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what started the rot?


CLARETANDBLUEFOXY

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Thanks AvfcRigo82.

No, what I'm suggesting is not interference TRO, it's basic football management structure. Interference would be someone telling O'Neill that player A is crap, or that he should go for player B.

But if O'Neill wraps up talks with a squad player like Sidwell, for example, and then asks for the board to approve his wage demands of say 50k a week, then the club could and should have turned round and said to him: "Look you can have the player, but not on those wage demands."

That is not interfering - that is the basic, simple, logical way to run your finances. But no-one ever told O'Neill 'no' - they can't have - judging by the absolutely farcical fees and wages paid for players.

There was no plan from the start - and THAT'S why we're now paying for it - you can't blame it on the manager as every single manager in the world signs crap players for inflated fees. The problem is we seemingly had no safeguards in place, because of the lack of the knowledge on the Villa board, and we placed far too great a trust on one average manager, which eventually royally **** us over. Again, that's not O'Neill's fault, he was given money and he spent it.

By the time Lerner realised what a royal ****-up it was, he panicked, and rained in spending far too quickly which affected us on the pitch. Then a succession of bad (I'm being kind) managerial choices has just inflamed this situation, leading to the steep decline we've seen, but have no doubt that the mess started AT THE START.

I simply disagree with you on the point of interference. your description of it is just one element player A v player B

Do you mean to tell me that you would have supported Randy Lerner had he have denied Martin O'Neill from signing a player based on to high a wage demand. I find that hard to believe.There would have been uproar and citings of not allowing the Manager to manage....The only reason Lerner is now being accused of lack of control is in hindsight we all know the players bought have not worked out and the logic is working in reverse.

My point is simply this we bought players we have got nothing out of and we are stuffed.

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I don't know how you can see it that way.

The wages were too high in relation to our income. Wasn't it something like 85%?

Now that percentage was deemed unsustainable, it doesn't become sustainable because the quality of the players is better.

It doesn't work like that.

If the players were better, would it not be likely the revenue/income would have gone up altering the ratio.

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I simply disagree with you on the point of interference. your description of it is just one element player A v player B

Do you mean to tell me that you would have supported Randy Lerner had he have denied Martin O'Neill from signing a player based on a too high wage demand. I find that hard to believe.There would have been uproar and citings of not allowing the Manager to manage....The only reason Lerner is now being accused of lack of control is in hindsight we all know the players bought have not worked out and the logic is working in reverse.

My point is simply this we bought players we have got nothing out of and we are stuffed.

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If the players were better, would it not be likely the revenue/income would have gone up altering the ratio.

I don't think it was realistic to get our income to sustain that level.

The issue was wages to income. Not now good or bad the players were.

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I don't think it was realistic to get our income to sustain that level.

The issue was wages to income. Not now good or bad the players were.

sorry john, I just don't buy it.

for me the issue we are now facing is a direct result of lack of quality in our recruiting over the past few years.We have failed to get the desired return from them.

If you are suggesting to me that irrespective of that lack of quality and in isolation of the quality that the inevitable revenue increase would generate ,the board were unable to sustain those wages/fee's then I stand corrected and I would be staggered at the lack of business acumen.

Edited by TRO
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I think the only way we could have continued spending that level would have been with consistent champions league qualification. And if we did qualify once then inevitably our wage bill would have increased as we tried to do this.

I think it's unrealistic to think that was a possibility. I don't see how else our income could have increased.

I'm not disagreeing that our money has been spent badly but I don't believe that was the issue that caused the cuts that needed to be made.

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I can't remember the exact amount but let's say our wage bill was 85% of our income and that was deemed unsustainable.

Now if we had better players on the same money the wage bill would still be 85% of our income.

Like I said the only way the income improves is if we'd qualified for champions league and it would have to have been a regular thing for the wages to continue at that level.

So even if the players were better we still would have had to make cuts.

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If we got Champions League we would have had lot of tv money, gate receipts, advertisements the ability to lure marketable players at the club.

Look at Spurs they are arguably a lot stronger team on and off the pitch since getting into Champions League, since getting 4th they lured Van Der Vaart, Adebayor, Lloris and were close with Moutinho and Willian. players that would get into a majority of football teams,

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Even if we had come 4th one season we would only have been guaranteed a couple of CL qualifying games and even if we had got past those and had a few Group games we wouldn't have generated enough income to sustain the level of wages that Lerner had committed the club to.

It's not really to do with the quality of the players we bought - that is partly a matter of opinion anyway (there are still people on here claiming players like Young and Milner wren't high quality). It's to do with wages.

If we had bought Messi, Ronaldo, Rooney and Van Persie, we would have had a world-beating team but Lerner wouldn't have been able to afford them.

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"MON spunking money on rubbish players was absolutely ruinous. We can talk about other things after but the thread asks what started the rot."

Yes, and Martin O'Neill "spunking money" was NOT what started the rot. If it wasn't O'Neill, it would have been another manager because of the management structure (or lack of) and financial plan we had in place. I am just perplexed how people can't see this?

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"MON spunking money on rubbish players was absolutely ruinous. We can talk about other things after but the thread asks what started the rot."

Yes, and Martin O'Neill "spunking money" was NOT what started the rot. If it wasn't O'Neill, it would have been another manager because of the management structure (or lack of) and financial plan we had in place. I am just perplexed how people can't see this?

Would another manager have flogged Cahill while paying more than 42 tracksuits for Zat Knight. I could go on...

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"MON spunking money on rubbish players was absolutely ruinous. We can talk about other things after but the thread asks what started the rot."

Yes, and Martin O'Neill "spunking money" was NOT what started the rot. If it wasn't O'Neill, it would have been another manager because of the management structure (or lack of) and financial plan we had in place. I am just perplexed how people can't see this?

but he did. O'Neill had no long term planning or structure when he was manager, he had a "safe" job but never seemed like he cared about our future(except Delph signing which has been a terrible transfer) with expensive quick fix signings.

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Lerner and his advisers have to take the blame in my opinion the rot started when he took over although wasn't visible until a couple of years later . I don't blame MON though because you cannot expect a man, ex footballer with the intelligence the majority have to understand the dynamics of running a football club/business. As with most managers, if you give them money to spend you probably won't ever see change. Give your missus the credit card and tell her to buy something nice. I bet she doesn't go to primark!

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Would another manager have flogged Cahill while paying more than 42 tracksuits for Zat Knight. I could go on...

Quite possibly because the issue with Cahill was always that he wanted regular first team football. This was reasonabe enough from his point of view since he had that under DD and DOL's shoestring operation. But in a team whose owner wanted CL football within in 4 years, he just wasn't good enough. It was a great solution for him to go to a lesser club with lower ambitions where he could make mistakes and learn his trade, and he has come good.

Zat Knight was older and more experienced, and much more reliable as a squad defender. In fact, he played a lot of first team games and our defensive record was best in games where he played. We also sold him on for a profit, so a decent bit of business all round.

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