The Randy Lerner thread

[TRO]

6 hours ago, blandy said:

It's an interesting idea. I think part of the current problem is the background. Initially RL let MO'N have free reign, with the aim/plan of getting into the top 4 and euro telly cup. once the money was spent, it was gone, and the gamble failed. At least he had a go. it was his money. Fair enough. But when MO'N threw his teddy, we were left with a high wage bill and no manger and an inexperienced owner left in a pickle.

Pretty much ever since there's been a cutting back on wages, selling the best players and repeated manager changes, meaning compensation for sackings, new manager coming in, wanting different players, causing additional expenses. Then there was the Lambert/Lerner joint "get cheaper younger hungrier players in" rather than the likes of Richard Dunne (admittedly he was hungry, but perhaps not in a good way). Shay Given and all those types who have no resale value, either.

Having sold off all the good players, we've been left with mostly lower wage, lower value, less able players, in part as a consequence of the need to cut the wage bill and partly because of all the instability.

Instability has high costs, and it's that as much as anything else that is the cause of the current state of affairs and the skewed net spend figures - many other clubs spend more, but get more back from sales, offsetting the costs of buys.

Ellis did many of the same things earlier in his time in charge. changing managers, selling off the higher paid and better players. It has the same effect too. It made the club worse and we got relegated.

 

There is an interesting scenario that could develop, that would certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons in the debate about transfer funds and the ultimate effect on team performance.

We could find a bizarre situation where Aston Villa go down and Birmingham City go up....Oh yes, less likely for them to come up but possible.

can anyone look in the financial position of both clubs and make any sense of that and how the finances of each club has had an effect on the playing performance.

you would forgive anyone for initially thinking it has no affect whatsoever.we all know it does have an effect it's just that WE have made such poor attempt at taking advantage of any money we have had......for us to have prospered on the field we would needed the American defence budget......There have been

3 hours ago, blandy said:

That's pretty accurate. Eventually a bigger club will hit a point, after falling and falling where their income can grow, or start to grow back again. How far down the divisions they drop is the worry. And even then it takes luck and being well run for that re-growth to happen. The reason it happens is because eventually they'll fall to a level, where even though their crowds will be smaller than at the top level, they will be bigger than everyone else's and that gate money will give them a financial advantage again, and they can then start to win more games, get promoted and you get a virtuous circle, [but it's usually a bumpy ride]. It's why Man City, Sunderland and so on got back up again a decade ago, or whenever it was. But the likes of Sheffield Wednesday, Leeds and co. they're still down below, somewhere. They were financial basket cases (as are Bolton and a few others).

So when you get to the point where the fans a club has actually genuinely start to matter, than when you can get a rebirth.

At the moment in the Premier league generally, throughout, the clubs all get most of their money one way or another through the telly and sponsors and fans are paid lip service to. The Prem is broken. It might be rich, and fans of the teams at the top might be happy, but it's still broken.

You may glean from my posts that I am less concerned / interested in the financial side of things as the football side of things.

it would be folly to suggest that money doesn't matter and is not a major factor in the success of a football clubs recruitment......but I still think that the art of picking up players as of yesteryear is equally as important.

clubs are still, just like 30/ 40 years and more ago are proving good management can partially negate the clubs with heavy financial clout......in the minority, maybe so, but still exists.

For me although football has changed it always has, but paradoxically remains the same.....There are so many things that existed 70  years ago like Villa buying all the best players.....only now it's others.

what has changed is the sums of money.....but equally there are many things like priciples have not changed.

Edited December 4, 2015 by TRO

[MakemineVanilla]

The biggest mystery about Villa's latest plunge towards relegation is how and why in the face of a run of recording-breaking direness that the crowds have held up so well, compared with the three relegations from the top tier since the end of WW2.

All the other relegation seasons are marked by sub-20k attendances but here we are after five years of relentless decline and there are still 36000 fans willing to pay quite a lot to witness the failure and experience the misery.

Is it just down to the modern habit of buying season tickets (I've paid so I'll go) or is it something to do with some fundamental change in the nature or the demograph of football supporters?

[TRO]

On 12/2/2015, 5:43:06, VillaCas said:

Correlation is the statistical relationship between two variables.  League position correlates very closely with wages and with turnover, so the more you spend on wages the higher up the league you are likely to finish.

