10 years ago today :(

[DCJonah]

People continue to ignore what it actually took for teams to break the original sky 4. But yeah, it was all because we signed heskey and MON was clueless. 

[Mark Albrighton]

I just think it’s a shame he didn’t feel confident in his abilities to at least try and have another go at the season with the squad he assembled (minus Milner). We could have had a crack at top six again, maybe found a bit of success in one of the cups, gone further in Europe. He may well have been faced with having to sell more players the following summer. I’d have been more understanding had he gone then. As it is, it still looks like a petulant child throwing his toys out because his overspending on certain players led to a tightening of the belt. 

Oh well. While we’ve gone to shit, things haven’t exactly panned out well for him in the intervening years. 

[Dr_Pangloss]

MON failed to sign the forward we desperately needed, despite having resources available to him, his teams would also burn out by Easter due to his inability to rotate effectively, preferring have a tighter squad and using less players overall. These two things frustrated me greatly and IMO we blew great chances to finish in the top 4. That said, it's impossible to deny that MON achieved good things here, he did do well and he did assemble a good team. He's a total prick and now a footballing dinosaur but he's the best manager we've had since John Gregory.

Edited March 2, 2019 by Dr_Pangloss

[Avcol]

I will never forget the feeling in the Upper Holte when Carew scored that worldy, I was absolutely convinced we were going to make top 4 when that went in and me and my mate were on cloud nine. Not sure how many points clear we'd have been but it would have been quite the buffer. That last five minutes and Whelan daisy cutter squirming in was pure shellshock. I seem to remember him sliding in front of the Stoke fans as well and my world crumbled.

Obviously O'Neill leaving right before the start of 10/11 was awful stuff but that Stoke game in my mind was when I knew we were never going to crack it. I was 20 at the time and I'd never seen an especially bad Villa team. Graham Taylor and O'Leary had bad seasons but that was as low as it ever got. if you'd told me that when I was 30 we'd be plodding along in our third championship season after a few years of barely staying up I'd have never believed it. Been a bad 10 years.

Edited March 2, 2019 by Avcol

[NIVillan]

On 02/03/2019 at 00:37, briny_ear said:

I guess the alternative was for him to stay on with an underfunded team stripped of the stars who had got us challenging for top 4, see the team slide down the table, and get sacked in time for the winter transfer window.

I think most sensible managers would step off the tracks to avoid that particular train.

Stripped??  He lost Milner and that was it. That was after previous couple of seasons being the one of the highest spenders in Europe. He walked out at the first request to cosider the finances.

Saunders sold Gidman and Gray and bought 'cheap' alternatives like Withe.  This is after always being told to manage the budget etc.  Consistent battles with the board.  Went on to win League and build a Euro Cup winning team.

You can compare ONeil with Jose recently.  Kept asking for more money to buy players and it just not working.

[NIVillan]

On 02/03/2019 at 10:54, screwdriver said:

So O'neill walked out of a rolling contract before the season started. and gets slated......even like 10 years on.

Saunders walked out of a rolling contract mid season with the champions league semi final around the corner....turned up next week at the blues!!    and no one bats an eyelid!!!!

you've all been brainwashed by a corrupt media. the evening mail.

It's time to look again at the brilliant days we had under O'Neill. Going to Old Trafford and doing them in their own yard. Flying round all the top piss up cities in europe! 4 or 5 Villa lads in the england squad on a regular basis. Carew front page pissed up in a lapdancing club then back page smashing in a hatrick against reading. those days were the best days.

 

We are so boring compared to back then. all we get is "one day we will play as good as brentford." ........great!

Saunders was told by the board they wasnt renewing the contract so in essence it wasnt a rolling contract anymore.  Saunders had basically been given notice of termination.  The board expected Saunders to resign and had Barton lined up ready to go.

Saunders had also delivered promotion to the top league, 2 League Cups and Champions of England.  Also left us 3 rounds from being Champions of Europe.  Though the team would need rebuilding with aging players the club was in a good place with good youth coming through and had been developed into the first team environment, and also being in a position to attract better players as champions.  Often told he had to sell a player to buy one.

ONeil, had one of the Top 5 budgets in Europe for 2 years in a row and a board that was on the whole very compliant and tended to every whim.  Asked to consider spending less and the loss of one player he walks out on a rolling contract 4 days before the start of the season.  Left an ageing team with no real youth to first team plan.

ONeil was an effective manager in a short term hit but he leaves teams in a bad way.  Next manager is always tasked with a clean up.

