MON's signings how do you rate them?

[BG_Villa_Fan]

I never said he would've cost £3m, but I'm pretty sure that at that moment in time if MON had asked to buy Bent instead of Heskey Lerner would've backed him.

The MON would have been a fool. He should have asked Lerner to get him Messi, instead of Bent.

[Mantis]

I never said he would've cost £3m, but I'm pretty sure that at that moment in time if MON had asked to buy Bent instead of Heskey Lerner would've backed him.

The MON would have been a fool. He should have asked Lerner to get him Messi, instead of Bent.

What? :?

[briny_ear]

I never said he would've cost £3m, but I'm pretty sure that at that moment in time if MON had asked to buy Bent instead of Heskey Lerner would've backed him.

What possible evidence can you have for saying that?

It's pure guesswork.

I hate the way people invent facts to suit their argument on this site.

[AVFCforever1991]

I think the only reason we bought bent was because Lerner was afraid we were going to get relegated IMO, again all just guesswork. That's how I interpreted it anyway.

[Mantis]

I never said he would've cost £3m, but I'm pretty sure that at that moment in time if MON had asked to buy Bent instead of Heskey Lerner would've backed him.

What possible evidence can you have for saying that?

It's pure guesswork.

I hate the way people invent facts to suit their argument on this site.

There's nothing to suggest he wouldn't have come to us in 2009 given that he came to us in 2011 when we were in a much worse position.

[Big_John_10]

I never said he would've cost £3m, but I'm pretty sure that at that moment in time if MON had asked to buy Bent instead of Heskey Lerner would've backed him.

What possible evidence can you have for saying that?

It's pure guesswork.

I hate the way people invent facts to suit their argument on this site.

There's nothing to suggest he wouldn't have come to us in 2009 given that he came to us in 2011 when we were in a much worse position.

We spent the money on bent after selling Milner and knowing full well young would be sold soon after.

Bit of an assumption that Lerner would have spent that money during that window.

[Mantis]

I never said he would've cost £3m, but I'm pretty sure that at that moment in time if MON had asked to buy Bent instead of Heskey Lerner would've backed him.

What possible evidence can you have for saying that?

It's pure guesswork.

I hate the way people invent facts to suit their argument on this site.

There's nothing to suggest he wouldn't have come to us in 2009 given that he came to us in 2011 when we were in a much worse position.

We spent the money on bent after selling Milner and knowing full well young would be sold soon after.

Bit of an assumption that Lerner would have spent that money during that window.

It is, but I personally think he would've if MON had asked to buy Bent.

[Ghost_of_Pongo_Waring]

I never said he would've cost £3m, but I'm pretty sure that at that moment in time if MON had asked to buy Bent instead of Heskey Lerner would've backed him.

What possible evidence can you have for saying that?

It's pure guesswork.

I hate the way people invent facts to suit their argument on this site.

There's nothing to suggest he wouldn't have come to us in 2009 given that he came to us in 2011 when we were in a much worse position.

But would Harry Redknapp have sold him to Villa? Not only a rival club but one where he receives abuse and had recently had someone try to bounce a 50p coin off his head.

Bent was available but not necessarily to Villa.

[Mantis]

I never said he would've cost £3m, but I'm pretty sure that at that moment in time if MON had asked to buy Bent instead of Heskey Lerner would've backed him.

What possible evidence can you have for saying that?

It's pure guesswork.

I hate the way people invent facts to suit their argument on this site.

There's nothing to suggest he wouldn't have come to us in 2009 given that he came to us in 2011 when we were in a much worse position.

But would Harry Redknapp have sold him to Villa? Not only a rival club but one where he receives abuse and had recently had someone try to bounce a 50p coin off his head.

Bent was available but not necessarily to Villa.

He may have sold him, he may not have.

[Big_John_10]

I never said he would've cost £3m, but I'm pretty sure that at that moment in time if MON had asked to buy Bent instead of Heskey Lerner would've backed him.

What possible evidence can you have for saying that?

It's pure guesswork.

I hate the way people invent facts to suit their argument on this site.

There's nothing to suggest he wouldn't have come to us in 2009 given that he came to us in 2011 when we were in a much worse position.

We spent the money on bent after selling Milner and knowing full well young would be sold soon after.

Bit of an assumption that Lerner would have spent that money during that window.

It is, but I personally think he would've if MON had asked to buy Bent.

I can now see why you're so against people speculating without all the facts when your arguments are presented with such concrete evidence.

[Mantis]

I never said he would've cost £3m, but I'm pretty sure that at that moment in time if MON had asked to buy Bent instead of Heskey Lerner would've backed him.

What possible evidence can you have for saying that?

It's pure guesswork.

I hate the way people invent facts to suit their argument on this site.

