Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: PeterWithesShin on July 29, 2011, 03:53:17 PM
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I'm currently reading Northern Soul which is about Wigan and their first season in the top flight. It's quite interesting, and had these snippets which may be of interest/relevance to us.
As well as covering that season, there are a few flashbacks, one of which was about when Wigan signed the 3 Spaniards and the author spoke to Martinez who was playing for Swansea at the time (2006) and he said this. "The chairman said he had a five-year plan to get into the Premiership, in the end it took ten and my only regret was that I never got the chance to play for them when they got there. That would have been special. To me Wigan Athletic will always be my club, always be in my heart".
Which may be why he wanted to stay at Wigan this season?
As the author spoke French he ended up being a translator when they signed Chimbonda and Henri Camara. This is about Camara.
Henri told me he really enjoyed his time at Southampton working under Harry Redknapp - 'he's a good coach, he understands players' - but he got frustrated at Celtic because Martin O'Neill just dropped him without explanation. 'I don't mind being dropped if the coach says to you why he is doing it,' he said, 'but when he says nothing it is difficult to take'.
Another fine example of man management MON style.
And finally, nothing to do with football, but the term pie-eaters for Wiganers, which has nothing to do with meat pies etc, which I had always assumed it did.
It actually comes from the time of the General Strike in 1926, when the impoverished, famished Wigan miners went back to work before everyone else, eating humble pie. It's a term of huge derision in that sense but, ironically, Wiganers themselves are the ones that use it the most.
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It appears MON and Houllier had one thing in common: if you were 'out' you were all the way out. And the way a player was ostrasized was not done delicately.
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On MoN it is no surprise. We heard it time and again from players who left us.
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It appears MON and Houllier had one thing in common: if you were 'out' you were all the way out. And the way a player was ostrasized was not done delicately.
Then again, you could say the same about Ron Saunders.
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And finally, nothing to do with football, but the term pie-eaters for Wiganers, which has nothing to do with meat pies etc, which I had always assumed it did.
It actually comes from the time of the General Strike in 1926, when the impoverished, famished Wigan miners went back to work before everyone else, eating humble pie. It's a term of huge derision in that sense but, ironically, Wiganers themselves are the ones that use it the most.
I never knew that! Quite interesting, cheers.
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It appears MON and Houllier had one thing in common: if you were 'out' you were all the way out. And the way a player was ostrasized was not done delicately.
Then again, you could say the same about Ron Saunders.
Difference between Saunders and the other 2 is that in Rons time you played the season with a settled team, using as few players as possible. MON and GH, it is a squad game where rotation is a must.
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And finally, nothing to do with football, but the term pie-eaters for Wiganers, which has nothing to do with meat pies etc, which I had always assumed it did.
It actually comes from the time of the General Strike in 1926, when the impoverished, famished Wigan miners went back to work before everyone else, eating humble pie. It's a term of huge derision in that sense but, ironically, Wiganers themselves are the ones that use it the most.
I never knew that! Quite interesting, cheers.
Although as a Wiganer for fifteen years before heading over here, I'd say that although that may be the official explanation, the sheer number and quality of pie shops in Wigan is why the people there relish the nick name.
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It appears MON and Houllier had one thing in common: if you were 'out' you were all the way out. And the way a player was ostrasized was not done delicately.
Then again, you could say the same about Ron Saunders.
An ex player once told me that if you were long term injured or out of form then Mr. Saunders wouldn't even speak to you. Add to that the way he ditched Andy Gray and you can see that there seems to be a bit of a history of this sort of thing at VP.
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All managers have players they don't rate. If AM decided he didn't rate Allbrighton, Clarke or Gabby, I wouldn't be pleased about it but its fair enough as he has to build his team. Likewise if you've got troublemakers like GH had, you need to get rid. The problem i had with MON freezing players out was they were his own buys. If you're investing millions in wages and fees into a player's purchase, then if you freeze him out totally a season later it just makes you look totally clueless in your judgement of a player's ability.
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It appears MON and Houllier had one thing in common: if you were 'out' you were all the way out. And the way a player was ostrasized was not done delicately.
Then again, you could say the same about Ron Saunders.
Difference between Saunders and the other 2 is that in Rons time you played the season with a settled team, using as few players as possible. MON and GH, it is a squad game where rotation is a must.
Also in Saunders time, players weren't 20 year old multi millionaires with fragile egoes, you could get away with it.
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"Absence makes the Mart Grow Stronger":
http://fourfourtwo.com/blogs/fanseyeview/archive/2011/08/01/absence-makes-the-mart-grow-stronger.aspx
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"Absence makes the Mart Grow Fonder":
http://fourfourtwo.com/blogs/fanseyeview/archive/2011/08/01/absence-makes-the-mart-grow-stronger.aspx
I can't imagine that anyone on here would disagree with any of that :-)
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"Absence makes the Mart Grow Fonder":
http://fourfourtwo.com/blogs/fanseyeview/archive/2011/08/01/absence-makes-the-mart-grow-stronger.aspx
I can't imagine that anyone on here would disagree with any of that :-)
I only got as far as "culling the dead wood".
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I sincerely hope he didn't get paid for that load of shite.
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I sincerely hope he didn't get paid for that load of shite.
I'm sure Martin paid him kindly.
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"Absence makes the Mart Grow Fonder":
http://fourfourtwo.com/blogs/fanseyeview/archive/2011/08/01/absence-makes-the-mart-grow-stronger.aspx (http://fourfourtwo.com/blogs/fanseyeview/archive/2011/08/01/absence-makes-the-mart-grow-stronger.aspx)
I can't imagine that anyone on here would disagree with any of that :-)
I only got as far as "culling the dead wood".
Or "culling the dead word" as it says, such is its quality! O'Neill was the equivalent of sustainable furniture manufacturers. For every bit of dead wood he culled, he replaced it with twice as much of his own.
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"Absence makes the Mart Grow Fonder":
http://fourfourtwo.com/blogs/fanseyeview/archive/2011/08/01/absence-makes-the-mart-grow-stronger.aspx
I can't imagine that anyone on here would disagree with any of that :-)
I only got as far as "culling the dead wood".
"unexpected top 6 finishes," for me.
Weren't we blessed with such unparalleled, groundbreaking achievement.
Dunno what's worse, the dull style of writing or the fact that some people still believe that guff.
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"Absence makes the Mart Grow Fonder":
http://fourfourtwo.com/blogs/fanseyeview/archive/2011/08/01/absence-makes-the-mart-grow-stronger.aspx
I can't imagine that anyone on here would disagree with any of that :-)
I only got as far as "culling the dead wood".
"unexpected top 6 finishes," for me.
Weren't we blessed with such unparalleled, groundbreaking achievement.
Dunno what's worse, the dull style of writing or the fact that some people still believe that guff.
I'm amazed he could reach the keyboard to type that shite whilst chomping down on MON's cock!
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Fair assessment I reckon.
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Aye. But you clearly expected so little from your club -even during the halcyon days of Magic Martin weirdly enough- that top 6 was unexpected for you.
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Aye. But you clearly expected so little from your club -even during the halcyon days of Magic Martin weirdly enough- that top 6 was unexpected for you.
I think that paragraph was reasonable.
"A club that had had all the promise of a washed up journeyman boxer had undergone a rejuvenescence that saw unexpected top-six finishes and domestic cup challenges. In not backing O’Neill, they had taken it all for granted."
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Depends if you think the rejuvination was more about the 80m in fees and the same in wages we spent rather than MON's inspiration managership
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I love the Wigan chant "we come from Wigan and we live in Mudhuts".
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Fair assessment I reckon.
Which, the article or the "amazed he could reach the keyboard to type that shite whilst chomping down on MON's cock!"
If it's the latter, then I completely agree with you.
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Fair assessment I reckon.
Which, the article or the "amazed he could reach the keyboard to type that shite whilst chomping down on MON's cock!"
If it's the latter, then I completely agree with you.
The former. The latter didn't make much sense to me as I would have thought the problem would be seeing the screen rather than reaching the keyboard, but I'm happy to bow to others superior knowledge in such matters.
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Who do you prefer Villa'Zawg, Martin O'Neill or Aston Villa?
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Dunno what's worse, the dull style of writing or the fact that some people still believe that guff.
What's worse is we are now paying the price of mismanagement of funds.
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you'd think if he was such a star as the author suggests he'd have got a new job by now. No doubt biding his time till the inevitable offer from a top4 club lands on his doormat. *snigger*
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Astonishgly, the article doesn't really mention how O'Bottler fucked off five days before the start of the season leaving us with a bunch of highly paid reserves, funny that.
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And until he wins the league and EC twice with a small, provincial club I don't see why the references to Clough continue to get vomited out. Yes, at one stage he did look like he might have a similar Midas touch about him (and Ol' Big Ead might have even said as much). But over the last few years he's proved himself to be quite mortal.
As it is- on planet Earth 2011- he is one LC victory ahead of Alex McLeish. And the last club who were interested in his services were those aristocrats of English football West Ham United.
That's not particularly majestic, is it?
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No, makes you think that your average football club owner has a bit more sense and knowledge than your average footy-mag hack.
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Fair assessment I reckon.
Which, the article or the "amazed he could reach the keyboard to type that shite whilst chomping down on MON's cock!"
If it's the latter, then I completely agree with you.
The former. The latter didn't make much sense to me as I would have thought the problem would be seeing the screen rather than reaching the keyboard..
So you've obviously thought about it..
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Who do you prefer Villa'Zawg, Martin O'Neill or Aston Villa?
I was banned the last time I gave you a straight answer to this type of question, so I'll let you make your own mind up this time.
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Fair assessment I reckon.
Which, the article or the "amazed he could reach the keyboard to type that shite whilst chomping down on MON's cock!"
If it's the latter, then I completely agree with you.
The former. The latter didn't make much sense to me as I would have thought the problem would be seeing the screen rather than reaching the keyboard..
So you've obviously thought about it..
You have curious circuitous way of discussing your predilections. It would probably best if we dropped the subject and everyone can go back to ignoring your strange obsession with the ex-manager.
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Depends if you think the rejuvination was more about the 80m in fees and the same in wages we spent rather than MON's inspiration managership
I think you have to spend money and have a good manager.
How much transfer fees/wages do you are needed to be where you would like to see the club?
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Depends if you think the rejuvination was more about the 80m in fees and the same in wages we spent rather than MON's inspiration managership
I think you have to spend money and have a good manager.
How much transfer fees/wages do you are needed to be where you would like to see the club?
Avram Grant got 2nd with enough money so i don't particulary think you need a good manager. If you threw 80m at AM i wouldn't be surprised if we got 5th either
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Fair assessment I reckon.
Which, the article or the "amazed he could reach the keyboard to type that shite whilst chomping down on MON's cock!"
If it's the latter, then I completely agree with you.
The former. The latter didn't make much sense to me as I would have thought the problem would be seeing the screen rather than reaching the keyboard..
So you've obviously thought about it..
You have curious circuitous way of discussing your predilections. It would probably best if we dropped the subject and everyone can go back to ignoring your strange obsession with the ex-manager.
What's strange is your undying devotion to him despite what's gone on. From what I understand, you think Lerner was wrong to stop giving O'Neill money, whilst I think Lerner lacked the know-how to run the club financially. There's an huge difference.
For me, MON just took the piss, he was always going to be a manager that needed just one more player but in reality he just wasn't that good a manager. What concerns me more is Lerner. Despite his dedication to the club and financial backing, I think we'd struggle to find an owner that would allow things to get so out of hand. I expected more and I pray he's learned his lesson.
Poorly researched tripe like that article are always going to annoy me. It's bullshit but what's more annoying is we've wasted 5 years. You keep on defending MON, blame Lerner for not wasting more millions with him, giving stupid wages to aging players that he never used and whilst I'll still find it comical, it won't stop me being more concerned with why we allowed him to do it.
That for me is the real story.
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Astonishgly, the article doesn't really mention how O'Bottler fucked off five days before the start of the season leaving us with a bunch of highly paid reserves, funny that.
It also fails to mention the wage (to turnover) bill MON left Villa with.
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Depends if you think the rejuvination was more about the 80m in fees and the same in wages we spent rather than MON's inspiration managership
I think you have to spend money and have a good manager.
How much transfer fees/wages do you are needed to be where you would like to see the club?
Avram Grant got 2nd with enough money so i don't particulary think you need a good manager. If you threw 80m at AM i wouldn't be surprised if we got 5th either
I don't see the point of getting into a discussion about comparing our transfer fee/wages spend to Chelsea or what might happen if you spent another £80m to build on this squad.
My question was how much transfer fees/wages do you think are needed to be where you would like to see the club? Do you have a view on that?
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Depends if you think the rejuvination was more about the 80m in fees and the same in wages we spent rather than MON's inspiration managership
I think you have to spend money and have a good manager.
How much transfer fees/wages do you are needed to be where you would like to see the club?
Avram Grant got 2nd with enough money so i don't particulary think you need a good manager. If you threw 80m at AM i wouldn't be surprised if we got 5th either
I don't see the point of getting into a discussion about comparing our transfer fee/wages spend to Chelsea or what might happen if you spent another £80m to build on this squad.
My question was how much transfer fees/wages do you think are needed to be where you would like to see the club? Do you have a view on that?
what we spent under MON but with a good manager spending it. The idea probably was that CL Income would offset the initial expenditure. Once it became clear MON wasn't going to do it we have what we have now. End of the day it was a one-off gamble that didn't pay off because of bad judgement calls and the limited tactical ability of the manager. Its dead money now and i don't think we'll ever spend similar to the MON days again.
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Greg, I see you're still banging on about MON's net spend being £80m. Yet the other week you were convinced he sold Milner, meaning his net spend was £54m. So which is it?
