Johan Lange

[messi11]

He still here? GET OUT 

[Indigo]

27 minutes ago, The_Steve said:

How does Suso escape such blame for what was signed when we came up?

He got absolutely slated by fans and eventually lost his job. Don't think he really got away with one or anything.

[VillaParkAvenue]

1 minute ago, bobzy said:

9 over 30?!  That can't be true.  We don't have 9 outfield players over 30, surely.  I'm struggling to name any outside of Ashley Young   Maybe Ings is 30?

Goalkeepers ... Most clubs have a number of goalkeepers over 30, just like we have.

30 or older this year are Martinez, Olsen, Steer, Young, Carlos, Mings, Digne, Coutinho, Ings

[Sulberto21]

3 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

Sorry, but that's balls.

It made sense to a bonehead like Gerrard who isn't fit to manage in professional football.

Ridiculously expensive signing for a player clearly on the wane. 

We clearly don't have much of a recruitment department when we're signing players like Ings, Coutinho and Digne. Even Moreno, who I do like and think might be good in isolation.

This isn't joined up thinking. It's scraps of paper on the wall like that Sunderland documentary. Managers being asked to sign players they like the look of.

I don't know who is responsible. I'm inclined to say Lange, but it may not be in his remit. Purslow could be involved? It's the sort of thing he likes to butt in on.

If the owners were ever to commission an independent review of our transfer business over the last three years, I think there would be hell to pay. Heads would roll.

How would our competitors have spent £250m? Brighton, Brentford, Newcastle. Teams who have spent less than that in the last three years, all above us in the table.

Luckily we have a better manager than them, and very good resources, so this can be turned around.

Thing is we’ve increased our analysis and analytics department. It begs the question what the eff are they doing???

But it seems to me that the overall recruitment is done off FIFA and FM stats.

A manager at most ,if done correctly ,should only have 1/2 signings which are solely his the rest should be done through the club’s own agreed processes. 

[villa4europe]

7 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

My guess is that Lange, Purslow or whomever aren’t actually involved much in choosing which youth players to sign. They don’t know who the hell these kids are, so they just leave it up completely on what the scouts say is a hot prospect and must be signed.

That’s not so much the case at first team level.

I would lean towards that too but why?

Almost like we give the scouts and the academy credit when we sign Wilson but then hammer lange when we sign Digne

In reality how we signed those 2 players and who recommended them is probably very similar

I don't think lange is actually that involved in signing most players, the infrastructure is all below him

So many moving parts

[The Fun Factory]

It is easy to do the blame game, but I don't really know what our transfer strategy is now. When Lange first came in we went for young players to add value to the squad such as Cash, Watkins and Traore. Post Grealish it has frankly been a bit of a mess. The premier league is incredibly competitive and every club has a massive recruitment department and player data analysis. It is harder and harder to find that unpolished gem for a bargain fee.

I think we are a sort of inbetween club. Too big to be just a selling club, but not yet successful enough to attract the top talent to want european football.

Edited January 10, 2023 by The Fun Factory

[duke313]

12 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

It is easy to do the blame game, but I don't really know what our transfer strategy is now. When Lange first came in we went for young players to add value to the squad such as Cash, Watkins and Traore. Post Grealish it has frankly been a bit of a mess. The premier league is incredibly competitive and every club has a massive recruitment department and player data analysis. It is harder and harder to find that unpolished gem for a bargain fee.

I think we are a sort of inbetween club. Too big to be just a selling club, but not yet successful enough to attract the top talent to want european football.

I think Newcastle progressing has also changed the recruitment process.  We stopped buying players with high potential and more players for here and now as to not be left behind.

[tomav84]

2 hours ago, The_Steve said:

How does Suso escape such blame for what was signed when we came up?

he doesn't? he was torn apart on here and sacked at the end of the season

[The Fun Factory]

8 minutes ago, tomav84 said:

he doesn't? he was torn apart on here and sacked at the end of the season

He had a hard job. We had to basically buy virtually a entirely new team in less than 3 months.

[rodders0223]

I have a hard time believing he wanted to sign half the players we have the past 18 months.

[tomav84]

21 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

He had a hard job. We had to basically buy virtually a entirely new team in less than 3 months.

he did. you can acknowledge the tough job suso had whilst also calling out some mistakes.

wesley for example...seriously, that was the best striker he could find for £20m+?? he then had months to rectify that mistake and the best he could come up with was samatta and baston.

back to lange though...i do sympathise that he's now on his 3rd manager in 18 months, each presumably had his own transfer wish list that i'm sure were quite different. the goalposts have changed a bit and he's had to adapt

he's not had many catastrophic failures really...aside from olsen and probably bailey. i won't say buendia or digne because both were proven PL players at the time and didn't hear many complaints about either of them on here when we signed them. in fact most were rejoicing at how pissed off everton and norwich fans were

and neil cutler would've had a big hand in us signing olsen, like he did when we signed emi, so lets not lay the blame solely at lange

[The Fun Factory]

58 minutes ago, tomav84 said:

he did. you can acknowledge the tough job suso had whilst also calling out some mistakes.

wesley for example...seriously, that was the best striker he could find for £20m+?? he then had months to rectify that mistake and the best he could come up with was samatta and baston.

back to lange though...i do sympathise that he's now on his 3rd manager in 18 months, each presumably had his own transfer wish list that i'm sure were quite different. the goalposts have changed a bit and he's had to adapt

he's not had many catastrophic failures really...aside from olsen and probably bailey. i won't say buendia or digne because both were proven PL players at the time and didn't hear many complaints about either of them on here when we signed them. in fact most were rejoicing at how pissed off everton and norwich fans were

and neil cutler would've had a big hand in us signing olsen, like he did when we signed emi, so lets not lay the blame solely at lange

It wasn't just the transfer fees... we were limited in salary in year one due to FFP. Had money  not been a issue we would have probably gone in for Tammy.

