Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: JJ-AV on August 31, 2011, 10:52:00 AM
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What is it?
Under MON we tended to sign better players from Clubs below us, and reserves of Clubs above us.
Then under Ged we looked like moving away from that with the signing of Makoun and the reported targets he had for this coming Summer. It seemed a real scouting system was being put in place, and we'd be looking abroad.
Ged had to go, understandable. But we've reverted to type under McLeish. Why?
Given and Hutton - reserves from players above us, will more than likely sell neither at a profit and both come in immediately commanding big wages.
N'Zogbia - a better player from a club below us, again big wages, same policy as before?
Newcastle and Fulham are signing promising players for relatively low fees from Ligue 1 and the Erividisie respectively. Why aren't we doing this?
Newcastle reportedly are well respected in France (due to the way they looked after Ben Arfa after his injury and their dealings with Clubs over there) - and now they're competing (and in some cases beating) Arsenal and Liverpool to players.
It's frustrating we seem to be accepting our position as opposed to trying different methods to break it.
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Much as I detest MON, take him away, give Randy more control over weaker managers and the wheels come off. It seems MON had so much power because Randy and co hadn't a clue how to run a Premier League team.
What we probably needed at that time was somebody on the board with a football brain to dilute down MON's power slightly.
Our current policy would indicate we don't really have a strategy. Houllier to McLeish? Selling, not to buy, just to sell? If no players come in today I would seriously fear for this club. I had been optimistic about a top ten finish until I saw Luke Young, Jean Makoun and Hogg leave without any players coming in. We are threadbare and lack the quality we used to have. We need about 4 or 5 signings today to achieve a top 9 finish I reckon.
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I don't know why there seems to be a fascination with getting signings in from abroad.Scandinavians aside, we've had very little success with players we've bought in from abroad and the two foreign managers we've had have in my humble opinion been utter dog turd.
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The transfer policy objectives should tie in with the Villa company objectives.
If the Villa objective was to finish in the top four then you would expect the transfer activity to reflect that objective.
The only objective I am aware of is to be in the top 20 richest European clubs list.
Finishing between 8th and 12th may not effect that objective, but reducing the wage bill and selling players will effect the profit and loss and help to achieve the objective stated above [at least in the short term]
If I was being sinical then it is what I would do with a company that I was preping for sale [make it look as profitable as possible on paper]
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Yes RL's letter told us the strategy was ensure we are in the top 20 rich list of European clubs. As far as I know one of the measures, if not the key measure, used to compile this list is turnover. Apparently we are going to achieve that goal by appointing a manager with a track record of failure in the premier league and a reputation for playing ultra dull football. He appealed to the Board because he agreed to sell a large number of our experienced squad members and sign very few replacements in order to reduce the wage bill. Which in turn will piss off the fan base, resulting in reduced crowds (already evidenced). Thus income from match day tickets, programme sales, and merchandising will fall. If you follow the tactics to their logical conclusion, relegation is a distinct possibility, significantly reducing our income base further. Surely even Sirs John Harvey-Jones, Phillip Green, Richard Branson and Alan Sugar couldn't find any fault with that busines logic could they? Take a bow Randy Lerner and Paul Faulkner, Business and Sporting geniuses.
I reserve the right to take this all back if we make 6 top signings today.
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My strategy will be to put my head in the sand and hope it all works out in the end.
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My strategy will be to put my head in the sand and hope it all works out in the end.
If we sign Jenas,my head is going in the oven.
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Not so much a strategy as a desperate cost-cutting exercise with prayers being offered that relegation is still avoided.
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What is it?
To get straight to your question, JJ, I honestly think the strategy goes no further than to recoup financial losses and stay in the Premier League.
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My strategy will be to put my head in the sand and hope it all works out in the end.
If we sign Jenas,my head is going in the oven.
Me too but mine is a fan assisted electric oven. Anyone got any experience with these as a tool for suicide ?
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Even if we sign no one today they seem to be making a calculated gamble that there will still be 3 worse teams than us in the premier league this season. I don't have an understanding how this lines up with any long term goal but I'm not our billionaire owner or Paul Faulkener.
So the three are, Swansea, Norwich and one of Blackburn/Wigan/QPR.
They are very very lucky that blues went down as they aren't around to make things worse by being above us. I would say that west brom and wolves would anticipate a finish above us, west brom should have last season.
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If I was Darren Bent I'd be thinking about getting out of this sinking ship.
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Our strategy is to abandon ambition and sell everyone of note.
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Delph after a storming season will be gone for 15-20 million next summer. Trouble is we were still acquiring good players before that would have good sell on values, we are not now.
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Delph after a storming season will be gone for 15-20 million next summer. Trouble is we were still acquiring good players before that would have good sell on values, we are not now.
Wise words.
Reluctantly, I accept the inevitability of the Downing/Young moves.My concern is that we are not recruiting the next wave of talent.
