Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: London Villan on April 17, 2016, 07:24:01 AM
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If today isn't a day for navel gazing I don't know when is. So where we the key turning points in the last six or so years. I'll start with two...
Leicester v Villa, Sept 2015
If TacticsTim brings on a midfielder instead of Ayew we hold on and win. Ok we maybe don't do a Leicester and win the league (ahem), but it gives the new players an early confidence boost and the next three home games don't end up as three defeats...
League Cup Final, Feb 2010
Vidic is sent off, manu with 10 men, we realise we can win the cup. ONeil stays, we are in Europe, Aiden McGeady is signed and the next six years are just a horrible nightmare.
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Pretty sure it wasn't 2013.
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It's early!
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The TSM Mk 1 appointment. Our stocks were still high but that appointmentset a tone. Then not sacking Lambert sooner. They had numerous opportunities. That's when this squad came together and this attitude of accepting defeat and unwanted records was forged.
Then not taking a pragmatic approach and appointing Allardyce or someone similar instead of 'single list Tim'.
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Yep, we'd just finished 6th, 6th, 6th, 10th and we employed a manager who had been relegated 2 of the last 3 seasons. Utter shit from the ''board''.
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Only one turning point for me - DD selling up to Lerner.
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Yep, we'd just finished 6th, 6th, 6th, 10th and we employed a manager who had been relegated 2 of the last 3 seasons. Utter shit from the ''board''.
9th under Houllier wasn't it?
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Good shout. Looking back The McLeish appointment was a statement of intent.
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Was a statement alright. The yank didn't have a Fucking clue what he was doing. If the current setup now had been put in place earlier we wouldn't be in this mess. This utter disaster
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I do think Leicester was a big turning point though
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Yep, we'd just finished 6th, 6th, 6th, 10th and we employed a manager who had been relegated 2 of the last 3 seasons. Utter shit from the ''board''.
9th under Houllier wasn't it?
You're right it sure was.
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The biggest turning point is yet to come. Next season will be the real turning point. Whether for the good or not it will define us as a club for years to come because unfortunately that is what TV money has now done for teams who are relegated. The appointment of our new manager could well turn out to be the biggest turning point. Things can get better but there is also a chance that things could get worse.
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To me it was the point where the club policy changed from buying established premiership players for the 1st team to looking for promising players for the 1st team. We had a situation left over from MON where we were chock full of his journeymen reserves on big wages. Instead of getting rid of them and replacing them with the youth or promising players, we sold our best players and replaced them with the youth and promising players. I think most people wanted a smaller squad but they went about it totally the wrong way
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I do think Leicester was a big turning point though
I personally don't think so. Simply because tactics was and always will be a chancer, the Leicester game would of happened plenty of other times against other teams had he stayed, we would never have got anywhere with him. It wouldn't have heralded a great run from him, he would have fucked it up somewhere else along the lines because he's crap and another rookie, nothing, gobshit manager employed by us on the easy.
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Having given it some thought,i would go for O'Neil walking out on the club just five days before the new season kicked off as the biggest single turning point
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I think the turning point was sometime near the end of O'Neill's reign where Lerner lost interest and decided to run us on a relative shoestring. O'Neill walked and we've been on a downward spiral ever since.
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I do think Leicester was a big turning point though
However that may have saved us from relegation this season but where to next......
The whole thing is about Lerner's executives not getting to grip with the real issue and compounded errors that have let this happen.
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Bringing Tom Fox in to replace Faulkner.
No new contract for Lambert, no "shortlist of one", a comfortable mid-table finish in 14/15, a competent structure in place for summer 2015 with a good manager spending £60m or so wisely.
We make the most of the erratic form of most of the league and finish eighth. Sign Benteke back from Liverpool ready for our Leicester-style assault at the league title next season.
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Stoke....
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Was a statement alright. The yank didn't have a Fucking clue what he was doing. If the current setup now had been put in place earlier we wouldn't be in this mess. This utter disaster
Appointing McLeish had nothing to do with him being an American, and everything to do with him being daft.