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Fair assessment I reckon.
Which, the article or the "amazed he could reach the keyboard to type that shite whilst chomping down on MON's cock!"
If it's the latter, then I completely agree with you.
The former. The latter didn't make much sense to me as I would have thought the problem would be seeing the screen rather than reaching the keyboard..
So you've obviously thought about it..
You have curious circuitous way of discussing your predilections. It would probably best if we dropped the subject and everyone can go back to ignoring your strange obsession with the ex-manager.
What's strange is your undying devotion to him despite what's gone on. From what I understand, you think Lerner was wrong to stop giving O'Neill money, whilst I think Lerner lacked the know-how to run the club financially. There's an huge difference.
For me, MON just took the piss, he was always going to be a manager that needed just one more player but in reality he just wasn't that good a manager. What concerns me more is Lerner. Despite his dedication to the club and financial backing, I think we'd struggle to find an owner that would allow things to get so out of hand. I expected more and I pray he's learned his lesson.
Poorly researched tripe like that article are always going to annoy me. It's bullshit but what's more annoying is we've wasted 5 years. You keep on defending MON, blame Lerner for not wasting more millions with him, giving stupid wages to aging players that he never used and whilst I'll still find it comical, it won't stop me being more concerned with why we allowed him to do it.
That for me is the real story.
All you have to do to get me to agree with you is explain to me how we could have done it with less money and without further investment. You won't find any of the clubs that are now vying for top four with a more frugally assembled squad or significantly lower wages than we had. We were and are massively below average in terms of transfer spend and wages for the top six.
We need to stop thinking about the money as Lerner's money and realise that we are talking about the club's revenue and investment.
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Doesn't really matter really does it? by the time he sold milner (or not) the dream was over. He'd built his team, it wasn't good enough or he wasn't
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Depends if you think the rejuvination was more about the 80m in fees and the same in wages we spent rather than MON's inspiration managership
I think you have to spend money and have a good manager.
How much transfer fees/wages do you are needed to be where you would like to see the club?
Avram Grant got 2nd with enough money so i don't particulary think you need a good manager. If you threw 80m at AM i wouldn't be surprised if we got 5th either
I don't see the point of getting into a discussion about comparing our transfer fee/wages spend to Chelsea or what might happen if you spent another £80m to build on this squad.
My question was how much transfer fees/wages do you think are needed to be where you would like to see the club? Do you have a view on that?
what we spent under MON but with a good manager spending it. The idea probably was that CL Income would offset the initial expenditure. Once it became clear MON wasn't going to do it we have what we have now. End of the day it was a one-off gamble that didn't pay off because of bad judgement calls and the limited tactical ability of the manager. Its dead money now and i don't think we'll ever spend similar to the MON days again.
Why is it dead money when 3/4 of it was returned to the club through the sales of Milner, Young and Downing?
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Depends if you think the rejuvination was more about the 80m in fees and the same in wages we spent rather than MON's inspiration managership
I think you have to spend money and have a good manager.
How much transfer fees/wages do you are needed to be where you would like to see the club?
Avram Grant got 2nd with enough money so i don't particulary think you need a good manager. If you threw 80m at AM i wouldn't be surprised if we got 5th either
I don't see the point of getting into a discussion about comparing our transfer fee/wages spend to Chelsea or what might happen if you spent another £80m to build on this squad.
My question was how much transfer fees/wages do you think are needed to be where you would like to see the club? Do you have a view on that?
what we spent under MON but with a good manager spending it. The idea probably was that CL Income would offset the initial expenditure. Once it became clear MON wasn't going to do it we have what we have now. End of the day it was a one-off gamble that didn't pay off because of bad judgement calls and the limited tactical ability of the manager. Its dead money now and i don't think we'll ever spend similar to the MON days again.
Why is it dead money when 3/4 of it was returned to the club through the sales of Milner, Young and Downing?
Dead money because by the time they had been sold any hope of CL football or joining the big boys was over. I don't believe Lerner had a 5 year plan or such but i believe there was a period of time they were willing to stomach massive losses with no end result and that came to an end last summer. MON had longer than any other manager since Saunders i believe to do it in and certainly favourably comparable to other clubs managers who haven't won anything. In fact it seems he would have got last season as well if he'd hadn't walked out.
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All you have to do to get me to agree with you is explain to me how we could have done it with less money and without further investment. You won't find any of the clubs that are now vying for top four with a more frugally assembled squad or significantly lower wages than we had. We were and are massively below average in terms of transfer spend and wages for the top six.
We need to stop thinking about the money as Lerner's money and realise that we are talking about the club's revenue and investment.
Let's save time and start with the last bit first, stop thinking of it as Lerner's money. Okay, we're £36m in debt, the year before I think it was £44m. Our revenue is way below any of the top six, our wage bill accounts for 88% of our turnover, so we can't compete unless we have fresh investment but I can't see too many banks willing to lend us the money, certainly not when we owe so much. The obvious plan would be to reduce the debt and start again when we're more financially attractive to the lenders.
It's pointless arguing how it could have been done, as for every "don't buy Knight, Harewood, Heskey, Beye, NRC, Dunne" etc there's a "who should we have bought, which is as the locals say here, 'discussing the sex of the angels', which isn't half as much fun as it sounds. What we and hopefully the board should be looking at is learning from their mistakes and deciding exactly what is necessary to do in future.
We've invested a lot of money over the past 5 years, a lot of it wasted. Whilst I'm not a big fan of DoFs, it's obvious the board needed one. Aston Villa is not a play thing but it was treated as such by MON and judging by our situation today, demonstrated by the complete lack of financial professionalism, also by Randy Lerner. I can only hope Randy has the determination and vision to learn from his mistakes, as Aston Villa is becoming a very expensive project and in fairness, he deserves better.
It was a massive gamble, especially when he didn't know all the rules of the game. I guess like others he got took in by MON but he should have known better, so he only has himself to blame.
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All you have to do to get me to agree with you is explain to me how we could have done it with less money and without further investment. You won't find any of the clubs that are now vying for top four with a more frugally assembled squad or significantly lower wages than we had. We were and are massively below average in terms of transfer spend and wages for the top six.
We need to stop thinking about the money as Lerner's money and realise that we are talking about the club's revenue and investment.
We were also massively below average in terms of points and league place in the top six. The credibility of your statistics, even dubious ones, would improve immeasurably if you didn't discard ones that don't fit into your argument.
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Whilst it appears not to be a popular opinion on here i'm still firmly a fan of what MoN did for our club.sure he made his mistakes, but for me he did more good things than bad.What Camara thinks of him is neither here nor there,he was hardly reknowned for his unwavering commitment.Twelve months ago if we'd have been offered Houllier or McLeish in place of MoN I wonder how many would've taken that offer without dismissing it with utter derision? Likewise how many really rate N'Zogbia above Downing and Young?
Fact is it's now history and MoN actually gave us a side who actually got us believing we might actually do something, after years of just trundling along. I think his tenure at Villa Park should be treated with a little more respect.
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Whilst it appears not to be a popular opinion on here i'm still firmly a fan of what MoN did for our club.sure he made his mistakes, but for me he did more good things than bad.What Camara thinks of him is neither here nor there,he was hardly reknowned for his unwavering commitment.Twelve months ago if we'd have been offered Houllier or McLeish in place of MoN I wonder how many would've taken that offer without dismissing it with utter derision? Likewise how many really rate N'Zogbia above Downing and Young?
Fact is it's now history and MoN actually gave us a side who actually got us believing we might actually do something, after years of just trundling along. I think his tenure at Villa Park should be treated with a little more respect.
Well said.
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Whilst it appears not to be a popular opinion on here i'm still firmly a fan of what MoN did for our club.sure he made his mistakes, but for me he did more good things than bad.What Camara thinks of him is neither here nor there,he was hardly reknowned for his unwavering commitment.Twelve months ago if we'd have been offered Houllier or McLeish in place of MoN I wonder how many would've taken that offer without dismissing it with utter derision? Likewise how many really rate N'Zogbia above Downing and Young?
Fact is it's now history and MoN actually gave us a side who actually got us believing we might actually do something, after years of just trundling along. I think his tenure at Villa Park should be treated with a little more respect.
If it were you money, would you have given him even another ten quid to spend? I know I wouldn't.
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Whilst it appears not to be a popular opinion on here i'm still firmly a fan of what MoN did for our club.sure he made his mistakes, but for me he did more good things than bad.What Camara thinks of him is neither here nor there,he was hardly reknowned for his unwavering commitment.Twelve months ago if we'd have been offered Houllier or McLeish in place of MoN I wonder how many would've taken that offer without dismissing it with utter derision? Likewise how many really rate N'Zogbia above Downing and Young?
Fact is it's now history and MoN actually gave us a side who actually got us believing we might actually do something, after years of just trundling along. I think his tenure at Villa Park should be treated with a little more respect.
Some very valid points. However, it's the manner and timing of his departure that sticks in the craw, for me it's where much of the respect he gained goes out the window.
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Whilst it appears not to be a popular opinion on here i'm still firmly a fan of what MoN did for our club.sure he made his mistakes, but for me he did more good things than bad.What Camara thinks of him is neither here nor there,he was hardly reknowned for his unwavering commitment.Twelve months ago if we'd have been offered Houllier or McLeish in place of MoN I wonder how many would've taken that offer without dismissing it with utter derision? Likewise how many really rate N'Zogbia above Downing and Young?
Fact is it's now history and MoN actually gave us a side who actually got us believing we might actually do something, after years of just trundling along. I think his tenure at Villa Park should be treated with a little more respect.
If it were you money, would you have given him even another ten quid to spend? I know I wouldn't.
It wasn't my money, and i'll never have the opportunity to deal with that level of finance so i don't know.Sure the manager has to take his fair amount of blame when transfers don't work out but i'd have thought that he wasn't the one signing the cheques.We chased the dream of CL football starting with a squad which was basically relegation fodder so it was always going to take a big investment.With the established sky4 then the emergence of Spurs and the outlandish finances at Man City we ultimately fell short at the end.However, two Wembley trips and three successive 6 place finishes is success for us when considering our competitors.
Bren 'D, fair comment regarding the timing of his departure, though we've never actually been given the full reason why he quit.Like many I assume it was to do with lack of funds, but like I said i'm only assuming that was the case.
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Who do you prefer Villa'Zawg, Martin O'Neill or Aston Villa?
I was banned the last time I gave you a straight answer to this type of question, so I'll let you make your own mind up this time.
Really? That seems a bit harsh. I mean, a straight answer was exactly what I wanted.
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MON and Randy coming in gave us belief, real belief built on tangible steady progress, improved points year on year, improved goals for and against. The strongest squad ever seen at VP, european football, cup runs, great signings, local bragging rights, historical victories. They gave us consistency, and a platform to climb to the next level. MON was working to the brief and vision as laid out by the chairman and board.
OK it wasn't all perfect but, the combination of Randy and MON was the best we have had in the last 30 years, it was the belief that we could really go and challenge.
That dream is over, and MON and Randy both played a part in the end game, so to single out the negatives and blame MON is very short sighted indeed.
I am grateful for that time MON was here, and i will always give him the respect he deserves, he turned us into a proper team capable of challenging, i only hope it happens again soon.
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MON and Randy coming in gave us belief, real belief built on tangible steady progress, improved points year on year, improved goals for and against. The strongest squad ever seen at VP, european football, cup runs, great signings, local bragging rights, historical victories. They gave us consistency, and a platform to climb to the next level. MON was working to the brief and vision as laid out by the chairman and board.
OK it wasn't all perfect but, the combination of Randy and MON was the best we have had in the last 30 years, it was the belief that we could really go and challenge.
That dream is over, and MON and Randy both played a part in the end game, so to single out the negatives and blame MON is very short sighted indeed.
I am grateful for that time MON was here, and i will always give him the respect he deserves, he turned us into a proper team capable of challenging, i only hope it happens again soon.
seconded
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All you have to do to get me to agree with you is explain to me how we could have done it with less money and without further investment. You won't find any of the clubs that are now vying for top four with a more frugally assembled squad or significantly lower wages than we had. We were and are massively below average in terms of transfer spend and wages for the top six.
We need to stop thinking about the money as Lerner's money and realise that we are talking about the club's revenue and investment.
We were also massively below average in terms of points and league place in the top six. The credibility of your statistics, even dubious ones, would improve immeasurably if you didn't discard ones that don't fit into your argument.
I also didn’t mention the price of fish. That isn’t because I chose to disregard it on the basis that it didn’t fit my argument, I chose to disregard it because it was irrelevant to the point I was responding to.
If people want to argue that we spent too much on transfer fees or we paid too much in wages compared to what we achieved, then it makes sense to compare our spending to the other clubs we were trying to compete with.
You have raised a different question about the other side of the equation i.e. our points total compared to the average top six. It’s a fair question.
In 07/08 we were 16 points below the average for the top six and 16 points behind the fourth placed team.
In 08/09 we were 14 points below average and 10 points from fourth place.
In 09/10 we were 10.5 points below average and 6 points from fourth place, with the added benefit of a decent showing in the domestic cups.
I’d be interested to hear how those statistics fit with your argument?
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All you have to do to get me to agree with you is explain to me how we could have done it with less money and without further investment. You won't find any of the clubs that are now vying for top four with a more frugally assembled squad or significantly lower wages than we had. We were and are massively below average in terms of transfer spend and wages for the top six.
We need to stop thinking about the money as Lerner's money and realise that we are talking about the club's revenue and investment.
We were also massively below average in terms of points and league place in the top six. The credibility of your statistics, even dubious ones, would improve immeasurably if you didn't discard ones that don't fit into your argument.