Without Bent we would be in serious trouble this season.
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If I was Darren Bent I'd be thinking about getting out of this sinking ship.
without a doubt
what an epic mistake he made coming here.
The way so called poorer teams are building and looking to improve where as we can't even afford players wages is pretty embarrassing
getting rid of Makoun is absolutely mindboggling, even more so if he's replaced with Jermaine feckin Jenas
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The strategy is cost cutting as deep and as quick as we can in order to reel in the excesses of the failed CL bid under MON. We are going to have to, for the time being, get used to the fact that we need to cut our cloth accordingly and except our place in the pecking order. That means that for now, we are a selling club who will be looking to blood youth players and hopefully develop enough in a few years to move back up the pecking order. We've been here before under Doug, so none of us should be particularly surprised by the turn of events.
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Delph after a storming season will be gone for 15-20 million next summer. Trouble is we were still acquiring good players before that would have good sell on values, we are not now.
Wise words.
Reluctantly, I accept the inevitability of the Downing/Young moves.My concern is that we are not recruiting the next wave of talent.
Without Bent we would be in serious trouble this season.
We are in serious trouble even with him.
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My strategy will be to put my head in the sand and hope it all works out in the end.
If we sign Jenas,my head is going in the oven.
Me too but mine is a fan assisted electric oven. Anyone got any experience with these as a tool for suicide ?
Stick it in the bath?
I can only guess that spudzzzzz will be paying part of his salary?
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The transfer policy objectives should tie in with the Villa company objectives.
If the Villa objective was to finish in the top four then you would expect the transfer activity to reflect that objective.
The only objective I am aware of is to be in the top 20 richest European clubs list.
Finishing between 8th and 12th may not effect that objective, but reducing the wage bill and selling players will effect the profit and loss and help to achieve the objective stated above [at least in the short term]
If I was being sinical then it is what I would do with a company that I was preping for sale [make it look as profitable as possible on paper]
I think Randy and Paul have shot themselves in the foot with this aim, alas. I just can't see us making the top twenty with our current strategy of down-scaling.
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You flat out will never ever make the top 20 richest European clubs unless you have success on the pitch.
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Definition of strategy: A method or plan chosen to bring about a desired future, such as achievement of a goal or solution to a problem.
I can't see anything we have done in the last three months that even approach the above - especially if the desired option is to be a Top 20 Euro club!
Utterly baffling.
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What an absolute joke. 2 players who are never going to amount for being anymore than average.
Santon and Cabaye at Newcastle. Young, promising and full of potential. We've a team of experienced 'steady' players, why not look further afield and try and unearth a gem?
Given, N'Zogbia, Hutton and Jenas?
Reserves from teams above us, best player from a team below us.
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Sell sell sell, get as much cash in as possible and try and stay in PL on as little money as possible.
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Right now the strategy seems to be, close our eyes, pray, and hope.
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I think the Bent problem will be more about how Villa play and the effect that will or is having on his game, said this before when people where saying thank god we've signed a 25 goal a season striker, he maybe 25 goals elsewhere but he will do well to get upwards of Gabby's or Carew's total, that will be the straw that breaks the camels back, bent will get to Jan with about 10 goals and he will think phuk this the club don't have the players and this is to dam hard, I'm of.
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I don't think we have one.
I'd rather we took chances on young players (like Newcastle have with Santon, Cabaye, Marvaux and Tiote) than sign mediocre (at best steady eddies) from lesser leagues abroad and add them to our own young players and I always have preferred for us to do that. Okay these players might not make it but we might have fun along the way rather than knowing we are going to have mediocrity and getting it.
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Newcastle and Fulham are signing promising players for relatively low fees from Ligue 1 and the Erividisie respectively. Why aren't we doing this?
Newcastle reportedly are well respected in France (due to the way they looked after Ben Arfa after his injury and their dealings with Clubs over there) - and now they're competing (and in some cases beating) Arsenal and Liverpool to players.
And yet we'll finish above Newcastle again this season..
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They might have a more interesting and occasionally entertaining season than we will though. It's not like we will get a trophy for finishing above them or anything important.
Look at last season we had a horrible season with few genuinely enjoyable games and they enjoyed inflicting some outright thrashings on teams as well as a fantastic 4-4 draw with Arsenal. They will certainly have enjoyed that more than we did finishing 9th rather than 12th or wherever.
And if just one of those young players proves to be good their investment of a few million will be returned a few times over. I doubt ours on Alan Hutton will.
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Newcastle and Fulham are signing promising players for relatively low fees from Ligue 1 and the Erividisie respectively. Why aren't we doing this?
Newcastle reportedly are well respected in France (due to the way they looked after Ben Arfa after his injury and their dealings with Clubs over there) - and now they're competing (and in some cases beating) Arsenal and Liverpool to players.
And yet we'll finish above Newcastle again this season..
