stem some of the negativity around the Grealish sale. I feel sorry for Dean Smith, it was probably the right time for him to go, but he was likely hamstrung by this strategy.

The midfield/spine still wasn’t addressed for the third summer in a row. There was a lot of talk about Ward-Prowse and Romeu, but we decided to carry on with essentially the same midfield that almost saw us relegated (with a young and untried JJ essentially coming in for Conor). The squad remained unballanced, again lacking size and physicality through the spine, meaning that we had a tendency to be bullied and collapse under pressure.

For me, this summer, the midfield was the area that needed major surgery. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Mings and Konsa. They’ve showed that they can be a formidable unit in the right system with proper protection. I really like Dougie, but he’s not a sole holding DM. I really like Ramsey, but he shouldn’t be playing every game as a No.8. I don’t think John McGinn is consistent enough to play as a No.8 in this system. I think he’d be an effective squad player option, maybe in an advanced midfield/second striker role (similar to that which Gerrard/Lampard basically played), busting into the box, causing mayhem and belting shots from 15-20 yards.

While Kamara looks an excellent signing, we’ll probably never know if Sanson could work in the midfield, and there needed to be at least one more No.8 signing.

Note: Dan Ashworth was Technical Director at Brighton from Aug 2018 until Feb 2022. He got poached by Newcastle immediately after the new regime took over, which looks like a very smart decision.

Gerrard Era

The Gerrard appointment also now looks arrogant. Immediately after the appointment, I was on the fence, but I reasoned that he must have something if he managed to go unbeaten for a whole season, and then there were impressive Europa League performances. But looking at the SPL table last season, both Celtic and Rangers lost just 3/38 games each, Celtic in winning the league lost 2 in 18/20 and went unbeaten themselves in 16/17.

I look at coaches who have secured Championship promotions with limited budgets over the past few seasons (Frank - a youth international coach since 2008 and Cooper - a youth international coach since 2014) and wonder whether that is a greater achievement than an SPL win.

I’m impressed with what Frank has done with Brentford. On promotion they seemed to turn in to a more pragmatic, tougher, wiser team that are a real pain to play against. I look at the way Forest went at Spurs on Sunday. Their team included a midfield signing from Huddersfield, a no striker front three including two new signings. They attacked in a fast, aggressive, exciting and coherent way and looked like they had been playing together for years. It's one game, but it was shocking and impressive to see this kind of exciting football! Silva at Fulham also seems to have shaped his team into a more robust unit that still carry a threat, with many of the same players that were relegated in spectacular fashion two years ago. They ran Arsenal really close on Saturday night.

I remember that Dean Smith held the title ‘head coach’, but is Gerrard’s title ‘manager’? It appears that he has more influence than Smith, and it has been suggested that Gerrard wanted to change the transfer strategy from young developable players to those that had experience of winning. This would be a worrying sign, having a long term strategy should provide some continuity even when the manager/head coach is changed.

The more I hear about the lack of day-to-day coaching from Gerrard, and the reliance on the coaching and tactical experience of an assistant, the more concerned I get. I understand that some managers work this way, but they have usually ‘been there and done’ the coaching and now take less of a hands on role where experience is key. It is very unusual for a manager to start out in this way, like Gerrard has. It feels like purely a 'personality' based appointment.

After 30-odd games in charge, aside from a handful of strong performances, usually against struggling teams, I don’t see much of an identity. Where we have looked good is during the early weeks and the home games against City and Liverpool, when we tightened up. Surely this was a blueprint for going forwards? What I do see more often are stodgy performances and bad habits such as conceding early goals, goals straight after half-time, or multiple goals in short periods. The game plan seems to be, ‘play like Liverpool’, but we don’t have some of the World’s best players at full back, centre back, or in-attack. Fundamental flaws remain week after week.

Other miscellaneous things bugging me

Some fans may not see these things as important, but don’t really see things progressing off the pitch.

• We are still plagued by strange betting company sponsorships on the shirt, from WW88, to whatever it was last year, to the latest version. None of these companies seem to have any real presence online.
• The club jumped on the Crypto bandwagon with the Socios fan token launch.
• We seem to have downgraded from Kappa, an established kit manufacturer, to a new entry in the market that has come from nowhere and now produces for loads of teams in the UK and Europe. It all looks a bit cheap to me. I know Kappa got some criticism, but in my opinion they made very stylish and well thought-out kits. The player spec versions were particularly impressive and I thought they gave our players an imposing look. We were the brand’s only premier league team, and one of their top 5 teams in Europe.
• At kick-off, the bells and whistles to get the crowd amped up, seem counterintuitive. Does anyone really like High Ho Silver Lining and what is the strange choral music that we walk out to? All of this just drowns out the organic atmosphere that can be so special at Villa Park.
• The quality and level of service for food and drink in the stadium is still really poor.

 

[one_ian_taylor]

13 minutes ago, 0Lamptey said:

I think this is the right thread, on the basis that Christian Purslow is in charge of ‘appointing excellent people’ (his words) to move the club forward, whether that is on the playing side, or in wider operations. After 3-4 years, if you look beyond the PR, a lot of things are starting to worry me.

I’ll acknowledge that some good things appear to have been happening at the Academy, with sensible appointments, and some results being seen already, but it’s starting to look a bit of a mess elsewhere.

Over the weekend, I started thinking about some of the things that have gone wrong over the last few years, why these might have happened, and how these issues might relate to key appointments.

Overall, despite the the big talk post-promotion, the on-pitch strategy is difficult to discern. Obviously, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and all clubs have hits and misses, but, it’s equally easy to get caught in a wave of positivity and blindly trust Club decisions and PR.

Pitarch Era

Jesus Garcia Pitarch apparently did a good job at Valencia/Atletico in the 2000s, clubs challenging for champions league at the time. I’m not sure how that was ever going to be transferable to a team trying to rebuild a whole squad and survive in the Premier League.

