The, he's finally GONE! Tell us your thoughts Thread

[philwhitters]

Our plan is hoof it over the top for Gabby to run on to, then side-foot it into the opposition goalkeeper's arms.

Thanks. Well if that is the plan, Gabby needs to play up top and we need to draw the opposition out first!

I know it was a joke, but I wouldn't mind if that was our ultimate plan, at least we would have one!

[alf_stewart]

I'm sticking my neck out here, but there's precisely zero chance of us losing to Rovers on Saturday to worsen McLeish's woes. They are 'kin terrible.

Even terrible-er than us.

[Raver50032]

What I didn't understand yesterday was why he persisted in keeping Petrov/Clark in midfield. I saw a quote with him saying it was to ensure we were still solid... but in my opinion, what is the point in being solid when you are 2-0 down?

He should have taken Clark and/or Stan off and gone with Ireland/Bannan or even Gardner.. I just didn't see that we had much to lose. This is what is so infuriating for me.

I think maybe he thinks 2-0 doesn't look too bad and can be swept under the carpet a bit easier than 3-0, 4-0.

That was something I loved about MON (sorry to compare). Even when we were 2 goals behind I always believed we could still win with 10 minutes to go because we always went for it. He would then say he didn't really care about conceding a goal or two because you pick up the same amount of points. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn't, it was exciting

McLeish's game plan doesn't seem to change from start to finish

I get your point Paddy, I really do... but I think you will find that under MON, we seemed to more regularly concede stupid late goals than score them... I get your point though - we are getting nothing at the moment other than a random 'freak' result at Stamford Bridge...

[Woodytom]

What I dont get is all these people want him out, but yet hes exceeding or at least matching many peoples expectations, especially with the resources he has available.

When he was appointed, there werent many who agreed with me that we had a chance of a top 8 finish.

A lot said lower mid table, and many said relegation battle. With that in mind, whats everyone complaining about?

[chips'ngravy]

Few lads at work have said to me he has to go (all arsenal and Chelsea fans). Good to see collymore speaking out too. Also the McLeish out # on twitter is busier than usual.

The more I think of yesterday the socket I feel. I hope we lose on sat to Bristol as its on tv and I want it to get worse for the word removed. And I have never wanted us to ever lose a game. Not even under previous managers I disliked.

The heights of 6th seems like years and light years ago.

I don't know what Collymore said but I think you can pretty much dismiss it in terms of having any influence. He's just following the talksport mandate which is to get people to phone in by saying whatever will provoke them. He was saying how McLeish should be given a break on Saturday :shock:

[Shillzz]

Personally think he's bought himself quite a lot of time with the performances against Arsenal, Chelsea and Stoke. Lerner stuck by Houllier through worse than this.

[picicata]

What I dont get is all these people want him out, but yet hes exceeding or at least matching many peoples expectations, especially with the resources he has available.

When he was appointed, there werent many who agreed with me that we had a chance of a top 8 finish.

A lot said lower mid table, and many said relegation battle. With that in mind, whats everyone complaining about?

Just because I expected McCleish to have us in lower mid table doesn't mean i'm happy that he has met my very low expectations of him!

[keefa3011]

I'm sticking my neck out here, but there's precisely zero chance of us losing to Rovers on Saturday to worsen McLeish's woes. They are 'kin terrible.

Even terrible-er than us.

Blackburn's players seem to be trying for their manager, whereas ours don't, Chelsea apart.

We have better players than Blackburn imo, but they at least give it a go, whereas we don't.

[PieFacE]

[

Spurs 1

Swansea (A) 2

Man U 2

Bolton 5

Liverpool 4

Arsenal 3

Stoke 2

Chelsea 7

Swansea (H) 1

A grand total of 27

An average of a MASSIVE 3 a game. Seriously, do I laugh or cry??

Good stats, not for Villa, but it shows that we are definitely a counter attacking team and nothing more. Against the "better" teams who try and attack us we seem to attack more. Against "lesser" teams who need to be broken down we are just plain useless. Something needs to give, and I don't think it's entirely down to the manager, well, it's been a problem for all of our managers over the past few years including MON. We suffer from lack of movement and lack of ideas, we've always struggled to break teams down. The only way to get past that is to get a manager in who can change the philosophy of the players.... unfortunately as seen with GH the players (and fans) don't really like playing like that. It would take a lot of time for it to click and we're too impatient to wait, as it would get worse before it gets better. So we're a bit ****.