There's nothing to suggest he wouldn't have come to us in 2009 given that he came to us in 2011 when we were in a much worse position.

We spent the money on bent after selling Milner and knowing full well young would be sold soon after.

Bit of an assumption that Lerner would have spent that money during that window.

It is, but I personally think he would've if MON had asked to buy Bent.

I can now see why you're so against people speculating without all the facts when your arguments are presented with such concrete evidence.

Who said I was against speculation? I don't think it's right when people jump to conclusions about things when the full picture has not yet been revealed (e.g. Vlaar) but that doesn't mean I'm against speculation.

[conorm]

This debate really does go round and round in circles.

When you look at the money we spent in comparison to those we were competing with we never got close. The Net figure is very deceptive because we had bugger all to sell. If you look at Spurs over the same period whilst their Net spending was lower than ours they spent almost double gross, just happened they managed to make a lot of money out of the Carrick, Berbatov and Keane sales. During that time Arsenal weren't spending big on transfer fees but were stil paying higher wages (on average) and still had the draw of CL football.

We on the other hand had to pick ourselves up from one of our worst PL finishes, being a club that last won something in 96, we were never going to go out and attract the better players from day one unless we had the resources to pull a city and throw £150k a week wages and the dream of something special at players.

If he was signing the likes of Harewood and Routlede iin his last season then I'd have been up in arms, but realistically even with money to spend we had a damaged reputation to repair before we could attract a higher calibre of player.

The issue of wages wil come up time and time again, again in comparison to the other clubs around us when we were pushing for 4th place and trophies we weren't paying significantly higher than anybody and when you look at the previous sky4 and city we were still well behind. The major issue was wages as a proportion of income, and therein lies the major flaw in the Lerner/MoN model, even in the height of MoN 'glory days' income was not growing at a fast enough rate to support the expenditure.

As much as it stings me to say but I honestly believe we've missed that train, if we'd have hung onto Utd's coat tails the season we finished 2nd behind them then we could be an established top 4 club, but now the markets have been tapped, the early days of the CL was the time to gamble and the foreign markets are now saturated with Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool fans.

What MoN pehaps could have done, and something Lambert has realised he needs to do is tap into the foreign markets where transfer fees and wage demands are generally (not always) lower. It can be successfull as Newcastle proved last season but it is a higher risk strategy, look at the players like Makoun or even worse examples from our history like Balaban. It is much better imo to add a few foreign players to an established core than it is to rely almost entirely on relatively unproven foreign players hitting the ground running.

The final thing I will say is it's easy for us to look back and say we should have signed player A instead of player B, or surely player C was available at price X, but in reality we do not know what enquiries were made, what players were approached and what players turned us down. What we can measure is results, points, goals scored and goals conceeded and league position, and ultimately whether you agree with his method or not MoN delivered a decent return on the money he spent. Finishing in the top 4 woud have been overachieving, I think, and finishing below the Euro spots would have been under achieving.

Good thread, good debate and good post here. Agree with most this except the final paragraph which absolved MON of any responsibility towards the longer-term well-being of the club. He got results in his time here, no doubt, but the ends don't necessarily justify the means. On a signing by signing basis, it is really quite easy to say "good" or "bad" and plenty of had a go in this very thread.

But if you widen "signings" to mean "transfers", the debate becomes much more interesting. Transfers are more than just players and their performances and I think the typical MON transfer was weak when taken as a package. Most consisted of average to good players at pretty high cost and high wages, under-used and with little to no resale value. I know you have argued that resale values don't come inti the equation for clubs or club owners but I feel certain they do.

[Zatman]

I never said he would've cost £3m, but I'm pretty sure that at that moment in time if MON had asked to buy Bent instead of Heskey Lerner would've backed him.

What possible evidence can you have for saying that?

It's pure guesswork.

I hate the way people invent facts to suit their argument on this site.

There's nothing to suggest he wouldn't have come to us in 2009 given that he came to us in 2011 when we were in a much worse position.

But would Harry Redknapp have sold him to Villa? Not only a rival club but one where he receives abuse and had recently had someone try to bounce a 50p coin off his head.

Bent was available but not necessarily to Villa.

He had no problem selling us Hutton

[markavfc40]

I never said he would've cost £3m, but I'm pretty sure that at that moment in time if MON had asked to buy Bent instead of Heskey Lerner would've backed him.

What possible evidence can you have for saying that?

It's pure guesswork.

I hate the way people invent facts to suit their argument on this site.

There's nothing to suggest he wouldn't have come to us in 2009 given that he came to us in 2011 when we were in a much worse position.

But would Harry Redknapp have sold him to Villa? Not only a rival club but one where he receives abuse and had recently had someone try to bounce a 50p coin off his head.

