With hindsight - January

[rob_bridge]

Nah - the two games away at Naaarwich and Sunderland killed us just before transfer window.

Had we avoided defeat / won in both those games we would have sewn bad seeds in their minds at an earlier stage and given ourselves a confidence boost to kick on with a couple of new recruits

We'd have still likely gone down however just not as shambolically.

[saunders_heroes]

I'll repeat what I posted sometime ago.
A long standing season ticket holder I go to games with wrote a long, complaining letter to the club in January.
The response was that he got the usual 'consultation' phone call from the club in early February.
During that call, the person from AVFC said that 'the best business the club did in January was NOT spending any money in the January window'.
Remember, this is when we still a little bit of hope that we might stop up so my mate was livid at the time and took it as confirmation that the club had already given up and resigned itself to going down.
   

This is more or less what Hollis and Fox said at the Trust AGM in mid January. Mind you they finished off by saying "we're still not down yet you know", which was like rubbing salt into the wounds.

[West Derby Villan]

Maybe maybe not. But by not investing in January it suggested that the towel had been thrown in and the remainder of the season was irrelevant. Unfortunately season ticket holders had paid hard earned cash for the remaining "void" matches. Surely the club has an obligation/ responsibility to entertain the customers/consumers............................Apologies I seem to be having some sort of breakdown, please ignore my previous comments.

*sobs on knees in dark corner of room*

[Skerra]

For my part, I never thought that Lerner had no intention of spending any money in the January transfer window. Have to admit though that, at the time, I didn't think there was any point in spending money because our problems go much deeper than just getting in new players.

I agree with others that the club should spend whatever it takes to get rid of all our crap/selfish players and, then also bring in appropriate replacements. If we don't I fear we can start getting our maps out for League 1 for 2017-18 season.

[KevinGage]

Absolutely correct to spend nothing, we needed 6 or 7 players to have given us any hope and that would have been 40-50m gamble.

The big mistake was last summer when we didn't buy a keeper when Sherwood had proved he had no faith in Guzan & not replacing the 32m striker with a proven player.  That might have given us a chance!

Disagree with that entirely.

A goalkeeper and a forward worthy of the name could have made a big difference to us.

We were only* 8 points off safety despite being so woeful going into Feb.

We needed to follow up that win against Norwich with a mini run -possibly winning three on the bounce at some point in the second half of the campaign. Which seems unthinkable with the current bunch of muppets, but with a different dynamic in the changing room that even two to three new faces could bring (and the likes of Lescott, Gabby, N Zog and Bacuna banished) you just never know.

I don't think it would have taken £50 million to do that. £15 million could have given us a fighting chance. The bulk of that going on a forward, then a goalkeeper and possibly a centre half on loan. We needed that whether we stayed up or went down anyway. 

To do nothing, not even a loan, was disgraceful.

[Bottom Right 89]

The only regret is that we didn't swap Tim for Fat Sam before Sunderland got him. He would have got some decent experienced signings in January and would have kept us up. You can't say that Sunderlands squad are any better than ours they're just fitter more organised and better prepared. It would have been worth getting Allardyce in just to eliminate the 45+3s and the 90+2 calamities that became the trade mark of our season. The way we rolled over and accepted relegation at Christmas was unforgiveable at least Newcastle gave it a shot.

[placeforparks]

I'll repeat what I posted sometime ago.
A long standing season ticket holder I go to games with wrote a long, complaining letter to the club in January.
The response was that he got the usual 'consultation' phone call from the club in early February.
During that call, the person from AVFC said that 'the best business the club did in January was NOT spending any money in the January window'.
Remember, this is when we still a little bit of hope that we might stop up so my mate was livid at the time and took it as confirmation that the club had already given up and resigned itself to going down.

out of interest, has your mate renewed/is he renewing?

[Mister E]

Absolutely correct to spend nothing, we needed 6 or 7 players to have given us any hope and that would have been 40-50m gamble.

The big mistake was last summer when we didn't buy a keeper when Sherwood had proved he had no faith in Guzan & not replacing the 32m striker with a proven player.  That might have given us a chance!

Disagree with that entirely.

A goalkeeper and a forward worthy of the name could have made a big difference to us.

We were only* 8 points off safety despite being so woeful going into Feb.

We needed to follow up that win against Norwich with a mini run -possibly winning three on the bounce at some point in the second half of the campaign. Which seems unthinkable with the current bunch of muppets, but with a different dynamic in the changing room that even two to three new faces could bring (and the likes of Lescott, Gabby, N Zog and Bacuna banished) you just never know.

I don't think it would have taken £50 million to do that. £15 million could have given us a fighting chance. The bulk of that going on a forward, then a goalkeeper and possibly a centre half on loan. We needed that whether we stayed up or went down anyway. 