I doubt it, in fact I am struggling to work out how many teams we will finish higher than, it wont be that many
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Crouch
Palacios
Barton
Wright Phillips
Dann
Upson
DJ Campbell
All players that have moved during August to clubs that you would consider to be lesser clubs that would have improved our squad. I'm not suggesting their characters or abilities are ever going to be the greatest players in the world but would have improved our squad nonetheless.
To lose the players we have, and bring in the players we have it shows we are consolidating on survival. Not enough to bring in the masses of missing fans. (Ifear for our club)
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Crouch
Palacios
Barton
Wright Phillips
Dann
Upson
DJ Campbell
All players that have moved during August to clubs that you would consider to be lesser clubs that would have improved our squad. I'm not suggesting their characters or abilities are ever going to be the greatest players in the world but would have improved our squad nonetheless.
To lose the players we have, and bring in the players we have it shows we are consolidating on survival. Not enough to bring in the masses of missing fans. (Ifear for our club)
I would of feared more if we would have brought in that load of shit.
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Crouch
Palacios
Barton
Wright Phillips
Dann
Upson
DJ Campbell
All players that have moved during August to clubs that you would consider to be lesser clubs that would have improved our squad. I'm not suggesting their characters or abilities are ever going to be the greatest players in the world but would have improved our squad nonetheless.
To lose the players we have, and bring in the players we have it shows we are consolidating on survival. Not enough to bring in the masses of missing fans. (Ifear for our club)
I would of feared more if we would have brought in that load of shit.
As I said, not necessarily my choices but in terms of upgrading our squad
Crouch - better than Heskey
Palacios - better than Sweatrov
Wright Phillips - Not as good as Young/Downing clearly but would have been a reasonable replacement
Barton - can't stand the bloke, but better than Jenas!
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I would have liked Villa to have signed Palacios but not fussed either way about any of the others - it's simply squad strength that's a concern for me.
However, the overall strategy is a puzzler. It seems as if it can go one of two ways - either the spending years are completely over, or this is a fallow period to allow for dead wood to be gotten rid of, wages to be be bought under control and for the club to stay afloat during yet another batshit crazy time in the world of British football economics before we start properly spending again. As much as I admire the latter approach, I fear it's the former.
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I aint been this depressed with whats going on with the club this O'Dreary was in charge.
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I aint been this depressed with whats going on with the club this O'Dreary was in charge.
You're depressed now. Hate to see how you feel come January.
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They might have a more interesting and occasionally entertaining season than we will though. It's not like we will get a trophy for finishing above them or anything important.
Look at last season we had a horrible season with few genuinely enjoyable games and they enjoyed inflicting some outright thrashings on teams as well as a fantastic 4-4 draw with Arsenal. They will certainly have enjoyed that more than we did finishing 9th rather than 12th or wherever.
And if just one of those young players proves to be good their investment of a few million will be returned a few times over. I doubt ours on Alan Hutton will.
Precisely. They were a newly promoted team and look what they've done with the Carroll money.
One or two of those comes really good and they'll make a profit again which they can reinvest further. It's the only way clubs in that position can bridge the gap.
Instead we plod along signing reserves from the clubs above us on slightly less wages than the players they replaced, that's our scheme of balancing the finances to challenge? It makes no sense.
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Looks like panic selling to reduce the wage bill was our strategy all along. A more controlled process would have made more sense and mitigated the risk of a season battling the drop. However our clueless leaders have opted for the knee-jerk approach, bathwater, baby and bath all out the door. The culmination of 5 years of brainless mismanagement (perhaps the Nasher was right all along and Ellis is still pulling the strings). Hopefully it will be a hiatus to get costs under control and give us a solid cost base to start again. All well and good as long as we aren't relegated. But for me the whole episode shows up what Brown's fans have been saying for years, that Randy's is fucking useless at running a sporting insitution.
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Looks like panic selling to reduce the wage bill was our strategy all along. A more controlled process would have made more sense and mitigated the risk of a season battling the drop. However our clueless leaders have opted for the knee-jerk approach, bathwater, baby and bath all out the door. The culmination of 5 years of brainless mismanagement (perhaps the Nasher was right all along and Ellis is still pulling the strings). Hopefully it will be a hiatus to get costs under control and give us a solid cost base to start again. All well and good as long as we aren't relegated. But for me the whole episode shows up what Brown's fans have been saying for years, that Randy's is fucking useless at running a sporting insitution.
I wonder if Doug offered Randy the advice to approach our cost cutting in this way because it certainly reminds me of the '84-'86 era. Having said that, I do think we are in a stronger position than then, thankfully. We have some good youngsters coming through and a manager who is far more battle hardened than Graham Turner. It ain't going to be pretty but we'll get through it this time.
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I listen to an interesting programme on 5 live - Called something like ' 5Live sports special - Scouting for Goals' was very interesting and talked about the role of scouts and how its organised at clubs. Worth a listen as I think its on iTunes. Made me wonder if we have anything in place at all.