Bent was available but not necessarily to Villa.

He had no problem selling us Hutton

When we signed Hutton we certainly weren't a threat to Spurs. In 2009 we we very much one of their rivals.

[TRO]

This debate really does go round and round in circles.

When you look at the money we spent in comparison to those we were competing with we never got close. The Net figure is very deceptive because we had bugger all to sell. If you look at Spurs over the same period whilst their Net spending was lower than ours they spent almost double gross, just happened they managed to make a lot of money out of the Carrick, Berbatov and Keane sales. During that time Arsenal weren't spending big on transfer fees but were stil paying higher wages (on average) and still had the draw of CL football.

We on the other hand had to pick ourselves up from one of our worst PL finishes, being a club that last won something in 96, we were never going to go out and attract the better players from day one unless we had the resources to pull a city and throw £150k a week wages and the dream of something special at players.

If he was signing the likes of Harewood and Routlede iin his last season then I'd have been up in arms, but realistically even with money to spend we had a damaged reputation to repair before we could attract a higher calibre of player.

The issue of wages wil come up time and time again, again in comparison to the other clubs around us when we were pushing for 4th place and trophies we weren't paying significantly higher than anybody and when you look at the previous sky4 and city we were still well behind. The major issue was wages as a proportion of income, and therein lies the major flaw in the Lerner/MoN model, even in the height of MoN 'glory days' income was not growing at a fast enough rate to support the expenditure.

As much as it stings me to say but I honestly believe we've missed that train, if we'd have hung onto Utd's coat tails the season we finished 2nd behind them then we could be an established top 4 club, but now the markets have been tapped, the early days of the CL was the time to gamble and the foreign markets are now saturated with Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool fans.

What MoN pehaps could have done, and something Lambert has realised he needs to do is tap into the foreign markets where transfer fees and wage demands are generally (not always) lower. It can be successfull as Newcastle proved last season but it is a higher risk strategy, look at the players like Makoun or even worse examples from our history like Balaban. It is much better imo to add a few foreign players to an established core than it is to rely almost entirely on relatively unproven foreign players hitting the ground running.

The final thing I will say is it's easy for us to look back and say we should have signed player A instead of player B, or surely player C was available at price X, but in reality we do not know what enquiries were made, what players were approached and what players turned us down. What we can measure is results, points, goals scored and goals conceeded and league position, and ultimately whether you agree with his method or not MoN delivered a decent return on the money he spent. Finishing in the top 4 woud have been overachieving, I think, and finishing below the Euro spots would have been under achieving.

Mon bought players to fit a model that would get results, that does not mean those players bought were anything special in terms of technical ability, hence their poor sell on value.

Talking in general terms of course, the players he bought were over paid for the technical ability they possessed.

Touching on the theory of finding it difficult to attract players after taking over from O'Leary, seems strange when two of his most gifted signings were bought in year 2 in Carew & Young.

Despite the decent finishes we had generally the quality of signing got no better.... my suspicion is that the quality of football being played as opposed to the results did'nt appeal to prospective new recruits as much as it did to a large section of the Villa Fans.

[HolteExile]

Carew and Ash were signed in his first season - when our image had taken such a battering that no decent players would even entertain notions of joining us apparently.

[TRO]

Carew and Ash were signed in his first season - when our image had taken such a battering that no decent players would even entertain notions of joining us apparently.

maybe I got the timing wrong but the principle of progress was what i was alluding to.... we simply did not progress in terms of general quality of signing.

[TRO]

I'm not sure how many players MON bought in his time but I can remember the good ones could be counted on one hand and without the rewards from their sales we would have been in trouble.

Owners and chairman get confidence too, from managers that consistently buy well. I would presume Venger don't have too much trouble persuading his people to fund him as nearly all his signings have made good money when sold on, despite his reluctance to sell.

My suspicion is Lerner needs to see a few of our signings turn in to gems and then he may get his confidence back.

[markavfc40]

[we simply did not progress in terms of general quality of signing.

That is a matter of opinion obviously. The facts will show however that we improved season on season under him for 4 years both in terms of league position for two seasons and then in points for another two. We also had two very good cup runs in his final season alongside our best ever 38 game Prem season in terms of points and the first time we had finished in the top 6 three times on the spin in over 50 years.

[TRO]

[we simply did not progress in terms of general quality of signing.

That is a matter of opinion obviously. The facts will show however that we improved season on season under him for 4 years both in terms of league position for two seasons and then in points for another two. We also had two very good cup runs in his final season alongside our best ever 38 game Prem season in terms of points and the first time we had finished in the top 6 three times on the spin in over 50 years.

I didn't say we did not improve in terms of points tally....I said I don't think we improved in terms of quality of individual signing and I stand by that.

Thats my opinion.