Did we get rid of the wrong lot?

[AndyBM]

or the fact hes injured?

 

i like albrighton and want to see him back in the team, we dont have anyone else who can keep whipping balls into the box

[Woodytom]

or the fact hes injured?

 

i like albrighton and want to see him back in the team, we dont have anyone who can keep whipping balls into the box

 

 

Edited

 

Cant remember the last time he put a good cross in.

 

Gabby tbf is our best crosser and hes hit and miss.

[Zatman]

from what ive seen of their rare ventures forward Lowton has a good delivery and so does Stevens but he wont play very much

[Stevo985]

Agreed. Lowton's delivery is pretty good.

[smetrov]

Nope, we didnt get rid of the wrong lot. Neither the lot we got rid of nor the lot we kept are good enough.

 

I would say only Cahill, Gabby and Weimann are anywhere near good enough from the whole lot of them. Maybe Baker, maybe.

 

The academy isnt that great. We are supposed to have been rated as the best. That will be based on numbers coming through to the first team. And the reason behind that is our first team players also tend to be nowhere near good enough.

 

 

Been saying a similar thing for a while. I don't particularly want to single out the villa academy, but no clubs academy will produce the number of rem players that villa seem to expect.

[lexicon]

No - definitely not.

The only one who'd get into the first team would be Cahill (and he wanted first team and wanted to go, not that we wanted to sell him) - the rest are no better than we've got and we were right to sell them when we did.

[AXD]

this all talking in retrospect.

if we would let Bannan for example go today and he ends up at QPR, Wolves or West Ham, I 'm pretty sure that in five years, he'll be a decent (not top) premier league midfielder as well and we'll all say we shouldn't have let him go. It's just because he would build up experience. A lot of players don't have a good career based on talent alone. Experience is a big factor, something Davies or Ridgewell are good examples of.

 

I'm sure Clark or Baker will be solid defenders as well in a few years time if they keep playing regular games. They will not necessarily be wanted by the big clubs.

example: John O'Shea. good defender, but never a world class talent. He now has the experience to walk into our team.

Huth, Shawcross were both let go by top teams as they were not talented enough to play themselves in the team. How many PL sides would say no to signing them for a affordable fee right now?

 

I think Albrighton would benefit from a loan to a championship side, so he can be a starter for an entire season. Worst case scenario, that team is us next year. But he'll be a better player.

[Denis_B]

Not an argument, we didn't need them because the owner was going to spend, spend, spend to get us Champions League in 5 years - and what happened to that?

[CI]

Gary Cahill was the most stupid error. Cost the club millions that.

[Robbie09]

Gary Cahill was the most stupid error. Cost the club millions that.

Especially when you look at the money spent on centre halves such as Collins, Knight, Cuellar and Dunne that were no better than him.

[Foxy1]

this all talking in retrospect.

if we would let Bannan for example go today and he ends up at QPR, Wolves or West Ham, I 'm pretty sure that in five years, he'll be a decent (not top) premier league midfielder as well and we'll all say we shouldn't have let him go. It's just because he would build up experience. A lot of players don't have a good career based on talent alone. Experience is a big factor, something Davies or Ridgewell are good examples of.

 

I'm sure Clark or Baker will be solid defenders as well in a few years time if they keep playing regular games. They will not necessarily be wanted by the big clubs.

example: John O'Shea. good defender, but never a world class talent. He now has the experience to walk into our team.

Huth, Shawcross were both let go by top teams as they were not talented enough to play themselves in the team. How many PL sides would say no to signing them for a affordable fee right now?

 

I think Albrighton would benefit from a loan to a championship side, so he can be a starter for an entire season. Worst case scenario, that team is us next year. But he'll be a better player.

You'll soon realise that sensible posts like this are not well received on here.

[CI]

Gary Cahill was the most stupid error. Cost the club millions that.

Especially when you look at the money spent on centre halves such as Collins, Knight, Cuellar and Dunne that were no better than him.

They were all inferior and we paid tens of millions for them. O'Neill was just a reckless spender.

[Papillon]

Selling Cahill turned out to be a crap move, but most of us were happy with Curtis Davies when he arrived. That's football and it happens to every club, just look at Man U with Diego Forlan, Gerard Pique and so on. More often than not, the selling club are doing it for a reason and many players need a new club and a new climate to develop into fine players. We have sold quite a few players that would have rightly walked into our squad right now, but that holds no value because when they did leave none of us were down about it. We were a totally different club 3 years ago and none of the players on the list contributed. We can look back and feel mad about it now, but our current problems are a mix of events happening since then.

 

As for Luke Moore, he wouldn't get into the squad in my opinion. He was basically crap and never delivered the goods, and now we have Benteke, Weimann and Bent - a potent strikeforce and Moore wouldn't get a game. He has a combined total of 292 minutes for Swansea in the league this season, scoring 0 goals. He hasn't score above 5 league goals in a season, either in the Championship or the Premier League, since 2005 when he was with us. I'd rather play Brett Holman as a lone striker.