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Crouch
Palacios
Barton
Wright Phillips
Dann
Upson
DJ Campbell
All players that have moved during August to clubs that you would consider to be lesser clubs that would have improved our squad. I'm not suggesting their characters or abilities are ever going to be the greatest players in the world but would have improved our squad nonetheless.
To lose the players we have, and bring in the players we have it shows we are consolidating on survival. Not enough to bring in the masses of missing fans. (Ifear for our club)
I'd have been seriously miffed if we'd bought any of that lot apart from Dann. We've had Crouch once, and he was mediocre for us then, he's not the answer. Palacios is steady, but £8mill? You're having a laugh, I'd struggle to pay half of that for him, another Tottenham reserve teamer.
I'd much prefer we do what Villa have traditionally done, cherry pick the best players from those teams below us......Ashley Young, Mark Draper, Stewart Downing, Earl Barrett, Garry Parker, James Milner, Andy Townsend to name but a few,.......pick some promising youngsters from lower leagues........David Platt, Fabian Delph, Shaun Teale, Tony Morley..........and mould them with a couple of headline signings. I see no future in us buying up reserves team players from the so called 'Big 6', these players will always be on big wages and very few of these players are 'hungry' enough. They are all probably millionaires and motivation when joining a mid table side like us must be very limited.
I'd like to have seen us signing two of the likes of the lad McCarthy at Wigan, Odemwingie at Baggies, Dann at Blues, Hoilet at Blackburn, Dempsey at Fulham, Adam at Blackpool
Mix them in with a couple of promising youngsters and lower league players like Brady at Hull, Maynard at Bristol City, Faurlin at QPR, Sigurdssen or Kebe at Reading, McGugan at Forest, Ings at Bournemouth, etc...
One or two of those will at least double their transfer value whilst with us, and therefore pay for any flops, they'd be hungry players, keen to learn and impress, and form a real affinity with the Villa, well at least until Man City or United come knocking!
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I'd much prefer we do what Villa have traditionally done, cherry pick the best players from those teams below us......Ashley Young, Mark Draper, Stewart Downing, Earl Barrett, Garry Parker, James Milner, Andy Townsend to name but a few,.......pick some promising youngsters from lower leagues........David Platt, Fabian Delph, Shaun Teale, Tony Morley..........and mould them with a couple of headline signings. I see no future in us buying up reserves team players from the so called 'Big 6', these players will always be on big wages and very few of these players are 'hungry' enough. They are all probably millionaires and motivation when joining a mid table side like us must be very limited.
I agree with this, though it would be nice if we spotted a bargain or two from abroad.
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I think, or at least hope, that the strategy at the moment is along these lines:-
Randy bought the club and invested in the playing side, but overestimated how fast the turnover would grow. That, alongside seeing a lot of money going to players who weren't contributing, made him decide to try and cut things back so he could start again with a better idea of how the turnover would evolve and a sharper focus on where the money was going and what we were getting for it.
So I'm hoping it's a case of wiping the slate clean and then starting again, but we're presently still in the wiping part of the process.
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What is it?
To get straight to your question, JJ, I honestly think the strategy goes no further than to recoup financial losses and stay in the Premier League
Can I have a free scarf with that on? Perhaps I should suggest it to the General in his Thread.
Oh....
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They might have a more interesting and occasionally entertaining season than we will though. It's not like we will get a trophy for finishing above them or anything important.
Look at last season we had a horrible season with few genuinely enjoyable games and they enjoyed inflicting some outright thrashings on teams as well as a fantastic 4-4 draw with Arsenal. They will certainly have enjoyed that more than we did finishing 9th rather than 12th or wherever.
And if just one of those young players proves to be good their investment of a few million will be returned a few times over. I doubt ours on Alan Hutton will.
I seem to remember some 4-4 draws and spankings of teams - as well as a cup run or two and doing well in the league - under a certain weird bespectacled Irishman.
I also remember that none of it stopped people whingeing about the team on here.
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They might have a more interesting and occasionally entertaining season than we will though. It's not like we will get a trophy for finishing above them or anything important.
Look at last season we had a horrible season with few genuinely enjoyable games and they enjoyed inflicting some outright thrashings on teams as well as a fantastic 4-4 draw with Arsenal. They will certainly have enjoyed that more than we did finishing 9th rather than 12th or wherever.
And if just one of those young players proves to be good their investment of a few million will be returned a few times over. I doubt ours on Alan Hutton will.
I seem to remember some 4-4 draws and spankings of teams - as well as a cup run or two and doing well in the league - under a certain weird bespectacled Irishman.
I also remember that none of it stopped people whingeing about the team on here.
Absofuckinglutely
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I'd suggest very few people had a problem with O'Neill at the time, which reflected how enjoyable we were to watch and how well he was doing. It was the two years which followed that were the issue, and that's when he lost a lot of support.