To do nothing, not even a loan, was disgraceful.

You've expressed my view. And Alladyce has shown that it was possible to turn around a flagging squad with 3-4 well-placed additions.
Sadly, as others have said, the malaise is far deeper here than at Blunderland.

We really are a shambles, thanks to the fuck-uppery by Lerner and others.

[andyh]

I'll repeat what I posted sometime ago.
A long standing season ticket holder I go to games with wrote a long, complaining letter to the club in January.
The response was that he got the usual 'consultation' phone call from the club in early February.
During that call, the person from AVFC said that 'the best business the club did in January was NOT spending any money in the January window'.
Remember, this is when we still a little bit of hope that we might stop up so my mate was livid at the time and took it as confirmation that the club had already given up and resigned itself to going down.

out of interest, has your mate renewed/is he renewing?

Yes. He's had his ST for over 40 years, I've had mins for over 30. We have both renewed.
I think its down to blind faith and bad habit now.
One of the other 'lads' who comes with us, ST holder for over 40 years as well has not renewed, and will not.

[Chris Harte]

We suffered the two loses to Sunderland and Norwich over Christmas, but had been unlucky to only draw with West Ham on boxing Day. Then we had a mini run of games that lasted as far as Norwich at home in early February, just after the window had closed. At this point we were showing signs of possibly achieving something, of clawing back the then eight points to safety. Talk of needing Champions League qualifying form to recover was rubbish - seven wins and a draw from the games played from then until now, albeit still a big upswing in form, to put us were Sunderland are currently would have been needed, but with three extra players in the right positions (goalkeeper, forward and centre-half) it may have been do-able.

Instead we signed no-one, surrendered the game after Norwich 6-0, Lescott said "never mind, look at my car" and the rest is, as they say, history.

[David_Nab]

Norwich / Sunderland / Newcastle all spent only one of them survived ..us spending might have improved our pathetic haul of points but would it have saved us ...I'm no so sure

The real test is next season will we now have an advantage over Norwich and Newcastle who did spend ? 

[FranzBiberkopf]

three extra players in the right positions (goalkeeper, forward and centre-half) it may have been do-able.

Plus two full backs.
Plus a dominant central midfielder.
Plus a winger (or two).

And it might have been do-able. 

[oldhill_avfc]

Absolutely correct to spend nothing, we needed 6 or 7 players to have given us any hope and that would have been 40-50m gamble.

The big mistake was last summer when we didn't buy a keeper when Sherwood had proved he had no faith in Guzan & not replacing the 32m striker with a proven player.  That might have given us a chance!

Disagree with that entirely.

A goalkeeper and a forward worthy of the name could have made a big difference to us.

We were only* 8 points off safety despite being so woeful going into Feb.

We needed to follow up that win against Norwich with a mini run -possibly winning three on the bounce at some point in the second half of the campaign. Which seems unthinkable with the current bunch of muppets, but with a different dynamic in the changing room that even two to three new faces could bring (and the likes of Lescott, Gabby, N Zog and Bacuna banished) you just never know.

I don't think it would have taken £50 million to do that. £15 million could have given us a fighting chance. The bulk of that going on a forward, then a goalkeeper and possibly a centre half on loan. We needed that whether we stayed up or went down anyway. 

To do nothing, not even a loan, was disgraceful.

You've expressed my view. And Alladyce has shown that it was possible to turn around a flagging squad with 3-4 well-placed additions.
Sadly, as others have said, the malaise is far deeper here than at Blunderland.

We really are a shambles, thanks to the fuck-uppery by Lerner and others.

Gareth had it about right.

We were too far gone.  I don't know about 6-7 players but we certainly needed to replace the quality we lost in the summer plus a new keeper.

£15m was nowhere near enough to keep us up - to replace Benteke's goals alone in January would cost nearly double that amount alone (see Bent + inflation).

Plus you have to factor in that Garde never really showed he was in Allardye's league for organisation and getting results with limited reesources.

[Mossie Hennebry]

Considering the amount of potential revenue available for just remaining in the league this season, it was very bad business to allow us to drop out of it without at least taking a modest punt on staying up. If ever an example is needed to demonstrate how bad the people in charge of this club are at doing their jobs. The fckin eejits.

[KevinGage]

Norwich / Sunderland / Newcastle all spent only one of them survived ..us spending might have improved our pathetic haul of points but would it have saved us ...I'm no so sure

We needed players in whether we went down or not.

Even if it was with a view to giving us a head start in the Championship.

They didn't have to be on ludicrous Jon Joe Shelvey-type deals either. That's the extreme end of the scale, and I don't think I have seen any Villa fan advocating that.