[briny_ear]

 

Gary Cahill was the most stupid error. Cost the club millions that.

Especially when you look at the money spent on centre halves such as Collins, Knight, Cuellar and Dunne that were no better than him.

They were all inferior and we paid tens of millions for them. O'Neill was just a reckless spender.

Presumably you're not arguing that Cahill could have done the work of all four of them, so we would have needed to buy at least three even if he had stayed.

 

At the start of the period we are talking about, he was a raw and rather unreliable talent while the names mentioned above were all experienced. There is no way that Cahill could have stepped into a back four of a side where the owner had asked to get a top 4 place within 4 seasons. He went to Bolton where he was pretty crap for a couple of seasons but it didn't matter to them because he was better than anyone else they had.

 

The fact that he is playing for Chelsea now doesn't mean that he could have found a regular slot in our side of 07/08.

 

EDIT

 

BTW, the claim that selling him "cost us millions" overlooks the fact that we got £5m for him - a very good price at the time -  and Bolton sold him on for £7m so these missing "millions" have yet to emerge in the real world.

Edited February 27, 2013 by briny_ear

[VillaRob]

Back in the day I would have played Gardner ahead of NRC so I regret selling him.  We should have fought to keep Cahill, we could see he'd come good for us.  The others should have gone when they did for the good of their careers. It was the right thing for them and us.

[cbr600rr]

this all talking in retrospect.

if we would let Bannan for example go today and he ends up at QPR, Wolves or West Ham, I 'm pretty sure that in five years, he'll be a decent (not top) premier league midfielder as well and we'll all say we shouldn't have let him go. It's just because he would build up experience. A lot of players don't have a good career based on talent alone. Experience is a big factor, something Davies or Ridgewell are good examples of.

 

I'm sure Clark or Baker will be solid defenders as well in a few years time if they keep playing regular games. They will not necessarily be wanted by the big clubs.

example: John O'Shea. good defender, but never a world class talent. He now has the experience to walk into our team.

Huth, Shawcross were both let go by top teams as they were not talented enough to play themselves in the team. How many PL sides would say no to signing them for a affordable fee right now?

 

I think Albrighton would benefit from a loan to a championship side, so he can be a starter for an entire season. Worst case scenario, that team is us next year. But he'll be a better player.

the question is ..can villa afford to let players like clarke /baker develope? if you look at the stats this year the answer is no. when huth/shaw left their clubs they could cope as when cahill left we coped as we had laursen.

[kevangrealish]

The following would walk into our squad now :

Cuellar

Davies

Maloney

Routledge

What does this have to do with anything ? LOL...

[TRO]

Gary Cahill was the most stupid error. Cost the club millions that.

Especially when you look at the money spent on centre halves such as Collins, Knight, Cuellar and Dunne that were no better than him.

They were all inferior and we paid tens of millions for them. O'Neill was just a reckless spender.

Not just a reckless spender, but a poor judge too.

Whether he spent too much, bought poor quality or failed to blend them in a similar manner to Saunders... We got little value from the majority of his signings....and it has got gradually worse.

Edited February 27, 2013 by TRO

[CI]

It's a huge factor in why our accounts have looked so bad. Depreciation of our assets (players) have been shockingly bad. That's why the policy has had to change.

[briny_ear]

 

 

Gary Cahill was the most stupid error. Cost the club millions that.

Especially when you look at the money spent on centre halves such as Collins, Knight, Cuellar and Dunne that were no better than him.

They were all inferior and we paid tens of millions for them. O'Neill was just a reckless spender.

Not just a reckless spender, but a poor judge too.

Whether he spent too much, bought poor quality or failed to blend them in a similar manner to Saunders... We got little value from the majority of his signings....and it has got gradually worse.

How many times do we have to do this?

 

The back four in his final season of Cuellar, Collins, Warnock and Dunne conceded the fourth lowest goals in the premier league that season, DESPITE conceding 7 in one game. They were only bettered by Man U, Chelsea and Liverpool. We also ended with 64 points, our best performance since 1992/3. So he may have stumbled his way to getting one or two things right - obviously completely at random, nothing to do with any ability he has as a manager since he clearly has none.

 

Why do we keep having to dredge up the MON years, and apparently ignore the fact that Houllier took a top 6 squad minus Ashley Young straight down into the relegation zone, destroyed squad morale, and wasted £6m on a guy who didn't even want to learn basic English let alone play for us and at least £18m on a forward who can barely get a game now, followed by McLeish who had less money but wasted nearly all he had on a duffer like N'Zogbia and created a unique brand of anti-football, followed by Lambert who had the great idea of spending his £23m on a Championship/League 1 quality team? (Oh, and let's not forget the CEO who gifted us Ireland who can't get a game.)

 

It becomes increasingly bonkers to try to create any sort of a thread between what happened between 2006-2010 and what is happening now. The more time that passes, the less credible is the narrative.

 

Only one smiley will do here........................