Manager Paul Lambert

[Isa]

We have a clear plan too.

No we don't. We just have vague talk of a 'project' which Faulkner (and by extension Lerner) pay lip-service to. The uncertainty over Lerner's future spending undermimes belief in this.

It's too early to say whether we'll have season-upon-season progress but we're looking good for improvement this season already.

Precisely. It remains to be seen whether we are on an upwards trajectory whereas Swansea have been on one for a good while.

They spent around £20m in the summer - I doubt they'll be able to do that every year.

With all due respect, you doubting they can spend that much within their means doesn't mean anything. Also, who is to say that they will spend that much every year? They spent that much this summer because they clearly felt they could do so.

Forest and Leeds are in the Championship and have been for a long time so that comparison is invalid.

It isn't invalid because you made club size the only basis for why their fans would want to swap places with us.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Isa

[Isa]

What do you guys think is a "better" brand of football? It's not clear from this discussion.

 

Bare in mind, the counter attacking Dortmund is Lambert's biggest influence, so do you have a problem with that style on the whole, or just the way we are doing it at the moment? Should he drop the style and try to do something more possession based or does it just need refining?

Dortmund don't resort to hoofball every five minutes. Dortmund can still create chances when their opponents have numbers behind the ball. Dortmund also do still average majority possession. Other then the fact that we both counter a lot, I struggle to see any other similarity between our football and theirs.

When Dortmund play teams on their level or near their level they don't. 43% possession against Schalke recently, a side they are better than.

Not always. They had 56% away to Wolfsburg at the weekend. A team who will be rivaling Schalke for 4th place most likely. They are currently joint second highest in average possession this season. They were also second highest last season and third highest the season before that. We on the other hand have been utterly dominated in possession by Allardyce's West Ham.

[GENTLEMAN]

We on the other hand have been utterly dominated in possession by Allardyce's West Ham.

 

...Yet we dealt with what they had to offer offensively and created the better chances.

[Isa]

We on the other hand have been utterly dominated in possession by Allardyce's West Ham.

...Yet we dealt with what they had to offer offensively and created the better chances.

I'm not disputing that but then comparisions to Dortmund are absurd.

[Butterfingers]

We on the other hand have been utterly dominated in possession by Allardyce's West Ham.

...Yet we dealt with what they had to offer offensively and created the better chances.

I'm not disputing that but then comparisions to Dortmund are absurd.

& comparisons between Southampton & Chelsea are not? ROFL

Do you also think Man City fans would swap place with Wigan on the back of the cup win?

Push the boat out pal & try posting 1 crumb of a positive about the team-Trust me, it won't hurt.

[VillakevBromsgrove]

Possession football is all well and good (Didn't do Cardiff and Arsenal much good against us) but it has to have an end product, PL has addressed the defensive issue which was the priority, we now defend as a team and are seeing the results, the negative side of this is it allows the opposition possession and creates a counter attacking team. As we know success breeds confidence and I am sure we will soon start to see the players start to come out of their shell and be more expansive. PL is learning too and has not really had a great defensive team and has had to go back to basics with a new defensive coach.  Hopefully soon we will start to improve our style and go on a good run. Last season we had few points at Christmas and were looking doomed, hopefully this year we will have a more solid platform to build off in the second half of the season.

[Raver50032]

So we've had one of the toughest starts in the division, have improved results in pretty much every match and with a raft of injuries to key players.

 

And yet so far as I can see the running theme on VT is negative, just goes to show that some peeps really aren't ever happy.

 

Ahhhh f**k it...

 

Glad to say Villa proved me wrong against Cardiff, despite a 'sigh' of frustration at half time. We did it... great.

 

Well done Villa... keep it up.

 

As a glass half empty man... I am quite happy at this moment.

[Risso]

The problem with ITKs, even when given the seal of approval by the mods (as someone else informed me had happened with HairyHands) is that they are fed little titbits of authentic info by the clubs so they pass on what the club want us to hear. We have no way of knowing whether we are getting a full or true picture. That's why I never bother with them.

Most press stories about transfers come from agents, not the clubs.

Anyway, the tourist boards of the Eurozone will be welcoming you with open arms on your next visit. 7m Euros is worth about £5.9m, not £4.5m. You'll be paying well over the odds for your pasta.

I'd say the chances of HH vs the press getting wrong information are about even at worst.

Ultimately there is no reliable way of knowing what we paid. I don't really even care, but annoyingly I do care that people looking for a stick to beat Lambert with seem determined to claim that Kozak cost an undisputed 7 million.

