The Randy Lerner thread

[Shillzz]

Well said Big John

Anyway, in response to the opening post:

At home, barely giving a toss.

[dukes]

For me it's getting to the DOL/Ellis time and the enjoyment of going to villa park is miminimal.

It's so frustrating to see how shit we play the game. There are probably 2 players I actually get some enjoyment of watching, the rest I'm just sick of seeing them either perform below their ability thanks to poor coaching and management or others performing to their average ability because they're just average players.

I hate knowing that we have a manager who isn't capable of coaching a team into playing football that will entertain me. I hate knowing we have a manager who isn't going to attract the kind of heroes and entertainers we've had in the past.

I hate knowing we have a shit owner who appointed this shit manager and is going to stick with him. I have little hope money and ambition will be spent and shown and I dread what Mcleish will waste it on if it is and how much that will cost us again.

The fun, the entertainment, the optimism and the pride are slipping away from this club at a fast pace. If Lerner loves us as much as his pr spinning , finger slipping, military friend claims then he should be doing everything in his power to find someone else to try and restore what he's pretty much destroyed in such a short period of time.

A failure of an owner in 2 major sports. Well done Mr Lerner!!

To my mind the football is the same as under MON, we just don't have Ashley Young as an outlet otherwise it's always been shit, and I agree most of our team are limited as footballers, and most of them were bought by MON for big money provided by Lerner.

If you buy limited footballers who just want to hoof the ball, no amount of coaching will turn them into ball playing Brazilians.

[Shillzz]

Limited Footballers?

The kind of limited footballers who are now plying their trade at Man City, United & Liverpool?

Let's please not go back to blaming everything on Oneill, because whilst my memory is terrible, I don't actually remember not wanting to go and watch a game at Villa Park due to the pish standard of football on offer whilst he was about. And as a fan, that's pretty much all I care about.

[djamfisher]

For me it's getting to the DOL/Ellis time and the enjoyment of going to villa park is miminimal.

It's so frustrating to see how shit we play the game. There are probably 2 players I actually get some enjoyment of watching, the rest I'm just sick of seeing them either perform below their ability thanks to poor coaching and management or others performing to their average ability because they're just average players.

I hate knowing that we have a manager who isn't capable of coaching a team into playing football that will entertain me. I hate knowing we have a manager who isn't going to attract the kind of heroes and entertainers we've had in the past.

I hate knowing we have a shit owner who appointed this shit manager and is going to stick with him. I have little hope money and ambition will be spent and shown and I dread what Mcleish will waste it on if it is and how much that will cost us again.

The fun, the entertainment, the optimism and the pride are slipping away from this club at a fast pace. If Lerner loves us as much as his pr spinning , finger slipping, military friend claims then he should be doing everything in his power to find someone else to try and restore what he's pretty much destroyed in such a short period of time.

A failure of an owner in 2 major sports. Well done Mr Lerner!!

To my mind the football is the same as under MON, we just don't have Ashley Young as an outlet otherwise it's always been shit, and I agree most of our team are limited as footballers, and most of them were bought by MON for big money provided by Lerner.

If you buy limited footballers who just want to hoof the ball, no amount of coaching will turn them into ball playing Brazilians.

I agree the football under O’Neill, at times, wasn’t that good, but at least the games, as a whole, were exciting, as they could usually go either way; and even if we were losing you felt as though we could possibly get back into them. Additionally, at least it seemed like the players knew what they were doing and knew how the manager wanted them to shape up.

As you mention at least we had an outlet back then, what do we have now?

[Big_John_10]

Mon may have played direct football but it wasn't like the shit we have at the moment. Under Mon it may not have been pretty but it was entertaining at times and in Barry, Milner, petrov and young we had technically good players.

Under mon we had cult heroes like Carew and entertainers like young and you knew that no matter who we played we had a chance. There was optimism, there was pride and going to villa park was something i looked forward to days even weeks in advance.

MON has gone though, there is one man here who could do things to improve us but unfortunately he's either not that bothered or incapable of making decent decisions.

[Richard]

Just what Randy wants; blame all our financial woes on MON. Who signed Ireland and put him on reportedly the highest wages? Why sign a player from France who has virtually not paid on £30000 as reported? etc, etc. Why have to pay off two managers in two seasons, and then pay off SHA to get Alexander McLeish? How much are we wasting on a manager who is incapable?

We can’t keep blame the mess on the man from Northern Ireland. It just doesn’t tally with the reality we are now in.

