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Straight choice - Ellis or Lerner?


Risso

Who do you prefer?  

233 members have voted

  1. 1. Who do you prefer?

    • Doug Ellis
      46
    • Randy Lerner
      187


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Angel at the time was a pretty big signing.

And bent was signed because we'd sold a good player for big money and knew another good player was going in the summer.

but would ellis have signed milner for 12m and ash young for 10m?

we would have got one marquee signing every 3-4 years if we were lucky

randy saw the problem and spent big to amke sure we stayed up and it paid off. ellis would have done nothing and we would have gone down

sorry i know things are pretty bad now and i have been one of mcleishs biggest critics but under ellis far, far worse

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What angers me so much is the wasted opportunities Villa have had down the years. Just as Villa appear to be heading somewhere, we crash back down to earth and the media pick on the fans for being fickle and spoilt. We have had some good managers who have taken Villa in to the top six only to go on to make a crap decision to appoint a complete numpty to undo the good work. Very, very frrustrating. Even more frustrating is that Faulkner appears to be backing McLeish, for being 15th!! 6 wins all season!! Ellis and Lerner are a pair, Ellis didn't get a great deal right and this time HE chose Lerner and appears to have ballsed it up again.

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Angel at the time was a pretty big signing.

And bent was signed because we'd sold a good player for big money and knew another good player was going in the summer.

but would ellis have signed milner for 12m and ash young for 10m?

we would have got one marquee signing every 3-4 years if we were lucky

randy saw the problem and spent big to amke sure we stayed up and it paid off. ellis would have done nothing and we would have gone down

sorry i know things are pretty bad now and i have been one of mcleishs biggest critics but under ellis far, far worse

Between Jul 92 and July 93 we signed the following players:

Ray Houghton

Steve Staunton

Earl Barrett

Andy Townsend

Dean Saunders

I'd hate to think what players of that quality would be worth in today's market.

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but would ellis have signed milner for 12m and ash young for 10m?

You could always turn around and say who signed McGrath, Platt, Yorke...

Its not always about the money :D

One might also argue that Randy threw money at MON because he thought that was how football clubs are run. Then he realised that MON had a glass celing, that HE was out of pocket, put the brakes on and, well, here we are.

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To be honest Taylor’s assessment of Ellis for most of his regime sums it up for me; “He gave enough backing to be good, not enough to be great”

Now it would be “Lerner backs you to be mediocre, not enough to be good”

Ellis did try to sign Gascgoine & Bergkamp, not that its much of a defence.

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Indeed Pete, O'Leary was everything you say, and worse, but in terms of "ambition" he was considered a decent manager at the time, so if we're judging Ellis at the time he appointed him, then I think it's fair to say it was a decent, ambitious appointment. If we judge him on O'Leary's overall tenure then it was obviously a bad appointment. Compare that to Alex McLeish though, which was so patently a bad decision at the time, and is proving to be every bit as bad as people predicted.

The point of this thread wasn't to rewrite Ellis's history, much of which was quite bad, but to state that in my opinion, he was a better football chairman/owner than Lerner, who didn't have the benefit of inheriting a billion quid from his dad.

I didn't feel that way when he was appointed. He was out of work, and thus cheap. He was prepared to work with no money, he had not long since been involved in all of Leeds troubles with court cases and money. He had got worse results each season with an inherited set of young players at Leeds that was outstanding.

Admittedly his style of football could be pleasing on the eye and though I never liked his self regard and never liked Ellis either, I'm trying to be fair in what I write and it honestly didn't seem "ambitious" to me. I wanted him to succeed, as I do with any Villa manager.

I guess we just agree to differ on the relative merits of RL and HDE.

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but would ellis have signed milner for 12m and ash young for 10m?

You could always turn around and say who signed McGrath, Platt, Yorke...

Its not always about the money :D

One might also argue that Randy threw money at MON because he thought that was how football clubs are run. Then he realised that MON had a glass celing, that HE was out of pocket, put the brakes on and, well, here we are.

Increasingly I think we shouldn’t just look at MON expenditure as the reason we reached this glass ceiling. For all of Randy and Cos so called nous they failed to make really proper inroads into increase expenditure.

It was great getting Nike to make our kit. We got a paltry £1.5 million per season for this. It was great that we sponsored Acorns, but the reality was that we couldn’t get a really good sponsor. It was great we have nice mosaics, etc, but maybe these great business men could have actually clinched some killer deals...

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Angel at the time was a pretty big signing.

And bent was signed because we'd sold a good player for big money and knew another good player was going in the summer.

but would ellis have signed milner for 12m and ash young for 10m?

we would have got one marquee signing every 3-4 years if we were lucky

randy saw the problem and spent big to amke sure we stayed up and it paid off. ellis would have done nothing and we would have gone down

sorry i know things are pretty bad now and i have been one of mcleishs biggest critics but under ellis far, far worse

Between Jul 92 and July 93 we signed the following players:

Ray Houghton

Steve Staunton

Earl Barrett

Andy Townsend

Dean Saunders

I'd hate to think what players of that quality would be worth in today's market.

That's a point that I hadn't thought of. Perhaps we should divide Ellis's long tenure into 3 or 4 parts - the first part - unmitigated disaster - relegation, terrible decisions, terrible football etc. then a big improvement under GT, who was not only good with the players, but got the measure of Ellis and "won" out, doing a massive service to the Club. When GT left, Ellis got Dr Jo in, which was a bad appointment (though Dr Jo was a good guy). BFR, BL and JG were all good, and Ellis let them spend windfall money, - from Sky, then from NTL, then from a share issue - kind of like RL with MO'N in many ways. Ellis interfered, and BFR had to "manage" him like GT had. BL had a really good relationship with HDE and was IMO the best appointment by a mile. JG then Ellis had his troubles with Ellis (both had faults, there). Once the money was gone and he got older HDE was terrible again, reverting to type, and our fortunes dropped.

So with no money, any manager will struggle to meet expectations. The we're looking at how the chairman deals with things and the managers that are in place. HDE and RL are almost opposites in that behaviour.

I prefer the way RL deals with things in these times (supporting the manager to the max) to the HDE method of meddling, but ultimately how we come out of this "retrenchment" will determine (for me) whether RL falls down to HDE levels or recovers.

Money aside, I think the underlying club set up is better now than it ever was under HDE. For that Randy (IMO) has to get the credit.

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Money aside, I think the underlying club set up is better now than it ever was under HDE. For that Randy (IMO) has to get the credit.

Yes its much better, but sadly Paul Faulkner isn’t up to the standard required for a football club. He’s too ignorant in football matters IMO and too easily blinded by balance sheets.

The one balance sheet which should matter the league table seems to have escaped attention.

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For all of Randy and Cos so called nous they failed to make really proper inroads into increase expenditure.

It was great getting Nike to make our kit. We got a paltry £1.5 million per season for this. It was great that we sponsored Acorns, but the reality was that we couldn’t get a really good sponsor. It was great we have nice mosaics, etc, but maybe these great business men could have actually clinched some killer deals...

I take it you are talking about increasing revenue? Since Randy has taken over he has nearly doubled our other revenue streams and by that I mean anything that is not TV money. So whilst we may have done even better with examples you made its not like we havent been increasing the revenue by a large amount.

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