Yes we needed to sign a lot of players due to the state of the squad, but on the whole the quality of signings was pretty poor. A majority seemed on the risky side with limited English league experience (Mings, Targett, Konsa, Heaton and El Ghazi were relatively safe bets/ known quantities). While players like Trez did a job, the majority of the imports took a long time to settle and delivered little to nothing and have little or no resale value.

Other mid-low table teams signed a range of lower risk options with decent experience that year: Ings, Webster, Bowen, Che Adams, Craig Dawson, James McCarthy, Dean Henderson (Loan), Walker Peters (Loan) Gary Cahill (FREE), Wellbeck (FREE), Callum Robinson, Maupay, Billing etc. You could argue that some of them such as Bowen wouldn’t have come to us at the time due to precarious league position, others were not long-term solutions, but all seemed viable options at similar or in most cases much less money than we spent. All offered at least one element that we lacked, such as physicality, pace, guile, or experience. On the riskier side, it’s worth noting that Sarr and Saint-Maximin both arrived from France that summer for £27m and £15m respectively.

The reluctance to use the loan system and ‘develop other club’s players’ now seems particularly naive and perhaps arrogant given the situation we were in. Arrogance seems like a recurring theme when considering some of the major strategic decisions made over the past few seasons.

Lange Era

Johan Lange is a 42 year old technical director who had previously only held that position at FC Copenhagen between 2014-2020. That team hasn’t finished outside the top 4 since 1999, more often than not winning the championship. Lange has been in post for 5 transfer windows now. I haven’t seen any evidence of any unknown players signed for a relatively small amount that could develop, no hidden gems. 

Of the group signed in summer 2020, only Watkins, Cash and Martinez worked, which is around a reasonable 50% success rate. But tellingly, we did not properly address squad weaknesses: size and physicality through the spine of the team, or pace and creativity out wide. Eze, Raphinha, Soucek, Loftus-Cheek, and Dawson all moved that summer to promoted or previously relegation threatened clubs for around £15m or much less, and could have added those elements to the squad.

The Club must have suspected Jack Grealish wanted to leave prior to signing the big contract with the £100m buy out clause. The Club said they always had a plan for life with and without Jack, but I’m not so sure.

It’s easy to say now, but where was the plan for a direct replacement (a powerful ball carrier playing from the left with Prem experience such as ASM, Zaha)? At least then the team shape and playing style wouldn’t need to be changed so drastically.

It’s early days but both Brighton and Leeds have just sold not one but two of their key players (perhaps in both cases their two best players). They have both either identified and signed direct replacements, or promoted squad players, and neither team have experienced the immediate down-turn in form you might have expected, and that we suffered. This might be good recruitment, a clearly defined system, or more likely a combination of both.

Buying 3 players to replace Jack’s output sounded very clever on paper, but it doesn’t really make sense. Despite patchy form in claret and blue, I believe that the three players are all high quality. But even at the time, it was difficult to see how they would fit into the same team. Ings in particular seemed like a PR signing to stem some of the negativity around the Grealish sale. I feel sorry for Dean Smith, it was probably the right time for him to go, but he was likely hamstrung by this strategy.

The midfield/spine still wasn’t addressed for the third summer in a row. There was a lot of talk about Ward-Prowse and Romeu, but we decided to carry on with essentially the same midfield that almost saw us relegated (with a young and untried JJ essentially coming in for Conor). The squad remained unballanced, again lacking size and physicality through the spine, meaning that we had a tendency to be bullied and collapse under pressure.

For me, this summer, the midfield was the area that needed major surgery. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Mings and Konsa. They’ve showed that they can be a formidable unit in the right system with proper protection. I really like Dougie, but he’s not a sole holding DM. I really like Ramsey, but he shouldn’t be playing every game as a No.8. I don’t think John McGinn is consistent enough to play as a No.8 in this system. I think he’d be an effective squad player option, maybe in an advanced midfield/second striker role (similar to that which Gerrard/Lampard basically played), busting into the box, causing mayhem and belting shots from 15-20 yards.

While Kamara looks an excellent signing, we’ll probably never know if Sanson could work in the midfield, and there needed to be at least one more No.8 signing.

Note: Dan Ashworth was Technical Director at Brighton from Aug 2018 until Feb 2022. He got poached by Newcastle immediately after the new regime took over, which looks like a very smart decision.

Gerrard Era

The Gerrard appointment also now looks arrogant. Immediately after the appointment, I was on the fence, but I reasoned that he must have something if he managed to go unbeaten for a whole season, and then there were impressive Europa League performances. But looking at the SPL table last season, both Celtic and Rangers lost just 3/38 games each, Celtic in winning the league lost 2 in 18/20 and went unbeaten themselves in 16/17.

I look at coaches who have secured Championship promotions with limited budgets over the past few seasons (Frank - a youth international coach since 2008 and Cooper - a youth international coach since 2014) and wonder whether that is a greater achievement than an SPL win.

I’m impressed with what Frank has done with Brentford. On promotion they seemed to turn in to a more pragmatic, tougher, wiser team that are a real pain to play against. I look at the way Forest went at Spurs on Sunday. Their team included a midfield signing from Huddersfield, a no striker front three including two new signings. They attacked in a fast, aggressive, exciting and coherent way and looked like they had been playing together for years. It's one game, but it was shocking and impressive to see this kind of exciting football! Silva at Fulham also seems to have shaped his team into a more robust unit that still carry a threat, with many of the same players that were relegated in spectacular fashion two years ago. They ran Arsenal really close on Saturday night.

I remember that Dean Smith held the title ‘head coach’, but is Gerrard’s title ‘manager’? It appears that he has more influence than Smith, and it has been suggested that Gerrard wanted to change the transfer strategy from young developable players to those that had experience of winning. This would be a worrying sign, having a long term strategy should provide some continuity even when the manager/head coach is changed.