I also didn’t mention the price of fish. That isn’t because I chose to disregard it on the basis that it didn’t fit my argument, I chose to disregard it because it was irrelevant to the point I was responding to.
If people want to argue that we spent too much on transfer fees or we paid too much in wages compared to what we achieved, then it makes sense to compare our spending to the other clubs we were trying to compete with.
You have raised a different question about the other side of the equation i.e. our points total compared to the average top six. It’s a fair question.
In 07/08 we were 16 points below the average for the top six and 16 points behind the fourth placed team.
In 08/09 we were 14 points below average and 10 points from fourth place.
In 09/10 we were 10.5 points below average and 6 points from fourth place, with the added benefit of a decent showing in the domestic cups.
I’d be interested to hear how those statistics fit with your argument?
They show that we finished sixth. Are you ever going to include more than six clubs in your rather tired argument?
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"Absence makes the Mart Grow Stronger":
http://fourfourtwo.com/blogs/fanseyeview/archive/2011/08/01/absence-makes-the-mart-grow-stronger.aspx
Ultimately what I find most annoying about the article is that on the one hand the writer calls Villa "a sleeping giant", but on the other hand he says Villa's decline without MON is inevitable, no more to "unxepectedly reach the top 6".
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Who do you prefer Villa'Zawg, Martin O'Neill or Aston Villa?
I was banned the last time I gave you a straight answer to this type of question, so I'll let you make your own mind up this time.
Really? That seems a bit harsh. I mean, a straight answer was exactly what I wanted.
Yes, really.
There is nothing I have ever written on here that justifies you asking me if I would like the club to be relegated or if I prefer an ex-manager to Aston Villa or indeed to question my support of the club in any other way.
So I'm afraid I can't answer your question because the only straight answer your question deserves would result in a ban. You can always refer to my reply the last time you asked this type of question if that helps.
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All you have to do to get me to agree with you is explain to me how we could have done it with less money and without further investment. You won't find any of the clubs that are now vying for top four with a more frugally assembled squad or significantly lower wages than we had. We were and are massively below average in terms of transfer spend and wages for the top six.
We need to stop thinking about the money as Lerner's money and realise that we are talking about the club's revenue and investment.
We were also massively below average in terms of points and league place in the top six. The credibility of your statistics, even dubious ones, would improve immeasurably if you didn't discard ones that don't fit into your argument.
I also didn’t mention the price of fish. That isn’t because I chose to disregard it on the basis that it didn’t fit my argument, I chose to disregard it because it was irrelevant to the point I was responding to.
If people want to argue that we spent too much on transfer fees or we paid too much in wages compared to what we achieved, then it makes sense to compare our spending to the other clubs we were trying to compete with.
You have raised a different question about the other side of the equation i.e. our points total compared to the average top six. It’s a fair question.
In 07/08 we were 16 points below the average for the top six and 16 points behind the fourth placed team.
In 08/09 we were 14 points below average and 10 points from fourth place.
In 09/10 we were 10.5 points below average and 6 points from fourth place, with the added benefit of a decent showing in the domestic cups.
I’d be interested to hear how those statistics fit with your argument?
They show that we finished sixth. Are you ever going to include more than six clubs in your rather tired argument?
So, we finished with the lowest points total out of the top 6, and on average with less points than the team that finished fourth, amazing revelations!
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You weren't so shy the other night when you were questioning my integrity.
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All you have to do to get me to agree with you is explain to me how we could have done it with less money and without further investment. You won't find any of the clubs that are now vying for top four with a more frugally assembled squad or significantly lower wages than we had. We were and are massively below average in terms of transfer spend and wages for the top six.
We need to stop thinking about the money as Lerner's money and realise that we are talking about the club's revenue and investment.
We were also massively below average in terms of points and league place in the top six. The credibility of your statistics, even dubious ones, would improve immeasurably if you didn't discard ones that don't fit into your argument.
I also didn’t mention the price of fish. That isn’t because I chose to disregard it on the basis that it didn’t fit my argument, I chose to disregard it because it was irrelevant to the point I was responding to.
If people want to argue that we spent too much on transfer fees or we paid too much in wages compared to what we achieved, then it makes sense to compare our spending to the other clubs we were trying to compete with.
You have raised a different question about the other side of the equation i.e. our points total compared to the average top six. It’s a fair question.
In 07/08 we were 16 points below the average for the top six and 16 points behind the fourth placed team.
In 08/09 we were 14 points below average and 10 points from fourth place.
In 09/10 we were 10.5 points below average and 6 points from fourth place, with the added benefit of a decent showing in the domestic cups.
I’d be interested to hear how those statistics fit with your argument?
They show that we finished sixth. Are you ever going to include more than six clubs in your rather tired argument?
I know we finished 6th Dave, I think everyone knows we finished 6th. The discussion is about whether we should have finished higher with the resources available to the manager, which is why it focuses on the top six.
You appear to have skipped over the statistics about average points of the top 6 that you asked for. It couldn't be that you are disregarding them because they don't fit with your argument could it?
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"Absence makes the Mart Grow Stronger":
http://fourfourtwo.com/blogs/fanseyeview/archive/2011/08/01/absence-makes-the-mart-grow-stronger.aspx
That is a really tired piece. He mentions losing Bouma to injury but not Laursen?
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All you have to do to get me to agree with you is explain to me how we could have done it with less money and without further investment. You won't find any of the clubs that are now vying for top four with a more frugally assembled squad or significantly lower wages than we had. We were and are massively below average in terms of transfer spend and wages for the top six.
We need to stop thinking about the money as Lerner's money and realise that we are talking about the club's revenue and investment.
We were also massively below average in terms of points and league place in the top six. The credibility of your statistics, even dubious ones, would improve immeasurably if you didn't discard ones that don't fit into your argument.
I also didn’t mention the price of fish. That isn’t because I chose to disregard it on the basis that it didn’t fit my argument, I chose to disregard it because it was irrelevant to the point I was responding to.
If people want to argue that we spent too much on transfer fees or we paid too much in wages compared to what we achieved, then it makes sense to compare our spending to the other clubs we were trying to compete with.
You have raised a different question about the other side of the equation i.e. our points total compared to the average top six. It’s a fair question.
In 07/08 we were 16 points below the average for the top six and 16 points behind the fourth placed team.
In 08/09 we were 14 points below average and 10 points from fourth place.
In 09/10 we were 10.5 points below average and 6 points from fourth place, with the added benefit of a decent showing in the domestic cups.
I’d be interested to hear how those statistics fit with your argument?
They show that we finished sixth. Are you ever going to include more than six clubs in your rather tired argument?
I know we finished 6th Dave, I think everyone knows we finished 6th. The discussion is about whether we should have finished higher with the resources available to the manager, which is why it focuses on the top six.
You appear to have skipped over the statistics about average points of the top 6 that you asked for. It couldn't be that you are disregarding them because they don't fit with your argument could it?
I didn't skip over anything of relevance. Neither, unlike you, did I conveniently ignore another 14 clubs.
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All you have to do to get me to agree with you is explain to me how we could have done it with less money and without further investment. You won't find any of the clubs that are now vying for top four with a more frugally assembled squad or significantly lower wages than we had. We were and are massively below average in terms of transfer spend and wages for the top six.
We need to stop thinking about the money as Lerner's money and realise that we are talking about the club's revenue and investment.
We were also massively below average in terms of points and league place in the top six. The credibility of your statistics, even dubious ones, would improve immeasurably if you didn't discard ones that don't fit into your argument.
I also didn’t mention the price of fish. That isn’t because I chose to disregard it on the basis that it didn’t fit my argument, I chose to disregard it because it was irrelevant to the point I was responding to.
If people want to argue that we spent too much on transfer fees or we paid too much in wages compared to what we achieved, then it makes sense to compare our spending to the other clubs we were trying to compete with.
You have raised a different question about the other side of the equation i.e. our points total compared to the average top six. It’s a fair question.
In 07/08 we were 16 points below the average for the top six and 16 points behind the fourth placed team.
In 08/09 we were 14 points below average and 10 points from fourth place.
In 09/10 we were 10.5 points below average and 6 points from fourth place, with the added benefit of a decent showing in the domestic cups.
I’d be interested to hear how those statistics fit with your argument?
They show that we finished sixth. Are you ever going to include more than six clubs in your rather tired argument?
I know we finished 6th Dave, I think everyone knows we finished 6th. The discussion is about whether we should have finished higher with the resources available to the manager, which is why it focuses on the top six.
You appear to have skipped over the statistics about average points of the top 6 that you asked for. It couldn't be that you are disregarding them because they don't fit with your argument could it?
I didn't skip over anything of relevance. Neither, unlike you, did I conveniently ignore another 14 clubs.
The statistics about our points in comparison to the average of the top six was relevant when you declared that in your opinion we were massively below that average, is no longer relevant now we have the facts to discuss rather than just your skewed opinion?
You'll have to forgive me if I don't take your concerns about your personal integrity seriously whilst you continually accuse me of duplicity and then change the subject when I challenge your accusations.
Feel free to now ignore the Villa points/avg top six points statistics that you raised and change the subject but you'll have to be more specific if you want me to understand the point you are now trying to make regarding the other 14 clubs.
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Doesn't really matter really does it? by the time he sold milner (or not) the dream was over. He'd built his team, it wasn't good enough or he wasn't
It doesn't really matter how much he spent? Surely you wouldn't keep exaggerating it if it didn't matter?
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Doesn't really matter really does it? by the time he sold milner (or not) the dream was over. He'd built his team, it wasn't good enough or he wasn't
It doesn't really matter how much he spent? Surely you wouldn't keep exaggerating it if it didn't matter?
its matters in the sense he had enough to get into the top4. In fact all that stopped him was some really terrible decisions with player purchases and the fact that while the 1st team was strong, the reserves were never good enough to cover for injuries despite the 40+m he spent on them. you could knock off the milner money and it still would be much more than moyes spent getting there which i believe was something like 6m net per season on average. pennies compared to MON's budget
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Doesn't really matter really does it? by the time he sold milner (or not) the dream was over. He'd built his team, it wasn't good enough or he wasn't
It doesn't really matter how much he spent? Surely you wouldn't keep exaggerating it if it didn't matter?
its matters in the sense he had enough to get into the top4. In fact all that stopped him was some really terrible decisions with player purchases and the fact that while the 1st team was strong, the reserves were never good enough to cover for injuries despite the 40+m he spent on them. you could knock off the milner money and it still would be much more than moyes spent getting there which i believe was something like 6m net per season on average. pennies compared to MON's budget
I still think that the £13/14m a year net wasn't as outrageously badly spent as you make out.
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Everton getting there was a fluke - they had a great season that coincided with Liverpool having a poor one, which the points total of their 4th placed finish would seem to back up. Spurs did it with investment at or around our level, but put in over a longer period.
Not all MON's buys were great value, but to say his spend was enough that we should have gotten 4th is wrong, IMO.
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i don't think you can call 38 games a fluke - they took advantage of liverpool's problems. We had exactly the same chance with arsenal and we blew it big time. We had tons of expensive reserves on big wages who the manager didn't play presumably because he didn't think they were good enough. A smaller squad with more quality reserves rather than a massive squad with average players would probably have done it IMO
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i don't think you can call 38 games a fluke - they took advantage of liverpool's problems. We had exactly the same chance with arsenal and we blew it big time. We had tons of expensive reserves on big wages who the manager didn't play presumably because he didn't think they were good enough. A smaller squad with more quality reserves rather than a massive squad with average players would probably have done it IMO
You predicted we'd finish 14th didn't you?
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i don't think you can call 38 games a fluke - they took advantage of liverpool's problems. We had exactly the same chance with arsenal and we blew it big time.
Well, if you count the 72 points Arsenal finished on in 08/09 as the same as the 58 Liverpool finished on in 04/05 then yes, we had exactly the same chance, other than totally irrelevant 14 point difference.
Them getting to 61 points wasn't a fluke, but 61 points being enough for 4th was.
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i don't think you can call 38 games a fluke - they took advantage of liverpool's problems. We had exactly the same chance with arsenal and we blew it big time.
Well, if you count the 72 points Arsenal finished on in 08/09 as the same as the 58 Liverpool finished on in 04/05 then yes, we had exactly the same chance, other than totally irrelevant 14 point difference.
Them getting to 61 points wasn't a fluke, but 61 points being enough for 4th was.
not sure what the points total prove apart from the league probably being weaker as a whole the season Arsenal were in trouble.
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Doesn't really matter really does it? by the time he sold milner (or not) the dream was over. He'd built his team, it wasn't good enough or he wasn't
It doesn't really matter how much he spent? Surely you wouldn't keep exaggerating it if it didn't matter?
its matters in the sense he had enough to get into the top4. In fact all that stopped him was some really terrible decisions with player purchases and the fact that while the 1st team was strong, the reserves were never good enough to cover for injuries despite the 40+m he spent on them. you could knock off the milner money and it still would be much more than moyes spent getting there which i believe was something like 6m net per season on average. pennies compared to MON's budget
I still think that the £13/14m a year net wasn't as outrageously badly spent as you make out.
Where does the 13/14m a year net come from?
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Doesn't really matter really does it? by the time he sold milner (or not) the dream was over. He'd built his team, it wasn't good enough or he wasn't
It doesn't really matter how much he spent? Surely you wouldn't keep exaggerating it if it didn't matter?
its matters in the sense he had enough to get into the top4. In fact all that stopped him was some really terrible decisions with player purchases and the fact that while the 1st team was strong, the reserves were never good enough to cover for injuries despite the 40+m he spent on them. you could knock off the milner money and it still would be much more than moyes spent getting there which i believe was something like 6m net per season on average. pennies compared to MON's budget
I still think that the £13/14m a year net wasn't as outrageously badly spent as you make out.