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MON
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Sherwood was a chancer and so was Fox. Put them both together at the same time and disaster was always on the cards.
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MON
Bring back MON. Three top six finishes- European football and a League Cup stolen from us by a dodgy ref. That sounds like a good option right now. Martin O'Neill was not responsible for the players contracts. That's down to the administration.
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Not bringing in a decent keeper. Guzan was dropped after his shambolic performance at Man City. Tactics Tim played Given for the rest of the season but still started the season with Guzan. Why? Whoever made that call has to shoulder a large chunk of the blame for me.
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Telling Steve stride they didn't need his experience around the club the general already knew everything
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Moscow followed by Stoke the weekend after.
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The most recent turning point was January this year.
We were beginning to perform better and achieved 8 points from 6 matches. We were unlucky not to get more ( for example WBA were very lucky to draw with us). Garde had challenged some of the bigger wasters like Agbonlahor, in the belief that he would be backed in the transfer window as promised.
But the board decided to run up the white flag. They told Garde that none of the players he had identified wanted to join us, when some were not even approached. Garde was deflated, players like Agbonlahor had to be played, player power was quickly reestablished when it was seen that Garde was not being supported. Then Liverpool happened and the rest became inevitable.
I wonder how much Hollis had to do with the January decision of to spend?
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All our midfield getting early yellow cards in the Cup Final. It handed the game to the Arsenal and we capitulated. That day eleven months ago when we watched our team vaporise in front of our eyes was when we first looked over the edge into the abyss.
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Thinking instantly about this is that one of my highs was Ajax at home. Maybe that was my turning point.
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Hollis is an accountant malc. He would have been at the centre of the decision to force Remi Garde to carry the can. One of the most insightful comments made in this forum over the relegation year was when Ads described Steve Hollis as our de facto Administrator. Look at the last five months through that lens and it all becomes much clearer.
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Moscow followed by Stoke the weekend after.
The Stoke match is a good call.
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This season- for me it was Watford at home,
we didn't play badly and probably were the better team on the day but we lost, and that's the day I thought for the first time that we would go down
Last few years - was when MON walked, didn't realise at the time but that was the day Randy through the towel in and we went on to make bad decision after bad decision
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Telling Steve stride they didn't need his experience around the club the general already knew everything
Yes that decision should have set off the red alert that we got some dickheads in charge of our club.
It kinda makes it feel like a mafiosa choice, 'bump him off and we can get our own secret bluenoses in to well and truly fuck Aston Villa up', if that makes sense.
Unfortunately was we doing so well that this awful decision lost its significance?
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There was also the reported meeting between Lerner and Sir Graham that Lerner didn't bother attending.
Maybe in those early days, Sir Graham would have given Lerner wise council.
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This season- for me it was Watford at home,
we didn't play badly and probably were the better team on the day but we lost, and that's the day I thought for the first time that we would go down
Last few years - was when MON walked, didn't realise at the time but that was the day Randy through the towel in and we went on to make bad decision after bad decision
You're being kind to Lerner. I'd say the very reason O'Neill walked was because Randy informed him he'd had enough with the club and would reel in the spending.
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I believe that, when he bought the club, MON was presented to Lerner as a football managing genius - something we also hoped to be true. When MON resigned after being questioned about his player acquisitions/salaries/costs and then went on to win a legal case against the club, Lerner lost all love/enthusiasm for both the club and football. The rest, as they say, is history - a very sad history.
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Signing Emile Heskey.
On the 22 January, 2009, we were in the top 4 on 44 points from 22 games. We were handily placed, only 3 points behind Man U and Liverpool in joint 1st, a point behind Chelsea in 2nd, and 3 points ahead of Arsenal. Importantly, we were the form team at the time, unbeaten in 10 games in the League with 5 wins out of the last 6.
However, despite this, it was clear we needed a goalscorer to continue to fight at the top. A forward hadn't scored in 5 league games, with all the goals coming from midfielders, defenders or own goals from the opposition. John Carew had scored 5 goals in the league up to then, with Gabby on 9.