This doesnt mean that a team with high wages will always beat one with low wages or that teams can't do better or worse than there wage bill dictates.  It's possible to do better than expected, like Leicester, particularly for a short period of time. It becomes more unlikely as time goes on, so Leicester are likely to drop back as the season progresses and are unlikely to sustain their performance over the medium term

This relationship is very strong in the Premiership, not so much in the Championship and I doubt it was as significant back in the 80s

http://ibmathsresources.com/2014/05/04/correlation-between-premier-league-wages-and-league-position/

I understand all of that, but to me Stats are a guide, no more no less.Subtle errors can be made from believing in Stats that can lead to much bigger errors in the long term.

We are a football team playing for a football club and there are many stats to boggle our mind, but some of the stuff we rely on is abstract and is very difficult to apply stats to like players attitudes, which can have a profound effect on our results, equally they can change in a jiffy.

The example of Leicester is a real one alright and whether they go on to faulter or not, they have the confidence of that period to call on to raise their game once again. Faultering is no exclusive to teams that have built their squad through modest means.....Chelsea are good reminders of that.

Birmingham City are not awash with money in fact that is a euphemism, I am surprised they are still in business, but they have dug themselves out through good football management and perseverence.

We back in the late 70's Early 80's acheived miracles coming from dark days of Tommy cummings, Tommy Docherty etc......Its wasn't injections of cash it was prudent recruitment and good football management.

I understand that stats support your correlation and the lazy/easy way to success is the Man City way ( good luck to them) my argument is its not the only way and other teams in the future will do a Leicester too.

Lets see if it can be us and lets bang the drum for it to be us.

Ps There are examples everywhere of arguments for and counter arguments, lets not feel sorry for ourselves in not having the money,lets fight back and not accept defeat so easily, as we haven't got the money to compete...because we have.

[TRO]

32 minutes ago, MakemineVanilla said:

The biggest mystery about Villa's latest plunge towards relegation is how and why in the face of a run of recording-breaking direness that the crowds have held up so well, compared with the three relegations from the top tier since the end of WW2.

All the other relegation seasons are marked by sub-20k attendances but here we are after five years of relentless decline and there are still 36000 fans willing to pay quite a lot to witness the failure and experience the misery.

Is it just down to the modern habit of buying season tickets (I've paid so I'll go) or is it something to do with some fundamental change in the nature or the demograph of football supporters?

That really is an interesting one....I was thinking the same the other day.

1.Season tickets is one, harder to stop going when you have committed to one

2. Families migration....have moved out of Brum and its the only way of keeping in touch with friends and relations.

3.The match day experience is better now than  30-50 years ago i.e facilities etc

4. We still have good teams to watch in the prem.....The championship may be a different dynamic.

5. The football we play is not that bad actually, just riddled with schoolboy errors.....so fans live in hope they will be eradicated.....still waiting,I Know.

but overall the fans need a big pat on the back for sticking with it.......I don't care what folk say the Villa Fans are great on the whole....just had their patience tested.

[MakemineVanilla]

19 minutes ago, TRO said:

That really is an interesting one....I was thinking the same the other day.

1.Season tickets is one, harder to stop going when you have committed to one

2. Families migration....have moved out of Brum and its the only way of keeping in touch with friends and relations.

3.The match day experience is better now than  30-50 years ago i.e facilities etc

4. We still have good teams to watch in the prem.....The championship may be a different dynamic.

5. The football we play is not that bad actually, just riddled with schoolboy errors.....so fans live in hope they will be eradicated.....still waiting,I Know.

but overall the fans need a big pat on the back for sticking with it.......I don't care what folk say the Villa Fans are great on the whole....just had their patience tested.

I favour 1 & 4.

Buying a season ticket seems like just as much of a sign of loyalty and commitment these days as buying a replica shirt.

The attendance stats over the decades seem to suggest that Villa fans are more likely to turn up to watch good opposition.

[VillaCas]

1 hour ago, TRO said:

I understand all of that, but to me Stats are a guide, no more no less.Subtle errors can be made from believing in Stats that can lead to much bigger errors in the long term.

We are a football team playing for a football club and there are many stats to boggle our mind, but some of the stuff we rely on is abstract and is very difficult to apply stats to like players attitudes, which can have a profound effect on our results, equally they can change in a jiffy.

The example of Leicester is a real one alright and whether they go on to faulter or not, they have the confidence of that period to call on to raise their game once again. Faultering is no exclusive to teams that have built their squad through modest means.....Chelsea are good reminders of that.

Birmingham City are not awash with money in fact that is a euphemism, I am surprised they are still in business, but they have dug themselves out through good football management and perseverence.

We back in the late 70's Early 80's acheived miracles coming from dark days of Tommy cummings, Tommy Docherty etc......Its wasn't injections of cash it was prudent recruitment and good football management.

I understand that stats support your correlation and the lazy/easy way to success is the Man City way ( good luck to them) my argument is its not the only way and other teams in the future will do a Leicester too.