Where does the 13/14m a year net come from?
Greg's figures including the Milner sale. He is the voice of reason don't you know?
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For me- and this isn't a departure from what I've said previously- the money we spent during the MON era gave us no divine right to top 4. Not that you have that even if you spend Citeh -style digits.
What it did do is give us a window of opportunity to take advantage of some of the established sides who faltered - Arsenal in 08/09 and Liverpool in 09/10.
Even genuine miracle workers like the oft mentioned Cloughie at Forest and maybe to a degree Lambert at Norwich did actually need some level of financial backing to deliver the success they managed. They couldn't operate with the well completely dry. They just massively overachieved vis a vis the expendature > success ratio.
O'Neill didn't. He delivered parity. When factoring in the state of the club when he arrived, against the money he was given to spend (more than the likes of Man U, Liverpool and Arsenal during his time with us). And generously (a little too generously in my opinion) being given the freedom pay his players far more than Tottenham and Everton did. Despite Tottenham generating far more income than we do. Everton, of course finished above his side three times in his four years at the club.
Despite all that, I struggle to view him as a bad manager. A bad manager would have made a complete hames of the thing, wouldn't have got anywhere near top 4 or secured European qualification.
I just genuinely struggle with the concept that we overachieved on his watch. All the evidence points to the contrary (except odd stats citing player utilisation measured against made up transfer fees, players girth when taken as a whole et.c). But those who wish to believe it will not be swayed by logic, common sense and so forth. So good luck to 'em.
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Doesn't really matter really does it? by the time he sold milner (or not) the dream was over. He'd built his team, it wasn't good enough or he wasn't
It doesn't really matter how much he spent? Surely you wouldn't keep exaggerating it if it didn't matter?
its matters in the sense he had enough to get into the top4. In fact all that stopped him was some really terrible decisions with player purchases and the fact that while the 1st team was strong, the reserves were never good enough to cover for injuries despite the 40+m he spent on them. you could knock off the milner money and it still would be much more than moyes spent getting there which i believe was something like 6m net per season on average. pennies compared to MON's budget
I still think that the £13/14m a year net wasn't as outrageously badly spent as you make out.
Where does the 13/14m a year net come from?
Greg's figures including the Milner sale. He is the voice of reason don't you know?
As i said, you can include him or not, doesn't matter. He had the use of Milner until he left and all the other players he bought. He had more time and money than any comparable Villa manager and he couldn't do presumably what he promised the board he would if they indulged him. A massive failure and when the dust has settled and we eventually get out the huge financial bind he put us into, we'll look back at his league finishes and say, "oh DOL did that on a fraction of the money even including inflation, and so did Gregory, and BFR and Taylor and Little. Hang on some of them finished higher and won stuff" .....and so on.
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I don't think we over-achieved, but don't agree that all the evidence points to the contrary, considering that we were doing well and improving every year. I also think that, despite some mistakes, we had value for money in the transfer market when you consider that three players out of his £80m spend have recently gone for £63m.
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To be honest, i'm not too sure what going over all this old ground achieves really, except that it gives Greg an excuse to type in the letters MON, which he seems to have managed to do every day since the bloke left, which is all a bit sad really.
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i don't think you can call 38 games a fluke - they took advantage of liverpool's problems. We had exactly the same chance with arsenal and we blew it big time.
Well, if you count the 72 points Arsenal finished on in 08/09 as the same as the 58 Liverpool finished on in 04/05 then yes, we had exactly the same chance, other than totally irrelevant 14 point difference.
Them getting to 61 points wasn't a fluke, but 61 points being enough for 4th was.
not sure what the points total prove apart from the league probably being weaker as a whole the season Arsenal were in trouble.
The fact Everton finished 4th with a minus GD and only scored 45 goals (the same amount that bottom placed Southampton scored) would suggest they were a tad fortuitous that season.
Mind, I wish we could be that fortuitous!
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Doesn't really matter really does it? by the time he sold milner (or not) the dream was over. He'd built his team, it wasn't good enough or he wasn't
It doesn't really matter how much he spent? Surely you wouldn't keep exaggerating it if it didn't matter?
its matters in the sense he had enough to get into the top4. In fact all that stopped him was some really terrible decisions with player purchases and the fact that while the 1st team was strong, the reserves were never good enough to cover for injuries despite the 40+m he spent on them. you could knock off the milner money and it still would be much more than moyes spent getting there which i believe was something like 6m net per season on average. pennies compared to MON's budget
I still think that the £13/14m a year net wasn't as outrageously badly spent as you make out.
Where does the 13/14m a year net come from?
Greg's figures including the Milner sale. He is the voice of reason don't you know?
As i said, you can include him or not, doesn't matter. He had the use of Milner until he left and all the other players he bought. He had more time and money than any comparable Villa manager and he couldn't do presumably what he promised the board he would if they indulged him. A massive failure and when the dust has settled and we eventually get out the huge financial bind he put us into, we'll look back at his league finishes and say, "oh DOL did that on a fraction of the money even including inflation, and so did Gregory, and BFR and Taylor and Little. Hang on some of them finished higher and won stuff" .....and so on.
Just curious as to why you keep quoting an £80m net spend and not the £54m you believe it to be. I've heard of selective use of statistics, but you're actually using stats you don't believe to exaggerate his spending. And as for saying it doesn't matter what he spent, no offence like, but you really don't seem to post about much else.
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I don't think we over-achieved, but don't agree that all the evidence points to the contrary, considering that we were doing well and improving every year. I also think that, despite some mistakes, we had value for money in the transfer market when you consider that three players out of his £80m spend have recently gone for £63m.
If the end goal was to spend a big sum and receive the bulk of it back in less than 3-4 years, then yes, you could say we had value for money in the transfer market.
But I'd imagine that money was spend at the time with the intention of pushing the club on -and better management of his resources as a whole would have possibly meant that we didn't have to lose three key components of the family silver in quite the same brutal way as we've experienced over the past 12 months.
Players will always want to move -even from successful sides. It's a fact of life. Short career + wanting to maximize earning potential + gain different experiences = player loyalty becoming an increasingly alien concept.
But better management of the purse strings - that is adding decent quality to suppliment the likes of Ash, Downing and Milner- might have convinced at least a few of them that they could achieve their goals with us. It was they who wanted to leave us, lets not forget.
In short, it was thanks to MON that we acquired the services of Ash, Milner and Downing in the first place- and got good value from them re performances and eventual money recouped. But it was also thanks to MON that his (pretty fundamental) weaknesses in the transfer market meant that we lost them, and lost the opportunity to build a suitable side around them to keep them at VP longterm.
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He did alright with the money he spent, as KG said above, money doesn't give you a divine right to anything, at least not until you get up to Man City levels.
We paid top dollar for a few players who turned out to be not that good, and who have left, or will leave, for significantly less. I appreciate that every manager buys the odd duffer, but with Martin, his reluctance to bother using scouts or to look outside the UK meant that we paid top dollar pretty much every time.
We also now have a few players who contribute next to nothing and earn big money. Again, every club suffers from this at times, but with Martin's preference for UK based players, the fees were higher and so were the salaries involved.
Basically, we're discovering that what success MON did have was all rather short term and with a price to pay. The really great managers don't just deliver results, they also leave a legacy.
Martin's legacy was a patchy squad, a number of players on big money for doing nothing, and an unmanageable wage bill.
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To be honest, i'm not too sure what going over all this old ground achieves really, except that it gives Greg an excuse to type in the letters MON, which he seems to have managed to do every day since the bloke left, which is all a bit sad really.
Hey at least i admit an interest in the scumball. Better than being one of the 4 or 5 who were his biggest supporters on here but who deny any interest or support for him now. And yet they always manage to find the time to defend him on any thread that mentions him.. As others have said, if i have no interest in a person i'd doub't i'd spend hours talking about him. *scratches chin*
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Doesn't really matter really does it? by the time he sold milner (or not) the dream was over. He'd built his team, it wasn't good enough or he wasn't
It doesn't really matter how much he spent? Surely you wouldn't keep exaggerating it if it didn't matter?
its matters in the sense he had enough to get into the top4. In fact all that stopped him was some really terrible decisions with player purchases and the fact that while the 1st team was strong, the reserves were never good enough to cover for injuries despite the 40+m he spent on them. you could knock off the milner money and it still would be much more than moyes spent getting there which i believe was something like 6m net per season on average. pennies compared to MON's budget
I still think that the £13/14m a year net wasn't as outrageously badly spent as you make out.
Where does the 13/14m a year net come from?
Greg's figures including the Milner sale. He is the voice of reason don't you know?
As i said, you can include him or not, doesn't matter. He had the use of Milner until he left and all the other players he bought. He had more time and money than any comparable Villa manager and he couldn't do presumably what he promised the board he would if they indulged him. A massive failure and when the dust has settled and we eventually get out the huge financial bind he put us into, we'll look back at his league finishes and say, "oh DOL did that on a fraction of the money even including inflation, and so did Gregory, and BFR and Taylor and Little. Hang on some of them finished higher and won stuff" .....and so on.
Just curious as to why you keep quoting an £80m net spend and not the £54m you believe it to be. I've heard of selective use of statistics, but you're actually using stats you don't believe to exaggerate his spending. And as for saying it doesn't matter what he spent, no offence like, but you really don't seem to post about much else.
i believe its 80m but i'm quite happy to go along with your figure if it makes you feel better percy.. still incredible waste. Add on the wage bill to go with the transfers and its horrific
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Right, so you've changed your mind about him selling Milner then?
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Greg, can you pm me your address so I can send you an invoice for the time I've wasted reading your tiresome squabbles.
Mods, can we introduce a MON tax?
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Right, so you've changed your mind about him selling Milner then?
no i think its obvious he wanted to sell him the way he let the cat out the bag without telling Milner but he never had to cope without him - he fucked off. I don't see why this is so confusing for you. He had his team, the finished product, built at huge expense and it failed. Whether he sold Milner or not after the failure doesn't really matter does it?
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Greg, can you pm me your address so I can send you an invoice for the time I've wasted reading your tiresome squabbles.
Mods, can we introduce a MON tax?
well meebe if Percy agrees to pay half. I mean he's said on here that he couldn't give a toss about MON and yet he's still on here fighting his corner. Work that one out.......
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The statistics about our points in comparison to the average of the top six was relevant when you declared that in your opinion we were massively below that average, is no longer relevant now we have the facts to discuss rather than just your skewed opinion?
You'll have to forgive me if I don't take your concerns about your personal integrity seriously whilst you continually accuse me of duplicity and then change the subject when I challenge your accusations.
Feel free to now ignore the Villa points/avg top six points statistics that you raised and change the subject but you'll have to be more specific if you want me to understand the point you are now trying to make regarding the other 14 clubs.
The point I was making, which you misconstrued, and for some reason now accuse me of avoiding, is a simple one. Our points average, total, call it what you like, is below the rest of the top six. That's why we finished sixth. Were it higher than any of theirs we would have finished above them. When you say we spent less than them (according to your figures) you forget to mention this.
The reason to mention 14 other clubs is that you ignore them as though they don't exist. In your world we only compete with the clubs who finish above us, they are our only challengers and the only ones with which to compare our expenditure.
Your puerile and repetitive digs about me I find laughable. It says everything about you that you can abuse me, yet when asked a direct question you squeal "Ooooh, I can't answer that. I'll be banned."
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Surely with the stated ambition of the board that the club must be financially self-sufficient and the fact that we couldn't maintain the level of spend under MON with 6th place finishes (ie without the Champions League money) proves we underachieved?
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Surely with the stated ambition of the board that the club must be financially self-sufficient and the fact that we couldn't maintain the level of spend under MON with 6th place finishes (ie without the Champions League money) proves we underachieved?
Well quite. Apparently some think MON only promised to get into the Europa league with all that expenditure
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Right, so you've changed your mind about him selling Milner then?
no i think its obvious he wanted to sell him the way he let the cat out the bag without telling Milner but he never had to cope without him - he fucked off. I don't see why this is so confusing for you. He had his team, the finished product, built at huge expense and it failed. Whether he sold Milner or not after the failure doesn't really matter does it?
What's confusing is your assertion that the net spend was £80m, when if he sold Milner it was £54m. I don't see why this is so confusing for you.
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Right, so you've changed your mind about him selling Milner then?
no i think its obvious he wanted to sell him the way he let the cat out the bag without telling Milner but he never had to cope without him - he fucked off. I don't see why this is so confusing for you. He had his team, the finished product, built at huge expense and it failed. Whether he sold Milner or not after the failure doesn't really matter does it?
What's confusing is your assertion that the net spend was £80m, when if he sold Milner it was £54m. I don't see why this is so confusing for you.
I am confused what point your trying to make or why you think its so important, i must admit. If you want to say "MON was a failure who wasted 52m and nearly bankrupted the club before leaving us unprepared on the eve of the season" in preference to "MON was a failure who wasted 80m and nearly bankrupted the club before leaving us unprepared on the eve of the season" then thats fine with me Percy. Either will do.
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For me- and this isn't a departure from what I've said previously- the money we spent during the MON era gave us no divine right to top 4. Not that you have that even if you spend Citeh -style digits.
What it did do is give us a window of opportunity to take advantage of some of the established sides who faltered - Arsenal in 08/09 and Liverpool in 09/10.
Even genuine miracle workers like the oft mentioned Cloughie at Forest and maybe to a degree Lambert at Norwich did actually need some level of financial backing to deliver the success they managed. They couldn't operate with the well completely dry. They just massively overachieved vis a vis the expendature > success ratio.