So what did we do? Signed a player who had never exactly been prolific apart from one season for Liverpool several years in the past, and who had managed the grand total of 3 goals for Wigan in the season up to then. The season before he'd scored 4 goals. So football mastermind O'Neill offers the 30 year old lump a huge three year contract on £65K a week, and after winning his first game for us in which ironically he scored, Carew is dropped, and we one game in the next 10 and finish 6th, even allowing Everton to overtake us.
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MON walking out is only a turning point because it left us exposed to Lerner's appalling grasp of the industry he was involved in.
I remember Barry looking to leave and that day really stuck in my craw. If we were pushing for top four and players still wanted to leave when would we ever crack it? The next season we managed to muddle through with James Milner emerging as the heartbeat of the team. We then sold him and ended up taking in Stephen Ireland. The night we went out of Europe, before the new manager was appointed, I remember there was this sense of foreboding. You could sense that things were not going to be as good as they had been. Houllier not being able to hit the ground running was a disaster.
Hiring McLeish was an utter, utter disaster.
However, for me, the summer of 2013 is the real tuning point. We simply did not invest in the squad to the extent that we should have and I blame Lerner, not Lambert. We finished the previous season strongly but we bought a whole load of nothing players the following summer: Tonev, Bacuna, Helenius, Tony Moon and, no offence to him intended, Libor Kozak. I have to say that was when I lost all faith in Lerner and became very strongly anti-Lerner.
We started that season so well with three very strong performances against Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool. Then the appalling lack of quality in the squad became very obvious after Okore and Benteke were injured. It was clear, for instance, that Tonev was utter shite. The penny dropped for me during a mind-numbingly boring 0-0 with Sunderland that November. We were shocking and I just thought 'we narrowly avoided relegation the past two years and we have signed rubbish players!'
From December on I was absolutely certain we were in a relegation dogfight and remember having a lot of arguments with people here who were sure we were a mid-table side making progress. I just could not see it. I felt the squad was worse than what had just finished 15th. To make the point, in 1995 we narrowly avoided relegation and reinvented ourselves in the following summer. Under Lerner, we narrowly avoided relegation several years in a row and simply went on to buy cheap players and cross out fingers.
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MON
Bring back MON. Three top six finishes- European football and a League Cup stolen from us by a dodgy ref. That sounds like a good option right now. Martin O'Neill was not responsible for the players contracts. That's down to the administration.
Yes, I agree with a lot of this. I am uncomfortable with the anti-MON line fans were sold in 2010 and which was accepted uncritically. Its only in the past 18 months I have begun to soften in my attitude to MON. It wasn't his responsibility to manage the finances. His failings were not scouting further afield etc. He obviously realised he was dealing with chancers in 2010 and the fact that they went ahead and signed that absolute fool Stephen Ireland after MON left shows you what calibre of people he was working for all along.
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The turning point was when Randy Lerner turned up at Ellis's office with a shiny Cleveland Browns helmet. Only now do we understand the symbolism in that gesture.
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The turning point was when Randy Lerner turned up at Ellis's office with a shiny Cleveland Browns helmet. Only now do we understand the symbolism in that gesture.
Yes.
Him and his shiny helmet!
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The turning point was when Randy Lerner turned up at Ellis's office with a shiny Cleveland Browns helmet. Only now do we understand the symbolism in that gesture.
Yes.
Him and his shiny helmet!
But brown!
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MON
Bring back MON. Three top six finishes- European football and a League Cup stolen from us by a dodgy ref. That sounds like a good option right now. Martin O'Neill was not responsible for the players contracts. That's down to the administration.
Yes, I agree with a lot of this. I am uncomfortable with the anti-MON line fans were sold in 2010 and which was accepted uncritically. Its only in the past 18 months I have begun to soften in my attitude to MON. It wasn't his responsibility to manage the finances. His failings were not scouting further afield etc. He obviously realised he was dealing with chancers in 2010 and the fact that they went ahead and signed that absolute fool Stephen Ireland after MON left shows you what calibre of people he was working for all along.
