MON's signings how do you rate them?

[Stevo985]

Friedel wasnt a great signing. He was good but not great.

:?

I don't know how you can come to that conclusion

[R.Bear]

Friedel wasnt a great signing. He was good but not great.

:?

I don't know how you can come to that conclusion

Quite simply because he wasnt great for us. He parried so many shots that he should have caught that got us into trouble. He was also slow to dive with so many shot I think he should have saved. He wasnt good at booting the ball from a passback and always made me a little nervous in that respect. High balls were also a problem, I was never confident he would catch/claim them, his punches were weak.

A good keeper for us but in no way was he a "great signing". All just my opinion of course.

[TRO]

It's time to stop obsessing about MON, it really is, folks.

when he has probably put the club back years in his expoits in the transfer market.....is there any wonder?

I'm sure his shopping will go down in Villa Folklore.

ps but don't worry he will do the same to sunderland.... given the money and the freedom to spend it.

(a) sorry to be a bit blunt but I think it is just complete nonsense that his signings "put us back years". I don't even know what this often repeated phrase means - which year exactly has it taken us back to?

I think it was Lerner's signings that put us years behind.

Stephen Ireland - has been a waste of money for the first season and part of this, but he is getting better. Not worth 65k a week in wages though, and an odd signing considering the wage bill. How can you pay 8 mill and commit 13.5 mill in wages the next four years when our situation is as poor as it is financially? And with no manager, risking that the new manager don't want the player?

Gerard Houllier - Not a good signing

Paul Faulkner - one of the people I believe is a huge problem at the club - disastrous signing

Alan Mc Leish - worst signing ever

So let's ask ourselves. How did we get into this mess? Was it the signings that sent us to three top 6 finishes? Or the Lerner signings?

The team was struggling way before McLeish and Houllier inherited it on the back of some bad reversals.... even Kevin Mcdonald who worked with Mon Couldn't influence it.....No in truth it was all very brittle....and it has gradually got worse.

Its one of the reasons Young & Downing followed in the foot steps of Barry & Milner... Not enough talent coming in to the club. good talent wants to play with good talent.

Why do you think Shaw, Cowans, Little didn't want to leave, becuase despite the modest sums available to the Manager they made prudent signings .....that talent spotting we once had has just dried up.

Thats the problem

and has been the problem too for Newcastle, until they got the manager and the backroom staff sorted and started getting some good purchases.

[markavfc40]

[

The team was struggling way before McLeish and Houllier inherited it on the back of some bad reversals....

:shock: WTF! I know you don't like O'Neill but even so this is some real crap.

How the **** do you work out we were struggling way before Houllier and Mcleish rolled up? we had just had our best ever 38 game Prem season in terms of points. We had just competed in our first major final for a decade and got to the semi final of another cup competition. We had an excellent defensive record, 4th best in the league conceding just 39 goals, 22 in the second half of the season including a freak 7-1 against Chelsea so in the other 18 games that made up the second half of the season we conceded just 15. The last dozen games of that season we finished pretty strongly winning 5, drawing 4 and losing 3 one of which a meaningless last day game against Blackburn.

2009/10 was a very good season and an improvement on the previous one and we finished the season pretty well. To suggest that the team was struggling is quite frankly bollocks.

[P3te]

the single biggest problem with o'neill's signing was the fact that the vast majority of them left the club for free, after bleeding us for big wages. ive never seen a list of so many players leaving a club for free after being signed for reasonable money and being placed on good contracts. people can blame lerner all they want on that front, but surely NOBODY could have foreseen that 75% of o'neills signings wouldve left the club for nothing.

[Kiwivillan]

7-1 against Chelsea was not a freak result. MON insisted on playing the same 11 all season even though every Villa fan knew that Petrov would be blowing out his arse after 60mins let alone the whole Chelsea team did and exploited it.

[smetrov]

The problem with MONS signings for me, was that the bad ones were predictably bad - could you really see the following cutting it:-

Heskey

Harewood

Beye

Routledge

Every manager has his duff signings, but the likes of Collymore, Curic etc - at least looked decent at the time we purchased them. The above were highly predictable dross has beens.

[TRO]

[

The team was struggling way before McLeish and Houllier inherited it on the back of some bad reversals....