O'Neill didn't. He delivered parity. When factoring in the state of the club when he arrived, against the money he was given to spend (more than the likes of Man U, Liverpool and Arsenal during his time with us). And generously (a little too generously in my opinion) being given the freedom pay his players far more than Tottenham and Everton did. Despite Tottenham generating far more income than we do. Everton, of course finished above his side three times in his four years at the club.
Despite all that, I struggle to view him as a bad manager. A bad manager would have made a complete hames of the thing, wouldn't have got anywhere near top 4 or secured European qualification.
I just genuinely struggle with the concept that we overachieved on his watch. All the evidence points to the contrary (except odd stats citing player utilisation measured against made up transfer fees, players girth when taken as a whole et.c). But those who wish to believe it will not be swayed by logic, common sense and so forth. So good luck to 'em.
I agree with pretty much all of that. He wasn't bad, he was fairly decent but he was not as brilliant as his biggest supporters make out. At the end of the day when we look back on him I think we won't look at his time as an exciting chapter, more a decently sized footnote. A bit like John Gregory. To be honest I'm quiet bored of discussing him.
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Agreed.
Though I do think -when the sting from the manner of his departure has subsided- he'll be viewed more favourably.
The period he was in charge was one of the exciting chapters of our history post WWII. That owed as much to the departure of Herbert and the arrival of RL, of course. But it did feel good to be a Villa fan for the vast majority of his tenure. And maybe that will endure better than technical discussions about style of play, wage bills and so forth.
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Right, so you've changed your mind about him selling Milner then?
no i think its obvious he wanted to sell him the way he let the cat out the bag without telling Milner but he never had to cope without him - he fucked off. I don't see why this is so confusing for you. He had his team, the finished product, built at huge expense and it failed. Whether he sold Milner or not after the failure doesn't really matter does it?
What's confusing is your assertion that the net spend was £80m, when if he sold Milner it was £54m. I don't see why this is so confusing for you.
I am confused what point your trying to make or why you think its so important, i must admit. If you want to say "MON was a failure who wasted 52m and nearly bankrupted the club before leaving us unprepared on the eve of the season" in preference to "MON was a failure who wasted 80m and nearly bankrupted the club before leaving us unprepared on the eve of the season" then thats fine with me Percy. Either will do.
I'm not making a point. As you keep saying you believe two different things about a factual matter, I'm just seeking clarity.
So, do you a) believe MON sold Milner, making his net spend £54m;
or b) believe the net spend was £80m, because he didn't sell Milner?
Because from your posts it seems you think both are true.
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A bit of both. i'm sure he'd given the go-ahead but as he was no longer manager when Milner left it can't be taken off his net spend.
*snigger*
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i don't think you can call 38 games a fluke - they took advantage of liverpool's problems. We had exactly the same chance with arsenal and we blew it big time.
Well, if you count the 72 points Arsenal finished on in 08/09 as the same as the 58 Liverpool finished on in 04/05 then yes, we had exactly the same chance, other than totally irrelevant 14 point difference.
Them getting to 61 points wasn't a fluke, but 61 points being enough for 4th was.
not sure what the points total prove apart from the league probably being weaker as a whole the season Arsenal were in trouble.
You do remember what Arsenal did when they were struggling Greg? They spent £22mil (a quarter of Mon's Net spend if you take the £80mil figure) on one player who in 12 league games, scored 6 and made another 7 goals. So one player was responsible for 13 goals in their run in and they went on to score 30 goals in 11 matches from the time they went above us at the end of Feb/Start of March 2009.
I'm not absolving MON of any blame as about the same time he signed Heskey (2 gls in 14 games and no assists) for £3.5mil. A lack of a quality squad was also his fault so when we had Carew with his mysterious back injury, Laursen about to retire through injury, Gabby out on his feet and Young's sending off against Sunderland, (where that or him being fined seems to be the start of his slow loss of form,) all conspired with the Arses incredible end form to mean we had no chance at 4th that year compared to the Everton/ Liverpool season.
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The statistics about our points in comparison to the average of the top six was relevant when you declared that in your opinion we were massively below that average, is no longer relevant now we have the facts to discuss rather than just your skewed opinion?
You'll have to forgive me if I don't take your concerns about your personal integrity seriously whilst you continually accuse me of duplicity and then change the subject when I challenge your accusations.
Feel free to now ignore the Villa points/avg top six points statistics that you raised and change the subject but you'll have to be more specific if you want me to understand the point you are now trying to make regarding the other 14 clubs.
The point I was making, which you misconstrued, and for some reason now accuse me of avoiding, is a simple one. Our points average, total, call it what you like, is below the rest of the top six. That's why we finished sixth. Were it higher than any of theirs we would have finished above them. When you say we spent less than them (according to your figures) you forget to mention this.
The reason to mention 14 other clubs is that you ignore them as though they don't exist. In your world we only compete with the clubs who finish above us, they are our only challengers and the only ones with which to compare our expenditure.
Your puerile and repetitive digs about me I find laughable. It says everything about you that you can abuse me, yet when asked a direct question you squeal "Ooooh, I can't answer that. I'll be banned."
I didn’t misconstrue your point at all. You made it very clearly. In response to my post you made a specific point about the top six and you accused me of duplicity in having disregarded this point, even though it hadn’t been raised previously in the discussion.
“We were also massively below average in terms of points and league place in the top six. The credibility of your statistics, even dubious ones, would improve immeasurably if you didn't discard ones that don't fit into your argument.”
I specifically addressed your post by posting the relevant statistics, whereupon you suggested those stats weren’t relevant and that I was once again being duplicitous by virtue of the fact that I was conveniently ignoring the other 14 clubs - WTF, as the kids say. I don't ignore them, I'm happy to discuss them, I just don't understand what point you want me to respond to.
I think it is over-egging it a bit to say that I make puerile repetitive digs and abuse you. We had a heated discussion the other night where you gave at least as good as you took and you have now brought the subject up again today. I can’t remember the previous time that such a discussion took place. You on the other hand seem to think it is perfectly acceptable to continually and repeatedly post snide remarks and question my honesty.
And finally, I didn’t squeal “Ooooh, I can't answer that. I'll be banned”. I simply pointed out that when he questioned my support of the club a couple of months ago, I was actually banned for giving him the only straight answer that such a question deserves.
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i don't think you can call 38 games a fluke - they took advantage of liverpool's problems. We had exactly the same chance with arsenal and we blew it big time.
Well, if you count the 72 points Arsenal finished on in 08/09 as the same as the 58 Liverpool finished on in 04/05 then yes, we had exactly the same chance, other than totally irrelevant 14 point difference.
Them getting to 61 points wasn't a fluke, but 61 points being enough for 4th was.
not sure what the points total prove apart from the league probably being weaker as a whole the season Arsenal were in trouble.
You do remember what Arsenal did when they were struggling Greg? They spent £22mil (a quarter of Mon's Net spend if you take the £80mil figure) on one player who in 12 league games, scored 6 and made another 7 goals. So one player was responsible for 13 goals in their run in and they went on to score 30 goals in 11 matches from the time they went above us at the end of Feb/Start of March 2009.
I'm not absolving MON of any blame as about the same time he signed Heskey (2 gls in 14 games and no assists) for £3.5mil. A lack of a quality squad was also his fault so when we had Carew with his mysterious back injury, Laursen about to retire through injury, Gabby out on his feet and Young's sending off against Sunderland, (where that or him being fined seems to be the start of his slow loss of form,) all conspired with the Arses incredible end form to mean we had no chance at 4th that year compared to the Everton/ Liverpool season.
yeah i take your point but wasn't his spending the main reason why we bought Heskey?- ie that was all we could afford? If we'd hadn't spent 5m on Harwood we'd have 8.5m, kept cahil and not bought Davies probably 16m, more than enough to get a decent striker if not an Arshavin. You can quite easily argue a case that the above and the likes of Sidwell, Shorey etc.. should never have been bought in the first place.
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If we'd hadn't spent 5m on Harwood we'd have 8.5m, kept cahil and not bought Davies probably 16m, more than enough to get a decent striker if not an Arshavin. You can quite easily argue a case that the above and the likes of Sidwell, Shorey etc.. should never have been bought in the first place.
So basically your whole points boils down to:
"If he'd not made a single mistake then we'd have done better than we did".
Fascinating insight.
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If we'd hadn't spent 5m on Harwood we'd have 8.5m, kept cahil and not bought Davies probably 16m, more than enough to get a decent striker if not an Arshavin. You can quite easily argue a case that the above and the likes of Sidwell, Shorey etc.. should never have been bought in the first place.
So basically your whole points boils down to:
"If he'd not made a single mistake then we'd have done better than we did".
Fascinating insight.
I don't call about 40m of reserves he never played a single mistake
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I'm not questioning your honesty at all, I - and others -saying the figures you use are spurious. I will also say that you are quick to claim we, allegedly, spend less than the clubs you consider to be our rivals. You never bring other, similar-sized clubs, into these equations. Why is this?
You accusing anyone else of snide remarks is rich, to put it mildly. Surely you remember a couple of days ago, when you said I should have told you about a meeting that hadn't then taken place and should behave differently in my work. This, from someone who has just admitted yet again that they are unable to answer a straight question without resorting to abuse.
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A bit of both. i'm sure he'd given the go-ahead but as he was no longer manager when Milner left it can't be taken off his net spend.
*snigger*
Is English your first language?
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A bit of both. i'm sure he'd given the go-ahead but as he was no longer manager when Milner left it can't be taken off his net spend.
*snigger*
Is English your first language?
seems clear enough to me. Like taking off Barry's fee from Gregory's net spend because he went for a profit after he left.
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Right, so you've changed your mind about him selling Milner then?
no i think its obvious he wanted to sell him the way he let the cat out the bag without telling Milner but he never had to cope without him - he fucked off. I don't see why this is so confusing for you. He had his team, the finished product, built at huge expense and it failed. Whether he sold Milner or not after the failure doesn't really matter does it?
What's confusing is your assertion that the net spend was £80m, when if he sold Milner it was £54m. I don't see why this is so confusing for you.
I am confused what point your trying to make or why you think its so important, i must admit. If you want to say "MON was a failure who wasted 52m and nearly bankrupted the club before leaving us unprepared on the eve of the season" in preference to "MON was a failure who wasted 80m and nearly bankrupted the club before leaving us unprepared on the eve of the season" then thats fine with me Percy. Either will do.
How come the chairman was able to charge the club £12m+ in management fees and debt charges that year if we were nearly bankrupt?
How come we were in 5th place after 6 games if we were unprepared for the eve of the season?
Just asking like.
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hmmmm, so leaving us with no manager just before kick-off and no chance of getting in an employed replacement doesn't class as un-prepared? An interesting concept even for you. I take it you noticed the size of Dunne last season?
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A bit of both. i'm sure he'd given the go-ahead but as he was no longer manager when Milner left it can't be taken off his net spend.
*snigger*
Is English your first language?
seems clear enough to me. Like taking off Barry's fee from Gregory's net spend because he went for a profit after he left.
Except you're not saying Gregory sold Barry are you? Then again, who knows?
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A bit of both. i'm sure he'd given the go-ahead but as he was no longer manager when Milner left it can't be taken off his net spend.
*snigger*
Is English your first language?
seems clear enough to me. Like taking off Barry's fee from Gregory's net spend because he went for a profit after he left.
Except you're not saying Gregory sold Barry are you? Then again, who knows?
what can i say..it seems logical to me to caculate a manager's net spend from the time he arrived to when he left. Milner was after so i wouldn't include it just as GH probably knew Young was being sold and agreed to it but i wouldn't include it in his.
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How come the chairman was able to charge the club £12m+ in management fees and debt charges that year if we were nearly bankrupt?
Whilst I've supported Randy firmly in the past, i must say, I never understood the need for those enormous management charges.
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A bit of both. i'm sure he'd given the go-ahead but as he was no longer manager when Milner left it can't be taken off his net spend.
*snigger*
Is English your first language?
seems clear enough to me. Like taking off Barry's fee from Gregory's net spend because he went for a profit after he left.
Except you're not saying Gregory sold Barry are you? Then again, who knows?
what can i say..it seems logical to me to caculate a manager's net spend from the time he arrived to when he left. Milner was after so i wouldn't include it just as GH probably knew Young was being sold and agreed to it but i wouldn't include it in his.
Oh dear, I thought the 'snigger' remark was an admission on your part that you were talking bollocks. Now it seems that you are believing your self-contradictory rubbish again.
Back to square one: so you're admitting he didn't sell him then? Do bear in mind that Milner actually played and scored a goal for us after O'Neill left.
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MON made press comments about how milner was going to leave ages before he left upsetting milner in the process. Whether you believe that was intended to burn Milnerr's bridges so he could get the money or he was just resigned to him leaving is up to personal viewpoint, but i think its pretty clear MON was okay with him being sold.
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yeah i take your point but wasn't his spending the main reason why we bought Heskey?- ie that was all we could afford? If we'd hadn't spent 5m on Harwood we'd have 8.5m, kept cahil and not bought Davies probably 16m, more than enough to get a decent striker if not an Arshavin. You can quite easily argue a case that the above and the likes of Sidwell, Shorey etc.. should never have been bought in the first place.
I agree that MON supposedly spent the whole years budget in the summer which meant Heskey was probably the only English option he could sign, but it was the purchase of Milner that pushed us over. We also bought Brad x 2, L Young, Cueller, Davies, Shorey (so a whole defence) and Sidwell in midfield. I don't remember too many people stating we shouldn't buy any of them at the time with statements that Sidwell was a good buy at £5mil and a ready made Barry replacement when he goes to Liverpool and a certain Nasher stating we wouldn't get Cueller as he will be going to Manure. In fact the only grumbling I remember was why did we have to spend the amount on Young when we could have had him cheaper 12 months earlier which was a good question, and £12million for Milner is overpriced (which was also a good statement but we then doubled the money on him 2 years later).