As I posted earlier, there's just over one million pounds difference between what sites like Soccerbase say we spent over 2 years, and what the club says we spent. If a player like Kozak cost less than the reported fee, then other players have to have cost more, and I don't see any rush to claim that Bacuna for example cost more.

[Morpheus]

 

 

 

Honestly couldn't care less about possession, even when we keep it half of the ground are screaming for Villa to move it quicker and cannot stand us keeping the ball and moving it around. Phil Thompson, on Sky mentioned that though Cardiff had the possession they done sod all with it.

Which would be correct. Kind of like how Spurs have one of the highest average possession stats in the league if not the highest, yet rarely do anything of note with it and have scored less goals than us (!), and lost to Newcastle without scoring having 65% of the possession. Passing in front of teams won't get you anywhere. We're more direct this year and it's yielding results so I'm not complaining too much. Even last year while playing better football we were still very much direct and incisive. It's like we want to have our cake and eat it too. How about we first sort out our defence and results before we move on to the luxury of an attractive style of play? Something that I have no doubt Lambert is working on.

Is that the Spurs team who are constantly challenging for CL?

I don't see how that's relevant. A red herring if I ever saw one.

 

It's relevant to your highlighted text.

[Mantis]

No we don't. We just have vague talk of a 'project' which Faulkner (and by extension Lerner) pay lip-service to. The uncertainty over Lerner's future spending undermimes belief in this.

 

It's no less vague than Swansea's.

 

Precisely. It remains to be seen whether we are on an upwards trajectory whereas Swansea have been on one for a good while.

 

And it also remains to be seen whether Swansea will cement their place above us. In any case, we're on an upward trajectory too.

 

11/12 - horrible season under McLeish and didn't even get 40 points

12/13 - narrowly avoided relegation again but at least got more points, played better more attacking football and building a young squad with potential

13/14 - look to be competing for a top-10 finish having already taken a couple of big scalps. Defence has improved remarkably.

 

With all due respect, you doubting they can spend that much within their means doesn't mean anything. Also, who is to say that they will spend that much every year? They spent that much this summer because they clearly felt they could do so.

 

Likewise, your opinion on it doesn't mean much either. It remains to be seen though whether Swansea will spend that kind of money every season.

 

It isn't invalid because you made club size the only basis for why their fans would want to swap places with us.

 

No I didn't. I also mentioned how entrenched in the Premier League we are. Leeds and Forest are entrenched in the Championship now.

 

Something that seems to be forgotten with these comparisons is that Swansea have had the benefit of stability over the past 2 seasons - we haven't. The club has been in turmoil of some kind for years and only now does it look like we're finally getting some stability, but even that will take time.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Mantis

[SikhInTrinity]

Whats all this project nonsense?  He is a year into re-building the side, there is progress and lots of room for improvement, but i can't understand what some fans want him to turn around and say, its like they want him to appear on AVTV with charts and graphs to analyse every minor detail.

[DelboyVilla]

Whats all this project nonsense?  He is a year into re-building the side, there is progress and lots of room for improvement, but i can't understand what some fans want him to turn around and say, its like they want him to appear on AVTV with charts and graphs to analyse every minor detail.

 

Heat maps would be most useful as we have a detailed understanding of these???

 

But you're right he has no obligation to explain himself to us. We have improved and are not at the moment solely relying on Beneteke's form to carry us.

[sne]

 

 

What do you guys think is a "better" brand of football? It's not clear from this discussion.

 

Bare in mind, the counter attacking Dortmund is Lambert's biggest influence, so do you have a problem with that style on the whole, or just the way we are doing it at the moment? Should he drop the style and try to do something more possession based or does it just need refining?

Dortmund don't resort to hoofball every five minutes. Dortmund can still create chances when their opponents have numbers behind the ball. Dortmund also do still average majority possession. Other then the fact that we both counter a lot, I struggle to see any other similarity between our football and theirs.

 

When Dortmund play teams on their level or near their level they don't. 43% possession against Schalke recently, a side they are better than.

 

If you think we play anything at all like Dortmund, even a ‰ like them then you clearly haven't watched them play many times, or at all.

 

The constant comparison to Dortmund is the most cringeworthy and embarrasing phenomenon on this forum.

Yes lambert spent a very successfull season there in the 90's, thats it

[bannedfromHandV]

No patronisation there Morpheus, that would involve some form of subtlety, this is an outright statement.