Sorry but it's hindsight that leads me to my opinion.
What about selling our youngsters - notably Cahill, Davis who now both captain their country - and replacing them with such quality as ReoCoker, Sidwell, Knight........ They all cost an arm and a leg in weekly salaries etc and have set the world alight since we eventually managed to get rid - not. MON's record since he left us hasn't exactly confirmed him as a good manager let alone a great one as we all, including Lerner, wanted to believe.
He blew a large amount of money on mediocrity and then left us in the lurch days before the season began when this was drawn to his attention and it was suggested that some of this had to be shifted if he wanted to spend yet more.
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Yes, I agree MON had his limitations.
I'm just saying that the blame isn't on him. If he was such a bad manager, selling good young players etc, why didn't they sack him the May 2010 and bring in somebody decent when the market was better?
That situation was damaging because the powers that be at villa mishandled it. They should have insisted cash only for Milner, Man City had enough of it that we didn't need to take troublesome cast-off, that money then should have been ring-fenced to fill the massive Barry/Milner shaped hole in our midfield. Then Houllier, McLeish not backing Lambert...the shortlist of one. It points to deep-rooted incompetence before, and after MON left. Lerner deserves way, way more blame for our decline than one manager.
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Milner should never have been sold full stop. You know you're in trouble when a club buys and sells players when there isn't even a manager at the club.
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Yes, I agree MON had his limitations.
I'm just saying that the blame isn't on him. If he was such a bad manager, selling good young players etc, why didn't they sack him the May 2010 and bring in somebody decent when the market was better?
Because as you might have noticed, the people in charge are rubbish at running football clubs.
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Moscow followed by Stoke the weekend after.
This
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This season- for me it was Watford at home,
we didn't play badly and probably were the better team on the day but we lost, and that's the day I thought for the first time that we would go down
Last few years - was when MON walked, didn't realise at the time but that was the day Randy through the towel in and we went on to make bad decision after bad decision
You're being kind to Lerner. I'd say the very reason O'Neill walked was because Randy informed him he'd had enough with the club and would reel in the spending.
Maybe I am, and you might be right
But either way that was the turning point of our decline into utter shitness
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This topic is too wide. For example turning points in over overall demise can be , Moscow/Stoke matches, sales of likes of Milner and Young, MON f ing off followed by Lerner u turn and subsequent appointments etc etc.
This season Benteke and Delph going, Leicester away, appointment of a coach, Garde as wrong man at the wrong time, and no signings in January. It's and endless catalogue of disaster.
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I wrote something about this in H &V a couple of years ago. I think I pinpointed it to the game at Chelsea in 2010 when Lamoard scored in first half stoppage time to make it 2-1. We ended up losing 7-1 and it was the game when O'Neill allegedly insisted Milner played even though he was injured. It has been pretty much all downhill from there.
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This topic is too wide. For example turning points in over overall demise can be , Moscow/Stoke matches, sales of likes of Milner and Young, MON f ing off followed by Lerner u turn and subsequent appointments etc etc.
This season Benteke and Delph going, Leicester away, appointment of a coach, Garde as wrong man at the wrong time, and no signings in January. It's and endless catalogue of disaster.
You're right, it's just one big list of fuck ups, terrible decisions and lack of planning that has put us where we are now.
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I think it went wrong when Houlier got ill and then demanded a settlement.
The Following RL fuck you appointment of TSM1 heralded Nzogbia and a continuing demise.
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The draw against Stoke should never have had the impact that it did. We should have been much stronger mentally. And in a funny way had we been 2 down and come back to draw I think we'd have been much better off even if the result was the same. But in the end we folded like a cheap tent.
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At the end of the Houllier season is when i reckon Lerner lost interest. Previously we had finished 6th 3 times and when O'Neil walked he probably thought with a new manager and a bit of fine tuning we would push on. When we actually went backwards instead Lerner gave up.