Absolutely 100% this. Ahh it's all Mon's fault, easy and wrong excuse for Lerner. Sorry that get out of jail card dont work for me

[Richard]

To my mind the football is the same as under MON, we just don't have Ashley Young as an outlet otherwise it's always been shit, and I agree most of our team are limited as footballers, and most of them were bought by MON for big money provided by Lerner.

If you buy limited footballers who just want to hoof the ball, no amount of coaching will turn them into ball playing Brazilians.

MON must have been a bloody genius then to coach such limited footballers to three top 6 finishes, increased year on year points total, a cup semi final and a cup final.

[Denis_B]

dukes wrote

To my mind the football is the same as under MON, we just don't have Ashley Young as an outlet otherwise it's always been shit, and I agree most of our team are limited as footballers, and most of them were bought by MON for big money provided by Lerner.

If you buy limited footballers who just want to hoof the ball, no amount of coaching will turn them into ball playing Brazilians.

Would you agree the football is worse now than under MON and would you agree that attendances have dropped about 5,000 as a direct result?

[HolteExile]

Or we could have not spent £10m on Davies, £5m on Sidwell, £4m on Shorey, £4m on Harewood, £8m on Reo-Coker, £4m on Heskey and other wasted money - been a bit wiser and progressed at a slower rate buying in players we needed every year, instead of average crap for the sake of it on high wages.

No way MON would accept being told what he can spend and how much to pay them. Unfortunately Randy trusted him too much.

This old myth

I don't think you can call those signings a myth, they definitely happened. Of course we all wish they hadn't.

You can't just sweep them under the carpet, and ignore the fact that they contributed both to MON's departure and our current position.

If MON had put a decent European Scouting network in place, or listened to the scouts he had, we might have unearthed some decent European talent rather than paying over the odds (in both wages and transfer fees) for experienced premier league players.

Lerner must shoulder a large portion of the blame for not tackling MON earlier, but MON must also share the blame for some very poor transfer dealings, and for what appears to be tantrum throwing when he was asked to address the situation.

Agree 100% chap.

I sympathise with Lerner to a degree.

For years I think many of us got carried away with Magic Martin, Martin the Maverick. The guy who could get more from less, who could take a team and make the whole greater than the sum of it's parts.

Turns out he was pretty moral afterall. Martin the Myth?

I think the feeling was, if you have a special manager, you try to make his job as easy as possible. Don't get in his way and he'll deliver. Read any book from the likes of Clough, Fergie and co and they'll talk about their run in's with directors, people who think they know football bit don't really.

RL never pretended to be an expert on the game, more an enthusiast. He provided his end of the bargain, but it turns out O'Neill -when given a free hand and favourable conditions to work with for 4 years- ultimately couldn't deliver.

Not a dismal performance by any means - being 6th best in the country. But not the kind of performance that deserves to be lionised either, lest we do the same for O'Leary and Gregory too.

MON deserves a degree of blame for the chaos we found ourselves in pre Houllier appointment. But for me the expiry date on that blame was last summer, when we had ample opportunity to source a decent replacement for Houllier.

Pretty much any big decision affecting the club post August 2010 (with the exception of the Bent signing and the Genting sponsorship deal) the board have made a hames of.

[PieFacE]

Agree 100% chap.

I sympathise with Lerner to a degree.

For years I think many of us got carried away with Magic Martin, Martin the Maverick. The guy who could get more from less, who could take a team and make the whole greater than the sum of it's parts.

Turns out he was pretty moral afterall. Martin the Myth?

I think the feeling was, if you have a special manager, you try to make his job as easy as possible. Don't get in his way and he'll deliver. Read any book from the likes of Clough, Fergie and co and they'll talk about their run in's with directors, people who think they know football bit don't really.

RL never pretended to be an expert on the game, more an enthusiast. He provided his end of the bargain, but it turns out O'Neill -when given a free hand and favourable conditions to work with for 4 years- ultimately couldn't deliver.

Not a dismal performance by any means - being 6th best in the country. But not the kind of performance that deserves to be lionised either, lest we do the same for O'Leary and Gregory too.

MON deserves a degree of blame for the chaos we found ourselves in pre Houllier appointment. But for me the expiry date on that blame was last summer, when we had ample opportunity to source a decent replacement for Houllier.

Pretty much any big decision affecting the club post August 2010 (with the exception of the Bent signing and the Genting sponsorship deal) the board have made a hames of.

My thoughts exactly. Great post.