So basically what your saying is that unless you deem a post constructive then no-one is entitled to an opinion. 

 

Thing is though you weren't giving an opinion about anything, you were trying, so far as I can tell to discredit my opinion but not with a counter-opinion, with complete tosh as per usual.

 

Hence, if you have nothing to add, don't try.

[bannedfromHandV]

And many other people's minds too I bet.

Hmmm...

Well let's think about it. Swansea have finished ahead of us for the last two seasons, have a better quality squad, a more progressive manager, have won a trophy, are in Europe and now even spend more.

Your move...

 

Okay, they have a 20,000 seater stadium with shit training facilities.

 

They have a fan base perhaps only just bigger than their stadium, globally.

 

I would strongly imagine that their revenue is much smaller than ours and their revenue potential is dwarfed by ours.

 

Football is not all about the here and now, yeah great they won the Carling Cup last year, Wigan won the FA cup so are they better than Swansea? As things stand we're above them in the league

 

How many more do you want?

[Morpheus]

So basically what your saying is that unless you deem a post constructive then no-one is entitled to an opinion. 

 

Thing is though you weren't giving an opinion about anything, you were trying, so far as I can tell to discredit my opinion but not with a counter-opinion, with complete tosh as per usual.

 

Hence, if you have nothing to add, don't try.

Actually no i wasn't trying to discredit your opinion at all. The 'had a wee chuckle at the bold part of the post' comment was fully explained in my previous post which I have now highlighted.

 

I would suggest however that describing my opinion as 'complete tosh as per usual' is actually more in line with what you are accusing me of and stating 'if you have nothing to add, don't try' is even further evidence of patronization.

[BOF]

Guys can we try not to nest too many quoted posts. It screw the mobile app. Snip done above.

[Isa]

It's no less vague than Swansea's.

How so?

And it also remains to be seen whether Swansea will cement their place above us. In any case, we're on an upward trajectory too.

Hang on. You earlier said it is too early to say whether we are making progress and now we are definitely on an upwards trajectory?

  

Likewise, your opinion on it doesn't mean much either. It remains to be seen though whether Swansea will spend that kind of money every season.

But I'm not using guesswork as an argument though. Your point is that you 'doubt' they can spend that much money every season. As I said earlier, who actually said they will spend that much every year? Also, is £22m actually that much? You seem to forget how substantial the increase in the TV money was. Just because our owner has pocketed most of it to pay off the debts he got us into, it doesn't mean more well-run clubs cannot put it towards their transfer budget.

 

No I didn't. I also mentioned how entrenched in the Premier League we are. Leeds and Forest are entrenched in the Championship now.

Sorry to use them again but we have a bigger stadium and fan-base then Southampton plus are more 'entrenched' in the league then they are. I take it their fans would love to switch places with us too right?

 

Something that seems to be forgotten with these comparisons is that Swansea have had the benefit of stability over the past 2 seasons - we haven't. The club has been in turmoil of some kind for years and only now does it look like we're finally getting some stability, but even that will take time.

Yes and our stability might well bear fruit. Until it does though, I don't see how you can claim we are on par with Swansea.

[Isa]

Guys can we try not to nest too many quoted posts. It screw the mobile app. Snip done above.

Apologies BOF. I only just saw this after I posted.

[Mantis]

How so?

Hang on. You earlier said it is too early to say whether we are making progress and now we are definitely on an upwards trajectory?

  

But I'm not using guesswork as an argument though. Your point is that you 'doubt' they can spend that much money every season. As I said earlier, who actually said they will spend that much every year? Also, is £22m actually that much? You seem to forget how substantial the increase in the TV money was. Just because our owner has pocketed most of it to pay off the debts he got us into, it doesn't mean more well-run clubs cannot put it towards their transfer budget.

 

Sorry to use them again but we have a bigger stadium and fan-base then Southampton plus are more 'entrenched' in the league then they are. I take it their fans would love to switch places with us too right?

 

Yes and our stability might well bear fruit. Until it does though, I don't see how you can claim we are on par with Swansea.

 

 

Because we have a fairly clear plan too.

 

Well, we are on an upwards trajectory.

 

£22m is quite a fair bit, even with the new TV revenue. Funny how you say he "pocketed" it yet isn't he still putting money into the club?

 

Deep down I bet a lot of them would in the long term. Then again, I don't know how much their recent "success" has gone to their heads.

 

I fail to see how we're not at least on par with Swansea.