Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: martin on June 24, 2011, 04:23:21 PM
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Granted, plenty has. But on the fundamental question of our ability to compete with the best for the top prizes, where do we stand vis a vis the Doug era?
Seems to me, not much has changed. We sell our best players; we ask managers to sell to buy new ones; we give the impression we don't want to go the extra yard to compete for the top prizes; we patronise fans with a lot of flannel about our "ambitions"; managers and players leave/want to leave stating/implying all the above.
Your thoughts.
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Unfortunately the era we are in prevents us from holding onto our best players as they all want to play in the champions league and them clubs are able to offer larger wages than us due to their income and the fact they play in the champions league. If Villa started offering high wages then we would go under as we dont bring in the amounts of money the bigger clubs do. MON tried do that and got quite close but always fell at the final hurdle.
At least we gave it a go when MON was in charge but I cant see if happening again for sometime.
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The gap has got too big during Lerner's tenure. I wonder how we would have fared had he been at the helm a decade earlier.
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The gap has got too big during Lerner's tenure. I wonder how we would have fared had he been at the helm a decade earlier.
Now that would have been very interesting.
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If only we'd have signed Juninho...
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M'ON showed a lack of ambition at various stages of his tenure, signings of Harewood and Heskey being obvious examples. He had enough money imo to break the top 4 but wasn't shrewd enough in his last 18 months or so, we missed a Bent type goalscorer and a Modric type creator, but he spent millions on transfer fees and wages for squad fillers like Beye, Sidwell, Cuellar, L Young, etc., guys he barely gave any game time to, and Delph and Downing who weren't ready to make an impact due to inexperience and injury. He should have relied more on the likes of kids like Clark, Delfouneso, Bannan and Albrighton for back up and spent the cash on a Bent and a Modric/Arshavin, to supplement Gabby, Milner, Barry and Young.
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Well we're not having players leaving who cite ambition and then join West Ham or Boro anymore, so progress of sorts from the latter end of the Herbert era.
Unfortunately, until we nail a CL place ourselves we're one of many clubs vulnerable to losing our best players to sides directly above us. One minor consolation may be that after Downing -and possibly Bent- I can't see any of the players currently on our books attracting that kind of attention again for a while. So we might actually have a bit of breathing space to build.
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If only we'd have signed Juninho...
If only we had have signed Beattie....
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M'ON showed a lack of ambition at various stages of his tenure, signings of Harewood and Heskey being obvious examples. He had enough money imo to break the top 4 but wasn't shrewd enough in his last 18 months or so, we missed a Bent type goalscorer and a Modric type creator, but he spent millions on transfer fees and wages for squad fillers like Beye, Sidwell, Cuellar, L Young, etc., guys he barely gave any game time to, and Delph and Downing who weren't ready to make an impact due to inexperience and injury. He should have relied more on the likes of kids like Clark, Delfouneso, Bannan and Albrighton for back up and spent the cash on a Bent and a Modric/Arshavin, to supplement Gabby, Milner, Barry and Young.
Spot on. If he hadn't spent 40m on squad players he didn't use we would have had enough quality in the 1st team barring injuries to have got a top4 place. The sad thing is its probably still possible but it doesn't look like Lerner's willing to stump up to try again.
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I think an important thing to understand is that a lot of work at the end of doug's era and the start of randy's time was done on the training facilities and youth setup.
In Rugby they (the rfu not individual clubs) did similar after the 2003 world cup where they realised most of that team were going to retire and there wasn't really the quality behind it. Most of the kids that have really benefitted from that were 12-13 at the time so it's only now 7-8 years later that the real effects are being felt.
Give it 3-4 years then ask what the difference is and if it's not easy to answer at that point then we'll be free to suggest that nothing good has come from the change.
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I wonder if we would have signed Bent instead of Harewood what would have been?
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The gap has got too big during Lerner's tenure. I wonder how we would have fared had he been at the helm a decade earlier.
This is the most important change. City coming from nowhere,Spurs spending big year on year,and the usual big four forever being in the CL gaining more dough every year have made it virtually impossible to crack.
Randy gave it a good shot in those first 3 years or so,shame a lot of the money was spunked on very average signings.
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I still wonder if we signed sheringham rather than cascarino what would have been?
