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The Cull of the High Earners


smetrov

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our last 6 years' signings:

 

 

Stiliyan Petrov - £6,500,000 - Will be released
Didier Agathe - Free - Released
Chris Sutton - Free - Released
John Carew - P/X - Released
Ashley Young - £9,650,000 - Sold for Profit
Shaun Maloney - £1m - Sold for Loss
Nigel Reo-Coker - £8.5m - Released
Marlon Harewood - £4m - Released
Zat Knight - £3.5m - Sold for Cost
Moustapha Salifou - 50p - Released
Wayne Routledge £1.25m - Sold for Loss
Curtis Davies - £10m - Sold for Loss
Steven Sidwell - £5.5m - Released
Brad Friedel - £2m - Released
Brad Guzan - £600k - Released (and resigned)
Nicky Shorey - £5m - Released (or sold for nominal fee, depending on where you look)
Luke Young - £5m - Released (or sold for nominal fee, depending on where you look)
Carlos Cuellar - £7.8m - Released
James Milner - £12m - Sold for Profit
Emile Heskey - £3.5m - Released
Stewart Downing - £12m - Sold for Profit
Fabian Delph - Still at Club
Habib Beye - £3.5m - Released
Stephen Warnock - £8m - Releaased
James Collins - £5m - Sold for Loss
Richard Dunne - £5m - Still at Club, Will Be Released in June
Stephen Ireland - £8m - Will likely be released due to wages
Jean Makoun - £6m - Will likely be released
Darren Bent - £24m - Will be sold for loss
Shay Given - £3.5m - Will likely be released due to wages
Charles N'Zogbia - £9.5m - Will likely be sold for loss
Alan Hutton - £4m - Will likely be sold for loss or released
Enda Stevens - £250k - Still at Club
Karim El Ahmadi - £2m - Still at Club
Brett Holman - Free - Still at Club
Matthew Lowton - £3m - Still at Club
Ron Vlaar - £3.2m - Still at Club
Joe Bennett - £3m - Still at Club
Jordan Bowery - £300k - Still at Club
Christian Benteke - £8m - Still at Club
Ashley Westwood - £4m - Still at Club
Yacouba Sylla - £2m - Still at Club
 
So counting players whose contracts expire in June as released, that's:
 
42 players signed
17 released
17 still at club
4 of those still at club likely to be released
3 sold for profit
4 sold for loss
1 sold at cost
 
 

some of those figures are wrong or at the high end of estimations - for example Habib Beye was 2.5 mil and Sidwell wasn't released for nothing.

 

But i agree our transfer dealings have been a car crash and Randy has every right to demand an end to it.

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 i agree our transfer dealings have been a car crash and Randy has every right to demand an end to it.

This is the thinking I have the greatest difficulty in dealing with - the idea that Randy Lerner is somehow an observer in this process, who has now had to step in to stop what was happening.

 

It was HIS "strategy" all along.

 

Phase 1 - let's go for top 4. Let's spend big on young players who will get us there. Nearly did it - OMG, we have some injuries in our defence, let's panic buy a whole new defence who can maintain the challenge.

 

Phase 2 - hang on, I can't afford this. Let's sell to buy - oops, there goes MON. Oh well Kevin Mac says he can do it with the youth team, let's give him a go. Hmm, or maybe I meant Gerard Houllier? OK, let's buy Bent for the largest fee ever paid for a Villa player ever, phew! relegation avoided.

 

Phase 3 - shame about Gerard, I know, how about Alex McLeish (letter of recommendation from Sralex). Oh dear, nearly relegated again and the fans hate him and the players he brought in are rubbish.

 

Phase 4 - OK, Paul Lambert, let's recruit an almost entirely new team who don't cost too much, drive out the remaining players on premier league pay and hope for the best. Sorry Paul, you must have misheard if you thought there would be money for players in January. Ah well, if we go down, Paul will get us back up...

