Aston Villa and how not to buy £5m+ players

[Ivo Stas]

According to this article on the BBC...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39015629

...we are simply unable to spend £5m+ on a decent player:

Purchases of £5m or above since O'Neill's departure:

2010-11:
Darren Bent (Sunderland, £18m) - the ultimate (January) panic buy.
Stephen Ireland (Man City, £8.25m) - Man City saw us coming, not the only dud they have offloaded onto us
Jean Makoun (Lyon, £6m) - what did he play, 3 games? (Note: Wikipedia says 9).

2011-12:
Charles N'Zogbia (Wigan, £9m) - a disaster (although at the time I approved of the signing, showing that I don't watch Wigan much).

2012-13:
Christian Benteke (Genk, £7.5m) - the exception that proves the rule   

2013-14:
Libor Kozak (Lazio, £5.5m) - the 21st-century Jonah.

2014-15:
Carlos Sanchez (Elche, £5.1m) - the only South American who can't play football. When we signed him, I remember thinking: isn't that the Colombian who gave Thiago Silva a free header from a corner in that World Cup game in 2014?

2015-16:
Jordan Ayew (Lorient, £10.2m) - not prolific enough to be a striker, too slow to be a winger. Last seen warming the Swansea bench
Jordan Amavi (Nice, £9.3m) - can't get in ahead of Neil Taylor
Jordan Veretout (Nantes, £8.5m) - possibly the least suited player ever for English football
Adama Traore (Barcelona, £8.5m) - Transfer policy chaos personified. Probably he will end up as a superstar at Chelsea just to troll us.
Idrissa Gueye (Lille, £7.6m) - I still maintain he is terrible, despite any evidence to the contrary at Everton. That Man City FA Cup backpass...
Rudy Gestede, (Blackburn, £7.2m) - remember Cascarino? And Ormondroyd? Well, they were both better than him.

2016-17:
Ross McCormack (Fulham, £12m) - Mr can't-be-bothered.
Scott Hogan (£12m) - I have a suspicion that the days of small Michael Owen/Kevin Phillips like strikers died a death with the end of 4-4-2 (as they require a Heskey or Niall Quinn to play off).
Jonathan Kodjia (£11m) - Gets a goal every other game but spends much of the rest of the time driving attacking moves into quicksand.
James Chester (£8m) - Not a Mellberg but possibly the best defender we've had since him? Too short mind you.
Aaron Tshibola (£5m) - One of those can't really do anything midfielders we've specialized in for too long.

[in exile]

That's quite a list when you look at it that way!

[eamonn]

This article appeared on the main BBC football page last night. Coming mere minutes after a Villa Park slaying of the might of one of the UK's major cities (another sleeping giant?), it went down like the proverbial fart in a lift.

[Toronto Villa]

Does Chelsea or man U or Man City have an equivalent list at £10m or £15m or £20m? There is no doubt that we've not excelled in recent years in our player acquisition and the list above also puts to bed in my opinion any notion that Randy didn't provide funds to his managers. The problem has always been how we spent it and who the manager then was who failed to put the pieces together. But in truth a lot of clubs will have a "fuck me did we really waste that much money on those players" list. Not just us.

[eamonn]

Does Chelsea or man U or Man City have an equivalent list at £10m or £15m or £20m? There is no doubt that we've not excelled in recent years in our player acquisition and the list above also puts to bed in my opinion any notion that Randy didn't provide funds to his managers. The problem has always been how we spent it and who the manager then was who failed to put the pieces together. But in truth a lot of clubs will have a "fuck me did we really waste that much money on those players" list. Not just us.

2012-2015 was fairly light in terms of significant investment which arguably did for us along with Lambert's failings. A rake of Tones/Moons/Heleniuses but not much quality. I'm pretty sure Carlos Sanchez was less than the amount they quote as well.

Interestingly, from the Sherwood summer batch we will end-up recouping most of that back and from the past twelve months only McCormack looks the closest to a waste of money and he still might be salvageable.

[remy]

When will football ever evolve into paid on playing, lose get peanuts, draw and get peanuts+bit, win and full amount.  Injured - sick pay.  Bad attitude (like McCordick) or just shit (Westwood) - pay transfer fee percentage back and fuck off to the stiffs with its own salary structure.

The rewards are millions. Gotta have the attitude of protecting the club at all costs.

[Rotterdam]

Darren Bent did keep us up that year...

[TopDeck113]

Whilst it is difficult to disagree with the tenor of the piece, it does once again perpetuate the myth that everything was rosy in the garden up until the MON flounce. I mean, absolutely everyone of his transfers was a success both in terms of what they delivered on the pitch and value for the money paid, wasn't it?

[passitsideways]

We haven't done all that well, but you've deliberately taken the pessimistic side on just about each of those signings simply to make a point.

[darren woolley]

That's a lot of money we have wasted we should have done better with it.

[Simon Page]

Darren Bent did keep us up that year...

And was a bargain compared to the other big money striker that window - £35m Andy Carroll to Liverpool. I'd say of the lot listed, Bent, Benteke, Kodjia and Chester all good buys. Hogan may yet prove to be. Could easily have done without the rest.

[ktvillan]

A piss poor congenital idiot of an owner hiring mostly piss poor managers who paid over the odds for mostly sub-standard players identified by a piss poor scouting operation, and then coached by a piss poor coaching set-up.   I think it's gone quite well considering.....

[JUAN PABLO]

how much was Albert ?

[eamonn]

how much was Albert ?

£6m? Basically a swap with Adama, almost letter for letter. Although we've saved on their wage differentials, as it's since been shown that Traore was on a million squids a week.

[Dave]

Darren Bent did keep us up that year...

And was a bargain compared to the other big money striker that window - £35m Andy Carroll to Liverpool.

£20m or so of which they got back from West Ham.

The return that we got from Derby when Bent was moved on was rather less.