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This is also my take on it. The club know full well that their actions will lead to drop in gate numbers, but they will have factored this in already as part of the cost cutting. The bottom line is that gates of 28-30k are about right for us. We are not going to drop below this and the club know full well that the investment involved in maintaining the floating 10K or so fans is just not worth it.
We tried to achieve the dream under MON and we fell short, just like virtually everyone else does, so now it’s time to pull back, regroup and try in a few years once more. It’s hardly the mantra to get us all excited, but there’s always going to be enough of us wanting to go to enable the club to do this.
In over 100 years we’ve pretty much fallen short at hitting the big time (except the oft mentioned blip) so we can hardly be surprised when the club does this.
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I'm pretty sure Daniel Levy is an employee of the actual owner at Spurs. Maybe we should be looking to upgrade on Faulkner with someone a little more experienced.
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Not sure I agree with the average team for a hundred years.
We have had a succesion of Managers Taylor, Atkinson, Little, Gregory and Mon that have got us very close to being competing with the Top Teams in England. Everytime through mis-management we have shot ourselves in the foot and faded. How many other Clubs outside the Lpool, Chelsea, Manure Arsenal have been threatening to breakthrough as often as The Villa. Spurs and Everton maybe. The rest have had brief spells in the Sun but have then yo yod from mediocre to worse.
This shows me that we have or had the capability to play with the big boys. Maybe our time will come again. UTV
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Not sure I agree with the average team for a hundred years.
We have had a succesion of Managers Taylor, Atkinson, Little, Gregory and Mon that have got us very close to being competing with the Top Teams in England. Everytime through mis-management we have shot ourselves in the foot and faded. How many other Clubs outside the Lpool, Chelsea, Manure Arsenal have been threatening to breakthrough as often as The Villa. Spurs and Everton maybe. The rest have had brief spells in the Sun but have then yo yod from mediocre to worse.
This shows me that we have or had the capability to play with the big boys. Maybe our time will come again. UTV
One league title, one European trophy and two FA Cups in that time suggest we have.
Better than that - Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Everton, Spurs, Leeds, Forest.
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i might not have explained my point I was refering to where we got too under recent managers and was discounting Arse Lpool Chels Manure, Citeh are a new entrant, Forest and leeds are nowhere.
My point was that in recent times we have been close to getting there. I used to believe that we could breakthough. Every year that goes by that we just make up the numbers the more difficult it becomes and maybe it is too late now. Spurs look like they are hanging in there, we have given up.
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The fact is, though, that for about 98 of those 100 years we've been at best marginal contenders or at worst appalling. Take out League Cups and all the clubs I've mentioned have won more trophies than us during that time. We've never been more than best of the rest so to expect more than that as some sort of birthright and to complain when it doesn't happen is wide of the mark.
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With the amount of players off the books next year, I think we'll invest wisely and refocus our European push.
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With the amount of players off the books next year, I think we'll invest wisely and refocus our European push.
I'm hoping that's the plan too.
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I'm at peace now the window has closed. It's clearly a year to settle things down again. It's a season to shed the last of the fat contracts, and to really start to incorporate an entirely new philosophy at the club. Clearly the MON strategy didn't work as a long term objective because it wasn't sustainable for the owner, and the manager refused to cooperate. The GH experiment halted as his health deteroriated, and the club took it as a project to go a different route. I think it's why Moyes would have been an attractive candidate for the latest chapter as he knows better than most about operating on a strict budget.
I'm now going to look forward to this season in the knowledge that our squad, in my opinion, is far too solid to go down, is solid enough defensively to compete against the majority of the league, and possibly has the firepower if the chemistry can be attained to compete just below the very best. That's fine for this season. Throw in a cup run or two, and hopefully by the this time next season we'll be far better for the experience and we can start to invest again in the type of players that will properly push us on again.
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We have high aspirations for the Villa, we want our club to be challenging for the top honours but the reality is that we wont.
Lets face it we are not going to compete with Manchester [blue or red], Chelsea or Arsenal and with Spurs and Liverpool making progress we are left in at best 5th / 6th but more realistc 7th / 8th. I would think that the board realise this and have settled for this and are cutting our cloth to fit.
Unless the top four dissapear into a European League then we we will be an also ran club hoping for cup win from time to time.
Unless of course the football governing bodies decide to cap wages etc... then we might have a chance again
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Not sure I agree with the average team for a hundred years.
We have had a succesion of Managers Taylor, Atkinson, Little, Gregory and Mon that have got us very close to being competing with the Top Teams in England. Everytime through mis-management we have shot ourselves in the foot and faded. How many other Clubs outside the Lpool, Chelsea, Manure Arsenal have been threatening to breakthrough as often as The Villa. Spurs and Everton maybe. The rest have had brief spells in the Sun but have then yo yod from mediocre to worse.