Never been a huge fan ever since he wasted an opportunity of a good end to a season by bringing in Marlon Harwood.  

[Pelle]

Yeah, for me this is the day when it all turned downhill and we're yet to recover. With the CSKA game just a few days before and a lot of moans about throwing away a good opportunity, definitely among fans, but also reportedly among the players. Which would be understandable. He gambled on that one and he lost. We didn't gain on resting players, we got a draw on ET. And never got back from that. Sure, we finished 6th the season after and reached a cup final and a semi-final, but it never quite felt the same. And then we got worse and worse. Since that game.

This is in hindsight, I know, 'cause I loved it when MON was our manager. We challenged, we could beat anyone, it was fun. But looking back, knowing what we spent, I just can't help feeling that we could've done better with another manager. Every manager signs the wrong player from time to time. Even SAF, but when he did he called us up and then that player was sold. But he signed quite a lot of players on high wages that he rarely played more than one game or two. Who remember that he signed Shorey and Delph? But what was even worse was that he signed so many semi good players for big fees and gave them high wages. Money that easily could've been spent better. We allegedly could've signed Falcao but signed Heskey. And I'm not even Heskey's biggest critic. He wasn't a bad player but he sure wasn't what we needed at the time. He could've signed Bent in those days for a decent fee and we'd have a firing striker in his prime. When spuds signed Modric and Bale we signed NRC and Sidwell (I know, they were a bit more expensive and wasn't exactly at the same time, but still). He never really looked further for talent. He was good but very limited. There were a few who said that at the time and I was one o those who objected. I was wrong. He was limited and spent a fortune and f**ked us real good a few days before the league started. No, he'll never be a legend for me. He's more a "What could've been if...?"

[briny_ear]

5 hours ago, NIVillan said:

Stripped??  He lost Milner and that was it. That was after previous couple of seasons being the one of the highest spenders in Europe. He walked out at the first request to cosider the finances.

Saunders sold Gidman and Gray and bought 'cheap' alternatives like Withe.  This is after always being told to manage the budget etc.  Consistent battles with the board.  Went on to win League and build a Euro Cup winning team.

You can compare ONeil with Jose recently.  Kept asking for more money to buy players and it just not working.

But I guess he knew what was coming. He knew Lerner had run out of money.

[MrDuck]

6 hours ago, briny_ear said:

But I guess he knew what was coming. He knew Lerner had run out of money.

MON was the first to see what was coming I think, and wisely buggered off before the shit hit the fan. I don't blame him in the slightest - the remainder of Lerner's tenure was an absolute disaster, and without MON it would have probably been an absolute disaster from the start.

[S-Platt]

Learner got a divorce and lost half his fortune if I remember correctly.  You just can't trust women can you! 

The spending MON did can be summed up with the defence you spend 20+ million on Davies, Cueller and Knight one season then the very next season sign Dunne and Collins for another 10+ million.  Add in selling Gary Cahill for buttons and you can see why we are still paying the price.

Great times but just for the here and now never a thought to the future.  So having to sell Milner at the first sign of the spending being pulled back shows you have the spine of an amoeba!

[briny_ear]

1 hour ago, S-Platt said:

Learner got a divorce and lost half his fortune if I remember correctly.  You just can't trust women can you! 

The spending MON did can be summed up with the defence you spend 20+ million on Davies, Cueller and Knight one season then the very next season sign Dunne and Collins for another 10+ million.  Add in selling Gary Cahill for buttons and you can see why we are still paying the price.

Great times but just for the here and now never a thought to the future.  So having to sell Milner at the first sign of the spending being pulled back shows you have the spine of an amoeba!

I think he got a reasonable price for Cahill given how raw he was at the time and was insisting on leaving if he couldn't be guaranteed first team football here. Don’t forget, we sold him to lowly Bolton, not Chelsea. And he spent a few seasons with Bolton being fairly crap while he learnt his trade. Important not to read back Cahill’s value now to the time  we sold him.

Even after his seasons at Bolton his value had only risen by £2m over the price we got for him.

So I suspect this could be deleted from the list of reasons for our current financial woes. 

[Zatman]

1 hour ago, briny_ear said:

I think he got a reasonable price for Cahill given how raw he was at the time and was insisting on leaving if he couldn't be guaranteed first team football here. Don’t forget, we sold him to lowly Bolton, not Chelsea. And he spent a few seasons with Bolton being fairly crap while he learnt his trade. Important not to read back Cahill’s value now to the time  we sold him.

Even after his seasons at Bolton his value had only risen by £2m over the price we got for him.

