Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: ciggiesnbeer on October 13, 2017, 07:02:50 AM
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Surely enough time has now past we can have a clearer perspective of him?
Kept Norwich, us*, Blackburn & Wolves all up. Survival specialist on a budget? Was brought in to do just that?
It might explain the seemingly shocked expression he had when we dared object to just scraping survival while buying (mostly) crap players. From his perspective it was "job done".
*possibly/probably?
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Bored?
300 pages!
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Sorry, if its a stupid thread please delete it. I thought it was interesting to note he went on to keep other clubs up as well and that maybe he knew all along that was his job. Figured others might have other ways of looking back at his time here now its been a while.
I guess not.
Also I should note, I have been drinking a little.
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Shit, shit, shit, really shit, oh my God we've never been this shit, a bit better, promising, maybe he might be good after all, back to being shit, shit, shit, shit, vaguely better let's extend his contract, shit again, shit, shit, really shit, sacked.
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Thought he would be a good appointment, should have been sacked after Bradford, got everything right for a couple of months and seemed like we may have cracked it, failed to build on that by buying some truly abysmal players ( Tonev, Helenius, Luna) from there it all went wrong until his inevitable sacking.
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I have to say you guys are talking some sense into me. Bradford. Bloody hell that was a low point. I had kinda blanked it out and yeah there were not many high points along the way.
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I know it's old ..
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Bloody hell. Yeah he didnt exactly hide it did he? I gotta hold my hands up. Sorry, I think this thread was a mistake, the answer was obvious. You will forgive a drunk old man. Thanks for the reminder.
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There was that little run of about 6 games pre Xmas in his first season including demolishing Liverpool 3-1 at Anfield and the great night away at Norwich in the League Cup. Then Chelsea happened and we fell apart. He never recovered.
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Aye. It was very brief with a lot of misery either side.
I guess my problem is I always wanted to like him. The notion of this swashbuckling tactical tinker man, next-generation British manger (which was his rep at Norwich) was thrilling stuff. Alas, we know the reality.
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Any bright period was completely obliterated by the number of humiliations we had to suffer. Then there was his post match "thought we were fantastic" comments when he had us playing the keep ball in our own half tactic. Dreadful manager.
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Please no. He'll probably be watching the game tomorrow shedding a tear that it should be him in that technical area - both of them.
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He played such horrible, defensive football for us, but his style seemed a lot better at Norwich. I never got my head round that one.
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What about that trip back to Germany (Dortmund I think) to see what he could glean about continental tactics etc. All he came back with was the two full backs running towards their own corner flags and Guzan rolling the ball out to them only for them to give it him back or get caught in possession. Genious.
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He played such horrible, defensive football for us, but his style seemed a lot better at Norwich. I never got my head round that one.
He was lucky enough to inherit a player in great form in Grant Holt. He bulldozed them through League 1 and the Championship, then had a good first season back in the Premier League.
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We've been through some shit over the years but the horrors of Lamberts reign will stay with me for a long, long time. I felt that I was physically shrinking as each desperate record fell.
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He was a hugely popular choice that seemingly played attractive, successful football at Norwich and came to us after an eye wateringly boring defensive period under TSM. At that point I think most agreed that TSM was so poor anyone would have been a better replacement and at the time PL was as good as we probably could have got - a young up and coming manager.
He was ok until he went to the German training camp and then all of a sudden he had delusions of grandeur that we were the next Barcelona in the way we were to pass the ball 300 times more than the opposition - the significant difference was they did it on the way to scoring goals with world class players and we did it all in our own half with the likes of Westwood et al. Fans became frustrated at the growing possession stats but reducing attempts at goal that meant we were always one conceded away from a loss.
There were budget issues I am sure but that still did not warrant some of the dross that he did buy although there were a few notable exceptions such as Lowton, Benteke during his time.
