The price of Emile Heskey

[Californian Villain]

Part of me wants to shout at Randy for allowing it, as the person who signs the cheques, but the fact is, if he had not allowed it, had he said "not at that age and those wages", at that time he'd have been slaughtered for not supporting the manager.

If it was any other player, and Randy had said no, then it's possible another Juninho-type scenario may have occurred, but this is Emile Heskey we're talking about - nobody wanted him.

Except the manager.

Well that much is obvious., and it's apparent that the same manager had little regard for the long term cost to the club of his bizarre transfer/salary policy. My view is that Randy called a halt to the indiscriminate spending about 18 months late.

[Villa'Zawg]

Joe Cole (Free, £100k wags, 2 goals), Jovanovic (Free,90k, 0), Aquilani(£20m, 80k, 2), Konchesky (£3m, £50k, 0), Poulson(£4.5m, £50k, 0)

[Greg N'Ash]

Baffling purchase at the time, still baffling now. I can only think he was a panic buy as no rational person would be searching for a guy to score the goals to fire us into the CL and end up at Heskey's door. Mebbe MON knew as much about centre forwards as he did about centre halfs.

I thought maybe it'd maybe, *maybe* make sense if we needed back up for Carew, in terms of a "similar" (ie physically powerful) player.

Those sort of wages to a player that old on that long a contract, though. Christ.

mebbe but at the time most people seemd to think we needed a striker who was gonna come in and keeps us ahead of Arsenal. They got arseshaving, we got Heskey and the rest as they say is history...

[Mazrim]

Quite. Bent would have guaranteed us Champions League at that stage. What a shame.

[Californian Villain]

Quite. Bent would have guaranteed us Champions League at that stage. What a shame.

Bent wasn't **censored** with Potatohead's daughter back then though.

[pauliewalnuts]

My view is that they came to the club without a clue about the game, and found themselves fortunate to have a highly regarded manager waiting to take over.

When said manager came in, he proved to be the type that runs everything from top to bottom, and for Lerner and co this was very much appreciated, as they themselves were pretty naive.

The flip side of that was that the manager asked them for lots of money to spend on players, and as they'd put their trust in him to run the club, and the whole world was telling them he was a great manager, they thought "well, why wouldn't we trust him", so did.

This happens even when, in 2008-9, he buys an entire defence (25m), then one year later, buys another entire defence (20m) because he's decided he doesn't like the one he bought the year before.

Oh, and in this same period that we're buying two defences, we sign Emile Heskey for 3.5m whilst Darren Bent goes to Sunderland for 10m. Still, they are still being told MON is a great manager and should be trusted, so they do so, hence why they we can't really pin the blame on them.

Fast forward a couple of years, and we've achieved decent results, but they're starting to notice that some of these contracts are somewhat generous, and that 88 percent of our turnover was going on wages. So, they ask said manager "can you please do some wheeling and dealing, move some players on, work on managing the wage bill a little".

Manager agrees, then does nothing about it. Gets asked again, realises that he's not going to be able to move some of them on quite so easily, realises that he's going to struggle to finish sixth again, realises that this is going to tarnish his own CV, changes his mind, abruptly fucks off.

Fast forward to now, and we're still spending over 100,000 pounds a week on salary just for Messrs Heskey and Beye, and we will continue to do so for the next 12 months.

[Californian Villain]

That's pretty much my view too. Shame the board let it carry on as long as it did though.

[pauliewalnuts]

That's pretty much my view too. Shame the board let it carry on as long as it did though.

Yes, but the entire world was telling them O'Neill was a genius. Much of the media are STILL telling all and sundry that O'Neill is a genius. It's easy to see why.

Since then, I think they've learned a lot about putting all your eggs in one basket as they did with him. The pity is that they don't really seem to have learned a great deal about the day to day management of a football club, which is why we seem to lurch around so amateurishly so frequently.

[Chris Jameson]

He was 10 times better under Houllier than O'Neill, but kept getting injured last season.

He was spectaculary shit under Houllier so just think what levels of ineptitude and fuckwittery he displayed previously.

[Californian Villain]

That's pretty much my view too. Shame the board let it carry on as long as it did though.

Yes, but the entire world was telling them O'Neill was a genius. Much of the media are STILL telling all and sundry that O'Neill is a genius. It's easy to see why.

Since then, I think they've learned a lot about putting all your eggs in one basket as they did with him. The pity is that they don't really seem to have learned a great deal about the day to day management of a football club, which is why we seem to lurch around so amateurishly so frequently.

the entire world? I've told you a million times: don't exaggerate.

[Dave]

Quite. Bent would have guaranteed us Champions League at that stage. What a shame.

Bent wasn't **censored** with Potatohead's daughter back then though.

No, but he was depressed and not getting a game at Spurs wasn't he?

[Risso]

Quite. Bent would have guaranteed us Champions League at that stage. What a shame.

Overstating things possibly, and I'm not blaming Heskey himself, but his signing was the watershed moment that sent everything tits up.  We needed goals, he didn't supply them, and his signing was probably the best example of paying a crap, old player far more than he was worth.  I seem to remember that there was talk about Lerner wanting O'Neill to sell him before making any more money available, so he was also one of the causes of the breakdown between Lerner and O'Neill.

[Villa'Zawg]

Didn't Paul Faulkner take over responsibility for conducting transfer deals when he was appointed CEO?

[paulcomben]

Be fair.  Surely his assists would mitigate that £868k figure?  Maybe get it down to about £850k...?

[pauliewalnuts]

Didn't Paul Faulkner take over responsibility for conducting transfer deals when he was appointed CEO?

To be fair, I think that's something you're convinced of, but for which we've no factual evidence.

Leaving that aside, I think there are enough sticks to beat him with anyway.