Villa compensation bill reaches £7m

[ktvillan]

A lot of money to pay for a git that left us in the lurch, a bloke who was doing some good things and could have probably have carried on doing those good things,  and for a manager that very few seem to rate or want at the club (SAF excluded).  I'm struggling to understand why we decided to ditch GH if he would have been fit to work in September, just as he was about to have the chance to put his stamp on the squad with his first full transfer window.  He could have given Faulkner instructions on who to sign, and Cowans and MacAllister instructions on pre-season preparation until then.    Instead we fork out millions to get rid, and millions to replace him with an inferior version. Barmy.

[UsualSuspect]

What a huge amount of money to pay out, to end up with such a poor choice of manager.

I like RL but to say he is meant to be this fantastic businessman  he doesn't half spunk away his money.

Add to this compensation:

NRC - Bought 8 Million got rid of for nothing

Salifou - 4 years at say 10k per week = 2 million

Habib Beye - Cost of transfer and wages = 8 million

Think you'll find O'Neill spunked that money away.

MON spunked it but it was RL who kept going into his pocket. When MON was asking for money to replace players that he had bought and on ridiculous he should have been on the ball.

The blame for the GH compensation you have to lie squarely a RL's door

[Summers]

Oh, definitely. But it's a necessary payout. He couldn't continue in the job, he had to go.

[villanois]

  I'm struggling to understand why we decided to ditch GH if he would have been fit to work in September

No matter how badly GH wanted to return and no matter how much in denial he was, he was never going to be able to return to Premier League management, not now, not September, not ever.

[darren woolley]

It's a lot of money to pay out in compensation all that money we paid out could have brought a decent player.

[pooligan]

Can  anyone explain why we have to pay out compensation for a man who walked out of his previous club because of the way he was treated. Surely its between Small Heath and Big Eck

[cdward]

Can  anyone explain why we have to pay out compensation for a man who walked out of his previous club because of the way he was treated. Surely its between Small Heath and Big Eck

Because we tapped him up. If we were completely innocent, i don't think we would just hand out 2m.
I would like Paul Faulkner to answer the question though.

[TheSandman]

One would imagine that we gave MoN such a large payout because his constructive dismissal claim was somewhat more compelling than we would think.

[cdward]

In fact i would like to see Paul Faulkner give explanations for handing out all 3 payments. A well run company would not get their fingers burnt 3 times, the way we have been.
Added to the Nike fiasco, and the lack of shirt sponsors, if i was Randy i would asking some serious questions of my chief executive.

[Concrete John]

Can  anyone explain why we have to pay out compensation for a man who walked out of his previous club because of the way he was treated. Surely its between Small Heath and Big Eck

Because we tapped him up. If we were completely innocent, i don't think we would just hand out 2m.
I would like Paul Faulkner to answer the question though.

Sorry if I've missed it, but where has it been said we've paid them £2m?

I simply don't believe that after conducting ourselves above board for every other managerial approach we then decided to abandon that as it was SHA.

[usav]

It's most likely bollocks John - why people pay so much attention to numbers and the press is conufsing to me.

[andrew08]

And why do we get so wrapped up with money anyway. My personal financial exposure to AVFC is the cost of my season ticket.makes no odds to me how much we get for Ash, how much we give to blues. After Sep 1 I bet we're among the top half dozen spenders again

[brian green]

All this waste of money and it is waste of money goes back to the Newcastle game last season.

We had just beaten West Ham comfortably in our opening fixture which we could have won eight nil and everybody I spoke to after the game was content that KMac deserved a proper run in charge while we looked for a decent manager in a very poor field at a very difficult time of the season.

For a quarter of an hour things looked fine, even with three up front away from home.   We got a penalty.   Carew blasted it into the Gallowgate End and from then on we crumbled.   I believe sincerely that if we had gone a goal up at that point it would have been a much closer game.   As it turned out our board went into headless chicken mode and a very scratch list of managerial candidates was drawn up.

We selected a man of advanced years in footballing terms and with a serious record of heart disease.   I believe any chief executive worthy of his salary and position would have  consulted the actuarial statistics regarding the recurrence of heart malfunctions in acutely stressful jobs but I can only assume he did not.

If I were the owner of the club I would expect the board to stay with interim management until the correct calibre of applicants could be found.   The old axiom about marrying in haste and repenting at leisure comes to mind.

I do not think KMac would have done any worse than GH.   The sudden flurry of six points from the last two games made our season look much more comfortable than it actually was.

As someone just said, all of the millions thrown away on all this compensation could have bought us a good player.

[citizenDJ]

I bloody knew it was John Carew's fault!

[Nirog72]

Not my money so don't care unless.... it comes out of the transfer budget. Whether it does or not is speculation. But, my opinion on the managers is........

MON spunked money and was allowed to but also came reasonably close to getting us the holy grail of champions league which would justify the spend. He didn't, RL realised he wouldn't and he left. £2m payout (?) is far far far less than he would have spunked on other average to shit players so an understandable 'write off'.

Houllier - I understand where he was going and if he had stayed fit for 3 years it might just have worked. He wasn't fit and couldn't continue with any sense of 'calm' for playing staff or fans so a write off again - call it a goodwill gesture?!? He would insist he was fit, we would insist he wasn't. Do we want 6 months of hearings and medical reports or do we want to move on.

McLeish, he thinks he has the right man and has paid for the privilege of having him. We'll find out. If it works it is worth so much more than the compo that it's a no brainer. We don't know yet whether it will work or not but until it doesn't this figure is irrelevent.

Just my opinion.