The demise of Lerner's enthusiasm turned Lambert into very defensively minded both in style of play but also as a man - his press conferences becoming more and more illegible. Rumour has it he was also at this time going through a few damaging personal issues as well as having his right hand men sacked for alleged bullying - none of which could have helped I am sure. This period was the start of the sinking of the good ship Villa and over the next few years we could not recover so he will always be remembered for that and it must have hurt him personally as he did not shut up about it to the point it became sour grapes and everyone stopped listening
Shame it did not work out
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Apart from March- May 2013 absolutely hated his reign.
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https://theclaretandview.com/2017/09/11/could-we-be-about-to-see-a-familiar-face-in-the-dugout/ This was an interesting article, if true.
I wanted him at the time, I really thought he'd make a difference but he never recovered from Bradford. How could anyone? It wasn't just Bradford either, that week we dropped a two goal lead against the stripeys, and knocked out of the FA Cup by millwall. They had an easy run to the semi final from there. That week was amongst the lowest times following the Villa
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https://theclaretandview.com/2017/09/11/could-we-be-about-to-see-a-familiar-face-in-the-dugout/ This was an interesting article, if true.
I wanted him at the time, I really thought he'd make a difference but he never recovered from Bradford. How could anyone? It wasn't just Bradford either, that week we dropped a two goal lead against the stripeys, and knocked out of the FA Cup by millwall. They had an easy run to the semi final from there. That week was amongst the lowest times following the Villa
We finished that season pretty strongly, finally playing the football I thought we would get from him.
We started the next season pretty well (winning v Arsenal and Man. City and being robbed of a win at Chelsea) but all summer everyone was crying out for a number 10 (Kioyate/Belhanada who've had decent careers) and we signed another targetman forward (Kozak). We also signed Grant Holt later that season.
That thinking meant we just didn't kick on from a relative position of strength and just became a team battling relegation every year once teams worked out how to defend against our counter attacks.
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That Barcelona attempt in his last 3-4 months was utterly woeful.
The best 2 players were Delph and Benteke - so play to their strengths. When Dim Sherwood was an improvement on him ou know the horse has bolted long since
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Shocking. Tactically inept and Comical Ali-esque post-match interviews. Horrendous results and performances. Did feel sorry for him at the end of his tenure in some ways though. He was clearly a broken man and it should not have been allowed to continue much earlier than it did.
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Any bright period was completely obliterated by the number of humiliations we had to suffer. Then there was his post match "thought we were fantastic" comments when he had us playing the keep ball in our own half tactic. Dreadful manager.
;D
That had reached a point where I wondered if he was saying it to wind us up. 'We were excellent' was happening in pretty much every post match interview, including the matches we were being battered in. Just type 'Paul Lambert we were excellent' into Google.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/mar/31/paul-lambert-aston-villa-liverpool
For 45 minutes we were excellent today
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/paul-lambert-heaps-praise-match-winner-4765473
We worked on some stuff on Saturday and I thought we were excellent at it today.
He was even doing it at Wolves ;D - https://www.expressandstar.com/sport/football/wolverhampton-wanderers-fc/2017/04/01/paul-lambert-hails-world-class-helder-costa-and-excellent-wolves/
I thought we were excellent right from the off
http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/paul-lambert-deserved-three-points-12398494
“I think we should have had two penalties, we hit the post twice and Joe Mason should have scored, but I still thought we were excellent. It shows you how far we’ve come.
There are many more of him saying 'we were excellent' after defeats ;D
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You can tell we haven't had a match in two weeks when threads like this pop up!
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Tosspot. No other words necessary
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Smirker, that's a fantastic post! I thought maybe I had embellished the memory of him constantly saying that - apparently not. I remember hearing about Villa fans singing, "We go again, we go again, we pick ourselves up and we go again".
Wanted him to be the next Graham Taylor, sadly he presided over probably the worst set of results in Villa's history.
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Any bright period was completely obliterated by the number of humiliations we had to suffer. Then there was his post match "thought we were fantastic" comments when he had us playing the keep ball in our own half tactic. Dreadful manager.
;D
That had reached a point where I wondered if he was saying it to wind us up. 'We were excellent' was happening in pretty much every post match interview, including the matches we were being battered in. Just type 'Paul Lambert we were excellent' into Google.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/mar/31/paul-lambert-aston-villa-liverpool
For 45 minutes we were excellent today
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/paul-lambert-heaps-praise-match-winner-4765473
We worked on some stuff on Saturday and I thought we were excellent at it today.