The more I hear about the lack of day-to-day coaching from Gerrard, and the reliance on the coaching and tactical experience of an assistant, the more concerned I get. I understand that some managers work this way, but they have usually ‘been there and done’ the coaching and now take less of a hands on role where experience is key. It is very unusual for a manager to start out in this way, like Gerrard has. It feels like purely a 'personality' based appointment.

After 30-odd games in charge, aside from a handful of strong performances, usually against struggling teams, I don’t see much of an identity. Where we have looked good is during the early weeks and the home games against City and Liverpool, when we tightened up. Surely this was a blueprint for going forwards? What I do see more often are stodgy performances and bad habits such as conceding early goals, goals straight after half-time, or multiple goals in short periods. The game plan seems to be, ‘play like Liverpool’, but we don’t have some of the World’s best players at full back, centre back, or in-attack. Fundamental flaws remain week after week.

Other miscellaneous things bugging me

Some fans may not see these things as important, but don’t really see things progressing off the pitch.

• We are still plagued by strange betting company sponsorships on the shirt, from WW88, to whatever it was last year, to the latest version. None of these companies seem to have any real presence online.
• The club jumped on the Crypto bandwagon with the Socios fan token launch.
• We seem to have downgraded from Kappa, an established kit manufacturer, to a new entry in the market that has come from nowhere and now produces for loads of teams in the UK and Europe. It all looks a bit cheap to me. I know Kappa got some criticism, but in my opinion they made very stylish and well thought-out kits. The player spec versions were particularly impressive and I thought they gave our players an imposing look. We were the brand’s only premier league team, and one of their top 5 teams in Europe.
• At kick-off, the bells and whistles to get the crowd amped up, seem counterintuitive. Does anyone really like High Ho Silver Lining and what is the strange choral music that we walk out to? All of this just drowns out the organic atmosphere that can be so special at Villa Park.
• The quality and level of service for food and drink in the stadium is still really poor.

 

A long rant, but a very good one

[Si.]

5 hours ago, Steero113 said:

Grealish saga was handled exceptionally well imo. 

I mean he did call him "Jack Greadish" on his video to the fans. Hats off to him.

[omariqy]

2 hours ago, 0Lamptey said:

I think this is the right thread, on the basis that Christian Purslow is in charge of ‘appointing excellent people’ (his words) to move the club forward, whether that is on the playing side, or in wider operations. After 3-4 years, if you look beyond the PR, a lot of things are starting to worry me.

I’ll acknowledge that some good things appear to have been happening at the Academy, with sensible appointments, and some results being seen already, but it’s starting to look a bit of a mess elsewhere.

Over the weekend, I started thinking about some of the things that have gone wrong over the last few years, why these might have happened, and how these issues might relate to key appointments.

Overall, despite the the big talk post-promotion, the on-pitch strategy is difficult to discern. Obviously, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and all clubs have hits and misses, but, it’s equally easy to get caught in a wave of positivity and blindly trust Club decisions and PR.

Pitarch Era

Jesus Garcia Pitarch apparently did a good job at Valencia/Atletico in the 2000s, clubs challenging for champions league at the time. I’m not sure how that was ever going to be transferable to a team trying to rebuild a whole squad and survive in the Premier League.

Yes we needed to sign a lot of players due to the state of the squad, but on the whole the quality of signings was pretty poor. A majority seemed on the risky side with limited English league experience (Mings, Targett, Konsa, Heaton and El Ghazi were relatively safe bets/ known quantities). While players like Trez did a job, the majority of the imports took a long time to settle and delivered little to nothing and have little or no resale value.

Other mid-low table teams signed a range of lower risk options with decent experience that year: Ings, Webster, Bowen, Che Adams, Craig Dawson, James McCarthy, Dean Henderson (Loan), Walker Peters (Loan) Gary Cahill (FREE), Wellbeck (FREE), Callum Robinson, Maupay, Billing etc. You could argue that some of them such as Bowen wouldn’t have come to us at the time due to precarious league position, others were not long-term solutions, but all seemed viable options at similar or in most cases much less money than we spent. All offered at least one element that we lacked, such as physicality, pace, guile, or experience. On the riskier side, it’s worth noting that Sarr and Saint-Maximin both arrived from France that summer for £27m and £15m respectively.

The reluctance to use the loan system and ‘develop other club’s players’ now seems particularly naive and perhaps arrogant given the situation we were in. Arrogance seems like a recurring theme when considering some of the major strategic decisions made over the past few seasons.

Lange Era

Johan Lange is a 42 year old technical director who had previously only held that position at FC Copenhagen between 2014-2020. That team hasn’t finished outside the top 4 since 1999, more often than not winning the championship. Lange has been in post for 5 transfer windows now. I haven’t seen any evidence of any unknown players signed for a relatively small amount that could develop, no hidden gems. 

Of the group signed in summer 2020, only Watkins, Cash and Martinez worked, which is around a reasonable 50% success rate. But tellingly, we did not properly address squad weaknesses: size and physicality through the spine of the team, or pace and creativity out wide. Eze, Raphinha, Soucek, Loftus-Cheek, and Dawson all moved that summer to promoted or previously relegation threatened clubs for around £15m or much less, and could have added those elements to the squad.

The Club must have suspected Jack Grealish wanted to leave prior to signing the big contract with the £100m buy out clause. The Club said they always had a plan for life with and without Jack, but I’m not so sure.

It’s easy to say now, but where was the plan for a direct replacement (a powerful ball carrier playing from the left with Prem experience such as ASM, Zaha)? At least then the team shape and playing style wouldn’t need to be changed so drastically.

