Johan Lange

[juanpablosaliceband]

No offence to Lange because it’s not all his fault but this feels like a good place to vent after today’s game. I thinks it’s actually underestimated how disastrous our recruitment has really been.

All of these players have fallen short of what I would have expected when we signed them, some by a huge margin: Trez, Wesley, Bailey, Buendia, Coutinho, Digne, Nakamba, Sanson, Olsen, Samatta, Engels, Traore, Jota, Ings (not used properly in his defence). I think we have spent over £230m on these alone.   

Our better signings have probably been Kamara, Martinez, Cash, Watkins, Konsa, Mings, Luiz, Targett. And many of those have had their critics. Martinez and Kamara are probably our only two knock out signings. 

Our flop rate is far too high. I can’t believe we need to spend again on another left back. 

[Hank Scorpio]

So the fact that we have discussions that a dof responsible for these terrible players we have wasted hundreds of millions on...but also the previous managers are also to blame points to a huge **** up villa have made from the top down.

Mish mash transfer policy has been a disaster.

Either make the manager solely responsible or the dof. Don't mix.

 

[maqroll]

Get. Out.

[ozvilla28]

The clean out starts with him first needs to go.

 

 

[joshharris12]

Out 

[Pinebro]

Buck starts with Purslow who hired him in the first place.

We are never gtoing to move forward until both of them are replaced.

[Demitri_C]

Bog question marks again over his signings. Dendonker olsen two of the biggest culprits shocking .

 

[Tomaszk]

38 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

Digne is an improvement on Targett and given how Gerrard needed attacking LBs he made total sense

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.

[Zatman]

On 08/01/2023 at 20:57, Pissflaps said:

So the fact that we have discussions that a dof responsible for these terrible players we have wasted hundreds of millions on...but also the previous managers are also to blame points to a huge **** up villa have made from the top down.

Mish mash transfer policy has been a disaster.

Either make the manager solely responsible or the dof. Don't mix.

 

We have been terribly run since summer 2021 - November 2022 Grealish transfer seemed to mess peoples heads and we ended up in a transfer mess then hiring a clearing in the woods and signing many poor signings with no actual transfer plan

I personally think Lange role was undermined by Purslow and his mate

[villa4europe]

On 08/01/2023 at 19:57, Pissflaps said:

So the fact that we have discussions that a dof responsible for these terrible players we have wasted hundreds of millions on...but also the previous managers are also to blame points to a huge **** up villa have made from the top down.

Mish mash transfer policy has been a disaster.

Either make the manager solely responsible or the dof. Don't mix.

Agree to an extent that you can make the manager responsible for the transfer policy but you still need the sporting director to manage the process

Got no issue with emery saying he wants a left back who plays in a certain way and has a certain skill set and he knows this guy from his experience... But he still then needs lange and his team and people who fall under his umbrella to organise everything that goes with it

I'd have have an expectation that emery walks in to langes office or the head of recruitment's office or the chief scouts office and says he wants moreno and one of the three already knows who he is

But the whole idea that the manager chucks a name out there and then everyone else goes away and does the scouting the data analysis etc etc is how we're always told its set up anyway, the whole committee thing where names come from all over

I'd like to know how we go about lessons learned and stuff like that, the scouts who picked out Bailey for example, wheres he now? We decide Bailey isn't good enough and we need a new winger, are we sending the same scouts out? How do we gauge success or more importantly monitor and improve on failure? Cos at the moment to me it seems like our youth scouts are brilliant and our first team scouts are **** terrible

[The_Steve]

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

[VillaParkAvenue]

Just checked how many players under the age of 25 each Premier League side has in their squad. Chelsea have 13, Arsenal 11, Man City 6, Liverpool 10, Man United 9. Most have between 6 and 10. Villa only have 2 players who are under 25 this summer.

[bobzy]

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. 

Nah, I think he's right.  Digne as an attacking wing-back makes sense - it was the system Gerrard chose to play last season and, in part, he had some success with it.  In the immediacy, we were a lot more solid than we were under Smith and Gerrard used the same (or very similar) system he used at Rangers, with Digne and Cash being the wide outlets.  Digne is almost perfect for that.