He was even doing it at Wolves ;D - https://www.expressandstar.com/sport/football/wolverhampton-wanderers-fc/2017/04/01/paul-lambert-hails-world-class-helder-costa-and-excellent-wolves/
I thought we were excellent right from the off
http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/paul-lambert-deserved-three-points-12398494
“I think we should have had two penalties, we hit the post twice and Joe Mason should have scored, but I still thought we were excellent. It shows you how far we’ve come.
There are many more of him saying 'we were excellent' after defeats ;D
"We go again" every single week.
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We lost to Bradford.
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I've been happy / relieved when we've sacked most of the shit managers in recent years. But the night I found out we'd binned Lambert I was bloody ecstatic.
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So many memories of the Lambert era... and all of them shit!
Should have been put out of his misery after the Bradford debacle but was allowed to carry on and we got progressively worse to the point where we did nothing but pass it sideways and lose
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I suppose there were a few what ifs that came up over his tenure - what if we'd gotten Coutinho in January 2013, what if he'd done better business in summer 2013, and so on.
Never had any idea about how to make the next step to build on an initial positive, or to make the right adjustments when things went wrong though.
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Poor manager, who got in some poor players he didn't need and moaned he didn't have any money, and the media believed him. Wouldn't play Bent. So many of his players left for nothing after going out on loan
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Very overrated manager
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A stupid manager for a stupid owner.
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There was the glimmer of hope with the end of first season run that kept us up and we played football.
Then he went straight back to boring turgid dour crap.
Wanker.
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There was the glimmer of hope with the end of first season run that kept us up and we played football.
Then he went straight back to boring turgid dour crap.
Wanker.
I'll never understand that. He kept us up playing some of the best football, and with some of the best goals, we've had this century. There was a bit of optimism for the future but from then on it was just shite.
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There was the glimmer of hope with the end of first season run that kept us up and we played football.
Then he went straight back to boring turgid dour crap.
Wanker.
I'll never understand that. He kept us up playing some of the best football, and with some of the best goals, we've had this century. There was a bit of optimism for the future but from then on it was just shite.
It has to go down as a where did it all go wrong period.
If he had approached the next season as he finished the last then I doubt we would be where we are now.
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Thought he was a good appointment at the time, but was allowed to drift for far too long. Had a poor start and the December and January of his first season were as poor as I can remember. We did pick up towards the end of that season and played some good football during that period. We started the next season off well (the win at Arsenal), but it wasn't to last and we reverted to being poor again. He should have gone at the end of that season, especially after what happened with Culverhouse and Karsa.
He was allowed to drift on aimlessly before being eventually sacked, but the damage was done by then. He would have definitely taken us down if he would have been allowed to continue, whether it be that season or the next.
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There was the glimmer of hope with the end of first season run that kept us up and we played football.
Then he went straight back to boring turgid dour crap.
Wanker.
I'll never understand that. He kept us up playing some of the best football, and with some of the best goals, we've had this century. There was a bit of optimism for the future but from then on it was just shite.
We didn't sign a playmaker. Well we sort of did but stretching the imagination to class Tonev as a professional footballer.
Benteke also lost a fair bit of form during the middle part of the season.
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There was the glimmer of hope with the end of first season run that kept us up and we played football.
Then he went straight back to boring turgid dour crap.
Wanker.
I'll never understand that. He kept us up playing some of the best football, and with some of the best goals, we've had this century. There was a bit of optimism for the future but from then on it was just shite.
It has to go down as a where did it all go wrong period.
If he had approached the next season as he finished the last then I doubt we would be where we are now.
I was so excited about that 2nd season, but as you say the way we carried on looked like he was starting all over again and we never looked that good again like we did the end of that 1st season. The end of that first season, I really thought it had all clicked. Disappointing.
That said, I am surprised he last as long as he did under Lerner. I actually think in the end he did well to keep us up.