It’s early days but both Brighton and Leeds have just sold not one but two of their key players (perhaps in both cases their two best players). They have both either identified and signed direct replacements, or promoted squad players, and neither team have experienced the immediate down-turn in form you might have expected, and that we suffered. This might be good recruitment, a clearly defined system, or more likely a combination of both.

Buying 3 players to replace Jack’s output sounded very clever on paper, but it doesn’t really make sense. Despite patchy form in claret and blue, I believe that the three players are all high quality. But even at the time, it was difficult to see how they would fit into the same team. Ings in particular seemed like a PR signing to stem some of the negativity around the Grealish sale. I feel sorry for Dean Smith, it was probably the right time for him to go, but he was likely hamstrung by this strategy.

The midfield/spine still wasn’t addressed for the third summer in a row. There was a lot of talk about Ward-Prowse and Romeu, but we decided to carry on with essentially the same midfield that almost saw us relegated (with a young and untried JJ essentially coming in for Conor). The squad remained unballanced, again lacking size and physicality through the spine, meaning that we had a tendency to be bullied and collapse under pressure.

For me, this summer, the midfield was the area that needed major surgery. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Mings and Konsa. They’ve showed that they can be a formidable unit in the right system with proper protection. I really like Dougie, but he’s not a sole holding DM. I really like Ramsey, but he shouldn’t be playing every game as a No.8. I don’t think John McGinn is consistent enough to play as a No.8 in this system. I think he’d be an effective squad player option, maybe in an advanced midfield/second striker role (similar to that which Gerrard/Lampard basically played), busting into the box, causing mayhem and belting shots from 15-20 yards.

While Kamara looks an excellent signing, we’ll probably never know if Sanson could work in the midfield, and there needed to be at least one more No.8 signing.

Note: Dan Ashworth was Technical Director at Brighton from Aug 2018 until Feb 2022. He got poached by Newcastle immediately after the new regime took over, which looks like a very smart decision.

Gerrard Era

The Gerrard appointment also now looks arrogant. Immediately after the appointment, I was on the fence, but I reasoned that he must have something if he managed to go unbeaten for a whole season, and then there were impressive Europa League performances. But looking at the SPL table last season, both Celtic and Rangers lost just 3/38 games each, Celtic in winning the league lost 2 in 18/20 and went unbeaten themselves in 16/17.

I look at coaches who have secured Championship promotions with limited budgets over the past few seasons (Frank - a youth international coach since 2008 and Cooper - a youth international coach since 2014) and wonder whether that is a greater achievement than an SPL win.

I’m impressed with what Frank has done with Brentford. On promotion they seemed to turn in to a more pragmatic, tougher, wiser team that are a real pain to play against. I look at the way Forest went at Spurs on Sunday. Their team included a midfield signing from Huddersfield, a no striker front three including two new signings. They attacked in a fast, aggressive, exciting and coherent way and looked like they had been playing together for years. It's one game, but it was shocking and impressive to see this kind of exciting football! Silva at Fulham also seems to have shaped his team into a more robust unit that still carry a threat, with many of the same players that were relegated in spectacular fashion two years ago. They ran Arsenal really close on Saturday night.

I remember that Dean Smith held the title ‘head coach’, but is Gerrard’s title ‘manager’? It appears that he has more influence than Smith, and it has been suggested that Gerrard wanted to change the transfer strategy from young developable players to those that had experience of winning. This would be a worrying sign, having a long term strategy should provide some continuity even when the manager/head coach is changed.

The more I hear about the lack of day-to-day coaching from Gerrard, and the reliance on the coaching and tactical experience of an assistant, the more concerned I get. I understand that some managers work this way, but they have usually ‘been there and done’ the coaching and now take less of a hands on role where experience is key. It is very unusual for a manager to start out in this way, like Gerrard has. It feels like purely a 'personality' based appointment.

After 30-odd games in charge, aside from a handful of strong performances, usually against struggling teams, I don’t see much of an identity. Where we have looked good is during the early weeks and the home games against City and Liverpool, when we tightened up. Surely this was a blueprint for going forwards? What I do see more often are stodgy performances and bad habits such as conceding early goals, goals straight after half-time, or multiple goals in short periods. The game plan seems to be, ‘play like Liverpool’, but we don’t have some of the World’s best players at full back, centre back, or in-attack. Fundamental flaws remain week after week.

Other miscellaneous things bugging me

Some fans may not see these things as important, but don’t really see things progressing off the pitch.

• We are still plagued by strange betting company sponsorships on the shirt, from WW88, to whatever it was last year, to the latest version. None of these companies seem to have any real presence online.
• The club jumped on the Crypto bandwagon with the Socios fan token launch.
• We seem to have downgraded from Kappa, an established kit manufacturer, to a new entry in the market that has come from nowhere and now produces for loads of teams in the UK and Europe. It all looks a bit cheap to me. I know Kappa got some criticism, but in my opinion they made very stylish and well thought-out kits. The player spec versions were particularly impressive and I thought they gave our players an imposing look. We were the brand’s only premier league team, and one of their top 5 teams in Europe.
• At kick-off, the bells and whistles to get the crowd amped up, seem counterintuitive. Does anyone really like High Ho Silver Lining and what is the strange choral music that we walk out to? All of this just drowns out the organic atmosphere that can be so special at Villa Park.
• The quality and level of service for food and drink in the stadium is still really poor.

 

Excellent post for the main

[VillaParkAvenue]

4 hours ago, 0Lamptey said:

I think this is the right thread, on the basis that Christian Purslow is in charge of ‘appointing excellent people’ (his words) to move the club forward, whether that is on the playing side, or in wider operations. After 3-4 years, if you look beyond the PR, a lot of things are starting to worry me.

I’ll acknowledge that some good things appear to have been happening at the Academy, with sensible appointments, and some results being seen already, but it’s starting to look a bit of a mess elsewhere.

Over the weekend, I started thinking about some of the things that have gone wrong over the last few years, why these might have happened, and how these issues might relate to key appointments.

