The General C. Krulak Thread XVII

[pestria]

General Krulak here:

3.  Believe me, there is not a single person at Villa Park who does not understand where we are right now and how the Fans feel.  We are working very hard to get us back on the right track.  We have a good portion of the season left....and we will get this sorted.  We hope and pray that you stick with us.  We literally cannot do what needs to be done without the support of the Fans!!

I asked, earlier in the thread, specifically what the senior management team at VP actually do.

I've seen very little evidence of substantive improvement in marketing, stadium development, overseas scouting, succession planning or the appointment process to key football posts. 

What I have seen is the squandering of millions on moderate players - a situation which I can readily see could not be allowed to continue ad infinitum, and which is a direct re-run of the process the club went through when it came by another windfall in the form of the NTL cash.  At least your predecessors put in place the development of the academy.

Maybe it's none of my business, but I am genuinely intrigued when you say 'everyone' is working hard because I can't see any tangible evidence - so I ask again, what are you actually doing?

[Sutton_Villa23]

Working hard with what? What are you all working hard at?  In five years we are in the same position, we are as far away from the top 4 now as before MON took over. The ground hasnt really changed apart from a few cosmetic changes, the training ground was under development when randy took ove and the academy was already there. On the pitch weve lost our best player 2 years in a row and we have the worst defence in the league. So, whats being done?

[Linus]

Working very hard to make staying at Villa Park seem like the last thing Ashley Young will want to do...

[eastie]

Can't blame the general or randy for the fact that we are in this position- in the last 4 yrs they have invested heavily and had little to show for their outlay- blame the man who frittered all the money away, most of it on average or poor overpaid players- the board backed mr o neill for 4 years and look at the shit he left behind.

I have questioned whether the money is still there but there is no doubt it was there and has in the main been wasted by the manager - not the boArds fault !

Yes martin bought some good players but he also bought an awful lot of average or poor players and given the money at his disposal he should have achieved more than he did!

[Sutton_Villa23]

Yes but where would you rather be? 16th on 17 points or 3rd with 29 points. Would you rather still be in the league cup looking forward to a semi or knocked out against the berks from down the road. I wasnt an oneill fan
in the last rites if his reign as i thought he looked tired and fed up of the job, but ud fecking crawl on broken glass to get that bloke back at our club instead of the idiot we have at the moment. Oneill never disrespected fans, he never slagged his players off to the media, he nevet banged on about celtic every
Press conference. Gen, you have to take heed of these fans comments, we will go down with this guy? Have you done the projected
calculations on what this could cost the club considering the debt we are currently servicing

[Shrek]

One thing they actually do is listen too you the fans, by this very thread we are communicating with the board.

We have all been stitched by Martin, so let's all relax a little bit.

Supporting a club is a never ending marathon, not a sprint.

[eastie]

Martin had run INS with fans and complained on occassions about booing , he also fielded a reserve team literally in Moscow in a vital European game so please don't make him out to be whiter than White- yes he was a decent manager for us but far from a great manager !

Houllier has inherited these players - I expect him to do a lot in the next 2 transfer windows and a very different team next year- these players are not good enough for the pass and move football that houllier likes- they were built into a unit by o neill to play a very different style of largely unattractive football which got results.

We now need to rebuild in a substantial way!

[philsheard]

General,

It seems apparent to me that he has lost (even if he had it to begin with) the dressing room. Our defence which was last season one of the best is now the worst and unable to cope with the slightest pressure and if three of liverpool's worst players/reserves all score against us in one game then something is very wrong. If Cuellar does not play on Saturday (particularly given his man of the match appearance against Wolves before being dropped for the next game) then GH is falling into the same trap as his predecessor with Luke Young.

Whilst GH has been extremely unfortunate with injuries and I believe the young players show we have a bright future ahead continued premier league status is a must.  At the moment the players performances remind me of the darker days when we flirted with relegation and for those of us old enough to remember the season when we did go down under McNeill.

A positive performance and result on Saturday is a must. If we cannot grind out a victory and improve on recent performances then the risks are that the fans will turn and/or he will lose the players further. I would hate to see him sacked after such a short period of time as that is more akin to Mike Ashley than Randy but the club's status as a top flight team is far more important, particularly in attracting new players at all levels and increasing revenue, than any sort of pride we may have in acting professionally and looking after our own.

I am disappointed with his actions both before and after the Liverpool game but more so with his statement afterwards which contained no form of an apology. We are all aware of the good times he had at Liverpool but to win over the fans and have them backing him, he must distance himself from his previous employers and appear focussed on Aston Villa because in our eyes, but obviously not his judging by his words at his first press conference, no club is bigger, better or more traditional and historic than ours. David O'Leary failed here for a number of reasons one of which was his failure to win rapport with the fans. GH must start repairing matters with a win on Saturday otherwise Randy needs to decide if he twists in sufficient time before the January transfer window. There are very few fans that will tolerate us slipping further and further behind our local neighbours.

[bertlambshank]

I know this is the General's thread,but we have not slipped behind our local neighbours.Get a grip.

[richard moore]

Thank you General. I look forward to seeing the outcomes of all this hard work because outcomes are all that count and, at the moment, they are almost completely non apparent sadly....

[philsheard]

we have slipped behind two of them in the table and indeed lost to one of them last week.....

[DeKuip]

When people question where the money has gone, what money exactly are they talking about?
If it's Randy's personal money they mean, then surely it's none of our business what he does with it.

I know that my £450 season ticket money might have just covered one week's wage of a young sub who ran up and down the touchline in front of me a few times and didn't even get to play. I only wish now I'd paid more attention to his warm-up than watching the game.
The bloke who sits by me had his 450 notes stuffed into a few g-strings at the Rocket Club by John Carew.

Come on, we all know where the money goes!

If every Premier League club spends £50m in January there will still be three teams relegated, still only four qualifying for the Champions League and the majority of us football fans would still be moaning. There would, however, be more agents laughing, more players buying another Bentley, and more managers laughing all the way to the bank with their huge pay-off for failing.

[dave.woodhall]

It's become obvious that, for the moment, this thread has run its course and has become another outlet for spleen-venting and assorted comments that a club director cannot possibly comment on in public. The general has agreed to step down for a while, until such a time as it can get back to the purpose for which it was intended.