[duke313]

Lange has made some good signings for us in his first season when he was appointed, Cash, Martinez and Watkins have all progressed and increased in value.  And like every Sporting Director, some signings haven't been great like Traore and Sanson.

I still think the jury is out on Buendia, Ings and Bailey, but so far, they have not pushed us on as they were meant to after selling Grealish.

Since Gerrard came in the signings have been average, Carlos and Kamara are so far excellent additions, but Digne and Donck have been average, Coutinho and Olsen poor and Augustinsson loan have been poor also.

Also don't forget we had practically signed Sarr, but Lange was overruled by Stevie Me.

Let's hope with Emery's guidance, we see some improvement in recruitment; more Martinez, Mings and Kamara.  Less Traore, Sanson and Olsen. 

 

[Marka Ragnos]

27 minutes ago, duke313 said:

Lange has made some good signings for us in his first season when he was appointed, Cash, Martinez and Watkins have all progressed and increased in value.  And like every Sporting Director, some signings haven't been great like Traore and Sanson.

I still think the jury is out on Buendia, Ings and Bailey, but so far, they have not pushed us on as they were meant to after selling Grealish.

Since Gerrard came in the signings have been average, Carlos and Kamara are so far excellent additions, but Digne and Donck have been average, Coutinho and Olsen poor and Augustinsson loan have been poor also.

Also don't forget we had practically signed Sarr, but Lange was overruled by Stevie Me.

Let's hope with Emery's guidance, we see some improvement in recruitment; more Martinez, Mings and Kamara.  Less Traore, Sanson and Olsen. 

 

Good in some cases, yes, to get us where we are, but overall, not good enough to get us where we're told we're headed.  

[AV82]

Do we know for sure that Lange is entirely responsible for the personnel we bring in? What if his role is to negotiate terms, wages, contract length, etc. after the recruitment team and head coach identify a player?

[duke313]

7 minutes ago, Marka Ragnos said:

Good in some cases, yes, to get us where we are, but overall, not good enough to get us where we're told we're headed.  

So far I’d rate him 6 or 6.5 out of 10. Not bad, but not amazing either

[duke313]

8 minutes ago, AV82 said:

Do we know for sure that Lange is entirely responsible for the personnel we bring in? What if his role is to negotiate terms, wages, contract length, etc. after the recruitment team and head coach identify a player?

Found this quote from Lange from Feb 2020, when he was at FC Copenhagen a few months before joining us.

“The partnership between myself, the manager and the scouts is crucial. We take time at the start of the process to establish exactly what we are looking for. Then we can set the parameters with the data. It is only after that stage that it becomes about live scouting.“

To me it reads, the coach identifies an area of the team that needs strengthening.  They then consult with Lange and the scouts to look at the data. From that they create a shortlist and scout the players.

 

[tomav84]

3 minutes ago, AV82 said:

Do we know for sure that Lange is entirely responsible for the personnel we bring in? What if his role is to negotiate terms, wages, contract length, etc. after the recruitment team and head coach identify a player?

i imagine he does have varying degrees of involvement. like, how much scouting etc would've been required for players like coutinho, ings, digne and buendia? it's not like we unearthed unknowns here

i do get your point though. we don't know who started the discussions around each player we bring in. we can guess, but will never know. i.e. i suspect gerrard would've initiated the conversation around coutinho. we can guess that emery mentioned moreno.

bailey? dendonker? kamara? carlos? bednerek? augustinson? olsen? we will never know who first provided those names and who we can blame/praise for their failure/success

it might also be worth remembering we have been in for some ambitious players like bentancur, joao felix and julian alvarez under lange

[VillaParkAvenue]

1 hour ago, tomav84 said:

i imagine he does have varying degrees of involvement. like, how much scouting etc would've been required for players like coutinho, ings, digne and buendia? it's not like we unearthed unknowns here

i do get your point though. we don't know who started the discussions around each player we bring in. we can guess, but will never know. i.e. i suspect gerrard would've initiated the conversation around coutinho. we can guess that emery mentioned moreno.

bailey? dendonker? kamara? carlos? bednerek? augustinson? olsen? we will never know who first provided those names and who we can blame/praise for their failure/success

it might also be worth remembering we have been in for some ambitious players like bentancur, joao felix and julian alvarez under lange

It’s true we on the outside will never know who pushed for which player.

But in the corporate world, if you’re the boss you will be responsible even if the idea came from someone else. You are supposed to create an organization that works.

If recruitment is poor over time, blame the sporting director. And maybe the one who hired him.

[Demitri_C]

Definitely a mixed bag in my opinion. Next window is absolutely vital for him in my opinion