Lets see if it can be us and lets bang the drum for it to be us.

Ps There are examples everywhere of arguments for and counter arguments, lets not feel sorry for ourselves in not having the money,lets fight back and not accept defeat so easily, as we haven't got the money to compete...because we have.

I find it hard to respond to your posts as you jump around so many subjects - one minute Leicester, the next Tommy Cummings, etc etc. Hard to make head or tail sometimes

I don't know what you mean by "subtle errors can be made from beleiving in stats, that can lead to bigger errors in the long term".  There is one single stat that matters in the premiership - wages.  No one is doubting that a team like Leicester can buck the trend for a short period of time but the stats clearly show that eventually teams that pay the most generally end up at the top of the table and teams that pay the least end up at the bottom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean

Your Birmingham City comparision is redundant, as I stated earlier the link between wages and league position is nothing like as strong in the Championship.

Of course we can hope that we will be one of the teams who buck the trend and outperform what the stats suggest however I'm not banking on it. I've not looked at the figures but I would imagine that we are at the other end of the curve at the moment in that our wage bill would suggert that we should be doing better than our league position suggests - statisticians call this the "Sherwood Effect"

[Chicken Field]

On 12/2/2015, 5:43:06, VillaCas said:

Correlation is the statistical relationship between two variables.  League position correlates very closely with wages and with turnover, so the more you spend on wages the higher up the league you are likely to finish.

This doesnt mean that a team with high wages will always beat one with low wages or that teams can't do better or worse than there wage bill dictates.  It's possible to do better than expected, like Leicester, particularly for a short period of time. It becomes more unlikely as time goes on, so Leicester are likely to drop back as the season progresses and are unlikely to sustain their performance over the medium term

This relationship is very strong in the Premiership, not so much in the Championship and I doubt it was as significant back in the 80s

http://ibmathsresources.com/2014/05/04/correlation-between-premier-league-wages-and-league-position/

Correlation is only significant because of the top 6. We will never be able to compete with them (money wise), therefor to find a correlation that is relevant for us you would have to remove the top 6. if we remove the top 6 I hypothesis that there is no significant correlation between wage budget and final finish. though I can't be bothered to crunch in the numbers anywhere. 
 

[VillaCas]

13 minutes ago, Chicken Field said:

Correlation is only significant because of the top 6. We will never be able to compete with them (money wise), therefor to find a correlation that is relevant for us you would have to remove the top 6. if we remove the top 6 I hypothesis that there is no significant correlation between wage budget and final finish. though I can't be bothered to crunch in the numbers anywhere. 
 

Happy that that is your hypothesis however unless you've got anything at all to back it up it will forever remain just that

[TRO]

2 hours ago, MakemineVanilla said:

The biggest mystery about Villa's latest plunge towards relegation is how and why in the face of a run of recording-breaking direness that the crowds have held up so well, compared with the three relegations from the top tier since the end of WW2.

All the other relegation seasons are marked by sub-20k attendances but here we are after five years of relentless decline and there are still 36000 fans willing to pay quite a lot to witness the failure and experience the misery.

Is it just down to the modern habit of buying season tickets (I've paid so I'll go) or is it something to do with some fundamental change in the nature or the demograph of football supporters?

That really is an interesting one....I was thinking the same the other day.

1.Season tickets is one, harder to stop going when you have committed to one

2. Families migration....have moved out of Brum and its the only way of keeping in touch with friends and relations.

3.The match day experience is better now than  30-50 years ago i.e facilities etc

4. We still have good teams to watch in the prem.....The championship may be a different dynamic.

5. The football we play is not that bad actually, just riddled with schoolboy errors.....so fans live in hope they will be eradicated.....still waiting,I Know.

but overall the fans need a big pat on the back for sticking with it.......I don't care what folk say the Villa Fans are great on the whole....just had their patience tested.

[TRO]

49 minutes ago, VillaCas said:

I find it hard to respond to your posts as you jump around so many subjects - one minute Leicester, the next Tommy Cummings, etc etc. Hard to make head or tail sometimes

I don't know what you mean by "subtle errors can be made from beleiving in stats, that can lead to bigger errors in the long term".  There is one single stat that matters in the premiership - wages.  No one is doubting that a team like Leicester can buck the trend for a short period of time but the stats clearly show that eventually teams that pay the most generally end up at the top of the table and teams that pay the least end up at the bottom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean

Your Birmingham City comparision is redundant, as I stated earlier the link between wages and league position is nothing like as strong in the Championship.