This shows me that we have or had the capability to play with the big boys. Maybe our time will come again. UTV
The only thing that sets us apart from the Lpool, Chelsea, ManUre and Arsenals over the years is that they have been blessed with the ideal combination for success - dynamic, ambitious leadership allied to plenty of financial backing - for more sustained periods than us. (Thinking about it I don't think there has ever been an era when we have had massive financial backing compared to other clubs of the time.)
Our time will come again, though, of that I am certain.
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I don’t think anyone is saying that we don’t want the best for the club, but football history is measured in trophies and the facts are that for a so called ‘big club’ we do not have the evidence to back it up. We may have come close to achieving success on a number of occasions, but for all the good teams we had, we still did not lift any major silverware; be it the great Atkinson teams of the early 1990’s, MON’s millionaires of a few years ago or Graham Taylor’s battlers.
We have absolutely no right to bleat about our club sliding back to mediocrity when its a pathetic 54 years since we even lifted the FA Cup.
As much as it pains me to say it, the facts are that we are a very average club and the area between 6-10th place is our natural place. I suspect Randy has realised this and also realised that the effort required to keep attendances at Villa Park around the 38,40K mark is just not worth it.
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Not sure I agree with the average team for a hundred years.
We have had a succesion of Managers Taylor, Atkinson, Little, Gregory and Mon that have got us very close to being competing with the Top Teams in England. Everytime through mis-management we have shot ourselves in the foot and faded. How many other Clubs outside the Lpool, Chelsea, Manure Arsenal have been threatening to breakthrough as often as The Villa. Spurs and Everton maybe. The rest have had brief spells in the Sun but have then yo yod from mediocre to worse.
This shows me that we have or had the capability to play with the big boys. Maybe our time will come again. UTV
One league title, one European trophy and two FA Cups in that time suggest we have.
Better than that - Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Everton, Spurs, Leeds, Forest.
So we're not a top 5 club then Mr Woodall
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We have high aspirations for the Villa, we want our club to be challenging for the top honours but the reality is that we wont.
Lets face it we are not going to compete with Manchester [blue or red], Chelsea or Arsenal and with Spurs and Liverpool making progress we are left in at best 5th / 6th but more realistc 7th / 8th. I would think that the board realise this and have settled for this and are cutting our cloth to fit.
Unless the top four dissapear into a European League then we we will be an also ran club hoping for cup win from time to time.
Unless of course the football governing bodies decide to cap wages etc... then we might have a chance again
Football constantly changes and evolves and we don't know what is around the corner. We could get new investment, as you say, that allows us to compete for the best players. Conversely, new rules might come in to establish new wage and transfer caps. We just don't know what is around the corner. One thing I am certain of, though, is that we have had sustained parts of our history when we were out performing and beating the Lpools, Manchesters, Arsenals etc. We are more than a big enough club in terms of location and history for this to start happening again.
The key is that we, as a club, never lose our ambition and desire to compete. Clearly we are hamstrung at the moment with Randy's situation but we just have to keep aiming as high as we can. As custodian of the club I would hope Randy is doing all he can to make sure Villa are competing at the highest level in the not too distant future, be that through employing dynamic leadership or securing new investment - preferably both.
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Randy is doing all he can to tighten us up financially and if he had a half decent offer he would sell tomorrow. IMO
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It's interesting as Chelsea were traditionally below us in the pecking order, but that massive investment from Roman propelled them ahead of us. He doesn't put as much in as he did before, because the success that initial investment created has evolved the club and it now generates more of it's own income, be it the CL money or shirt sales in Asia.
Traditionally, lots of clubs had their periods of dominance and also being also rans - was it 25 years between titles for Man Utd before 1993? The difference now, as we all know, is that money is so much at the heart of the game that once you have it, be it through rish owners or excellent marketing and commercialism, only someone with the same or more can challenge you. And unless you do get an oil billionaire going down that marketing/commercialism route is a hiding to nothing as outside your existing fans all anyone cares about is the glamour clubs the media fawns over, who already have the money.
So to me the whole 'where should Villa be' argument is pretty much redundant in the modern game as the true question that defines how good we are is how rich we are.
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Randy is doing all he can to tighten us up financially and if he had a half decent offer he would sell tomorrow. IMO
Is what I am thinking too.
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We have high aspirations for the Villa, we want our club to be challenging for the top honours but the reality is that we wont.
Lets face it we are not going to compete with Manchester [blue or red], Chelsea or Arsenal and with Spurs and Liverpool making progress we are left in at best 5th / 6th but more realistc 7th / 8th. I would think that the board realise this and have settled for this and are cutting our cloth to fit.
Unless the top four dissapear into a European League then we we will be an also ran club hoping for cup win from time to time.
Unless of course the football governing bodies decide to cap wages etc... then we might have a chance again
We are more than a big enough club in terms of location and history for this to start happening again.
You could say the same for the British Empire but it aint gonna happen.