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There was the glimmer of hope with the end of first season run that kept us up and we played football.
Then he went straight back to boring turgid dour crap.
Wanker.
I'll never understand that. He kept us up playing some of the best football, and with some of the best goals, we've had this century. There was a bit of optimism for the future but from then on it was just shite.
Exactly. I was so exited after the end of that season. I couldn't believe what we served up the following year.
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I had high hopes after what he did at Norwich and felt that with a bigger budget than Norwich, he would do great. No idea why it worked at Norwich with mediocre players and not with us.
What actually did happen with Culverhouse?? never got to the bottom of it.
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I suppose there were a few what ifs that came up over his tenure - what if we'd gotten Coutinho in January 2013, what if he'd done better business in summer 2013, and so on.
Never had any idea about how to make the next step to build on an initial positive, or to make the right adjustments when things went wrong though.
He'd have turned Coutinho into Carles Gil
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I had high hopes after what he did at Norwich and felt that with a bigger budget than Norwich, he would do great. No idea why it worked at Norwich with mediocre players and not with us.
What actually did happen with Culverhouse?? never got to the bottom of it.
Karsa and Culverhouse were summarily dismissed due to allegations of bullying if I remember correctly.
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On his watch, we got worse and worse, every single season. Poor manager, employed by a poor CEO (presumably), employed by a disinterested owner.
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I fcukin hate him. That Christmas/New Year spell was the most inept and embarrassing run of results in the club's history. And there has beena few!
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8, 7, 4?
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All three of those games amazingly could have been heavier defeats.
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Especially the Chelsea debacle.
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Sun Dec 23 Premier Chelsea Away Lost 0-8
Wed Dec 26 Premier Tottenham Hotspur Home Lost 0-4
Sat Dec 29 Premier Wigan Athletic Home Lost 0-3
Tue Jan 1 Premier Swansea City Away Drew 2-2
Sat Jan 5 FAC 3 Ipswich Town Home Won 2-1
Tue Jan 8 LC Semi - 1 Leg Bradford City Away Lost 1-3
Sat Jan 12 Premier Southampton Home Lost 0-1
Sat Jan 19 Premier West Bromwich Albion Away Drew 2-2
Tue Jan 22 LC Semi - 2 Leg Bradford City Home Won 2-1 (3-4 aggregate)
Fri Jan 25 FAC 4 Millwall Away Lost 1-2
Tue Jan 29 Premier Newcastle United Home Lost 1-2
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Especially the Chelsea debacle.
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8 4 3. Cries at that.
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Add bradford and millwall into that. How he wasnt sacked i will never know.
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That is a shocking sequence of results.
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I've got 2 words to describe his era.
Shite.........and shite.
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I had high hopes after what he did at Norwich and felt that with a bigger budget than Norwich, he would do great. No idea why it worked at Norwich with mediocre players and not with us.
What actually did happen with Culverhouse?? never got to the bottom of it.
Karsa and Culverhouse were summarily dismissed due to allegations of bullying if I remember correctly.
I believe Karsa was posting on VillaTalk just before he was dismissed which added to the surrealism of that time.
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Playing the ball backwards from a goal kick.
Playing keepball in our own half with the opposition not getting a kick for ages. They weren't too bothered though as they were winning the game.
Claimed he had his resignation turned down but signed a new contract.
Gave Gabby a new contract.
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8 4 3. Cries at that.
at least we got better...
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Sun Dec 23 Premier Chelsea Away Lost 0-8
Wed Dec 26 Premier Tottenham Hotspur Home Lost 0-4
Sat Dec 29 Premier Wigan Athletic Home Lost 0-3
Great Christmas that was. At least we were saving ourselves for an easy cup semi final.
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A man treated so very badly by Randy Lerner, he signed anew four year contract. My heart bleeds.
