Steven Gerrard

[VillaParkAvenue]

24 minutes ago, PerryBarrPet said:

Where did you get this? The squad under Smith was not performing but, for me, the reason for change was that Smith was not the right man to take the club forward long term. Top 8 claims were no more than wishful thinking expressed by some fans being stoked up by opportunistic journalists. This squad is not, nor ever has been, top 8 quality.

Our squad is the 9th most valuable (Transfermarkt) so by that metric should be 9th. (Funny detail is Everton have the 8th most valuable squad).

Valuation corresponds pretty well with league position. Man C, Liverpool, Chelsea are top 3. Man U, Everton and to some degree Villa underperform. West Ham and Wolves outperforn.

[PerryBarrPet]

11 minutes ago, tinker said:

While I agree in principle, not top 8 quality,  this team has looked capable of beating the top 6 teams and did so on a few occasions last season. The drop in form was  understandable given we lost arguably the best player we have in 20 years.

But we have replaced him with more quality in the final third Bailey and Coutinho in Smith's system would be affective, more affective than Grealish and Bert and Trez were last season, maybe ? Add to that Ings and Buendia and it's a vast improvement in attacking options.

We have  Sansom who's not been given a real chance either and to top it all we are praying for Nakamba to come back save us! We have made stupid errors that have cost us goals and now we are bringing Nakamba back to solve it! It's not the Nakamba I have watched over the last few seasons because he had more than a few errors in his game. Has Gerrard seen him play previous to him coming in? 

League football is a marathon not a sprint. The fact that we had occasional success against a few top teams proves little. Top teams have top players who perform consistently at top 6 level - we do not. The fact that we fall back on one player leaving as an excuse just shows how short of top talent we are. Our level is mid-table at best and we should be honest about our this.

[Stephen_Evans]

36 minutes ago, romavillan said:

That's not how it was framed when he came in at all. Back then it was Smith was under performing with a squad that was top 8 class and Gerrard was coming in to sort that out.

I'm rather on the fence about Gerrard, but this is the niggle for me.  Have we let Smith go believing the players are better than they are and have now decided it was the players after all? In which case, Smith's sacking was very unlucky from his point of view.

[Davkaus]

55 minutes ago, romavillan said:

That's not how it was framed when he came in at all. Back then it was Smith was under performing with a squad that was top 8 class and Gerrard was coming in to sort that out.

Remember some of those expensive players we bought? Well, now we need to flog several of them, almost certainly for less than we paid, so we can reshape the squad according to our lord and saviour Steven Gerrard, to play a style of football almost no clubs attempt.

Tune in next year for another squad rebuild and clearout. 

About a year ago, I believed we were a well-run machine, in which everyone, even the manager, was a replacable cog  a well-optimised machine to reach our european goal.

Right now, I think we've thrown that model away for Purslow's wet dream. "Another reacharound, Stevie"? 

Edited April 10, 2022 by Davkaus

[VillaParkAvenue]

6 minutes ago, PerryBarrPet said:

League football is a marathon not a sprint. The fact that we had occasional success against a few top teams proves little. Top teams have top players who perform consistently at top 6 level - we do not. The fact that we fall back on one player leaving as an excuse just shows how short of top talent we are. Our level is mid-table at best and we should be honest about our this.

The teams at the top have far better players, but there isn’t anything such as a  certain top 6 level. Teams move in and out of the top 6 for various reasons, luck being one of them.

If we look at current top 6 teams, Man Citys squad has almost nothing in common with West Ham’s in terms of quality.

[PerryBarrPet]

8 minutes ago, VillaParkAvenue said:

Our squad is the 9th most valuable (Transfermarkt) so by that metric should be 9th. (Funny detail is Everton have the 8th most valuable squad).

Valuation corresponds pretty well with league position. Man C, Liverpool, Chelsea are top 3. Man U, Everton and to some degree Villa underperform. West Ham and Wolves outperforn.

I don’t like “fuzzy logic” where one view on value (often fluctuating) somehow translates into absolute capability. Yes value is a rough indicator of where a team should be but it is not precise. There is far more to team performance so much needs to be included in overall evaluation. In the round I believe our squad is mid-table (7 to 14) based on performances over last season plus this so far.

[Davkaus]

I reckon in a decade, we'll feel about this summer and letting Gerrard spend somewhere between £100m and £150m how we now look back at the Martin O'Neill era. A golden opportunity and a lot of money pissed down the drain by a manager who was given far more autonomy than he deserved,

[duke313]

6 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

I reckon in a decade, we'll feel about this summer and letting Gerrard spend somewhere between £100m and £150m how we now look back at the Martin O'Neill era. A golden opportunity and a lot of money pissed down the drain by a manager who was given far more autonomy than he deserved,

We’ll if Gerrard manages to finish 6th three years in a row, he’ll be doing quite well.

[useless]

We would be having an expensive rebuild this summr regardless of who the manager was, and good thing too because at the moment our squad is nowhere near good enough to get to where our owners want to get to.

Also 'rebuild' is probably the wrong word, we will probably sign five or so players in the summer, which is pretty much normal for a summer transfer window.

At the moment there's enough to moan about regarding Gerrard, losing four games in a row being one of them, blaming him because we're going to strengthen the team in the summer just seems like a desperate attempt to find another negative light to put him in.

I don't know if he's going to prove to be a good manager, but regardless of whether he is or not, we definitely need better players, a club needs better players at the best of times anyway just to stand still, never mind to progress.

[VillaParkAvenue]

8 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

I reckon in a decade, we'll feel about this summer and letting Gerrard spend somewhere between £100m and £150m how we now look back at the Martin O'Neill era. A golden opportunity and a lot of money pissed down the drain by a manager who was given far more autonomy than he deserved,

If Gerrard spends big on fees, at least we will probably get some relatively young players deemed to have potential.