[CI]

Like I've said before, the tipping point for MON was the board saying enough is enough when he demanded another £26.9m to secure McGeady for 5 years

& who can blame them

[Gabby0878]

Exactly, as in everything in life it is never a case of black and white, instead huge areas of grey. Yes MON was slightly over hyped, but he brought some good players and got some other players who weren't as good to play well. He will go on and do great things I'm sure, however he isn't going to be the next Fergie. He made some great signings like Young and Milner, and he made some shocking ones like Sidwell and Shorey.

Randy loves the club, but after putting in quite a bit of cash has decided that he needs to stop the spending and tighten the purse strings, as we aren't going anywhere fast. The only manager who has willing to take the job on, and therefore taking the ensuing shit storm that followed it, was big Eck. Randy has almost inadvertently made him his fall guy.

The reason we all feel so angry, is because we have been left with an ambition vacuum. We are just treading water and it sucks. Where we go from here is anyone's guess, but I think we need to hunker down, get behind the team (even though at times it can be incredibly trying) and hope for a bit of a cup run to lighten the gloom till the summer. After that we can slowly rebuild but it’s going to take some very astute signing and I’m not sure if Big Eck will be able to do that. Otherwise we need to hope that Randy realises he did his best and can’t get any further, and sells up.

I know it’s not exactly a ground breaking theory, but I hate this anti MON/Love Randy or anti Randy/ love MON back and forth. Surely it’s clear that they are both to blame along with Houiller and Faulkner. Big Eck is stupid for agreeing to take over the club when he should have known how it would/will eventually play out.

Apologese for the typos/spelling mistakes.

[Denis_B]

We are just treading water and it sucks

Gabby I would be happy with that, but, we are slowly sinking

[Gabby0878]

Well thats the thing, the longer you tread water the more you tire..... eventually you go down.

[Rob182]

We are treading water compared to last season. It's only compared to MON's reign that we've sunk.

Last season Houllier worked with MON's players and he wanted to change that. Now Eck is working with MON's players with a few of Houllier's and Eck's thrown in.

I think the least we should do, is give McLeish a chance to bring in a few players and see how he does (fingers crossed - they're Dann/ Martins/ Hleb type players and not Zigic's)

[thetrees]

It's times like these when you think of where we could be now if all the money given to O'Neill had been handed to O'Leary instead.

Perhaps we would have ended up as an established top 4 club.......

[thetrees]

Limited Footballers?

The kind of limited footballers who are now plying their trade at Man City, United & Liverpool?

Let's please not go back to blaming everything on Oneill, because whilst my memory is terrible, I don't actually remember not wanting to go and watch a game at Villa Park due to the pish standard of football on offer whilst he was about. And as a fan, that's pretty much all I care about.

The standard was 'pish' though.

I remember posting on here how it was all very well that we were a good away side, but the shit football was a turn off for the home support and was told by one or two that it was winning that counts.

I don't blame O'Neill, he was given a free rein and, like 99% of people who find themselves in such a position, he took it. I blame the chairman for giving him the free rein.

I can't accept that the football served up, at home at least, was anything less than 90% 'pish' though.

[Big_John_10]

It's times like these when you think of where we could be now if all the money given to O'Neill had been handed to O'Leary instead.

Perhaps we would have ended up as an established top 4 club.......

Yes giving him loads of cash at leeds worked really well. Please tell me that was a joke.

Randy gets away with a lot on here, that good faith he built up with pr exercises obviously is still working on some.

For all the faults Mon had he didn't decide houllier or mcleish should be in charge. Still blaming him now is pointless and deflects from the current issues holding us back and seeing attendences drop and drop as the football and results just aren't good enough.

[Mantis]

Or we could have not spent £10m on Davies, £5m on Sidwell, £4m on Shorey, £4m on Harewood, £8m on Reo-Coker, £4m on Heskey and other wasted money - been a bit wiser and progressed at a slower rate buying in players we needed every year, instead of average crap for the sake of it on high wages.

No way MON would accept being told what he can spend and how much to pay them. Unfortunately Randy trusted him too much.

This old myth

I don't think you can call those signings a myth, they definitely happened. Of course we all wish they hadn't.

You can't just sweep them under the carpet, and ignore the fact that they contributed both to MON's departure and our current position.

If MON had put a decent European Scouting network in place, or listened to the scouts he had, we might have unearthed some decent European talent rather than paying over the odds (in both wages and transfer fees) for experienced premier league players.