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His record at Livingston, Wycombe and Colchester was very average. His record at Norwich was excellent and a hark back to the SGT and Dave Bassett days at Watford and Wimbledon. I wasn't as keen on his appointment as some but there was something to suggest he might be the next bright thing in management. His recruitment could be described as 'scatter gun'. Like playing a football management game on a computer with a limited budget and taking a load of punts. His punts were more losers than winners. His record was dire, that is why we remember the rare good days so vividly. I don't like to praise TSM before him too much, but at least when we were in the shit he pulled a Robbie Keane out of the bag as opposed to a Grant Holt.
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Not sure if it was all down to him or his so called scouts but most of the players he "unearthed" , with the exception of Benteke, Vlaar and maybe Lowton were either mediocre or utter shite. Driftwood, KEA, Tonev, Helenius, Luna, Bennett, Bowery, Sylla,Richardson and then ultimately, desperately, crocks and has beens like Cole and Senderos. He may not have had a huge budget to play with but I reckon a chimp could have used 90% of it more wisely when it came to spotting young and hungry players with talent. He's hardly been in massive demand since leaving us, which says a lot.
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You can take a punt on a crock like Andy Carroll or a bad boy like Joey Barton or a youngster untried at the top level but you can't base your entire transfer policy on risky punts that come into any of those three categories.
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His first summer's business looked fantastic by the way the end of his first season. Lowton, Westwood and even Sylla were all playing very well. We were playing really good football too
That following summer almost every buy was poor, and the style changed to a much more dour and combative style. Lots of players didn't progress or went backwards. We got more and more defensive over the next 18 months. Then he completely lost it and decided we could play a slow possession game with zero creative players, which was just never going to work
By the end the squad was clearly under achieving as Sherwood proved pretty immediately
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His first summer's business looked fantastic by the way the end of his first season. Lowton, Westwood and even Sylla were all playing very well. We were playing really good football too
That following summer almost every buy was poor, and the style changed to a much more dour and combative style. Lots of players didn't progress or went backwards. We got more and more defensive over the next 18 months. Then he completely lost it and decided we could play a slow possession game with zero creative players, which was just never going to work
By the end the squad was clearly under achieving as Sherwood proved pretty immediately
It is often forgotten that after that first season, despite it being largely awful in terms of league position, he managed to maintain huge levels of support from the fans.
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His first summer's business looked fantastic by the way the end of his first season. Lowton, Westwood and even Sylla were all playing very well. We were playing really good football too
That following summer almost every buy was poor, and the style changed to a much more dour and combative style. Lots of players didn't progress or went backwards. We got more and more defensive over the next 18 months. Then he completely lost it and decided we could play a slow possession game with zero creative players, which was just never going to work
By the end the squad was clearly under achieving as Sherwood proved pretty immediately
I remember watching us in a pre season friendly at Forest and being absolutely horrified watching the hosts run rings around our new signings from the lower leagues. I knew we were in trouble there and then.
I try not to think of Lambert these days. He should have been sacked after the Chelsea humiliation, but let’s face it even if he was it wouldn’t have made a difference in the long run. Lerner had already given up and our eventual relegation would have happened whoever was in charge.
Absolutely dreadful period in the history of this club.
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he just about avoids being placed in a pantheon of Villa shysters and charlatans for the sole act of bringing Benteke to the club - which kept him and us from being swallowed whole for three years.
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A lot of people bought into the young and hungry, give him time bullshit. Believing what they want to believe rather than the proof of their own eyes, which was that we were shit in almost his entire reign give or take a period of about 9 games.
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he just about avoids being placed in a pantheon of Villa shysters and charlatans for the sole act of bringing Benteke to the club - which kept him and us from being swallowed whole for three years.
Agreed. The man who threw his fellow coaches under a bus to save himself and the man who came back from Germany with the idea of playing the ball to our own corner flag from a goal kick. This to two full backs who weren't very confident, or even very good.
65% possession running around in circles and going backwards, lose a game 2-0 and he saw it as progress.
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...Grant Holt.