The counter attacking "MON" style football can only get you so far, well... 6th ... probably more like 8th now. Unfortunately AMC is a more negative MON who plays similar rubbish counter attack football. Boring few years to come unfortunately.

[marstonvilla]

people keep going on about how great we played against chelsea, yes we got three points but eight times out of ten chelsea would beat us playing like we did.

we did not play chelsea off the park and if the torres shot had been 2 inches lower i can gurantee it would of been game over.

for the first time in my life i hope villa loose there next 5 games, because i feel we might have to take two steps backward for this great club to move forward. the amount of villa fans that are losing intrest in our club is shocking, this could take years to put right, but a good start would be to sack the manager. UTV

[ender4]

What I dont get is all these people want him out, but yet hes exceeding or at least matching many peoples expectations, especially with the resources he has available.

When he was appointed, there werent many who agreed with me that we had a chance of a top 8 finish.

A lot said lower mid table, and many said relegation battle. With that in mind, whats everyone complaining about?

depends.

with the squad available, i expected him to get 8th before the season started. i still expect him to take us to at least 9th by the end of the season. Thats not the problem, the problem is the mind-numbing football.

of course, some people think we're going to get relegated, and so yes they should be over the moon at this point of the season.

[Paddywhack]

I'm sticking my neck out here, but there's precisely zero chance of us losing to Rovers on Saturday to worsen McLeish's woes. They are 'kin terrible.

Even terrible-er than us.

Blackburn's players seem to be trying for their manager, whereas ours don't, Chelsea apart.

We have better players than Blackburn imo, but they at least give it a go, whereas we don't.

Wrong Rovers :winkold:

[sellyoakvilla]

The only reason I'm giving him the smallest fragment of a chance is because he had the balls to cross the city. But then again if I could almost double my wage I'd do it too. The worst part is that we paid our rivals £3 milllion for him.... sigh

[Cridontour]

McLeish will take us down.

It won't be this season because he has inherited some good players and there are far worse teams than us in the league this season, but how will we get on next season?

This bloke couldn't sign an autograph let alone a decent player. If our better players are offered a way out in the summer they will go, if they are still here by then. Would you trust McLeish to rebuild?

I can't see Lerner sacking him. It's just going to cost him more money we haven't got and he isn't going to resign and give up his pay off.

IMO all we can hope for is a summer take over?

[keefa3011]

I'm sticking my neck out here, but there's precisely zero chance of us losing to Rovers on Saturday to worsen McLeish's woes. They are 'kin terrible.

Even terrible-er than us.

Blackburn's players seem to be trying for their manager, whereas ours don't, Chelsea apart.

We have better players than Blackburn imo, but they at least give it a go, whereas we don't.

Wrong Rovers :winkold:

Oops! :oops:

In that case, if we do lose this Saturday, McLeish out!

[Paddywhack]

It's too easy to sit here calling for McLeish's head. Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to see him gone, but a massive factor for me is finding an avaliable, realistic replacement who would justify us sacking and paying McLeish and then trusting that someone new to do a better job.

It's a bigger call than we all think IMO, one I can't see Randy making for a long time. If ever

[sellyoakvilla]

The thing is as much as we all want the 'glory days' back, Aston Villa is not just a football club.

Randy Lerner has a business to run, which he's currently operating at a loss. Not saying it's not his fault because he should've been a bit more careful with his money and not get so carried away in his opening couple of seasons in charge, but it's happened now and there's not a lot we can do other than cut unnecessary outgoings.

One of the main reasons we were so set on McLeish was because Lerner saw him as a manager who could steady the ship without complaining for transfer funds and causing unrest within management. By steady the ship I mean behind the scenes.

As much as we all want the club to be getting instant results football doesn't always work like that.

We've got to be realistic for the long term future of the club. OK, we may be stagnant for another season (I won't say transitional period because I'm fed up of it being described as that) but our wage bill in ratio to turnover isn't the best. But neither are our attendances. And here comes catch 22.