Lerner must shoulder a large portion of the blame for not tackling MON earlier, but MON must also share the blame for some very poor transfer dealings, and for what appears to be tantrum throwing when he was asked to address the situation.

Agree 100% chap.

I sympathise with Lerner to a degree.

For years I think many of us got carried away with Magic Martin, Martin the Maverick. The guy who could get more from less, who could take a team and make the whole greater than the sum of it's parts.

Turns out he was pretty moral afterall. Martin the Myth?

I think the feeling was, if you have a special manager, you try to make his job as easy as possible. Don't get in his way and he'll deliver. Read any book from the likes of Clough, Fergie and co and they'll talk about their run in's with directors, people who think they know football bit don't really.

RL never pretended to be an expert on the game, more an enthusiast. He provided his end of the bargain, but it turns out O'Neill -when given a free hand and favourable conditions to work with for 4 years- ultimately couldn't deliver.

Not a dismal performance by any means - being 6th best in the country. But not the kind of performance that deserves to be lionised either, lest we do the same for O'Leary and Gregory too.

MON deserves a degree of blame for the chaos we found ourselves in pre Houllier appointment. But for me the expiry date on that blame was last summer, when we had ample opportunity to source a decent replacement for Houllier.

Pretty much any big decision affecting the club post August 2010 (with the exception of the Bent signing and the Genting sponsorship deal) the board have made a hames of.

Excellent post. Well balanced.

Mon may have played direct football but it wasn't like the shit we have at the moment. Under Mon it may not have been pretty but it was entertaining at times and in Barry, Milner, petrov and young we had technically good players.

Under mon we had cult heroes like Carew and entertainers like young and you knew that no matter who we played we had a chance. There was optimism, there was pride and going to villa park was something i looked forward to days even weeks in advance.

MON has gone though, there is one man here who could do things to improve us but unfortunately he's either not that bothered or incapable of making decent decisions.

All that proves is that McLeish is a shit manager. I think everyone here knows that by now.

We are treading water compared to last season. It's only compared to MON's reign that we've sunk.

Last season Houllier worked with MON's players and he wanted to change that. Now Eck is working with MON's players with a few of Houllier's and Eck's thrown in.

I think the least we should do, is give McLeish a chance to bring in a few players and see how he does (fingers crossed - they're Dann/ Martins/ Hleb type players and not Zigic's)

I agreed with letting Houllier get his own players in but with McLeish I just don't think we can afford to do that. He has a track record of failure and you can bet than when he leaves we'll be left with a bunch of aging hoofball merchants.

[Ingram85]

Exactly, as in everything in life it is never a case of black and white, instead huge areas of grey. Yes MON was slightly over hyped, but he brought some good players and got some other players who weren't as good to play well. He will go on and do great things I'm sure, however he isn't going to be the next Fergie. He made some great signings like Young and Milner, and he made some shocking ones like Sidwell and Shorey.

Randy loves the club, but after putting in quite a bit of cash has decided that he needs to stop the spending and tighten the purse strings, as we aren't going anywhere fast. The only manager who has willing to take the job on, and therefore taking the ensuing shit storm that followed it, was big Eck. Randy has almost inadvertently made him his fall guy.

The reason we all feel so angry, is because we have been left with an ambition vacuum. We are just treading water and it sucks. Where we go from here is anyone's guess, but I think we need to hunker down, get behind the team (even though at times it can be incredibly trying) and hope for a bit of a cup run to lighten the gloom till the summer. After that we can slowly rebuild but it’s going to take some very astute signing and I’m not sure if Big Eck will be able to do that. Otherwise we need to hope that Randy realises he did his best and can’t get any further, and sells up.

I know it’s not exactly a ground breaking theory, but I hate this anti MON/Love Randy or anti Randy/ love MON back and forth. Surely it’s clear that they are both to blame along with Houiller and Faulkner. Big Eck is stupid for agreeing to take over the club when he should have known how it would/will eventually play out.

Apologese for the typos/spelling mistakes.

Careful, sensible posts like that will get you in trouble.

While I agree with pretty much all the post, I myself, am struggling to muster up any excitement at all when it comes to anything aston villa. Not a dislike, more a complete apathy. I didnt really care when we beat chelsea as I had a sneaking suspicion the euphoria wouldnt last too long.

Its part mcleishs fault, its part lerners fault, part mons fault and part the fault of how the game has changed in the modern era away from the supporter. The fans are left in a state of limbo in the mean time. Cant see it changing anytime soon.