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Top 4 teams have bad seasons, its just being good enough to take advantage. 5 years ago liverpool were guaranteed top4 now look at them, a best of the rest side. Its highly likely that one of them will do so again. We had our chance when Arsenal had an iffy season and blew it, Tottenham took their chance unfortunately.
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The gap has got too big during Lerner's tenure. I wonder how we would have fared had he been at the helm a decade earlier.
It didn't seem it at the time (Harweood apart, that always looked a bit shit) but the purchases from the summer 2007 onwards ultimately did for us. We had a narrow window from that period up until Jan 2009 -before Citeh's financial advantage could really be utilised and with Tottingham having one of their infamous season's of transition- where we could have cracked it had we utilised our own resources better.
I'm not going to be a hypocrite, as I thought most of our business back then was decent. Davies was the kind of signing other ambitious clubs would go for (and did), NRC was captain of the U21's and a big player for West Ham at a relatively young age et.c
But when you see some of the fees players like Parker and RSC went for back then -players that could have improved us immeasurably - it was definitely an opportunity wasted. I'm not sure if we'll get that chance again -barring a meltdown at the top if some of the big hitters get into financial difficulty.
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Unfortunately the era we are in prevents us from holding onto our best players as they all want to play in the champions league and them clubs are able to offer larger wages than us due to their income and the fact they play in the champions league. If Villa started offering high wages then we would go under as we dont bring in the amounts of money the bigger clubs do. MON tried do that and got quite close but always fell at the final hurdle.
At least we gave it a go when MON was in charge but I cant see if happening again for sometime.
none of the top 4 or 5 or 6 bring in any amount of money compared to what they are spending bar maybe Arsenal
agree with the rest of your post
we gave it a go for 3ish seasons - but no more - we are going to be a mid table team, selling our best player every season, hoping for a run in the cups for the forseeable
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I wonder if we would have signed Bent instead of Harewood what would have been?
I wonder if we had signed Zamora instead of Harewood...
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The gap has got too big during Lerner's tenure. I wonder how we would have fared had he been at the helm a decade earlier.
Most thought provoking and possibly depressing post of the day. We coulda been top dog!
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The gap has got too big during Lerner's tenure. I wonder how we would have fared had he been at the helm a decade earlier.
Most thought provoking and possibly depressing post of the day. We coulda been top dog!
You could also say what if Doug stayed on a little bit longer and Sheik Mansour preffered us to Man City. We could be the club doing the 'Poznan' now.
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The gap has got too big during Lerner's tenure. I wonder how we would have fared had he been at the helm a decade earlier.
This is the most important change. City coming from nowhere,Spurs spending big year on year,and the usual big four forever being in the CL gaining more dough every year have made it virtually impossible to crack.
Randy gave it a good shot in those first 3 years or so,shame a lot of the money was spunked on very average signings.
I agree with these points. The most depressing thing is that now should one of the teams currently holding the top four blow up (Chelsea and Arsenal look like contenders) Tottenham and Liverpool would be far better placed than us to replace them.
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I wonder if we would have signed Bent instead of Harewood what would have been?
Or Bent instead of Heskey. Surely that would have nailed a top four spot.
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With the new financial rules coming into play, and the domestic quotas, and if they are actually adhered to, then it puts more onus on academies. When we finally feel that impacting on the game (if we do at all), then I fancy we could compete again. At the same time we need enough luck to get the sort of genius manager, who can get the extra 10% from his squad to make them out perform. O Neill did get some momentum going, but could only get so far. Someone even better could nuture our kids to become a top team. It may sound idealistic, but perhaps there's potential for us to build a side like Man Utd did in the early 90's. If Fifa genuinely want people to stop spunking money to build great sides, then we could be a competitive side again. If that happened, the game would be better for it. I don't think the Abramovich and Sheikh factor has been good for football at all. We need to, best as possible, weed out the mercanary mentality. At the very least, if teams are only allowed to buy 1-2 superstars to be in financial fair play compliance, as opposed to splurge on a whole 11, then the league will be more competitive. If in the next ten years the league shapes up to reflect the best youth production, then I firmly believe that would make us one of the top 4 easily. With luck and good management, we can compete year in and year out in the top 6.
But for the time being, we have to settle for mid-table, or if we're lucky a best of the rest scrap with the likes of Liverpool, Everton and maybe even Spurs if they lose their star players.
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The gap has got too big during Lerner's tenure. I wonder how we would have fared had he been at the helm a decade earlier.