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The fact is, though, that for about 98 of those 100 years we've been at best marginal contenders or at worst appalling. Take out League Cups and all the clubs I've mentioned have won more trophies than us during that time. We've never been more than best of the rest so to expect more than that as some sort of birthright and to complain when it doesn't happen is wide of the mark.
Difficult to argue with that, however I'd say we've been particulalry unfortunate in that, pretty much since the days of Rinder and co., we seem to have attracted a succession of spectacularly inept owners and board members who have in turn appointed a series of average or downright incompetent managers. In short we have failed to realise our potential for most of the last 100 years, but that doesn't mean the potential wasn't there. For example, Liverpool were a run of the mill second division team until Shankly and the Moores family tapped their potential. Sadly it is probably no longer enough to attract, say, 60,000 a week of the 2-3 million population within 30 miles of VP and be well run with a top manager. We'd also need an injection of at least 200 milion pounds in transfer fees plus 50-100 m a year extra on wages to have a cat in hell's chance of achieving top 3. The game has been killed stone dead as a competitive sport except for a select few.
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Not sure I agree with the average team for a hundred years.
We have had a succesion of Managers Taylor, Atkinson, Little, Gregory and Mon that have got us very close to being competing with the Top Teams in England. Everytime through mis-management we have shot ourselves in the foot and faded. How many other Clubs outside the Lpool, Chelsea, Manure Arsenal have been threatening to breakthrough as often as The Villa. Spurs and Everton maybe. The rest have had brief spells in the Sun but have then yo yod from mediocre to worse.
This shows me that we have or had the capability to play with the big boys. Maybe our time will come again. UTV
One league title, one European trophy and two FA Cups in that time suggest we have.
Better than that - Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Everton, Spurs, Leeds, Forest.
So we're not a top 5 club then Mr Woodall
In terms of trophies won, no. In terms of consistent league finishes, yes.
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Not sure I agree with the average team for a hundred years.
We have had a succesion of Managers Taylor, Atkinson, Little, Gregory and Mon that have got us very close to being competing with the Top Teams in England. Everytime through mis-management we have shot ourselves in the foot and faded. How many other Clubs outside the Lpool, Chelsea, Manure Arsenal have been threatening to breakthrough as often as The Villa. Spurs and Everton maybe. The rest have had brief spells in the Sun but have then yo yod from mediocre to worse.
This shows me that we have or had the capability to play with the big boys. Maybe our time will come again. UTV
One league title, one European trophy and two FA Cups in that time suggest we have.
Better than that - Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Everton, Spurs, Leeds, Forest.
So we're not a top 5 club then Mr Woodall
In terms of trophies won, no. In terms of consistent league finishes, yes.
Looking back we can say that we are a top side, however in the present time that we are in we are not a top side, we dont have the cash, the team or the marketing appeal to make us a top side.
I dont see top players / managers beating a path to join the Villa [just look at the manager situation we were in]
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We have high aspirations for the Villa, we want our club to be challenging for the top honours but the reality is that we wont.
Lets face it we are not going to compete with Manchester [blue or red], Chelsea or Arsenal and with Spurs and Liverpool making progress we are left in at best 5th / 6th but more realistc 7th / 8th. I would think that the board realise this and have settled for this and are cutting our cloth to fit.
Unless the top four dissapear into a European League then we we will be an also ran club hoping for cup win from time to time.
Unless of course the football governing bodies decide to cap wages etc... then we might have a chance again
We are more than a big enough club in terms of location and history for this to start happening again.
You could say the same for the British Empire but it aint gonna happen.
Well, I would say the rules and conditions for empire building are different to those of football club building (but no one can predict the future for certain so you never know...)
When it comes to football I actually believe that a big change in the game will come when the clubs from Asia, South America etc. decide they have had enough of allowing European clubs to dominate their markets and the progress and growth of their own clubs. I'm pretty sure punters in Hong Kong, for example, are going to say at some point: "Hold on, why am I supporting a football club half a world away when we have perfectly good football clubs here and plenty of money to make our clubs the biggest and best on the planet."
Now, if and when that day comes, it will be very interesting.
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Not sure I agree with the average team for a hundred years.
We have had a succesion of Managers Taylor, Atkinson, Little, Gregory and Mon that have got us very close to being competing with the Top Teams in England. Everytime through mis-management we have shot ourselves in the foot and faded. How many other Clubs outside the Lpool, Chelsea, Manure Arsenal have been threatening to breakthrough as often as The Villa. Spurs and Everton maybe. The rest have had brief spells in the Sun but have then yo yod from mediocre to worse.
This shows me that we have or had the capability to play with the big boys. Maybe our time will come again. UTV
One league title, one European trophy and two FA Cups in that time suggest we have.
Better than that - Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Everton, Spurs, Leeds, Forest.
So we're not a top 5 club then Mr Woodall
In terms of trophies won, no. In terms of consistent league finishes, yes.