:shock: WTF! I know you don't like O'Neill but even so this is some real crap.

How the **** do you work out we were struggling way before Houllier and Mcleish rolled up? we had just had our best ever 38 game Prem season in terms of points. We had just competed in our first major final for a decade and got to the semi final of another cup competition. We had an excellent defensive record, 4th best in the league conceding just 39 goals, 22 in the second half of the season including a freak 7-1 against Chelsea so in the other 18 games that made up the second half of the season we conceded just 15. The last dozen games of that season we finished pretty strongly winning 5, drawing 4 and losing 3 one of which a meaningless last day game against Blackburn.

2009/10 was a very good season and an improvement on the previous one and we finished the season pretty well. To suggest that the team was struggling is quite frankly bollocks.

No Mark its not that i don't like him , because I don't know him.... I don't rate him in the way you do.

And its clear to me you lean towards results in your appraisals and I lean towards performances... when both are important.

you seem to conveniently forget the reversal at Newcastle only 5 minutes after Mon had left... so the Chelsea result was hardly a freak result, when we go and repeat it at St James's

The difference is Barton takes over and goes on to do good things because he inherited substance.....Mcdonald takes over and inherits a team only O'Neill can work with.

If the 6-6-6 was so resolute.... it would have carried on under another manager, particularly the coach who worked with him, but it had no signs of that.

During O'Neills stewardship we have some good results, we had a decent cup run despite being fortunate with the teams we were drawn against.

No mark its not that i dislike him and its hard to get the point across because we are worse now.

I found his style of football unconvincing.... sorry

Ps If he was so bloody good, why couldn't he beat a poor villa team ravaged by injuries.

[markavfc40]

The insistence of some to blame a guy who left almost two years ago for the shit we are in now is a dangerous game. The guy you are blaming can do **** all about the fact the upward spiral we were on when he was here has now turned into a downward one gaining momentum with every passing game. Those that can do something, Lerner, Mcleish, Faulkner ,aren't up to their jobs its as simple as that and our attentions need to be focused on them not some bloke who got the boot two years ago.

[Mantis]

The insistence of some to blame a guy who left almost two years ago for the shit we are in now is a dangerous game. The guy you are blaming can do **** all about the fact the upward spiral we were on when he was here has now turned into a downward one gaining momentum with every passing game. Those that can do something, Lerner, Mcleish, Faulkner ,aren't up to their jobs its as simple as that and our attentions need to be focused on them not some bloke who got the boot two years ago.

Nobody is blaming him entirely for the position we're in. Many people are to blame. O'Neill, Lerner, Faulkner and McLeish.

[TRO]

The insistence of some to blame a guy who left almost two years ago for the shit we are in now is a dangerous game. The guy you are blaming can do **** all about the fact the upward spiral we were on when he was here has now turned into a downward one gaining momentum with every passing game. Those that can do something, Lerner, Mcleish, Faulkner ,aren't up to their jobs its as simple as that and our attentions need to be focused on them not some bloke who got the boot two years ago.

Come on Mark, you are not reading my comments on O'Neill properly.

I did say, and I will continue to say the rot started with HIM and its got progressively worse.

Study the performance of any club..... the biggest difference between success and failure is their ability in the transfer Market and their ability to develop the player once they have bought him in to their system. Its not everything but it plays a major part.

[TRO]

The insistence of some to blame a guy who left almost two years ago for the shit we are in now is a dangerous game. The guy you are blaming can do **** all about the fact the upward spiral we were on when he was here has now turned into a downward one gaining momentum with every passing game. Those that can do something, Lerner, Mcleish, Faulkner ,aren't up to their jobs its as simple as that and our attentions need to be focused on them not some bloke who got the boot two years ago.

so when a guy walks out on his wife and leaves her straddled with 30 grand's worth of deb't and you bump in to her as a friend and wonder why she has no food etc..... is it her fault.

Of course he has to share the current problem.... when most of his signings have had a reduced sell on value..... most of the big money ones don't cover the junk.

[briny_ear]

7-1 against Chelsea was not a freak result.