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the strategy was fine, with another manager it would've been perfect. mon trusted his manager to get things right, and backed him with the money to do so. he forked over huge sums of cash on the basis that he trusted the manager to use it wisely. if the manager said he needed another player, or two more, for x amount and whatever wages we could get them for, he trusted him enough to back him up with the funds he needed. how could anyone have foreseen that so many of those signings would be flops and end up being released? what happened with our signings was a complete and utter freak. you'd never get that at any other club in the volume it happened at the villa. you might take a hit for some signings, selling on at a loss, sure, but to have one in three leaving for absolutely nothing is absolutely incredible.

 

randy did what needed to be done, he trusted the manager with money. it didnt work, and he couldn't afford to keep doing it. he came in, he gave it a go, and then he called quits on that approach when it was in danger of bankrupting the club.

 

has he handled things well since then? no. but you can't criticise him for backing mon for 4 years

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Football managers are not generally very commercially astute. They are ex players who have limited business understanding.

Hence the financial parameters and player negotiations should be handled by someone else or at least signed off following some due diligence.

Seemingly this is what didn't happen under MON.

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Gabby - faded in the last few years - but overall worth his wage

 

Is he *#*# definition of limited. If his hams ever went and he slowed down he'd be worth very little.

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the strategy was fine, with another manager it would've been perfect. mon trusted his manager to get things right, and backed him with the money to do so. he forked over huge sums of cash on the basis that he trusted the manager to use it wisely. if the manager said he needed another player, or two more, for x amount and whatever wages we could get them for, he trusted him enough to back him up with the funds he needed. how could anyone have foreseen that so many of those signings would be flops and end up being released? what happened with our signings was a complete and utter freak. you'd never get that at any other club in the volume it happened at the villa. you might take a hit for some signings, selling on at a loss, sure, but to have one in three leaving for absolutely nothing is absolutely incredible.

 

randy did what needed to be done, he trusted the manager with money. it didnt work, and he couldn't afford to keep doing it. he came in, he gave it a go, and then he called quits on that approach when it was in danger of bankrupting the club.

 

has he handled things well since then? no. but you can't criticise him for backing mon for 4 years

So (if I can summarise a bit harshly) his "strategy" was to hand over a lot of money to his manager and hope for the best?

 

Doesn't sound too good to me. I don't think the main problem was the lack of payback on transfer fees paid (in fact, despite the numbers who left for free, the big fees received for Barry, Young, Milner and Downing and other smaller ones for players like Cahill, Ridgewell, Knight, etc., makes that side of the business look not too disastrous). It was more the unsustainability of the wages paid compared with income. He was a bit like a kid with a month's pocket money who spends it all in a week and then wonders how he is going to get through the next three weeks. Lerner should have known he couldn't afford those wages long term, although I accept that he might have calculated that Champions League income would have helped boost income. 

 

At best you can credit him with being a gambler whose bet failed and he decided eventually to stop betting. Paying off the gambling debts is proving a bit painful.

 

(Apologies for the randonm mix of metaphors in this!) 

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How has it cost us £70m?

 

We've already been relegated.

 

Despite being in the relegation zone by goal difference and the teams around us being as bad as us this season so far, or we'd be adrift on our own, apparently there is

no chance at all that we'll get one point more than those teams in the remaining games.

 

I hope the team have more bottle and fight than some of the supporters.

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Who are you actually thinking, that came for big money and then went on a free ? - I can only think of Cuellar ? \ Warnock

Reo coker, Davies, Luke young

Edit ignore hadn't read rest of thread so already mentioned

Edited by mikeyp102
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We've already been relegated.

 

Despite being in the relegation zone by goal difference and the teams around us being as bad as us this season so far, or we'd be adrift on our own, apparently there is

no chance at all that we'll get one point more than those teams in the remaining games.

 

I hope the team have more bottle and fight than some of the supporters.

 

But thats not the whole story - Apart from reading we have been beaten quite easily buy all those around us.  Wigan, Newcastle, southampton all at home within the last few weeks. Theres a good chance we will be bottom by the end of Feb. The bookies also make us joint favourites to go down.

 

We have 14 games left - and probably need to win 6 - thats some upturn in form. It can be done of course - but I trust you will agree it is unlikely.