Instead of looking at the last one hundred years of football why don't we compare the performances of those clubs during the first one hundred years of the game?
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Not sure I agree with the average team for a hundred years.
We have had a succesion of Managers Taylor, Atkinson, Little, Gregory and Mon that have got us very close to being competing with the Top Teams in England. Everytime through mis-management we have shot ourselves in the foot and faded. How many other Clubs outside the Lpool, Chelsea, Manure Arsenal have been threatening to breakthrough as often as The Villa. Spurs and Everton maybe. The rest have had brief spells in the Sun but have then yo yod from mediocre to worse.
This shows me that we have or had the capability to play with the big boys. Maybe our time will come again. UTV
One league title, one European trophy and two FA Cups in that time suggest we have.
Better than that - Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Everton, Spurs, Leeds, Forest.
So we're not a top 5 club then Mr Woodall
In terms of trophies won, no. In terms of consistent league finishes, yes.
Instead of looking at the last one hundred years of football why don't we compare the performances of those clubs during the first one hundred years of the game?
If you are trying to establish a list of 'The big clubs in English Football History' then looking back would establish Aston Villa as huge club.
However if assessing the present then we must do a 'where are we now' analysis including comparing ourselves to our competitors, if we do that they we are an also ran in terms of obtaining success.
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Not sure I agree with the average team for a hundred years.
We have had a succesion of Managers Taylor, Atkinson, Little, Gregory and Mon that have got us very close to being competing with the Top Teams in England. Everytime through mis-management we have shot ourselves in the foot and faded. How many other Clubs outside the Lpool, Chelsea, Manure Arsenal have been threatening to breakthrough as often as The Villa. Spurs and Everton maybe. The rest have had brief spells in the Sun but have then yo yod from mediocre to worse.
This shows me that we have or had the capability to play with the big boys. Maybe our time will come again. UTV
One league title, one European trophy and two FA Cups in that time suggest we have.
Better than that - Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Everton, Spurs, Leeds, Forest.
So we're not a top 5 club then Mr Woodall
In terms of trophies won, no. In terms of consistent league finishes, yes.
Instead of looking at the last one hundred years of football why don't we compare the performances of those clubs during the first one hundred years of the game?
Because in this context it's irrelevant. Nobody is going to support or join us because we were good in the 1890s.
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Not sure I agree with the average team for a hundred years.
We have had a succesion of Managers Taylor, Atkinson, Little, Gregory and Mon that have got us very close to being competing with the Top Teams in England. Everytime through mis-management we have shot ourselves in the foot and faded. How many other Clubs outside the Lpool, Chelsea, Manure Arsenal have been threatening to breakthrough as often as The Villa. Spurs and Everton maybe. The rest have had brief spells in the Sun but have then yo yod from mediocre to worse.
This shows me that we have or had the capability to play with the big boys. Maybe our time will come again. UTV
One league title, one European trophy and two FA Cups in that time suggest we have.
Better than that - Arsenal, Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Everton, Spurs, Leeds, Forest.
So we're not a top 5 club then Mr Woodall
In terms of trophies won, no. In terms of consistent league finishes, yes.
In terms of trophies won we could well consider ourselves top 5 but we aint won to many trophies over the last 80 yrs or so .
As for consistant top 5 finishers , when was this becouse it certainly aint in my time of following the Villa
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There's a difference between thinking we should, and expecting us to, compete, and seeing success as a birthright.
I see it used a lot on here but I don't think anyone really thinks the latter, do they? We haven't won anything for 15 years now.
I just want us to try to do the best we can, if we don't do that, then why are we all bothering?
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I just want us to try to do the best we can, if we don't do that, then why are we all bothering?
Because for at least 28,000 or so Villa fans there's no choice and the club know that. I'm not being cynical or anything, but for many many of us, we'll go to Villa no matter what.
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Thank goodness there's a Reasons to be Cheerful thread running alongside this one!
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Thank goodness there's a Reasons to be Cheerful thread running alongside this one!
The two threads are a microcosm of the H&V community. This thread is the blackened sky and lashing rain to the rainbow filled sunny skied Cheerful thread.... I know where I'm happier
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Thank goodness there's a Reasons to be Cheerful thread running alongside this one!
The two threads are a microcosm of the H&V community. This thread is the blackened sky and lashing rain to the rainbow filled sunny skied Cheerful thread.... I know where I'm happier
Garbage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhB4iuKjJLc&feature=related)
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I don't think this thread is all blackened skies and rain to be honest, it is maybe the reality check we all sometimes need to remind us of our current standing in the game but I'll take the 4th most decorated club in English Football History as a positive even if the majority of that was pre WW1. Never makes me happier than pissing on the chips of new Sky Football fans about what real history is about and that Chelsea have still only won the League the same number of times as Sheffield Wednesday and Newcastle United. If Citeh win it this year they'll only be level with Leeds, Huddersfield and Blackburn.