If you look at the results that went immediately before and after that 1-7, they are:

1-2 (Man U League Cup Final)

4-2

0-0

2-1

2-2

1-1

1-7

1-0

0-3 (Chelsea FA Cup semi)

2-2

2-1

2-0

1-0

Now call me dim if you will, but I fail to see how the 1-7 could be called anything but a "freak result" in the context of the results we were typically getting at the time, and in a season where we achieved our highest points per game total since 1992/3 and, despite the 1-7, the best defensive record in ten seasons.

Yeah, seriously I would call that a freak.

[TRO]

7-1 against Chelsea was not a freak result.

If you look at the results that went immediately before and after that 1-7, they are:

1-2 (Man U League Cup Final)

4-2

0-0

2-1

2-2

1-1

1-7

1-0

0-3 (Chelsea FA Cup semi)

2-2

2-1

2-0

1-0

Now call me dim if you will, but I fail to see how the 1-7 could be called anything but a "freak result" in the context of the results we were typically getting at the time, and in a season where we achieved our highest points per game total since 1992/3 and, despite the 1-7, the best defensive record in ten seasons.

Yeah, seriously I would call that a freak.

.

so the 6-1 , 6-0 ( can't remember) debacle at Newcastle was not long after.... these sort of reversals are not really convincing that we are on the right track are they.

Don't remember Gregory, Little, Taylor or Atkinsons teams getting turned over like that.

[Zatman]

Friedel wasnt a great signing. He was good but not great.

not a popular decision but i would agree he was good not great. He was solid but nothing brilliant, an improvement on what we had but cant really remember him winning us many points

[Woody1000]

I thought I'd bump this thread as the Collins one is in serious danger of going WAY off topic....

My take on the MON transfer business during his time at Villa: Too much hit and miss for me. Ashley Young, Milner and Downing all were bought and sold at a tidy profit, but the likes of NRC, Sidwell, Curtis Davies, Beye etc cost the club too much in wages for the club to maintain.

I understand when people are saying that we only had the 6th or 7th highest wage bill in the league at the time, so how could we expect to finish higher than that? By looking abroad, that's how! The French, German, Dutch, Portugese leagues were all paying much less in wages, and we probably could've got much better value for money - take NRC for example, just think what £8m in transfer fee and £40k per week could've bought us from Holland or France?

Sure there would've been some flops, look at Makoun for example, but there have been plenty of British flops brought into our club in the last 4/5 years.

[sharkyvilla]

I liked O'Neill a lot and I even liked his brand of football, which whilst it was a bit agricultural sometimes it was done with pace, lots of wingers, great set pieces and loads of enthusiasm. His problem is that he has never built a legacy at any of his clubs and we suffered more than most by his short-termism. That's what stops him being regarded amongst the very best managers imo.

[briny_ear]

You guys really MUST try to get over O'Neill, you know.

It starts to look like an obsession and, what's more worrying, a refusal to face up to the issues of the present by blaming them all on the past.

It's two seasons since he was with us and a lot has changed since he left. We have had two years of some of the worst club and football management I have seen since the late 60s.

MON was the best manager we had since Johnny Gregory and brought us the only decent run of results and performance since JG.

I like him for that because I like managers who help us win matches, gain points, move up the table, and do well in cup competitions. So I despise the two fuckwits who have followed on from him.

As for saying he left us no legacy, he left us with a squad in 2010-11 that was more or less the one that had got us to 6th the season before and only the most incompetent of managers could have failed to build on that.

[Woody1000]

I liked O'Neill a lot and I even liked his brand of football, which whilst it was a bit agricultural sometimes it was done with pace, lots of wingers, great set pieces and loads of enthusiasm. His problem is that he has never built a legacy at any of his clubs and we suffered more than most by his short-termism. That's what stops him being regarded amongst the very best managers imo.

I'd agree with most of that, except I wasn't he biggest fan of his football style.

The thing I really agree with you on is the lack of build for the future. I read somewhere a few months ago that MON is one of the best managers around for getting you the result on Saturday afternoon, but isn't worried about Saturday afternoons in 5/10 years time.

Anyway, I don't want to seem that I'm always criticising the guy; he did a lot of good things during his time here, I think he's just copped a lot of the flack as he left just as the bubble burst.

[Woody1000]

You guys really MUST try to get over O'Neill, you know.

I'm over it thanks, I just didn't want to take another thread off topic so I bumped this one.

I see now why I tend to just read VT rather than post, if you try to put your opinion across about something then you get accused of being 'obsessed'.