A decade earlier Doug was investing a similar amount in the squad as Lerner has, in relative terms.
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I'll ask again, as no one has given a satisfactory answer - who said we are not going to spend any more large amounts of money?
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I'll ask again, as no one has given a satisfactory answer - who said we are not going to spend any more large amounts of money?
Martin O'Neill last January.
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I'll ask again, as no one has given a satisfactory answer - who said we are not going to spend any more large amounts of money?
Martin O'Neill last January.
Subsequently proved to be wrong. Next?
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I'll ask again, as no one has given a satisfactory answer - who said we are not going to spend any more large amounts of money?
Martin O'Neill last January.
Subsequently proved to be wrong. Next?
No it hasn't. He said we needed to sell to buy and that's exactly what we've done.
If you're saying we'll spend plenty because we'll raise plenty in sales, I wouldn't argue with you.
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I'll ask again, as no one has given a satisfactory answer - who said we are not going to spend any more large amounts of money?
Martin O'Neill last January.
Subsequently proved to be wrong. Next?
No it hasn't. He said we needed to sell to buy and that's exactly what we've done.
If you're saying we'll spend plenty because we'll raise plenty in sales, I wouldn't argue with you.
Really, so GH only spent the Milner money last season? Don't think so.
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We also sold Gardner, Sidwell, Shorey and Davies. We've balanced the transfer books since Summer 2009.
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I still wonder if we signed sheringham rather than cascarino what would have been?
Or just let Ian Olney carry on as he was.
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Agreeing with this string. I decided to give up my ST for work reasons, before the micky mouse search for a manager, which means that we have infuriated the enemy, but also the club most likely to provide us with a keeper and centre back. I thought it would be a real wrench, but it is certain that the football on view next season will be no better than the mid- range of MON's days. Conceding 2 late goals to Stoke, kinda stuff.
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The bent money came from the sale of milner. I've got a feeling we won't get the marquee signing. Time will tell but if randy doesn't put money in then I'd rather he sell up
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Granted, plenty has. But on the fundamental question of our ability to compete with the best for the top prizes, where do we stand vis a vis the Doug era?
Seems to me, not much has changed. We sell our best players; we ask managers to sell to buy new ones; we give the impression we don't want to go the extra yard to compete for the top prizes; we patronise fans with a lot of flannel about our "ambitions"; managers and players leave/want to leave stating/implying all the above.
Your thoughts.
In terms of competing with the best, we're worse off than we were under Ellis (at least in the best years). That's because the top four is more engulfed than ever, and it seems as if you need Man City style resources if you want to come up from behind. The Ajax model mentioned last summer when we appointed GH last summer could have been worth a try, but it now seems as if that was a whim rather than a new strategy. Even so, Arsenal find it difficult staying in the top four employing that model; it's probably even more difficult getting there that way.
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Well we're not having players leaving who cite ambition and then join West Ham or Boro anymore, so progress of sorts from the latter end of the Herbert era.
Unfortunately, until we nail a CL place ourselves we're one of many clubs vulnerable to losing our best players to sides directly above us. One minor consolation may be that after Downing -and possibly Bent- I can't see any of the players currently on our books attracting that kind of attention again for a while. So we might actually have a bit of breathing space to build.
This for me is the 'nailed on' correct explanation of where we are - yes we would all like to break into the top4 but our
exploits in the Uefa mickey mouse competition proved we haven't the resources to compete -
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The gap has got too big during Lerner's tenure. I wonder how we would have fared had he been at the helm a decade earlier.
A decade earlier Doug was investing a similar amount in the squad as Lerner has, in relative terms.
Hmm...you reckon? Irrespective of investment similarities (and even stretching ''relative terms'' to as realistic a meaning as possible, I reckon Lerner has been more generous), I think throughout the 90's we were in a realistic position to be contenders. Under Randy we got back there (contenders now being diluted to mean good enough to finish 4th) between 2008-'10 but have since lost that momentum.
If we'd had more of a window of opportunity this time round like which existed between '92-'00 (only United and then Arsenal towards the end of the decade were what could be classed as insurmountable compeition), I reckon we could have achieved something. That we failed to do so in the 90's was largely due to having micro-thinking Doug in charge.
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We could have not signed Davies and cuellar and bought Bent instead. A front 6 of Milner, Barry, petrov - downing, bent, young would be top 4 material IMHO.
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I agree with Matt