Overall, despite the the big talk post-promotion, the on-pitch strategy is difficult to discern. Obviously, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and all clubs have hits and misses, but, it’s equally easy to get caught in a wave of positivity and blindly trust Club decisions and PR.

Pitarch Era

Jesus Garcia Pitarch apparently did a good job at Valencia/Atletico in the 2000s, clubs challenging for champions league at the time. I’m not sure how that was ever going to be transferable to a team trying to rebuild a whole squad and survive in the Premier League.

Yes we needed to sign a lot of players due to the state of the squad, but on the whole the quality of signings was pretty poor. A majority seemed on the risky side with limited English league experience (Mings, Targett, Konsa, Heaton and El Ghazi were relatively safe bets/ known quantities). While players like Trez did a job, the majority of the imports took a long time to settle and delivered little to nothing and have little or no resale value.

Other mid-low table teams signed a range of lower risk options with decent experience that year: Ings, Webster, Bowen, Che Adams, Craig Dawson, James McCarthy, Dean Henderson (Loan), Walker Peters (Loan) Gary Cahill (FREE), Wellbeck (FREE), Callum Robinson, Maupay, Billing etc. You could argue that some of them such as Bowen wouldn’t have come to us at the time due to precarious league position, others were not long-term solutions, but all seemed viable options at similar or in most cases much less money than we spent. All offered at least one element that we lacked, such as physicality, pace, guile, or experience. On the riskier side, it’s worth noting that Sarr and Saint-Maximin both arrived from France that summer for £27m and £15m respectively.

The reluctance to use the loan system and ‘develop other club’s players’ now seems particularly naive and perhaps arrogant given the situation we were in. Arrogance seems like a recurring theme when considering some of the major strategic decisions made over the past few seasons.

Lange Era

Johan Lange is a 42 year old technical director who had previously only held that position at FC Copenhagen between 2014-2020. That team hasn’t finished outside the top 4 since 1999, more often than not winning the championship. Lange has been in post for 5 transfer windows now. I haven’t seen any evidence of any unknown players signed for a relatively small amount that could develop, no hidden gems. 

Of the group signed in summer 2020, only Watkins, Cash and Martinez worked, which is around a reasonable 50% success rate. But tellingly, we did not properly address squad weaknesses: size and physicality through the spine of the team, or pace and creativity out wide. Eze, Raphinha, Soucek, Loftus-Cheek, and Dawson all moved that summer to promoted or previously relegation threatened clubs for around £15m or much less, and could have added those elements to the squad.

The Club must have suspected Jack Grealish wanted to leave prior to signing the big contract with the £100m buy out clause. The Club said they always had a plan for life with and without Jack, but I’m not so sure.

It’s easy to say now, but where was the plan for a direct replacement (a powerful ball carrier playing from the left with Prem experience such as ASM, Zaha)? At least then the team shape and playing style wouldn’t need to be changed so drastically.

It’s early days but both Brighton and Leeds have just sold not one but two of their key players (perhaps in both cases their two best players). They have both either identified and signed direct replacements, or promoted squad players, and neither team have experienced the immediate down-turn in form you might have expected, and that we suffered. This might be good recruitment, a clearly defined system, or more likely a combination of both.

Buying 3 players to replace Jack’s output sounded very clever on paper, but it doesn’t really make sense. Despite patchy form in claret and blue, I believe that the three players are all high quality. But even at the time, it was difficult to see how they would fit into the same team. Ings in particular seemed like a PR signing to stem some of the negativity around the Grealish sale. I feel sorry for Dean Smith, it was probably the right time for him to go, but he was likely hamstrung by this strategy.

The midfield/spine still wasn’t addressed for the third summer in a row. There was a lot of talk about Ward-Prowse and Romeu, but we decided to carry on with essentially the same midfield that almost saw us relegated (with a young and untried JJ essentially coming in for Conor). The squad remained unballanced, again lacking size and physicality through the spine, meaning that we had a tendency to be bullied and collapse under pressure.

For me, this summer, the midfield was the area that needed major surgery. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Mings and Konsa. They’ve showed that they can be a formidable unit in the right system with proper protection. I really like Dougie, but he’s not a sole holding DM. I really like Ramsey, but he shouldn’t be playing every game as a No.8. I don’t think John McGinn is consistent enough to play as a No.8 in this system. I think he’d be an effective squad player option, maybe in an advanced midfield/second striker role (similar to that which Gerrard/Lampard basically played), busting into the box, causing mayhem and belting shots from 15-20 yards.

While Kamara looks an excellent signing, we’ll probably never know if Sanson could work in the midfield, and there needed to be at least one more No.8 signing.

Note: Dan Ashworth was Technical Director at Brighton from Aug 2018 until Feb 2022. He got poached by Newcastle immediately after the new regime took over, which looks like a very smart decision.

Gerrard Era

The Gerrard appointment also now looks arrogant. Immediately after the appointment, I was on the fence, but I reasoned that he must have something if he managed to go unbeaten for a whole season, and then there were impressive Europa League performances. But looking at the SPL table last season, both Celtic and Rangers lost just 3/38 games each, Celtic in winning the league lost 2 in 18/20 and went unbeaten themselves in 16/17.

I look at coaches who have secured Championship promotions with limited budgets over the past few seasons (Frank - a youth international coach since 2008 and Cooper - a youth international coach since 2014) and wonder whether that is a greater achievement than an SPL win.

I’m impressed with what Frank has done with Brentford. On promotion they seemed to turn in to a more pragmatic, tougher, wiser team that are a real pain to play against. I look at the way Forest went at Spurs on Sunday. Their team included a midfield signing from Huddersfield, a no striker front three including two new signings. They attacked in a fast, aggressive, exciting and coherent way and looked like they had been playing together for years. It's one game, but it was shocking and impressive to see this kind of exciting football! Silva at Fulham also seems to have shaped his team into a more robust unit that still carry a threat, with many of the same players that were relegated in spectacular fashion two years ago. They ran Arsenal really close on Saturday night.