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MON
Bring back MON. Three top six finishes- European football and a League Cup stolen from us by a dodgy ref. That sounds like a good option right now. Martin O'Neill was not responsible for the players contracts. That's down to the administration.
Yes, I agree with a lot of this. I am uncomfortable with the anti-MON line fans were sold in 2010 and which was accepted uncritically. Its only in the past 18 months I have begun to soften in my attitude to MON. It wasn't his responsibility to manage the finances. His failings were not scouting further afield etc. He obviously realised he was dealing with chancers in 2010 and the fact that they went ahead and signed that absolute fool Stephen Ireland after MON left shows you what calibre of people he was working for all along.
You have hit the nail firmly on the head. Experienced managers do not walk unless there is some serious fuckwitery going on behind the scenes. In my years it has happened theee times Saunders,Little and O'Neil. It has always been the precursor for some pretty grim times.
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I don't think there's been any turning points as such, more an accumulation of errors upon errors. Some too ridiculous to be true, but sadly they are.
Anyway, we can analyse for all we want, it won't change a thing. All we can hope is that finally the club have learned from those mistakes & that the road back has already started.
I think we all need to draw a line under what's gone and show the world, any future manager / players what a wonderful football club Aston Villa are, despite the shit we are in. The fight back starts today & there's no room for those who are not committed.
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08/09 was massive. Especially the January as others pointed out.
On the 8th Feb there were 13 games to go. We were 7 points clear of Arsenal, 11 ahead of Everton. However, we had issues. Only 5 home wins from 12, Laursen had recently played his last game, only 5 times in the league all season did we win by more than 1 goal. We needed more firepower but as Risso says, we signed Heskey. Our stock was really high at the time, we could have cherry picked any number of players but didn't.
We won 2 more games all season out of 13 league games and 3 cup games. During that run Gabby scored once, Heskey scored once. We finished 10 points behind Arsenal, a point behind Everton. And our chance had gone. Despite having a good 09/10 we were never in such a strong position again.
None of that is why we are now a division 2 side, but I think it was a massive turning point in our history. Had things been a bit different back then, we score one of the 100 chances at home to Wigan instead of a 0-0. Laursen doesn't get crocked, we sign Bent instead of Heskey, we don't blow it against Stoke etc who knows what might have happened.
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I am not committed. I am Prepared. Prepared for whatever the future holds. I suspect that it is going to be no more pretty than what has gone before. Bring it on.
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Appointing a Manager with a history of heart problems who then had the gall to claim off us when he inevitably fell ill again, did we actually take medical advice about his condition before we employed him, if so why did we not sue for bad advice?. From there cut to the foolish appointment of Mcleish and the rest is history - and so were we.
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There have been many things that have gone wrong and I don't think you can pin-point one thing and say it was the turning point.
For me, one of the most telling things has been our transfer policy when we have sold our better players. As an example, take Benteke last year. We received the best part of £30m for him and our survival the previous seasons was nearly entirely due to his goals. It was clear that we could not replace his goals from one player unless we spent all the money on one player. that was never going to happen, even if we could have persuaded someone to come. So, the plan should have been to spread the goals around the forwards and midfield. Our transfer policy did not match that though.
You can go back over the years and look at when we sold our better players and look how we wasted the money with no plan to deal with the loss, just spend the money - Ireland + £s for Milner, Young + £s for Bent (they knew Young was going to Utd.), N'Zogbia + £s for Downing (having already sold Young) etc. etc.
Our managers since MON's largesse on wages have lost sight of the fact that it is a team game and you have to be strong across that team. We have bought too many 'icing on the cake' type players, without have the players around them to allow them to play their type of game, which then made them the weakest links in the team. I think McLeish's, Lambert's and Sherwood's approach to buying was akin to a kid in a sweet shop, with no real plan.
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many turning points , beating liverpool at wembley last season , not taking full allocations for away matches , closing the adventurers and not giving albrighton a new contract
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Yes, I agree MON had his limitations.
I'm just saying that the blame isn't on him. If he was such a bad manager, selling good young players etc, why didn't they sack him the May 2010 and bring in somebody decent when the market was better?