Of course, Gerrard completely switched up system and then we sacked him so we now have a left-back who isn't "as good" anymore.  But that's more that he's not perfect for Emery's system (although, FWIW, I think Digne is 'fine' and we've looked good with him playing).

[Zatman]

3 minutes ago, The_Steve said:

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

Because we stayed up when he had to sign 12/13 players to build a new squad. His Belgian fetish aside he actually did an underrated job.

[bobzy]

Just now, VillaParkAvenue said:

Just checked how many players under the age of 25 each Premier League side has in their squad. Chelsea have 13, Arsenal 11, Man City 6, Liverpool 10, Man United 9. Most have between 6 and 10. Villa only have 2 players who are under 25 this summer.

Bit of an arbitrary figure, though.  Our squad doesn't feel like an old squad at all.  If you shifted "25" to "26", you'd see a few more Villa players included (Konsa, Cash, Luiz, Bailey).

How many over 30 outfield players do those squads have compared to ours?  I think we've got a lot of "middle range" players.

[gwi1890]

20 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Agree to an extent that you can make the manager responsible for the transfer policy but you still need the sporting director to manage the process

Got no issue with emery saying he wants a left back who plays in a certain way and has a certain skill set and he knows this guy from his experience... But he still then needs lange and his team and people who fall under his umbrella to organise everything that goes with it

I'd have have an expectation that emery walks in to langes office or the head of recruitment's office or the chief scouts office and says he wants moreno and one of the three already knows who he is

But the whole idea that the manager chucks a name out there and then everyone else goes away and does the scouting the data analysis etc etc is how we're always told its set up anyway, the whole committee thing where names come from all over

I'd like to know how we go about lessons learned and stuff like that, the scouts who picked out Bailey for example, wheres he now? We decide Bailey isn't good enough and we need a new winger, are we sending the same scouts out? How do we gauge success or more importantly monitor and improve on failure? Cos at the moment to me it seems like our youth scouts are brilliant and our first team scouts are **** terrible

He might not have been successful here but he was one of the better wingers in the Bundesliga and him coming here was considered to be a coup at the time. Danny Ings record spoke or it’s self and Buendia was one of the biggest talents in the champions for some reason things haven’t worked out the managerial appointment didn’t help

[VillaParkAvenue]

8 minutes ago, bobzy said:

Bit of an arbitrary figure, though.  Our squad doesn't feel like an old squad at all.  If you shifted "25" to "26", you'd see a few more Villa players included (Konsa, Cash, Luiz, Bailey).

How many over 30 outfield players do those squads have compared to ours?  I think we've got a lot of "middle range" players.

Villa have the second highest average squad age with 27,7 years. Not that many are over 30 that's true, there's 9 of them which seems a fairly average number or slightly above average. 

[Laughable Chimp]

26 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Agree to an extent that you can make the manager responsible for the transfer policy but you still need the sporting director to manage the process

Got no issue with emery saying he wants a left back who plays in a certain way and has a certain skill set and he knows this guy from his experience... But he still then needs lange and his team and people who fall under his umbrella to organise everything that goes with it

I'd have have an expectation that emery walks in to langes office or the head of recruitment's office or the chief scouts office and says he wants moreno and one of the three already knows who he is

But the whole idea that the manager chucks a name out there and then everyone else goes away and does the scouting the data analysis etc etc is how we're always told its set up anyway, the whole committee thing where names come from all over

I'd like to know how we go about lessons learned and stuff like that, the scouts who picked out Bailey for example, wheres he now? We decide Bailey isn't good enough and we need a new winger, are we sending the same scouts out? How do we gauge success or more importantly monitor and improve on failure? Cos at the moment to me it seems like our youth scouts are brilliant and our first team scouts are **** terrible

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.

 

[Laughable Chimp]

2 minutes ago, VillaParkAvenue said:

Villa have the second highest average squad age with 27,7 years. Not that many are over 30 that's true, there's 9 of them which seems a fairly average number or slightly above average. 

Damn, wasn’t it just last year when we had one of the youngest squads?

[bobzy]

2 minutes ago, VillaParkAvenue said:

Villa have the second highest average squad age with 27,7 years. Not that many are over 30 that's true, there's 9 of them which seems a fairly average number or slightly above average. 

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?