You could argue that we could have saved £3mil by keeping Cahill and not signing Davies or Cueller (plus wages) and maybe Cahill might have held the defence together when Laursen got crocked (a lot of pressure on a still unproven 22 year old at the time) and maybe MON would have finally spent money on a decent striker, (he never seemed to have managed that before with us,) but we could also have not bought a good striker or Cahill might not have gelled with Laursen and we could have been 10-11th for the season.
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I agree there's a lot of what if's but i'd say if he'd kept olof that would have given us an alternative to cahill at no cost. I wasn't against the signing of cuellar - i still don't think he's a bad player, the others: shorey was a disaster from day 1 but i can't remember what i thought of him before he'd played for us. Sidwell, well i remember groaning at the amount of people who seemed to think he was lampard mk2, so personally of his signings then i wouldn't have signed sidwell or Davies which again is the best part of 15m. Either way whether we rated them before they arrived or not the fact remains they were crap which is down to the boss
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I'm not questioning your honesty at all, I - and others -saying the figures you use are spurious. I will also say that you are quick to claim we, allegedly, spend less than the clubs you consider to be our rivals. You never bring other, similar-sized clubs, into these equations. Why is this?
You accusing anyone else of snide remarks is rich, to put it mildly. Surely you remember a couple of days ago, when you said I should have told you about a meeting that hadn't then taken place and should behave differently in my work. This, from someone who has just admitted yet again that they are unable to answer a straight question without resorting to abuse.
I'm pleased you're not questioning my honesty. You don't have to rely on the figures I say we, allegedly, spend. You could have a clear opinion and knowledge about such things yourself and I'd be happy to discuss your figures. I'm also happy to discuss "similar-sized clubs" whenever someone wants to make a relevant post about them.
I do remember a couple of days ago when I alluded to the fact that you complained that one of the other attendees at the meeting with McLeish had gone public and not treated it as the off the record briefing it was supposed to be. I never said or thought that you should have told me, I suggested you might consider being upfront about such things if you're going to tell people what to think.
Since when is questioning my support of the club a straight question? (Didn't there used to be a site rule about such things?) I not only admit that I'm unable to answer such a question without resorting to abuse, I fucking well guarantee that there would be abuse in any straight answer I gave to it.
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MON made press comments about how milner was going to leave ages before he left upsetting milner in the process. Whether you believe that was intended to burn Milnerr's bridges so he could get the money or he was just resigned to him leaving is up to personal viewpoint, but i think its pretty clear MON was okay with him being sold.
In answer to my simple question, does that mean 'yes, I'm admitting MON didn't sell him'?
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MON made press comments about how milner was going to leave ages before he left upsetting milner in the process. Whether you believe that was intended to burn Milnerr's bridges so he could get the money or he was just resigned to him leaving is up to personal viewpoint, but i think its pretty clear MON was okay with him being sold.
In answer to my simple question, does that mean 'yes, I'm admitting MON didn't sell him'?
*sigh* please for love of god tell me what you want to hear. Do i think MON had agreed to sell Milner? Yes. Do i think it was all done by the time he left? no
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erm wrong thread
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I'm not questioning your honesty at all, I - and others -saying the figures you use are spurious. I will also say that you are quick to claim we, allegedly, spend less than the clubs you consider to be our rivals. You never bring other, similar-sized clubs, into these equations. Why is this?
You accusing anyone else of snide remarks is rich, to put it mildly. Surely you remember a couple of days ago, when you said I should have told you about a meeting that hadn't then taken place and should behave differently in my work. This, from someone who has just admitted yet again that they are unable to answer a straight question without resorting to abuse.
I'm pleased you're not questioning my honesty. You don't have to rely on the figures I say we, allegedly, spend. You could have a clear opinion and knowledge about such things yourself and I'd be happy to discuss your figures. I'm also happy to discuss "similar-sized clubs" whenever someone wants to make a relevant post about them.
I do remember a couple of days ago when I alluded to the fact that you complained that one of the other attendees at the meeting with McLeish had gone public and not treated it as the off the record briefing it was supposed to be. I never said or thought that you should have told me, I suggested you might consider being upfront about such things if you're going to tell people what to think.
Since when is questioning my support of the club a straight question? (Didn't there used to be a site rule about such things?) I not only admit that I'm unable to answer such a question without resorting to abuse, I fucking well guarantee that there would be abuse in any straight answer I gave to it.
Paragraph one - you never mention the spending of any club except those you reckon spend more than us. Perhaps if you did, your evidence might be treated a bit more seriously.
Paragraph two, in your words - "When you were posting in support of the board at the height of "the McLeish troubles", I think you should have mentioned in GM at least that you'd been to a briefing with McLeish, before having it exposed on another website."
As explained, I couldn't have mentioned being at a meeting before it had taken place. 'exposed' - like it was something to hide. Very emotive.
Paragraph three - thank you for admitting you lack the ability to answer a question without reporting to foul language and abuse.
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I agree there's a lot of what if's but i'd say if he'd kept olof that would have given us an alternative to cahill at no cost. I wasn't against the signing of cuellar - i still don't think he's a bad player, the others: shorey was a disaster from day 1 but i can't remember what i thought of him before he'd played for us. Sidwell, well i remember groaning at the amount of people who seemed to think he was lampard mk2, so personally of his signings then i wouldn't have signed sidwell or Davies which again is the best part of 15m. Either way whether we rated them before they arrived or not the fact remains they were crap which is down to the boss
Olaf went on a free to Juventus, Ok they weren't the club they used to be but it was still a move to a bigger club. Could we stand in his way after his 7 years service? Did we offer him a new contract or did he want to go/ MON want him to leave?
And I don't really want to get into a similar financial to and fro as per you and Perc, but we got £5mil for Cahil, so that money would have to be taken off any saving made on using him instead of other players. Can I ask what Davies did wrong in his first season with us on loan that you decided he shouldn't be bought that summer? ( I will give you the first game he played against Leicester I believe as a free.)
I think the best description of MON time with us is as someone mentioned earlier, a John Gregory mk2. We had potential to go far, had some good seasons at the start, never took the final leap (for differing reasons), and the reign is followed with several seasons of cost cutting and saving Money as ultimately our finances got screwed during the ride.
Talking of speculating on the past, what would have been interesting is if Randy had bought the club in May 2006 and either had to keep Dolly on or replace him without the input of Doug/ Stride who would have been our manager?
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Talking of speculating on the past, what would have been interesting is if Randy had bought the club in May 2006 and either had to keep Dolly on or replace him without the input of Doug/ Stride who would have been our manager?
He still had Steve Stride when he took over, and O'Neill got the job so close to the takeover he may as well have been Randy's appointment.
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Talking of speculating on the past, what would have been interesting is if Randy had bought the club in May 2006 and either had to keep Dolly on or replace him without the input of Doug/ Stride who would have been our manager?
He still had Steve Stride when he took over, and O'Neill got the job so close to the takeover he may as well have been Randy's appointment.
I realise MON and Randy would have met pre takeover to discuss things before MON said yes to Doug. But if Dolly was still employed when the takeover went through, would Randy have given him a chance?
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Talking of speculating on the past, what would have been interesting is if Randy had bought the club in May 2006 and either had to keep Dolly on or replace him without the input of Doug/ Stride who would have been our manager?
He still had Steve Stride when he took over, and O'Neill got the job so close to the takeover he may as well have been Randy's appointment.
I realise MON and Randy would have met pre takeover to discuss things before MON said yes to Doug. But if Dolly was still employed when the takeover went through, would Randy have given him a chance?
I hope not.
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Talking of speculating on the past, what would have been interesting is if Randy had bought the club in May 2006 and either had to keep Dolly on or replace him without the input of Doug/ Stride who would have been our manager?
That's a really intriguing question.
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...
Paragraph one - you never mention the spending of any club except those you reckon spend more than us. Perhaps if you did, your evidence might be treated a bit more seriously.
Paragraph two, in your words - "When you were posting in support of the board at the height of "the McLeish troubles", I think you should have mentioned in GM at least that you'd been to a briefing with McLeish, before having it exposed on another website."
As explained, I couldn't have mentioned being at a meeting before it had taken place. 'exposed' - like it was something to hide. Very emotive.
Paragraph three - thank you for admitting you lack the ability to answer a question without reporting to foul language and abuse.
I’m happy to discuss our record in relation to any other teams. It seems to me that no-one ever raises questions about our record against the teams that finished below us, it's always that we should have finished higher.
I apologise for that post, I wouldn’t have posted it if I were sober.
I absolutely do have the ability to answer someone questioning my support without resorting to foul language and abuse, I choose not to.
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Surely with the stated ambition of the board that the club must be financially self-sufficient and the fact that we couldn't maintain the level of spend under MON with 6th place finishes (ie without the Champions League money) proves we underachieved?
Well quite. Apparently some think MON only promised to get into the Europa league with all that expenditure
I guess that depends on what you genuinely expected when he arrived, Greg
For me, I hoped for CL and the transformation in status that can bring, but expected -as a minimum- regular European qualification (and taking the fecking thing seriously) + signing the type of young up and coming players Tottingham were targeting.
With RL's inherited wealth, I can understand why some expected marquee names and all the rest of it. But he was very clear from the outset that it wouldn't be an Abramovich style scenario. So decent sums on the likes of Ash, Davies, Milner, Delph et al and effectively trying to create our own stars was -to me- progress on the latter Herbert years. When budget priced journeymen pro's or big names on the way down had become de rigueur.
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Talking of speculating on the past, what would have been interesting is if Randy had bought the club in May 2006 and either had to keep Dolly on or replace him without the input of Doug/ Stride who would have been our manager?
That's a really intriguing question.
I think given that he was highly rated, unemployed and clearly interested in the job, the outcome would have been the same.
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Thinking about it, the thing with MON's spend/success ratio wasn't that he should have achieved more, but that he could have achieved what he did with spending less. How would the results have been dramatically different without the likes of Beye, Sidwell, Harewood, etc.?
We would have had a smaller squad, which we'd have largely gotten away with as injuries generally favoured us during his time here, but the likes of Gardner the Elder and the Bolton Defender would have had more game time, saving money on the likes of Sidwell and Knight. His big signings, with the exception of Davies, worked well for us, but it is that extra and needless spend that drags down his record.
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MON made press comments about how milner was going to leave ages before he left upsetting milner in the process. Whether you believe that was intended to burn Milnerr's bridges so he could get the money or he was just resigned to him leaving is up to personal viewpoint, but i think its pretty clear MON was okay with him being sold.
In answer to my simple question, does that mean 'yes, I'm admitting MON didn't sell him'?
*sigh* please for love of god tell me what you want to hear. Do i think MON had agreed to sell Milner? Yes. Do i think it was all done by the time he left? no
That'll do. You used to say he sold him, now you've changed your mind. A simple 'Yes, I was wrong about him selling him', pages ago, would have done.
-
Thinking about it, the thing with MON's spend/success ratio wasn't that he should have achieved more, but that he could have achieved what he did with spending less. How would the results have been dramatically different without the likes of Beye, Sidwell, Harewood, etc.?
We would have had a smaller squad, which we'd have largely gotten away with as injuries generally favoured us during his time here, but the likes of Gardner the Elder and the Bolton Defender would have had more game time, saving money on the likes of Sidwell and Knight. His big signings, with the exception of Davies, worked well for us, but it is that extra and needless spend that drags down his record.
Every club would like to only buy players that work out and only sell players that subsequently decline. So the question is, did we spend more on players that didn't work out than other clubs and have a higher proportion of the players we sold gone on to better things?
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Talking of speculating on the past, what would have been interesting is if Randy had bought the club in May 2006 and either had to keep Dolly on or replace him without the input of Doug/ Stride who would have been our manager?
That's a really intriguing question.
I think given that he was highly rated, unemployed and clearly interested in the job, the outcome would have been the same.
Given that that description applied to a few managers this summer and we still ended up with McLeish, I'd say the outcome would have been very different.
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Thinking about it, the thing with MON's spend/success ratio wasn't that he should have achieved more, but that he could have achieved what he did with spending less. How would the results have been dramatically different without the likes of Beye, Sidwell, Harewood, etc.?
We would have had a smaller squad, which we'd have largely gotten away with as injuries generally favoured us during his time here, but the likes of Gardner the Elder and the Bolton Defender would have had more game time, saving money on the likes of Sidwell and Knight. His big signings, with the exception of Davies, worked well for us, but it is that extra and needless spend that drags down his record.
Every club would like to only buy players that work out and only sell players that subsequently decline. So the question is, did we spend more on players that didn't work out than other clubs and have a higher proportion of the players we sold gone on to better things?
I don't think it's a matter of buying poor players, as every manager does that, but rather buying them and not using them in the first place. How many starts has Beye had, for instance?
In many ways it's a side effect of his desire to field the same 11 for 90% of the season.
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Thinking about it, the thing with MON's spend/success ratio wasn't that he should have achieved more, but that he could have achieved what he did with spending less. How would the results have been dramatically different without the likes of Beye, Sidwell, Harewood, etc.?
We would have had a smaller squad, which we'd have largely gotten away with as injuries generally favoured us during his time here, but the likes of Gardner the Elder and the Bolton Defender would have had more game time, saving money on the likes of Sidwell and Knight. His big signings, with the exception of Davies, worked well for us, but it is that extra and needless spend that drags down his record.