With low attendances and little revenue the only hope we have at making our wage bill sensible is by letting players go and operating on a sell-to-buy policy, or "trading" as McLeish liked to describe it. Now, of course we'd all like 40k attendances every week, but how is that going to happen if the football is, er, well, crap? We all know Villa have our fair share of fairweather fans just like every other club. But without the fans attending the games this is going to be an even longer process.

Poor matchday revenue = lack of players in

High wage bill = lack of players in

Lack of players in = slow decline

Slow decline = Decrease in revenue

Decrease in revenue = selling assets, or, as we've learnt, selling our best players

And then we're back to square one.

It's not pretty, it's definitely not what I or any other Villa fan wants, but the way we're being run at the moment is something that needs to be done. Thankfully a lot of our 30+ players on £50,000+ p/w have contracts ending at the end of this season or next. Heskey, Dunne, Beye, Cuellar all out at the end of this season frees up almost £200,000 p/w which is £10.4m p/a... if needs be and we have to let Bent go we'll be saving even more. Again, thankfully, we have a lot of promising kids coming through the ranks who are adequate enough to replace those that will go, and if we need to replace I'm sure we will be shrewd... it's gonna be a long and winding road with a lot of disappointment on the way but as rubbish as it is, the financial status of the club in the long term is more important than a season or two of mediocrity.

It's far too easy to call for McLeish's head but he won't be off any time soon. Oh and there's also the fact that Houllier had to be paid off, Martin O'Neill had to be paid off, Birmingham City had to be paid off and if we sacked McLeish there'd be an even bigger pay off. Can we really afford to have another set back in our mission to make the club financially stable before the new UEFA rules come into play?

I'm not saying we'll challenge top 4 again but I highly doubt Lerner doesn't care about the club anymore. You can't blame McLeish for taking the job, he was offered it after all. It's just unfortunate for us that he was the only one *silly* enough to accept the job on our terms of no transfer funds, sell to buy, reduce wage bill & combat decline.

[Hanky]

It's far too easy to call for McLeish's head but he won't be off any time soon. Oh and there's also the fact that Houllier had to be paid off, Martin O'Neill had to be paid off, Birmingham City had to be paid off and if we sacked McLeish there'd be an even bigger pay off. Can we really afford to have another set back in our mission to make the club financially stable before the new UEFA rules come into play?

This is the massive error that the board are making which is why we will continue to lose money. First of all there was the O'Neill debacle which may have been unavoidable, but if we were looking to cut costs I think we could have been shrewder when appointing the next two managers as we have thrown money away.

The chances are Lerner may have to sack McLeish in the summer again (well hopefully not as I believe it will mean we are no longer in the division), then where would we be. I really think just recently we have been run very poorly, no point in freeing up these wages if we are wasting the money somewhere else.

[brummybloke]

here is where everything started going very very wrong. it was the start of the ginger poison which has swept through our club

14th may 2010

The club are very pleased to announce that all round top man Paul Faulkner has been appointed as the club's Chief Executive.

The announcement was made on the Official Site a few short moments ago.

Paul as we know was a key member of the team Randy put together when he completed the takeover from Dougie and little shareholders like me and for the last two years he has held the title of Chief Operating Officer, working closely still with Randy and Martin O'Neill on team matters whilst overseeing all other aspects of the clubs' day to day running.

Speaking briefly in the announcement Randy said:

'I'm very gratified to announce the appointment of Paul as Chief Executive. His involvement with all aspects of the club combined with his tireless commitment makes him, in my judgement, a sound and promising choice.'

Paul added:

'I am both very excited and very humbled to have been appointed. It is a real honour and privilege to have been involved with this great club and I look forward to starting to prepare for the 2010-2011 season and beyond.'

[Mantis]

What I dont get is all these people want him out, but yet hes exceeding or at least matching many peoples expectations, especially with the resources he has available.

When he was appointed, there werent many who agreed with me that we had a chance of a top 8 finish.

A lot said lower mid table, and many said relegation battle. With that in mind, whats everyone complaining about?

Have you not seen us play? You sound like an opposition fan who doesn't watch Villa when you say this. :|

With a couple of exceptions, most of performances this season have been poor at best. We're completely toothless in attack (which is NOT ok given the resources he has) and our defence isn't much better either. We play the worst football in the league and at the moment are sliding down the table. If we carry on like this for the rest of the season we will be in the thick of it come May.