I remember that Dean Smith held the title ‘head coach’, but is Gerrard’s title ‘manager’? It appears that he has more influence than Smith, and it has been suggested that Gerrard wanted to change the transfer strategy from young developable players to those that had experience of winning. This would be a worrying sign, having a long term strategy should provide some continuity even when the manager/head coach is changed.

The more I hear about the lack of day-to-day coaching from Gerrard, and the reliance on the coaching and tactical experience of an assistant, the more concerned I get. I understand that some managers work this way, but they have usually ‘been there and done’ the coaching and now take less of a hands on role where experience is key. It is very unusual for a manager to start out in this way, like Gerrard has. It feels like purely a 'personality' based appointment.

After 30-odd games in charge, aside from a handful of strong performances, usually against struggling teams, I don’t see much of an identity. Where we have looked good is during the early weeks and the home games against City and Liverpool, when we tightened up. Surely this was a blueprint for going forwards? What I do see more often are stodgy performances and bad habits such as conceding early goals, goals straight after half-time, or multiple goals in short periods. The game plan seems to be, ‘play like Liverpool’, but we don’t have some of the World’s best players at full back, centre back, or in-attack. Fundamental flaws remain week after week.

Other miscellaneous things bugging me

Some fans may not see these things as important, but don’t really see things progressing off the pitch.

• We are still plagued by strange betting company sponsorships on the shirt, from WW88, to whatever it was last year, to the latest version. None of these companies seem to have any real presence online.
• The club jumped on the Crypto bandwagon with the Socios fan token launch.
• We seem to have downgraded from Kappa, an established kit manufacturer, to a new entry in the market that has come from nowhere and now produces for loads of teams in the UK and Europe. It all looks a bit cheap to me. I know Kappa got some criticism, but in my opinion they made very stylish and well thought-out kits. The player spec versions were particularly impressive and I thought they gave our players an imposing look. We were the brand’s only premier league team, and one of their top 5 teams in Europe.
• At kick-off, the bells and whistles to get the crowd amped up, seem counterintuitive. Does anyone really like High Ho Silver Lining and what is the strange choral music that we walk out to? All of this just drowns out the organic atmosphere that can be so special at Villa Park.
• The quality and level of service for food and drink in the stadium is still really poor.

 

Brilliant post. It seems to me the club has been hamstrung by arrogance (as you say) and vanity. I guess those traits are pretty much Christian Purslow’s personality. There seems to be an obsession with acting like a ”big club” in every instance.

Right now it doesn’t even matter how great the main owners may be, or if we appointed Pochettino, as long as the club on the whole is still run as Purslow’s fantasy football project.

[WHY]

5 hours ago, 0Lamptey said:

I think this is the right thread, on the basis that Christian Purslow is in charge of ‘appointing excellent people’ (his words) to move the club forward, whether that is on the playing side, or in wider operations. After 3-4 years, if you look beyond the PR, a lot of things are starting to worry me.

I’ll acknowledge that some good things appear to have been happening at the Academy, with sensible appointments, and some results being seen already, but it’s starting to look a bit of a mess elsewhere.

Over the weekend, I started thinking about some of the things that have gone wrong over the last few years, why these might have happened, and how these issues might relate to key appointments.

Overall, despite the the big talk post-promotion, the on-pitch strategy is difficult to discern. Obviously, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and all clubs have hits and misses, but, it’s equally easy to get caught in a wave of positivity and blindly trust Club decisions and PR.

Pitarch Era

Jesus Garcia Pitarch apparently did a good job at Valencia/Atletico in the 2000s, clubs challenging for champions league at the time. I’m not sure how that was ever going to be transferable to a team trying to rebuild a whole squad and survive in the Premier League.

Yes we needed to sign a lot of players due to the state of the squad, but on the whole the quality of signings was pretty poor. A majority seemed on the risky side with limited English league experience (Mings, Targett, Konsa, Heaton and El Ghazi were relatively safe bets/ known quantities). While players like Trez did a job, the majority of the imports took a long time to settle and delivered little to nothing and have little or no resale value.

Other mid-low table teams signed a range of lower risk options with decent experience that year: Ings, Webster, Bowen, Che Adams, Craig Dawson, James McCarthy, Dean Henderson (Loan), Walker Peters (Loan) Gary Cahill (FREE), Wellbeck (FREE), Callum Robinson, Maupay, Billing etc. You could argue that some of them such as Bowen wouldn’t have come to us at the time due to precarious league position, others were not long-term solutions, but all seemed viable options at similar or in most cases much less money than we spent. All offered at least one element that we lacked, such as physicality, pace, guile, or experience. On the riskier side, it’s worth noting that Sarr and Saint-Maximin both arrived from France that summer for £27m and £15m respectively.

The reluctance to use the loan system and ‘develop other club’s players’ now seems particularly naive and perhaps arrogant given the situation we were in. Arrogance seems like a recurring theme when considering some of the major strategic decisions made over the past few seasons.

Lange Era

Johan Lange is a 42 year old technical director who had previously only held that position at FC Copenhagen between 2014-2020. That team hasn’t finished outside the top 4 since 1999, more often than not winning the championship. Lange has been in post for 5 transfer windows now. I haven’t seen any evidence of any unknown players signed for a relatively small amount that could develop, no hidden gems. 

Of the group signed in summer 2020, only Watkins, Cash and Martinez worked, which is around a reasonable 50% success rate. But tellingly, we did not properly address squad weaknesses: size and physicality through the spine of the team, or pace and creativity out wide. Eze, Raphinha, Soucek, Loftus-Cheek, and Dawson all moved that summer to promoted or previously relegation threatened clubs for around £15m or much less, and could have added those elements to the squad.