Because as you might have noticed, the people in charge are rubbish at running football clubs.
Thanks, you have reinforced my point about Lerner's shitness better than I ever could ;)
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Yes, I agree MON had his limitations.
I'm just saying that the blame isn't on him. If he was such a bad manager, selling good young players etc, why didn't they sack him the May 2010 and bring in somebody decent when the market was better?
Because as you might have noticed, the people in charge are rubbish at running football clubs.
Thanks, you have reinforced my point about Lerner's shitness better than I ever could ;)
"Your point"? Your point looked to me like an unwarranted exonoration of O'Neill.
I don't think that Lerner's incompetence is really a point that anybody needs to make or have reinforced. It's a fully accepted truth.
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Yes, I agree MON had his limitations.
I'm just saying that the blame isn't on him. If he was such a bad manager, selling good young players etc, why didn't they sack him the May 2010 and bring in somebody decent when the market was better?
Because as you might have noticed, the people in charge are rubbish at running football clubs.
Thanks, you have reinforced my point about Lerner's shitness better than I ever could ;)
"Your point"? Your point looked to me like an unwarranted exonoration of O'Neill.
I don't think that Lerner's incompetence is really a point that anybody needs to make or have reinforced. It's a fully accepted truth.
No, I was making the point that responsibility for our problems is full square on Lerner's shoulders. Citing MON as a major source of our problems this half decade is ridiculous. I mentioned his limitations as a manager but balanced that by saying the events that have transpired since 2010 have caused me to re-evaluate what happened that summer.
It's an accepted truth that Lerner's incompetent? For years I have seen people embrace the latest 'plan': 'young and hungry', 'old and experienced', Tom Fox and now the belated changes at board level.
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Every change or decision the club has made since MON walked out have been made from a position of weakness. It's been compounded by the ineptitude of those making the decisions & the increasingly limited options available as our position deteriorated.
For all MON's faults, and there's plenty, he's been the only person at the club during Lerner's reign, who was fit to run a football club.
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I am surprised nobody has mentioned Lerner's divorce in 2011 and the family taking over the 'money'.
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Also, the Macron curse....Bolton down this season plus Villa!
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I think it went wrong when Houlier got ill and then demanded a settlement.
I agree to an extent. I watched the BBC clip today on "where did it go wrong for the Villa" and they showed the PC where Houllier was introduced and my reaction was "wow we did appoint a big Manager to replace MON something that we could do and now we are looking at who??"
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TSM1
The bomb squad
Bradford City
Culverhouse & Karsa
TSM2 given another contract.
The shameful record books being shattered.
Yesterday.
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Leicester away was the turning point this season.
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Watching their game today I thought the same, for both teams.
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Having given it some thought,i would go for O'Neil walking out on the club just five days before the new season kicked off as the biggest single turning point
Not for me. We still had a half decent squad of players at that time although we had not played well for at least a season before that - MON had run out of ideas by that time and we were far too predictable.
The appointment of TSM1 marked the beginning of the end in my view. Not only did we acquire a manager with a deplorable track record in management, but the Board were fully aware of the animosity which the appointment would create with the fans and went ahead anyway. I always felt that Lerner appointed TSM1 because he liked him personally and not because he was a winner. This mistake was to be repeated with TSM2 and Tim.
Given the financial restraints which all managers would face post-MON, the appointment of decent chaps as manager was always going to mean perpetual struggle.
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Yes, I agree MON had his limitations.
I'm just saying that the blame isn't on him. If he was such a bad manager, selling good young players etc, why didn't they sack him the May 2010 and bring in somebody decent when the market was better?
Because as you might have noticed, the people in charge are rubbish at running football clubs.
Thanks, you have reinforced my point about Lerner's shitness better than I ever could ;)
"Your point"? Your point looked to me like an unwarranted exonoration of O'Neill.
I don't think that Lerner's incompetence is really a point that anybody needs to make or have reinforced. It's a fully accepted truth.