Every club would like to only buy players that work out and only sell players that subsequently decline. So the question is, did we spend more on players that didn't work out than other clubs and have a higher proportion of the players we sold gone on to better things?
I don't think it's a matter of buying poor players, as every manager does that, but rather buying them and not using them in the first place. How many starts has Beye had, for instance?
In many ways it's a side effect of his desire to field the same 11 for 90% of the season.
Some of the number crunchers have looked at this "utilisation rate" issue.
"Their squad and starting XI expenditures were in line with 9th to 11th place finishes, and O’Neill’s utilization rate was right at the average for the seasons in which he managed. O’Neill did just about as good as anyone could have asked of him, and the only man to do better with such meagre transfer expenditures is Arsene Wenger at Arsenal. "
Transfer Price Index - Clicky (http://transferpriceindex.com/2011/06/using-the-tpi-to-set-realistic-expectations-at-aston-villa/)
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MON made press comments about how milner was going to leave ages before he left upsetting milner in the process. Whether you believe that was intended to burn Milnerr's bridges so he could get the money or he was just resigned to him leaving is up to personal viewpoint, but i think its pretty clear MON was okay with him being sold.
In answer to my simple question, does that mean 'yes, I'm admitting MON didn't sell him'?
*sigh* please for love of god tell me what you want to hear. Do i think MON had agreed to sell Milner? Yes. Do i think it was all done by the time he left? no
That'll do. You used to say he sold him, now you've changed your mind. A simple 'Yes, I was wrong about him selling him', pages ago, would have done.
If what i typed above means "yes, i was wrong about him selling him" in your world Percy, then i'm happy for you. Obviously, Milner would still be here if MON had stayed because the nasty man Lerner would have backed down instead of sacking the poor cherub, which we all know is what happened really.
I love conspiracy theories me.....
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Some of the number crunchers have looked at this "utilisation rate" issue.
"Their squad and starting XI expenditures were in line with 9th to 11th place finishes, and O’Neill’s utilization rate was right at the average for the seasons in which he managed. O’Neill did just about as good as anyone could have asked of him, and the only man to do better with such meagre transfer expenditures is Arsene Wenger at Arsenal. "
Transfer Price Index - Clicky (http://transferpriceindex.com/2011/06/using-the-tpi-to-set-realistic-expectations-at-aston-villa/)
It's an intersting piece, but how is the 'average utilization rate' calculated and what exactly does it mean? My argument was, and this is coming from a MON fan, that we spent a lot on virtually unused players, so that saving that money wouldn't have impacted on results. Yet this, plus we know we had a rather static first 11, doesn't tie in to these percentages, if I'm reading them correctly.
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MON made press comments about how milner was going to leave ages before he left upsetting milner in the process. Whether you believe that was intended to burn Milnerr's bridges so he could get the money or he was just resigned to him leaving is up to personal viewpoint, but i think its pretty clear MON was okay with him being sold.
In answer to my simple question, does that mean 'yes, I'm admitting MON didn't sell him'?
*sigh* please for love of god tell me what you want to hear. Do i think MON had agreed to sell Milner? Yes. Do i think it was all done by the time he left? no
That'll do. You used to say he sold him, now you've changed your mind. A simple 'Yes, I was wrong about him selling him', pages ago, would have done.
If what i typed above means "yes, i was wrong about him selling him" in your world Percy, then i'm happy for you. Obviously, Milner would still be here if MON had stayed because the nasty man Lerner would have backed down instead of sacking the poor cherub, which we all know is what happened really.
I love conspiracy theories me.....
Yes, we know greg. We remember your 'Ellis is still running the club' one, and your even more ridiculous 'MON is still selling our players even though he's left' one.
This reminds me of your ten-page argument about zonal marking, which only ended when it was finally established that you didn't actually know what zonal marking is. According to you, our problems at set-peices were caused by MON phoning Collins and Dunne befrore games and telling them to fuck it up on purpose. Comedy gold, if only you meant to be so laughable.
-
Talking of speculating on the past, what would have been interesting is if Randy had bought the club in May 2006 and either had to keep Dolly on or replace him without the input of Doug/ Stride who would have been our manager?
That's a really intriguing question.
I think given that he was highly rated, unemployed and clearly interested in the job, the outcome would have been the same.
Given that that description applied to a few managers this summer and we still ended up with McLeish, I'd say the outcome would have been very different.
Well I'd say that a few years back we had a bigger pot of cash to piss up the wall, which is always enticing for managers, or are you suggesting the Master Businessman could/would have lured the likes of Ancelloti to the club?
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Some of the number crunchers have looked at this "utilisation rate" issue.
"Their squad and starting XI expenditures were in line with 9th to 11th place finishes, and O’Neill’s utilization rate was right at the average for the seasons in which he managed. O’Neill did just about as good as anyone could have asked of him, and the only man to do better with such meagre transfer expenditures is Arsene Wenger at Arsenal. "
Transfer Price Index - Clicky (http://transferpriceindex.com/2011/06/using-the-tpi-to-set-realistic-expectations-at-aston-villa/)
It's an intersting piece, but how is the 'average utilization rate' calculated and what exactly does it mean? My argument was, and this is coming from a MON fan, that we spent a lot on virtually unused players, so that saving that money wouldn't have impacted on results. Yet this, plus we know we had a rather static first 11, doesn't tie in to these percentages, if I'm reading them correctly.
The utilisation rate is the value of the players in the starting 11 for each PL game as a percentage of the value of the entire squad. It equates to the amount of a clubs transfer spending that is on the pitch.
I think when you do the analysis it shows that very few of our players were bought and almost never played (Beye, Harewood, ??). Most of his signings had a significant run as regular 1st team players before becoming squad players, usually because they were replaced by better.
I don't know but it could be masking a problem if we were "overplaying" our more expensive signings.
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The utilisation rate is the value of the players in the starting 11 for each PL game as a percentage of the value of the entire squad. It equates to the amount of a clubs transfer spending that is on the pitch.
I think when you do the analysis it shows that very few of our players were bought and almost never played (Beye, Harewood, ??). Most of his signings had a significant run as regular 1st team players before becoming squad players, usually because they were replaced by better.
I don't know but it could be masking a problem if we were "overplaying" our more expensive signings.
I think that's what it's doing. If that's the untilization rate then it does not reflect whether or not the players playing were more constant than other clubs, so that the unused percentage were also the same players each game, as opposed to mixing it around in more of a rotation system.
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I don't know but it could be masking a problem if we were "overplaying" our more expensive signings.
From the said report:
Clearly, for O’Neill, the key to outperforming £XI expectations was the consistency of the starting XI. [Although it can lead to fatigue later in the campaign – a regular criticism of the club's performance under the Ulsterman.]
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MON made press comments about how milner was going to leave ages before he left upsetting milner in the process. Whether you believe that was intended to burn Milnerr's bridges so he could get the money or he was just resigned to him leaving is up to personal viewpoint, but i think its pretty clear MON was okay with him being sold.
In answer to my simple question, does that mean 'yes, I'm admitting MON didn't sell him'?
*sigh* please for love of god tell me what you want to hear. Do i think MON had agreed to sell Milner? Yes. Do i think it was all done by the time he left? no
That'll do. You used to say he sold him, now you've changed your mind. A simple 'Yes, I was wrong about him selling him', pages ago, would have done.
If what i typed above means "yes, i was wrong about him selling him" in your world Percy, then i'm happy for you. Obviously, Milner would still be here if MON had stayed because the nasty man Lerner would have backed down instead of sacking the poor cherub, which we all know is what happened really.
I love conspiracy theories me.....
Yes, we know greg. We remember your 'Ellis is still running the club' one, and your even more ridiculous 'MON is still selling our players even though he's left' one.
This reminds me of your ten-page argument about zonal marking, which only ended when it was finally established that you didn't actually know what zonal marking is. According to you, our problems at set-peices were caused by MON phoning Collins and Dunne befrore games and telling them to fuck it up on purpose. Comedy gold, if only you meant to be so laughable.
MON made press comments about how milner was going to leave ages before he left upsetting milner in the process. Whether you believe that was intended to burn Milnerr's bridges so he could get the money or he was just resigned to him leaving is up to personal viewpoint, but i think its pretty clear MON was okay with him being sold.
In answer to my simple question, does that mean 'yes, I'm admitting MON didn't sell him'?
*sigh* please for love of god tell me what you want to hear. Do i think MON had agreed to sell Milner? Yes. Do i think it was all done by the time he left? no
That'll do. You used to say he sold him, now you've changed your mind. A simple 'Yes, I was wrong about him selling him', pages ago, would have done.
If what i typed above means "yes, i was wrong about him selling him" in your world Percy, then i'm happy for you. Obviously, Milner would still be here if MON had stayed because the nasty man Lerner would have backed down instead of sacking the poor cherub, which we all know is what happened really.
I love conspiracy theories me.....
Yes, we know greg. We remember your 'Ellis is still running the club' one, and your even more ridiculous 'MON is still selling our players even though he's left' one.
This reminds me of your ten-page argument about zonal marking, which only ended when it was finally established that you didn't actually know what zonal marking is. According to you, our problems at set-peices were caused by MON phoning Collins and Dunne befrore games and telling them to fuck it up on purpose. Comedy gold, if only you meant to be so laughable.
And there you have it. Only took you about 15 hours and 6 pages to revert to type and start lying. Look if you're convinced MON left because he wouldn't sell milner despite all public comments to the contrary then come out and say it rather than arguing pointlessly on the technicality that he wasn't actually there when the transfer was finally concluded.. What next? GH was sacked because he wouldn't let Young go? man alive.........
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I don't know but it could be masking a problem if we were "overplaying" our more expensive signings.
From the said report:
Clearly, for O’Neill, the key to outperforming £XI expectations was the consistency of the starting XI. [Although it can lead to fatigue later in the campaign – a regular criticism of the club's performance under the Ulsterman.]
It did appear to be a problem up until his final season (when we strengthened with the Dunne, Collins etc. influx), where we averaged 2 points a game in the league from the end of Dec to end of April along with the cup runs.
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MON made press comments about how milner was going to leave ages before he left upsetting milner in the process. Whether you believe that was intended to burn Milnerr's bridges so he could get the money or he was just resigned to him leaving is up to personal viewpoint, but i think its pretty clear MON was okay with him being sold.
In answer to my simple question, does that mean 'yes, I'm admitting MON didn't sell him'?
*sigh* please for love of god tell me what you want to hear. Do i think MON had agreed to sell Milner? Yes. Do i think it was all done by the time he left? no
That'll do. You used to say he sold him, now you've changed your mind. A simple 'Yes, I was wrong about him selling him', pages ago, would have done.
If what i typed above means "yes, i was wrong about him selling him" in your world Percy, then i'm happy for you. Obviously, Milner would still be here if MON had stayed because the nasty man Lerner would have backed down instead of sacking the poor cherub, which we all know is what happened really.
I love conspiracy theories me.....
Yes, we know greg. We remember your 'Ellis is still running the club' one, and your even more ridiculous 'MON is still selling our players even though he's left' one.
This reminds me of your ten-page argument about zonal marking, which only ended when it was finally established that you didn't actually know what zonal marking is. According to you, our problems at set-peices were caused by MON phoning Collins and Dunne befrore games and telling them to fuck it up on purpose. Comedy gold, if only you meant to be so laughable.
MON made press comments about how milner was going to leave ages before he left upsetting milner in the process. Whether you believe that was intended to burn Milnerr's bridges so he could get the money or he was just resigned to him leaving is up to personal viewpoint, but i think its pretty clear MON was okay with him being sold.
In answer to my simple question, does that mean 'yes, I'm admitting MON didn't sell him'?
*sigh* please for love of god tell me what you want to hear. Do i think MON had agreed to sell Milner? Yes. Do i think it was all done by the time he left? no
That'll do. You used to say he sold him, now you've changed your mind. A simple 'Yes, I was wrong about him selling him', pages ago, would have done.
If what i typed above means "yes, i was wrong about him selling him" in your world Percy, then i'm happy for you. Obviously, Milner would still be here if MON had stayed because the nasty man Lerner would have backed down instead of sacking the poor cherub, which we all know is what happened really.
I love conspiracy theories me.....
Yes, we know greg. We remember your 'Ellis is still running the club' one, and your even more ridiculous 'MON is still selling our players even though he's left' one.
This reminds me of your ten-page argument about zonal marking, which only ended when it was finally established that you didn't actually know what zonal marking is. According to you, our problems at set-peices were caused by MON phoning Collins and Dunne befrore games and telling them to fuck it up on purpose. Comedy gold, if only you meant to be so laughable.
And there you have it. Only took you about 15 hours and 6 pages to revert to type and start lying. Look if you're convinced MON left because he wouldn't sell milner
1)Yours is the only lie there mate, and you know it. Unless of course, you've forgotten what you said about Ellis, the Milner sale and MON contacting Dunne and Collins. In which case, you have my sympathy. The whole argument (this time) was re: you lying about MON's net spend because it suits your 5-years-and-counting obsession.
2) I don't think MON left because he wouldn't sell Milner. I don't know why he left, same as you.
Imagine! Called a liar by H&V's Walter Mitty! Larf!
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I don't know but it could be masking a problem if we were "overplaying" our more expensive signings.
From the said report:
Clearly, for O’Neill, the key to outperforming £XI expectations was the consistency of the starting XI. [Although it can lead to fatigue later in the campaign – a regular criticism of the club's performance under the Ulsterman.]
It did appear to be a problem up until his final season (when we strengthened with the Dunne, Collins etc. influx), where we averaged 2 points a game in the league from the end of Dec to end of April along with the cup runs.