Of course we can hope that we will be one of the teams who buck the trend and outperform what the stats suggest however I'm not banking on it. I've not looked at the figures but I would imagine that we are at the other end of the curve at the moment in that our wage bill would suggert that we should be doing better than our league position suggests - statisticians call this the "Sherwood Effect"

In response to jumping around .....I was merely trying to make it easier to understand my point....sorry for failing to do that.

Put in simple terms whilst I appreciate the wages /transfer fee's argument.....I believe the business of prudent player recruitment can negate some of the financial difficulty a club may have.....I do not believe it is impossible to acheive, but i respect the general view to be so....but remember its a general view not exclusive.

There is NO hard and fast rule that we can all cling to as the holy grail, so I was trying illustrate that despite unlimited funds that we don't have, an element of success has been acheived by clubs that buy prudently....We were great exponents of that during Ron Saunders reign coming off the back of some dark times in previous seasons under Cummings and Docherty

We are currently bottom of the league and we are not the most miserly payers in the league, so there are discrepancies to the wages argument.

John Gregory has recently come out and said ( which i have already made the point in earlier posts) The poor signings that Villa Have made in recent times are largely responsible for their position.....the people in question should be accountable for that. 

I believe we have a bigger problem with what players we buy, than how much we have to spend.....although to some degree that is related.

[Chicken Field]

1 hour ago, VillaCas said:

Happy that that is your hypothesis however unless you've got anything at all to back it up it will forever remain just that

the Scatter box is actually showing that taking out the top 6, the more you use in wages the lower you are likely to finish. 

Though these results were not significant p=.368, meaning there is no correlation with wage budget and final finish and the differences we see in the scatter box are just random. 
So my hypothesis that money spent on wages and final finishes do not correlate has been proven and accepted. 

 

P.s I know that i wrote position wrong in the scatter box * could not be arsed to change it.

Edited December 5, 2015 by Chicken Field

[VillaCas]

1 hour ago, Chicken Field said:

the Scatter box is actually showing that taking out the top 6, the more you use in wages the lower you are likely to finish. 

Though these results were not significant p=.368, meaning there is no correlation with wage budget and final finish and the differences we see in the scatter box are just random. 
So my hypothesis that money spent on wages and final finishes do not correlate has been proven and accepted. 

haha, I wouldnt have thought so - so your theory is the more you spend the worse you get

firstly you've taken only one season here which proves nothing. Secondly, to be rigourous you should really remove the results of the top six and recast the table accordingly. Come back when you've looked at the last ten seasons

[Chicken Field]

1 minute ago, VillaCas said:

haha, I wouldnt have thought so - so your theory is the more you spend the worse you get

firstly you've taken only one season here which proves nothing. Secondly, to be rigourous you should really remove the results of the top six and recast the table accordingly. Come back when you've looked at the last ten seasons

No, it is that outside the top 6 money is not what decides where you finish. As I said, the numbers I got where not significant, meaning that the wage budget could not explain anything outside the top 6 that season. 

I've used the same numbers that the article you quoted did, so if I can't prove my point using one season, then neither can you.  

My point was to show that statistics can be very misleading and that money is not the reason we are where we are.

 

 

[TRO]

On 12/5/2015, 4:06:25, Chicken Field said:

 

My point was to show that statistics can be very misleading and that money is not the reason we are where we are.

 

On 12/5/2015, 4:06:25, Chicken Field said:

I whole heartedly agree with that.

Money is always a big advantage and its a lazy way of negating hard work.....It can work for sure...... but so can the way Ron Saunders/Mourinho @Porto/Leicester/Crystal Palace/Watford/ and many more that have not had Big Funds, Everton have generated their own funds so they should be included.

We have just made an appalling mess of managing our football.....lets hope Remi can reverse that, not this year I would suspect.

 

 

 

Edited December 7, 2015 by TRO

[blandy]

On 05/12/2015, 13:01:17, VillaCas said:

There is one single stat that matters in the premiership - wages.  No one is doubting that a team like Leicester can buck the trend for a short period of time but the stats clearly show that eventually teams that pay the most generally end up at the top of the table and teams that pay the least end up at the bottom

If we assume that this argument is true ( and I think it's not so much true as a rule, but more a kind of general theory which holds some water, but isn't universally right) - so even if we say it's completely true, the difficulty is that if we just use stats, you'd kind of say, right the way to stop being so crap is to pay more wages - it must be, because the stats prove it. 

I don't think anyone believes that Villa paying the players more money will save us.

You might claim I'm being unfair, as that's not the point you were making. However I could point out that Villa has been paying wages somewhere in the mid range for the last 5 years+. yet we've been finishing down the bottom every season. So quite demonstrably, the wages stat is far from the determining factor.