No, I was making the point that responsibility for our problems is full square on Lerner's shoulders. Citing MON as a major source of our problems this half decade is ridiculous. I mentioned his limitations as a manager but balanced that by saying the events that have transpired since 2010 have caused me to re-evaluate what happened that summer.
It's an accepted truth that Lerner's incompetent? For years I have seen people embrace the latest 'plan': 'young and hungry', 'old and experienced', Tom Fox and now the belated changes at board level.
I agree. It was very late in the day when Lerner was accepted as an incompetent buffoon not fit to run a football club and he had a lot of support from fans till relatively recently. I still shudder when I hear the dreaded "young and hungry" mentioned. So many of us fell for that one.
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More recently, the exit door this summer was telling. Not only the Delph fiasco but the speed at which Benteke made it clear he would be off, the unwillingness of Cleverly to engage over a contract, same with Vlaar and the lack of a plan B when we couldn't get Begovic to join us. The messages coming out of that muddle were that players with any sort of kudos didn't want to be near the place and any hope of a decent spine evaporated
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Stalingrad or El Alamein.
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Week beginning 23rd February 2009. Things have gone downhill ever since then.
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many turning points , beating liverpool at wembley last season , not taking full allocations for away matches , closing the adventurers and not giving albrighton a new contract
Half and half scarves, the banning of conkers in schools, the demise of white dog poo and Coldplay.
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many turning points , beating liverpool at wembley last season , not taking full allocations for away matches , closing the adventurers and not giving albrighton a new contract
Yep, not taking an extra 1,000 to away games is where it all went wrong.
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The turning point was when Randy Lerner turned up at Ellis's office with a shiny Cleveland Browns helmet. Only now do we understand the symbolism in that gesture.
Not being funny, no-one can deny that Randy has proven to be a disaster, but which of the alternatives would you have gone for?
Ray Ranson? The man who facilitated Ridsdale bankrupting Leeds so he could earn a few quid, then pitched up at Coventry and helped drive them almost to extinction?
The 50 year old lawyer still living at home with his mother?
Doug who'd run out of money that wasn't his own, and had recognised that he couldn't really hack it in the jungle of modern football anymore?
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Another landmark of shitness was Lambert's first transfer dealings when he signed the likes of Westwood, Lowton, Bennett, Bowery etc and classed them as "young and hungry"in a desperate PR move. Went to see them at a pre-season friendly at Forest and I recoiled in horror at just how shit they were. I just couldn't believe we signed so many players who'd be clearly out of their depth in the Premier League and I think that's the very moment I started to worry about relegation.
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I do think Leicester was a big turning point though
No it wasn't - the natural rules of statistical variation produced a performance that flattered a very poor team which was patently a relegation candidate from day 1.
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Hollis is an accountant malc. He would have been at the centre of the decision to force Remi Garde to carry the can. One of the most insightful comments made in this forum over the relegation year was when Ads described Steve Hollis as our de facto Administrator. Look at the last five months through that lens and it all becomes much clearer.
Brian
Hollis might be an accountant and he maybe our de facto administrator too. But in that role he's realised what most of us know, that the virtually everything in the management of the club was broke when he pitched up. He correctly realised that the whole structure needed sorting before we could move forward.
Things were simply so far gone, that just about the only decision the club got right in the past few years was not to spend massively in January.
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Also, the Macron curse....Bolton down this season plus Villa!
This year's Henson.
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I do think Leicester was a big turning point though
No it wasn't - the natural rules of statistical variation produced a performance that flattered a very poor team which was patently a relegation candidate from day 1.
We'd played reasonably well for a side trying to settle in up to the Leicester game. The Leicester game was the catalyst for this season's progressively poorer form.
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Turning point.
If I was to pick one I'd say that Stoke game in 2009 when we were 2 nil up and got pegged back. We would have been 8 points ahead of a mentally fragile Arsenal and may have had enough momentum to take us through.
Thereafter a litany of errors. Not sacking O'Neil at the end of that season and giving him another huge pot of money for transfers and wages.