Worst case imo is we give long contracts to a number of ageing players on free transfers.

[PerryBarrPet]

15 minutes ago, VillaParkAvenue said:

The teams at the top have far better players, but there isn’t anything such as a  certain top 6 level. Teams move in and out of the top 6 for various reasons, luck being one of them.

If we look at current top 6 teams, Man Citys squad has almost nothing in common with West Ham’s in terms of quality.

But we are not in this “top group” nor have been for a long time. Yes there are differences between squads of those teams in the top 6 but what is certain is that ours is not good enough so we should be honest enough to admit it.

[TRO]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

That’s coaching, completely.  We’re not, er,  short of height, nor bereft of pace at the back. It’s almost completely down to how the team is set up. You look at how in our first season back up, when we had the national lockdown and break in the season, the manager worked on changing our defensive play, and it made a huge difference to our vulnerability.  Now Gerrard hasn’t had the luxury of a break like that, but he’s had international breaks, been able to bring players in, including 2 defenders and been here for 20+ games.

There are a multitude of ways to address that weakness, either via defending deeper, or via him having a midfielder sit deeper all the time, or via how the fullbacks play - change the system, play to the strengths of the squad. It’s stuff like that that ought to be unacceptable for a manager to fail to address over time. “The players aren’t good enough, I want new ones” and “ Tyrone might have the captaincy given to someone else” are exactly the wrong type of messages at this time.

I respectfully disagree Pete..

We are short of height, one million per cent, short of height....we have a small team, even midfield are less than 6 feet.....at set pieces alone only Tyrone, looks dominant ( of sorts)

You shouldn't  have to coach a player, who is being touted as the next England Centre back, to win a ball in the air......Its basic stuff.

I am not saying Gerrard is blameless, personally, I would have Chambers or Hause in, to deal with the long balls.....but some of them errors are down to the players.

Its not that the players aren't good enough, the team balance is wrong........Tyrone is the only player we had playing over 6 feet......and they just pummeled us with high balls...sure first touch is as vulnerbale as lack of height, but we look panicky and positionally niave.

Even the  2 best football teams in the country played out today, firing in  high balls , but they both had adequate height in their respective teams to deal with it.

I am not saying height is the answer to everything, low center of gravity players are too.....but we need balance, is my point.

[PerryBarrPet]

13 minutes ago, duke313 said:

We’ll if Gerrard manages to finish 6th three years in a row, he’ll be doing quite well.

Yes, and you know something, if he does finish 6th three times in a row he will get more money to take the club even further - not turn off the money supply like Lerner did.

[tinker]

13 minutes ago, VillaParkAvenue said:

If Gerrard spends big on fees, at least we will probably get some relatively young players deemed to have potential.

Worst case imo is we give long contracts to a number of ageing players on free transfers.

He said he wants experience, they will not be young 

[tinker]

6 minutes ago, PerryBarrPet said:

Yes, and you know something, if he does finish 6th three times in a row he will get more money to take the club even further - not turn off the money supply like Lerner did.

He will be off to manage Liverpool, he won't be here .

[duke313]

2 minutes ago, tinker said:

He will be off to manage Liverpool, he won't be here .

I think we’d be a more attractive team to manage if we established ourselves in Europe. 

[PerryBarrPet]

1 minute ago, tinker said:

He will be off to manage Liverpool, he won't be here .

Not too sure about this but if he goes leaving us a regular top 6 performer then he will have done a good job and we can attract a proven manager like Conte is now.

[The Fun Factory]

Regardless of Smith or Gerrard we f**ked up the summer window after selling the floppy-haired one. The squad has not been balanced from the first game of the season and we failed to resolve the massive dm hole in January either. We have had 1 decent summer window in the last 3. I am not that confident we will get it right this time either.

[VillaParkAvenue]

3 minutes ago, tinker said:

He will be off to manage Liverpool, he won't be here .

I’m quite sure Gerrard will never manage Liverpool. Not even if he finishes 6th with Villa and does well in Europa League.

The way Liverpool are run, I’m sure they will go after the best coach in world football when Klopp leaves. Ideally they’ll want another visionary. They won’t give the job to a club legend on sentimental grounds, especially not one basing his own philosophy largely on Klopp’s.

[hippo]

11 hours ago, TRO said:

I respectfully disagree Pete..

We are short of height, one million per cent, short of height....we have a small team, even midfield are less than 6 feet.....at set pieces alone only Tyrone, looks dominant ( of sorts)

You shouldn't  have to coach a player, who is being touted as the next England Centre back, to win a ball in the air......Its basic stuff.

I am not saying Gerrard is blameless, personally, I would have Chambers or Hause in, to deal with the long balls.....but some of them errors are down to the players.

Its not that the players aren't good enough, the team balance is wrong........Tyrone is the only player we had playing over 6 feet......and they just pummeled us with high balls...sure first touch is as vulnerbale as lack of height, but we look panicky and positionally niave.

Even the  2 best football teams in the country played out today, firing in  high balls , but they both had adequate height in their respective teams to deal with it.

I am not saying height is the answer to everything, low center of gravity players are too.....but we need balance, is my point.

You keep saying this balance thing 

Even if true - is it not possible to improve the balance - even if it can't be completely resolved ?

To me Ings + Watkins doesn't look a balance.

Sanson could bring DM tackling to the midfield 

We could use some midfielders for width - thus letting the full backs concentrate on defending.

We've got a highly promising DM in ibregham.

I can't believe a guy recruited on a £4m a year salary can get a free pass and say there is absolutely nothing he can do about the balance without £100m in the transfer market......when that's done it will be something else.