The Club must have suspected Jack Grealish wanted to leave prior to signing the big contract with the £100m buy out clause. The Club said they always had a plan for life with and without Jack, but I’m not so sure.

It’s easy to say now, but where was the plan for a direct replacement (a powerful ball carrier playing from the left with Prem experience such as ASM, Zaha)? At least then the team shape and playing style wouldn’t need to be changed so drastically.

It’s early days but both Brighton and Leeds have just sold not one but two of their key players (perhaps in both cases their two best players). They have both either identified and signed direct replacements, or promoted squad players, and neither team have experienced the immediate down-turn in form you might have expected, and that we suffered. This might be good recruitment, a clearly defined system, or more likely a combination of both.

Buying 3 players to replace Jack’s output sounded very clever on paper, but it doesn’t really make sense. Despite patchy form in claret and blue, I believe that the three players are all high quality. But even at the time, it was difficult to see how they would fit into the same team. Ings in particular seemed like a PR signing to stem some of the negativity around the Grealish sale. I feel sorry for Dean Smith, it was probably the right time for him to go, but he was likely hamstrung by this strategy.

The midfield/spine still wasn’t addressed for the third summer in a row. There was a lot of talk about Ward-Prowse and Romeu, but we decided to carry on with essentially the same midfield that almost saw us relegated (with a young and untried JJ essentially coming in for Conor). The squad remained unballanced, again lacking size and physicality through the spine, meaning that we had a tendency to be bullied and collapse under pressure.

For me, this summer, the midfield was the area that needed major surgery. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Mings and Konsa. They’ve showed that they can be a formidable unit in the right system with proper protection. I really like Dougie, but he’s not a sole holding DM. I really like Ramsey, but he shouldn’t be playing every game as a No.8. I don’t think John McGinn is consistent enough to play as a No.8 in this system. I think he’d be an effective squad player option, maybe in an advanced midfield/second striker role (similar to that which Gerrard/Lampard basically played), busting into the box, causing mayhem and belting shots from 15-20 yards.

While Kamara looks an excellent signing, we’ll probably never know if Sanson could work in the midfield, and there needed to be at least one more No.8 signing.

Note: Dan Ashworth was Technical Director at Brighton from Aug 2018 until Feb 2022. He got poached by Newcastle immediately after the new regime took over, which looks like a very smart decision.

Gerrard Era

The Gerrard appointment also now looks arrogant. Immediately after the appointment, I was on the fence, but I reasoned that he must have something if he managed to go unbeaten for a whole season, and then there were impressive Europa League performances. But looking at the SPL table last season, both Celtic and Rangers lost just 3/38 games each, Celtic in winning the league lost 2 in 18/20 and went unbeaten themselves in 16/17.

I look at coaches who have secured Championship promotions with limited budgets over the past few seasons (Frank - a youth international coach since 2008 and Cooper - a youth international coach since 2014) and wonder whether that is a greater achievement than an SPL win.

I’m impressed with what Frank has done with Brentford. On promotion they seemed to turn in to a more pragmatic, tougher, wiser team that are a real pain to play against. I look at the way Forest went at Spurs on Sunday. Their team included a midfield signing from Huddersfield, a no striker front three including two new signings. They attacked in a fast, aggressive, exciting and coherent way and looked like they had been playing together for years. It's one game, but it was shocking and impressive to see this kind of exciting football! Silva at Fulham also seems to have shaped his team into a more robust unit that still carry a threat, with many of the same players that were relegated in spectacular fashion two years ago. They ran Arsenal really close on Saturday night.

I remember that Dean Smith held the title ‘head coach’, but is Gerrard’s title ‘manager’? It appears that he has more influence than Smith, and it has been suggested that Gerrard wanted to change the transfer strategy from young developable players to those that had experience of winning. This would be a worrying sign, having a long term strategy should provide some continuity even when the manager/head coach is changed.

The more I hear about the lack of day-to-day coaching from Gerrard, and the reliance on the coaching and tactical experience of an assistant, the more concerned I get. I understand that some managers work this way, but they have usually ‘been there and done’ the coaching and now take less of a hands on role where experience is key. It is very unusual for a manager to start out in this way, like Gerrard has. It feels like purely a 'personality' based appointment.

After 30-odd games in charge, aside from a handful of strong performances, usually against struggling teams, I don’t see much of an identity. Where we have looked good is during the early weeks and the home games against City and Liverpool, when we tightened up. Surely this was a blueprint for going forwards? What I do see more often are stodgy performances and bad habits such as conceding early goals, goals straight after half-time, or multiple goals in short periods. The game plan seems to be, ‘play like Liverpool’, but we don’t have some of the World’s best players at full back, centre back, or in-attack. Fundamental flaws remain week after week.

Other miscellaneous things bugging me

Some fans may not see these things as important, but don’t really see things progressing off the pitch.

• We are still plagued by strange betting company sponsorships on the shirt, from WW88, to whatever it was last year, to the latest version. None of these companies seem to have any real presence online.
• The club jumped on the Crypto bandwagon with the Socios fan token launch.
• We seem to have downgraded from Kappa, an established kit manufacturer, to a new entry in the market that has come from nowhere and now produces for loads of teams in the UK and Europe. It all looks a bit cheap to me. I know Kappa got some criticism, but in my opinion they made very stylish and well thought-out kits. The player spec versions were particularly impressive and I thought they gave our players an imposing look. We were the brand’s only premier league team, and one of their top 5 teams in Europe.
• At kick-off, the bells and whistles to get the crowd amped up, seem counterintuitive. Does anyone really like High Ho Silver Lining and what is the strange choral music that we walk out to? All of this just drowns out the organic atmosphere that can be so special at Villa Park.
• The quality and level of service for food and drink in the stadium is still really poor.