Signed for Kings Lynn on Friday
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I have some sympathy, though not much, for both him and TSM in retrospect. They were both bought in to keep us up on a budget as a selling club. Both had got smaller clubs in the premiership and to be honest most people would jump at the chance to do exactly the same job with more money, better facilities etc.. Unfortunately there's very little difference between a club with no money getting 30+k attendances and one getting 20+k and its very hard building a premiership team on the premise of picking up bargain lower league and foreign players. You have to put this into the context at the time that our chief executive was seriously planning to build our future based on what AJAX were doing! Utter mentalism then and now. Having said that, anyone with ambition to get to the top in management would have looked at Villa's plans and said no thank you in the interview. Lambert presumably needed the money or thought he'd never get a similar chance.
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...Grant Holt.
Signed for Kings Lynn on Friday
Has he taken up speedway racing?
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...Grant Holt.
Signed for Kings Lynn on Friday
Has he taken up speedway racing?
He'd need a trike with his ass!
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Surely enough time has now past we can have a clearer perspective of him?
Kept Norwich, us*, Blackburn & Wolves all up. Survival specialist on a budget? Was brought in to do just that?
According to the man himself and Faulkner, no.
He was reticent to mention targets when he first arrived, but shortly after the 3-1 away win v Liverpool the talk was of how apparently everything had be geared to top 6 and a return to European football within two years. And he knew that was his remit.
Yet when he left, it had all been about staying up and he knew that all along too.
And as others have said, this is a guy who thought we were 'excellent' most weeks.
If Paul Lambert said good morning to me, I'd go outside to check what time of day it was.
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A lot of people bought into the young and hungry, give him time bullshit. Believing what they want to believe rather than the proof of their own eyes, which was that we were shit in almost his entire reign give or take a period of about 9 games.
Hear hear!
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I recall writing on here,lost previous password and so changed name ,that he was the new up and coming manager,based on his exploits at Colchester and Norwich.
Surely,most of it must have been down to Culverhouse and Karsa because left to his own coaching we ,as well documented here,were abysmal.Even Dim Tim was an upgrade.
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He really wasn't very good, but with hindsight the way Lerner and the board hobbled him over and over again was disgraceful.
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Was it? I imagine he was made aware of the parameters and there was suggestion from Pelty or someone ITK that during certain windows he had more to spend than what he used.
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My clear impression of the history is that Lambert was a very willing participant in the hobbling. My entirely personal opinion is that a better man and a better manager would have hobbled out of the door. He stayed to boast about reducing the expectations of the fans.
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a complete knobhead redeemed only by buying The Beast. Sack me, sack me! - he was was daring randy to do it. I can only imagine the enormity of his erotic compo dreams.
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The run of results post earlier is shocking but they were followed by a run to the end of the season which was promising. In the last 14 we lost 5 times, against Man U, Man C, Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool and won 6 of them. 21 points from 14, extend that over a season and you're looking at 8-10 in the league and breathing room.
The problem then was that he had a complete brain fade in the summer when it came to signings. What we need to do was spend a decent whack on a left back and a forward/wide player who could compete with Gabby and Weimann and then a backup in defence for right back/right centre back and if there was some money left then he could've looked for a backup striker. Instead he spent most of his budget on Kozak and Okore as competition for 2 of our best players, let players like Holman and KEA leave on the cheap and signed players just as poor (or worse) to replace them.
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Sack me, sack me! - he was was daring randy to do it. I can only imagine the enormity of his erotic compo dreams.
Didn't he offer to resign several times?
He was a stupid appointment for the task set by the board for a new manager - to bring in young and hungry players and develop them. He managed the first part but was never equipped to deliver on the second. If that was our strategy somebody like Carlos Queiroz should have been appointed.
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Sack me, sack me! - he was was daring randy to do it. I can only imagine the enormity of his erotic compo dreams.
Didn't he offer to resign several times?
He was a stupid appointment for the task set by the board for a new manager - to bring in young and hungry players and develop them. He managed the first part but was never equipped to deliver on the second. If that was our strategy somebody like Carlos Queiroz should have been appointed.
Worse still it's poisoned some of the fans against the idea of buying player to develop them and reinforced the short-termism that we need to get away from.
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Sack me, sack me! - he was was daring randy to do it. I can only imagine the enormity of his erotic compo dreams.
Didn't he offer to resign several times?