We had a better season in MON's final tear than in any other under him, but that doesn't take away from the fact that there was still players that hardly got a look in collecting high salaries. Players we effectively didn't need as we wouldn't have even noticed them not being here. When it came to orgainising a football side and getting them to win games then MON is right up there, but when it comes to balancing the budget and larger squads of modern football he was found wanting.
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Yeah. In that final season under MON we effectively had a squad that could field two separate X1s... his first choice X1, which barely changed in terms of starting line-up, and then a second X1 which, if played every week, could probably have secured a mid-table place in the PL. Then there were a handful of senior players not in the picture altogether, and then some emerging young players who barely got a sniff (European competition aside).
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I don't know but it could be masking a problem if we were "overplaying" our more expensive signings.
From the said report:
Clearly, for O’Neill, the key to outperforming £XI expectations was the consistency of the starting XI. [Although it can lead to fatigue later in the campaign – a regular criticism of the club's performance under the Ulsterman.]
It did appear to be a problem up until his final season (when we strengthened with the Dunne, Collins etc. influx), where we averaged 2 points a game in the league from the end of Dec to end of April along with the cup runs.
We had a better season in MON's final tear than in any other under him, but that doesn't take away from the fact that there was still players that hardly got a look in collecting high salaries. Players we effectively didn't need as we wouldn't have even noticed them not being here. When it came to orgainising a football side and getting them to win games then MON is right up there, but when it comes to balancing the budget and larger squads of modern football he was found wanting.
I understand the point, I'm just not sure that the evidence stacks up.
Villa squad stats 2009/10 - Clicky (http://www.soccerbase.com/teams/team.sd?team_id=154&comp_id=1#teamTabs=stats)
Only Beye, Davies (loan?) and NRC underplayed of the senior players available.
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Really?
Reading that, it's plain to see a core of players with 30-plus league starts and then more than a dozen playing very little.
Players MON signed:
Luke Young 14 (slightly more than starting a third of games)
Sidwell 12 (so he started less than a third of games)
Beye 5
Davies 2
Guzan 0
NRC 6
Salifou 0
Shorey 3
Delph 4
Then there were several young players who had been involved the season before (and extensively in pre-season) but largely overlooked: Albrighton (0), Clark (1), Delfouneso (0), Gardner (0).
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I understand the point, I'm just not sure that the evidence stacks up.
Villa squad stats 2009/10 - Clicky (http://www.soccerbase.com/teams/team.sd?team_id=154&comp_id=1#teamTabs=stats)
Only Beye, Davies (loan?) and NRC underplayed of the senior players available.
Can't get into that site at work, but checked the official PL site and found out the following for 09/10:-
Freidle - 38 appearances
Dunne, Petrov and Ash - 37
Gabby, Cuellar and Milner - 36
Collins - 33
Warnock and Heskey - 31
Carew - 30
Downing and Sidwell - 25
Next on the list is Luke Young at 16.
So that doesn't leave a huge amount of games for the likes of NRC, Shorey, Beye and Davies, all of whom therefore barely contributed despite large salaries and transfer outlays.
EDIT: just so it doesn't get confused with Merv's post above, the figures I used are appearances, so including being subbed on. Hence he's got Luke Young at 14 starts and I have him at 16 appearances.
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That's right. I think the soccerbase stats, for example, break down Heskey's starts as 16 and subs appearances on at 15. So you get the idea of his true role too.
Funnily enough, I was pondering this the other day - the squad for O'Neill's last season. And the two X1s I came up with, based on his first choice and his reserves, were:
Friedel
Cuellar Dunne Collins Warnock
Downing Milner Petrov A Young
Gabby Carew
Guzan
L Young Davies Clark Shorey
Albrighton NRC Sidwell Delph
Heskey Delfouneso
And that doesn't feature senior professionals such as Harewood, Beye, Andy Marshall, Gardner, Salifou, Osbourne.
When I looked at it like that, I realised what a large squad O'Neill had built up. He signed 21 of those players himself.
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When it came to orgainising a football side and getting them to win games then MON is right up there, but when it comes to balancing the budget and larger squads of modern football he was found wanting.
If O'Neill had sorted out our home form we probably would have qualified for the CL three years on the trot. The fact that during his 4 years we were generally poor at Villa Park cost us and Randy dearly. Oh to have had a Plan B.
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I don't know but it could be masking a problem if we were "overplaying" our more expensive signings.
From the said report:
Clearly, for O’Neill, the key to outperforming £XI expectations was the consistency of the starting XI. [Although it can lead to fatigue later in the campaign – a regular criticism of the club's performance under the Ulsterman.]
It did appear to be a problem up until his final season (when we strengthened with the Dunne, Collins etc. influx), where we averaged 2 points a game in the league from the end of Dec to end of April along with the cup runs.
If that'as true then 4 months from 4 years hardly defends his record.
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When it came to orgainising a football side and getting them to win games then MON is right up there, but when it comes to balancing the budget and larger squads of modern football he was found wanting.
If O'Neill had sorted out our home form we probably would have qualified for the CL three years on the trot. The fact that during his 4 years we were generally poor at Villa Park cost us and Randy dearly. Oh to have had a Plan B.
Footballing wise, it was the major flaw we had under him.
The easy solution is to say 'creative midfielder' or 'better striker', but ultimately I think he and his staff needed to coach a more patient passing style to go along with the quick wing play we preferred. The players were there to do it.
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When it came to orgainising a football side and getting them to win games then MON is right up there, but when it comes to balancing the budget and larger squads of modern football he was found wanting.
If O'Neill had sorted out our home form we probably would have qualified for the CL three years on the trot. The fact that during his 4 years we were generally poor at Villa Park cost us and Randy dearly. Oh to have had a Plan B.
Footballing wise, it was the major flaw we had under him.
The easy solution is to say 'creative midfielder' or 'better striker', but ultimately I think he and his staff needed to coach a more patient passing style to go along with the quick wing play we preferred. The players were there to do it.
That's why for me he was never "right up there". More John Gregory than Brian Clough. A lot more.
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That's why for me he was never "right up there". More John Gregory than Brian Clough. A lot more.
I think he's a much better manager than Gregory, but then how many are truely in the Clough bracket?
For me he excelled in being the type of manager he was, but that type will always have limited dimensions to them.
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That's right. I think the soccerbase stats, for example, break down Heskey's starts as 16 and subs appearances on at 15. So you get the idea of his true role too.
Funnily enough, I was pondering this the other day - the squad for O'Neill's last season. And the two X1s I came up with, based on his first choice and his reserves, were:
Friedel
Cuellar Dunne Collins Warnock
Downing Milner Petrov A Young
Gabby Carew
Guzan
L Young Davies Clark Shorey
Albrighton NRC Sidwell Delph
Heskey Delfouneso
And that doesn't feature senior professionals such as Harewood, Beye, Andy Marshall, Gardner, Salifou, Osbourne.
When I looked at it like that, I realised what a large squad O'Neill had built up. He signed 21 of those players himself.
It’s worth considering long term injuries/bereavements (L Young, Delph), youth players (Guzan, Clark, Albrighton and Delfouneso) who almost certainly weren't ready 2 years ago and ones that were loaned out or sold (Davies, Shorey, Gardner, Harewood).
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Of course. Though Luke Young was actually fit/available for all but about the first six weeks of that season, Delph barely used anyway until his injury around Feb time, those last four senior players you mention loaned or sold from January 2010 onwards - and overlooked until then. But at the start of the season/close of the transfer window in Aug 2009, MON had a lot of players at his disposal.
Naturally, not everyone was available at all times, but he did have a tendency of stockpiling players, many of whom were quickly discarded and then classed as reserves. However, I'm going over old, painful ground here!
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It was a deliberate ploy of his - based on the Cloughie doctrine that the first XI is the be all and end all, and if you didn't make that you effectively didn't exist.
Clough used it as a form of control/ manipulation -the ever present threat to players in the starting XI who questioned him in any way (or who he wanted to take down a peg or two) was an immediate loss of status. For those actually in the reserves, he barely spoke to them. Only when they were in the first team were they worth giving the time of day to.
Thing is, you could probably get away with it in Clough's era - the time of a starting XI and one sub. But with several subs available now and the sheer volume of games played it has increasingly become a squad game, and it pays to keep the bulk of your squad interested. A concept O'Neill never seemed to fully grasp.
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MON made press comments about how milner was going to leave ages before he left upsetting milner in the process. Whether you believe that was intended to burn Milnerr's bridges so he could get the money or he was just resigned to him leaving is up to personal viewpoint, but i think its pretty clear MON was okay with him being sold.
In answer to my simple question, does that mean 'yes, I'm admitting MON didn't sell him'?
*sigh* please for love of god tell me what you want to hear. Do i think MON had agreed to sell Milner? Yes. Do i think it was all done by the time he left? no
That'll do. You used to say he sold him, now you've changed your mind. A simple 'Yes, I was wrong about him selling him', pages ago, would have done.
If what i typed above means "yes, i was wrong about him selling him" in your world Percy, then i'm happy for you. Obviously, Milner would still be here if MON had stayed because the nasty man Lerner would have backed down instead of sacking the poor cherub, which we all know is what happened really.
I love conspiracy theories me.....
Yes, we know greg. We remember your 'Ellis is still running the club' one, and your even more ridiculous 'MON is still selling our players even though he's left' one.
This reminds me of your ten-page argument about zonal marking, which only ended when it was finally established that you didn't actually know what zonal marking is. According to you, our problems at set-peices were caused by MON phoning Collins and Dunne befrore games and telling them to fuck it up on purpose. Comedy gold, if only you meant to be so laughable.
MON made press comments about how milner was going to leave ages before he left upsetting milner in the process. Whether you believe that was intended to burn Milnerr's bridges so he could get the money or he was just resigned to him leaving is up to personal viewpoint, but i think its pretty clear MON was okay with him being sold.
In answer to my simple question, does that mean 'yes, I'm admitting MON didn't sell him'?
*sigh* please for love of god tell me what you want to hear. Do i think MON had agreed to sell Milner? Yes. Do i think it was all done by the time he left? no
That'll do. You used to say he sold him, now you've changed your mind. A simple 'Yes, I was wrong about him selling him', pages ago, would have done.
If what i typed above means "yes, i was wrong about him selling him" in your world Percy, then i'm happy for you. Obviously, Milner would still be here if MON had stayed because the nasty man Lerner would have backed down instead of sacking the poor cherub, which we all know is what happened really.
I love conspiracy theories me.....
Yes, we know greg. We remember your 'Ellis is still running the club' one, and your even more ridiculous 'MON is still selling our players even though he's left' one.
This reminds me of your ten-page argument about zonal marking, which only ended when it was finally established that you didn't actually know what zonal marking is. According to you, our problems at set-peices were caused by MON phoning Collins and Dunne befrore games and telling them to fuck it up on purpose. Comedy gold, if only you meant to be so laughable.
And there you have it. Only took you about 15 hours and 6 pages to revert to type and start lying. Look if you're convinced MON left because he wouldn't sell milner
1)Yours is the only lie there mate, and you know it. Unless of course, you've forgotten what you said about Ellis, the Milner sale and MON contacting Dunne and Collins. In which case, you have my sympathy. The whole argument (this time) was re: you lying about MON's net spend because it suits your 5-years-and-counting obsession.
2) I don't think MON left because he wouldn't sell Milner. I don't know why he left, same as you.
Imagine! Called a liar by H&V's Walter Mitty! Larf!
Riiiiiiiight. So basically you've wasted hours of your life trying to point score against me on something as petty as whether you can include milner's sales in his net spending. I must apologise Percy, you're not obsessed with defending MON, you're just obsessed with me. I'd call you a Troll but then a troll is supposed to wind his victim up, not himself!
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When it came to orgainising a football side and getting them to win games then MON is right up there, but when it comes to balancing the budget and larger squads of modern football he was found wanting.
If O'Neill had sorted out our home form we probably would have qualified for the CL three years on the trot. The fact that during his 4 years we were generally poor at Villa Park cost us and Randy dearly. Oh to have had a Plan B.
Footballing wise, it was the major flaw we had under him.
The easy solution is to say 'creative midfielder' or 'better striker', but ultimately I think he and his staff needed to coach a more patient passing style to go along with the quick wing play we preferred. The players were there to do it.
I don't think it was his major flaw.
I think the biggest flaw was his inability to vary tactics. We always seemed to do the same thing, regardless of whether or not it was working.
I struggle to think of many occasions where he'd change the flow of a game with a substitution, or a change of shape on the field.
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Percy, Gregnash, any chance you could sort out your bloody quoting if you're going to carry on this, err, really interesting debate?
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When it came to orgainising a football side and getting them to win games then MON is right up there, but when it comes to balancing the budget and larger squads of modern football he was found wanting.
If O'Neill had sorted out our home form we probably would have qualified for the CL three years on the trot. The fact that during his 4 years we were generally poor at Villa Park cost us and Randy dearly. Oh to have had a Plan B.
Footballing wise, it was the major flaw we had under him.
The easy solution is to say 'creative midfielder' or 'better striker', but ultimately I think he and his staff needed to coach a more patient passing style to go along with the quick wing play we preferred. The players were there to do it.
I don't think it was his major flaw.
I think the biggest flaw was his inability to vary tactics. We always seemed to do the same thing, regardless of whether or not it was working.
I struggle to think of many occasions where he'd change the flow of a game with a substitution, or a change of shape on the field.
Except in his first season, weirdly enough.
Watford and Everton at home in particular stand out.
He was also flexible in his formations; starting the season with a 4-4-3 but 4-5-1, 4-4-1-1 and -of course- 4-4-2 were all tried at various stages.
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I think MON would have probably been an excellent manager in the 1970s. In the 2000s he was merely decent.