So I suspect this could be deleted from the list of reasons for our current financial woes. 

His value only rose 2million as he had 6 months left on his contract when they sold him

[NIVillan]

If Lerner had ran out of money how come he spent big on Bent?

I think Lerner just wanted some sort of management of the situation which ONeil was unwilling (unable) to do.

ONeil has show through his career he could work to a budget in that he is told you can spend this much.  He would get players in within that spend budget and build a team but never one to have a long enough plan to keep that budget ticking over.

Leicester, Celtic and us were all screwed after ONeil left as he didnt build any sort of legacy plan.

It will be interesting if Dean Smith can be that manager.

[MrDuck]

11 hours ago, NIVillan said:

If Lerner had ran out of money how come he spent big on Bent?

Panicking at the prospect of relegation I suspect - we were sitting in 18th at the start of January that season!

[VillaChris]

Probably a very minority opinion but I wasn't hugely bothered.

Went to uni at the time (Keele) in Stoke and actually wanted them to stay up so I could watch premier league football at two clubs during that time. Of course rather we won but I wasn't too devastated.

Think after that game we still had a 5 point lead over Arsenal which was still pretty decent and I also just assumed we'd dust off the sticky little spell and beat Spurs at home (we lost 2-1), got to Anfield and win due to how great we were away from home in that period (we lost 5-0 which pretty much said to the players as much as anyone we weren't good enough to top 4) or win at Old Trafford (we actually played great that day f*** Macheda!).

Those three straight defeats allowed Arsenal not just get infront of us but to build their own decent lead. What disappointed me is we didn't even make them fight for 4th, they coasted and wrapped things up by early May IIRC.

Again maybe in minority but it seemed that year things have come too quickly for us to challenge top 4 and it all caught up. 09/10 to me was actually a better chance. We had much more depth in our squad, were a year more experienced as a group and instead of Arsenal we were challenging Man. City (who at that point were at a similar stage of development as we were) and Spurs who were muddling along until Bale hit an amazing run of form from February onwards.

It was nip and tuck between the three before we had our annual winless March and we lost ground. Wonder if we'd made 4th if we hadn't had big runs in both cup competitions (something that didn't happen in 08/09).

That season did all the damage as Man. City finished above of us for first time in four years and they rode off into the financial sunset and Spurs making top 4 allowed them to sign players like Van Der Vaart and they became top 6 mainstays.

[VillaChris]

On 02/03/2019 at 22:32, Avcol said:

I will never forget the feeling in the Upper Holte when Carew scored that worldy, I was absolutely convinced we were going to make top 4 when that went in and me and my mate were on cloud nine. Not sure how many points clear we'd have been but it would have been quite the buffer. That last five minutes and Whelan daisy cutter squirming in was pure shellshock. I seem to remember him sliding in front of the Stoke fans as well and my world crumbled.

Obviously O'Neill leaving right before the start of 10/11 was awful stuff but that Stoke game in my mind was when I knew we were never going to crack it. I was 20 at the time and I'd never seen an especially bad Villa team. Graham Taylor and O'Leary had bad seasons but that was as low as it ever got. if you'd told me that when I was 30 we'd be plodding along in our third championship season after a few years of barely staying up I'd have never believed it. Been a bad 10 years.

At the time on MOTD Jonathan Pearce was commenting and he said after the Carew goal: Aston Villa are heading for the Champions league."

So blame Johnny boy.

Have to say I agree with your other points. There really was no reason for us to decline as badly as we did so quickly. Any team rebuilding can have a couple of bad seasons (Man. United finished 7th, Liverpool 8th and Chelsea 10th in recent seasons but they all eventually bounced back).

We went from Young-Downing-Bent in 10/11 to Westwood-Tonev-Bacuna in 13/14. Barely 3 years and it wasn't like we had huge quality in 12/13 either (11/12 was just down to McLeish as our squad was still good enough for mid table).

Lerner turned off the money taps and that was that.

[Zatman]

35 minutes ago, VillaChris said:

 

We went from Young-Downing-Bent in 10/11 to Westwood-Tonev-Bacuna in 13/14. Barely 3 years and it wasn't like we had huge quality in 12/13 either (11/12 was just down to McLeish as our squad was still good enough for mid table).

Lerner turned off the money taps and that was that.

I really dont blame McLeish that much. We had a horrible injury crisis after Christmas.  Dunne, Petrov, Gabby, Given, Collins and Bent had injuries at different time through the season

He had to blood players like Lichaj, Baker, Weimann, Gardner and Herd. Think Jack even made the bench for a game at 16 we had no numbers