He was a stupid appointment for the task set by the board for a new manager - to bring in young and hungry players and develop them. He managed the first part but was never equipped to deliver on the second. If that was our strategy somebody like Carlos Queiroz should have been appointed.
Worse still it's poisoned some of the fans against the idea of buying player to develop them and reinforced the short-termism that we need to get away from.
I think anybody that saw the game on Saturday will see that it can be done with the right coach/manager.
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Saw him linked with the Sheffield Wednesday job in a weekend paper. Must have a good agent.
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When I think of Paul Lambert I always remember the Bradford game at Villa Park. Shockingly bad.
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We seem to have been damned with appointing managers with a negative mindset, when we sit around recalling his tenure in a few years time I will forever link him with the tactic of managing to go backward from our own goal kicks. A tactic that was truly remarkable.
And I'll remember him for Bradford.
That said you'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel for him when the TV camera showed him on the touchline in a defeat against, I think, Hull. He looked to have aged 20 years and looked broken.
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Yes, I remember that.
I nearly felt a shiver down my spine when a previous poster mentioned the name, Tonev.
What did he cost, about £2m?
Still, at least that enabled PL to release Mark Albrighton on a Bosman.
Nice work, Paul!!!!
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Yes, I remember that.
I nearly felt a shiver down my spine when a previous poster mentioned the name, Tonev.
What did he cost, about £2m?
Still, at least that enabled PL to release Mark Albrighton on a Bosman.
Nice work, Paul!!!!
Off the top of my head I can only think of one decent signing from Lambert and that was Benteke (and what a bloody player as well). The rest are some of the worst footballers to ever pull on a Villa shirt in all my years as a Villa fan.
Paul Lambert is the stuff of nightmares.
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I generally agree, SH.
Apart from The Beast, Lowton always looked a good footballer, despite a lack of pace; Okore and Kozak would have done better without bad luck with injuries.
After that, there's not much to celebrate.
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Yes, I remember that.
I nearly felt a shiver down my spine when a previous poster mentioned the name, Tonev.
What did he cost, about £2m?
I remember Tonev getting a shot on target against Newcastle and thinking "he doesn't look a bad player at all".
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I generally agree, SH.
Apart from The Beast, Lowton always looked a good footballer, despite a lack of pace; Okore and Kozak would have done better without bad luck with injuries.
After that, there's not much to celebrate.
I thought Lowton was a joke constantly out of position and cost us loads of goals. Okore got better the longer he was out injured, and don’t get me started on Kozak.
Other than that we’re in agreement. ;-)
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Kozak showed some promise on the few occasions I saw him on the pitch. Having said that a decent twenty minute cameo appearance would usually be enough to be man of the match under Lambert.
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Lowton is playing very well for Burnley these days.
He was a victim of the formation really. In a 4-3-3 he was too exposed to wingers running at him. At Burnley a tight 4-4-2 with wingers regularly tracking back and he's done fine for them.
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I didn't think Lowton was too bad either. Not brilliant but not awful.
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I didn't think Lowton was too bad either. Not brilliant but not awful.
Certainly no worse than Hutton.
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I didn't think Lowton was too bad either. Not brilliant but not awful.
Certainly no worse than Hutton.
At least Hutton tries in more games than he doesnt, which is more than can be said for a lot of the squad
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I didn't think Lowton was too bad either. Not brilliant but not awful.
There were some personal issues with him though weren't there?
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I didn't think Lowton was too bad either. Not brilliant but not awful.
Certainly no worse than Hutton.
At least Hutton tries in more games than he doesnt, which is more than can be said for a lot of the squad
Agree and he was one of a few players to come out with any credit on Saturday.
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I didn't think Lowton was too bad either. Not brilliant but not awful.
There were some personal issues with him though weren't there?
Yes he started to fall out of favour in his second season as allegedly the club found out he'd vacated his club house in Four Oaks and quietly moved back up to Chesterfield. Think he was late for training a couple of times.
Last memory of him was Young skinning him and Falcao scoring. That was a bit weakness, slow on the turn but he's less exposed to that the way Burnley play which is good management imo.