 

Best post on this forum in a very, very long time. Hit the nail on the head with virtually everything. To summarise outside of the academy we have made more bad decisions in terms of recruitment than good. I’ve said several  times now that Lange should be nowhere near a team of our size, it’s like putting the bloke who runs your corner shop in charge of Tesco, scandalous appointment imo. 

Edited August 30, 2022 by WHY

[VillaParkAvenue]

Just now, WHY said:

Best post on this forum in a very, very long time. Hit the nail on the head with virtually everything. To summarise outside of the academy we have made more bad decisions in terms of recruitment than good. I’ve said several  time now that Lange should be nowhere near at team of our size, it’s like putting the bloke who runs your corner shop in charge of Tesco, scandalous appointment imo. 

But Lange is a good fit for Purslow. If we had a powerful sporting director who was a heavyweight in the industry, Christian’s football opinions might not be listened to.

[WHY]

Just now, VillaParkAvenue said:

But Lange is a good fit for Purslow. If we had a powerful sporting director who was a heavyweight in the industry, Christian’s football opinions might not be listened to.

I don’t disagree mate, Purslow is a narcissist. 

[ccfcman]

1 minute ago, WHY said:

I don’t disagree mate, Purslow is a narcissist. 

With a potentially catastrophic blind spot for SG.

[TheLegendOfLeonBailey31]

Can sack Gerrard all you want.... but if Purslow and Lange don't go with him... I think that's a mistake.

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

Find it hard not to agree with certain sentiments although I always defend Purslow.

Lesser clubs than us have more accomplished people than us making sporting decisions.

I feel like in a sense, we are operating like a lower level Man U.

Have all the money etc and are using it all wrong, with some bad decisions.

Having the most beautiful Crest and Stadium in the bottom 6 of the PL or Championship isn't an achievement.

In hindsight, we should have been trying to get " best in class " for all the key sporting positions.

This would have made everything easier for us.

We've sort of been building backwards.

 

Edited August 31, 2022 by JAMAICAN-VILLAN

[tinker]

4 hours ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Find it hard not to agree with certain sentiments although I always defend Purslow.

Lesser clubs than us have more accomplished people than us making sporting decisions.

I feel like in a sense, we are operating like a lower level Man U.

Have all the money etc and are using it all wrong, with some bad decisions.

Having the most beautiful Crest and Stadium in the bottom 6 of the PL or Championship isn't an achievement.

In hindsight, we should have been trying to get " best in class " for all the key sporting positions.

This would have made everything easier for us.

We've sort of been building backwards.

 

This is because Purslow wants to make football decisions and he's not got the skill set to do it. On top of that  he hasn't appointed anyone that can advise him either, which is more worrying. Our next manager, if Gerrard fails, has to be selected using a different process to the one used to pick Gerrard.

My guess is Purslow wanted Gerrard as soon as he knew he would come and that pushed him into getting rid of Smith, who had a bad start to the season.  

[villa4europe]

We don't know how it works

We're losing football matches and the knife is being sharpened for everyone again 

Personally for me I thought the downfall of the Lerner regime was we didn't have anyone who would stand up and be heard in the PL owner meetings or in the media, we had no representation and we ended up with FFP and us in a right **** mess and for me personally one of the lowest moments of that period dave whelan spouting that Wigan to Villa wasn't a big enough step for the world class Bobby Martinez... I don't get that feeling with purslow, I can see him being incredibly vocal and influential using the likes of talksport when he needs to and getting what he considers to be best for villa and he wouldn't put up with shit like that from whelan 

he's maybe the last remnant of a "big club" that we have, again we'll never see it but I can imagine he's a terrier in the PL meetings

I like him and I think we need him, the gerrard appointment is a massive misstep but again we don't know what happened, if Potter turned us down for example... 

[one_ian_taylor]

14 hours ago, VillaParkAvenue said:

Brilliant post. It seems to me the club has been hamstrung by arrogance (as you say) and vanity. I guess those traits are pretty much Christian Purslow’s personality. There seems to be an obsession with acting like a ”big club” in every instance.

Right now it doesn’t even matter how great the main owners may be, or if we appointed Pochettino, as long as the club on the whole is still run as Purslow’s fantasy football project.

The acting like a big club thing drives me slightly  potty as, amongst other things, I convinced it's  a mindset that  leads to us targeting the wrong players and paying over the odds. It also means that players and agents - even managers and chief execs - see us as a license to print money. 

[one_ian_taylor]

9 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

We don't know how it works

We're losing football matches and the knife is being sharpened for everyone again 

Personally for me I thought the downfall of the Lerner regime was we didn't have anyone who would stand up and be heard in the PL owner meetings or in the media, we had no representation and we ended up with FFP and us in a right **** mess and for me personally one of the lowest moments of that period dave whelan spouting that Wigan to Villa wasn't a big enough step for the world class Bobby Martinez... I don't get that feeling with purslow, I can see him being incredibly vocal and influential using the likes of talksport when he needs to and getting what he considers to be best for villa and he wouldn't put up with shit like that from whelan 

he's maybe the last remnant of a "big club" that we have, again we'll never see it but I can imagine he's a terrier in the PL meetings

I like him and I think we need him, the gerrard appointment is a massive misstep but again we don't know what happened, if Potter turned us down for example... 

Think Purslow is a little bit of a double edged sword 

[rodders0223]

I thought Purslow to be fair to him had enough credit in the bank to survive this disaster of an appointment but it is actually getting to the point, with all the murmurings that this appointment has been spectacularly more of a failure than anyone could ever have predicted.

 

4 games to save his job, if I was Purslow I'd cut him loose asap to save myself. The stories are getting worse and worse.

 

[Stephen_Evans]

14 hours ago, WHY said:

I don’t disagree mate, Purslow is a narcissist. 

Presumably you know him well on a personal level then?