Edited by smetrov
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Although we're in a poor predicament, and many Villa fans are undoubtedly going to be pessimistic, the statements of fact that we're 'already' down (such as those below) are laughable.

 

Its already cost us £70m in TV money,  

 

 we've tossed £70m out of the window tonight

 

If you believe that we're heading for relegation because our financial strategy is wrong, then fine - that's your prediction and many fans will agree with you.  However, just because you imply that we're already relegated, it doesn't automatically mean that you're correct right now.  State your opinion, and bask in your own nostradamic magnificence at the end of the season.  Not now.

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In the Soccernomics book, which has very deep statistical analysis on this issue, it says there is a direct correlation between wages and success.
Its obvious really, more money = better players.
Obviously there are anomalies, but the chances of us finding a squad of 22 anomalies arent great...

From what I read it sounds like we're trying to do what Alan Sugar did at Spurs in the early 90's and run a profitable football club?
It didn't work.

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But thats not the whole story - Apart from reading we have been beaten quite easily buy all those around us.  Wigan, Newcastle, southampton all at home within the last few weeks. Theres a good chance we will be bottom by the end of Feb. The bookies also make us joint favourites to go down.

 

We have 14 games left - and probably need to win 6 - thats some upturn in form. It can be done of course - but I trust you will agree it is unlikely.

 

Wigan beat us easily but there's no way that Southampton did. We created chance after chance against them, not forgetting that the penalty should not have been given. Newcastle had an easy first half but were under the cosh the second. They deserved the victory because we couldn't get the equalizer but it can't be classed an easy victory for them.

 

Yes we're looking likely to go down but that is not the same as guaranteed to go down.

 

If in the remaining games we win one more point than Reading and Wigan and don't lose more than three points more than QPR we will survive. Whether anyone thinks thats likely is one thing but many on here are acting as if it's impossible.

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Crikey, so much bashing of MON's era.

 

At the end of the day, most Villa fans would give anything to have a team like the one Martin had stepping out at Goodison today.

 

Randy should've realised you have to pay out and continue to pay out to achieve success in football, only a tiny minority of clubs in this country, or in Europe, are successful on the pitch and operate at decent financial statistics.

 

Birmingham in 2011 achieved success on the pitch winning a trophy, if they'd managed to stay up who's to say they wouldn't be a really good side now if they had continued to pay out for good players? Think of the money Liverpool and Arsenal have outlayed and achieved relatively little in the past 6 or so seasons. Man City, Man Utd, Spurs and Chelsea are having to spend huge all the time just to try and stay where they are.

 

Villa gambled by spending big and it didn't work for MON's "successful" 2 seasons at the club. Randy was still prepared to back Houllier in the market, and I'm one of those who do believe that Houllier would have been able to build something successful if he had been here at the right time of his career/life.

 

Since then McLeish took over and Randy had lost faith with the idea that managers are long term and trust-worthy, in my humble opinion. Lambert has come in and sold some sort of dream to him that he is a good enough young manager to overhaul a squad of highly paid under-achievers and do better with a young and hungry bunch.

 

And I hope Lambert is good enough over the next 14 games, I really really hope he is.

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lets take it back to mon..he walked when milner was to be sold,randy signed stephen ireland & plonked him on a long contract on high wages! 

 

Then randy decides he has made a huge mistake with ireland & tells every manager to cut the wage bill..FFS randy you **** signed him! 

your forcing every manager to play ireland in some way shape or form.

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Wigan beat us easily but there's no way that Southampton did. We created chance after chance against them, not forgetting that the penalty should not have been given. Newcastle had an easy first half but were under the cosh the second. They deserved the victory because we couldn't get the equalizer but it can't be classed an easy victory for them.

 

Yes we're looking likely to go down but that is not the same as guaranteed to go down.

 

If in the remaining games we win one more point than Reading and Wigan and don't lose more than three points more than QPR we will survive. Whether anyone thinks thats likely is one thing but many on here are acting as if it's impossible.

 

OK - My mistake - Southampton\Newcastle just beat us  - but didn't beat us easily.

 

And we are not guaranteed to go down - but it looks highly probable.

 

Even given the above - I don't feel much brighter about our prospects 

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