Furthermore, there's a bit of cause and effect to consider. teams that do well earn more TV money, they earn more prize money, they sell more sponsorships and shirts and all the other stuff. Players get win bonuses and new contracts for playing well and getting picked for England etc. on the back of their performances for their clubs. So the players do well, then get more money, rather than it always being "pay them more and they'll do better". Often "pay them more" can lead to them becoming complacent and doing worse, over time, as individuals.

I'm not saying that clubs with more money can't or don't go out and buy the best players, pay them high wages and maintain a hold at the top, which means that these clubs have high wage bills and finish high up. Just pointing out that it's not a given that wages necessarily tell you much, on their own.

[markavfc40]

44 minutes ago, blandy said:

If we assume that this argument is true ( and I think it's not so much true as a rule, but more a kind of general theory which holds some water, but isn't universally right) - so even if we say it's completely true, the difficulty is that if we just use stats, you'd kind of say, right the way to stop being so crap is to pay more wages - it must be, because the stats prove it. 

I don't think anyone believes that Villa paying the players more money will save us.

I agree with much of what you have said Pete but I guess the pay more wages theory isn't so much about paying the players you currently have more money it is about the fact if you are willing to pay more in wages that you should attract better players.

We spent 50 odd mill over the summer. Signed a dozen players but I’d be confident in saying we reduced the wage bill as the likes of Delph, Benteke, Bent, Vlaar and Given all left and were on big money and we also lost Weimann and Lowton.

For me it is not hard to see where we have gone wrong. We have consistently lost our better players and not been willing to reinvest and after 5 years of doing so it has now well and truly caught up with us.

When I look back now the writing was on the wall over the summer. We had just finished 17^th on 38 points again. Had we have kept our better players it would have needed decent investment to ensure we didn't again find ourselves in deep trouble. What happened though is that we lost our 4 best players and invested little more than what we got for them whilst reducing the wage bill. In fact I would argue that given Delph was worth twice his 8 mill fee that we’d have needed to invest 50 mill just to replace those 4 players before we even thought about improving on a squad that had finished 17th.

We can blame Sherwood for where we find ourselves but that for me would just be using him as a fall guy much like we did with McLeish and Lambert before him. The managers have certainly made mistakes but they have always had one hand tied behind their backs and always been swimming against the tide due to the way the club has been run. There will have been many bit part players in our demise but the man who has to be held responsible is Randy Lerner.

[blandy]

4 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

I agree with much of what you have said Pete but I guess the pay more wages theory isn't so much about paying the players you currently have more money it is about the fact if you are willing to pay more in wages that you should attract better players.

We spent 50 odd mill over the summer....but I’d be confident in saying we reduced the wage bill

For me it is not hard to see where we have gone wrong. We have consistently lost our better players and not been willing to reinvest and after 5 years of doing so it has now well and truly caught up with us.

When I look back now the writing was on the wall over the summer. We had just finished 17^th on 38 points again. Had we have kept our better players it would have needed decent investment to ensure we didn't again find ourselves in deep trouble. What happened though is that we lost our 4 best players and invested little more than what we got for them whilst reducing the wage bill....

We can blame ...managers have certainly made mistakes but they have always had one hand tied behind their backs..

That's a pretty fair diagnosis. I would imagine most fans would agree with a fair part of it, and maybe differ over the odd detail or conclusion, perhaps. I definitely share the view of the deals done. A struggling team that sells its best players and replaces them with cut price youngsters (in the main) is going to struggle even more, 9 out of 10 times. It's why in the pre-season newspaper predictions a lot had Villa tipped for relegation. it's a statement of the bleedin' obvious. I also happen to think that the "hit rate" with youngsters, and players from abroad, especially when paying relatively small fees is quite low. So buying in players unfamiliar with the league is a double risk, in our situation. So yes, the managers have made bad choices, the club has a policy (it seems) on player recruitment that is too idealistic, and too risky. the club changes people too often - managers, staff, players...and all these things are ultimately the responsibility of the (absentee) owner.

My post was really about how concentrating on one single metric (wages) and acting on what it "shows" is (IMO) a mistake. About how too much importance given to things that are less significant and that are only a small part of an overall picture can and will lead to bad choices.

[DCJonah]

Just read that our current run of 14 games with no win is the worst in the history of the club. 

How many is that now under this guy?

[Davkaus]

14? That's nothing.

Derby went 32 games without a win, we have our work cut out for us if we want to break the Premier League record.

[Zatman]

16 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Just read that our current run of 14 games with no win is the worst in the history of the club. 

How many is that now under this guy?

4