This is something I would never have advocated - the ultimate wise after the event.
Not binning him at the end of 2009-10
Having Faulkner as CEO
Not picking Hughes as replacement manager in 2011 summer
Picking the one we did who's player recruitments is probably the worst of all time in terms of bang for buck (I include his own recruitment, wages and severance pay on top).
Not sacking Lambert at the end of 2013-14 or even before the end of the season and then seeing his signings that summer.
Giving him a new contract in Sept 2014 - he'd done nothing to warrant it.
Having Fox as CEO and his False Narrative crap
The rest Sherwood, Garde etc.. are the symptoms of the utter shiteness. I'll cut Sherwood some slack in retrospect, though his mates in the media talk utter shite about his involvement in player recruitment
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It's got to be selling Benteke for me. Selling a goalscorer who had kept us up for 2 seasons and not replacing him with an established striker sealed our fate. What everyone said would happen to us happened to us.
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Turning point.
If I was to pick one I'd say that Stoke game in 2009 when we were 2 nil up and got pegged back. We would have been 8 points ahead of a mentally fragile Arsenal and may have had enough momentum to take us through.
http://www.skysports.com/football/news/12799/10236123/aston-villas-fall-and-fall-from-top-four-challenges-to-premier-league-relegation
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Signing Darren Bent to keep us in the top division rather than signing him to get close to winning it.
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Turning point.
If I was to pick one I'd say that Stoke game in 2009 when we were 2 nil up and got pegged back. We would have been 8 points ahead of a mentally fragile Arsenal and may have had enough momentum to take us through.
http://www.skysports.com/football/news/12799/10236123/aston-villas-fall-and-fall-from-top-four-challenges-to-premier-league-relegation
The fees were big but it was more the wages and the fact most of them had much lower or zero sell on value.
Downing, Young, Milner, Barry we got good money for. The others not
It was very much Gregory Mk II with better (alebit limited) style of football.
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The TSM Mk 1 appointment. Our stocks were still high but that appointmentset a tone. Then not sacking Lambert sooner. They had numerous opportunities. That's when this squad came together and this attitude of accepting defeat and unwanted records was forged.
I would agree with this one. It's the point where Villa declared to the world what the level of their ambition now was.
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Overall - Moscow/Stoke
This season - Leicester away substitution/collapse
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The turning point was when Randy Lerner turned up at Ellis's office with a shiny Cleveland Browns helmet. Only now do we understand the symbolism in that gesture.
Not being funny, no-one can deny that Randy has proven to be a disaster, but which of the alternatives would you have gone for?
Ray Ranson? The man who facilitated Ridsdale bankrupting Leeds so he could earn a few quid, then pitched up at Coventry and helped drive them almost to extinction?
The 50 year old lawyer still living at home with his mother?
Doug who'd run out of money that wasn't his own, and had recognised that he couldn't really hack it in the jungle of modern football anymore?
Gillette and Hicks.
Michael 'Broadband' Neville.
Sven.
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I don't think there's been any turning points as such, more an accumulation of errors upon errors. Some too ridiculous to be true, but sadly they are
I agree, there has been a gradual disintegration of all aspects, including the very basic.
Since the start of 2011-12 we have won 40 games in the PL. In that period, the number of corner kicks we've taken that have found the head of one of our own players cannot be much greater than double that at the most. That's just basics and we can't do it right.
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I do think Leicester was a big turning point though
No it wasn't - the natural rules of statistical variation produced a performance that flattered a very poor team which was patently a relegation candidate from day 1.
We'd played reasonably well for a side trying to settle in up to the Leicester game. The Leicester game was the catalyst for this season's progressively poorer form.
Sorry - can't agree with that.
The first four games showed the glaring weaknesses that were evident from the previous season hadn't been addressed, ie not being able to control games in midfield or create chances - plus we'd lost our get out of jail card in Benteke. The writing was on the wall for all to see. Leicester didn't change anything.
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You always know you are in trouble when you can only draw 2-2 at home to Sunderland, previously our favourite whipping boys of recent years.
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2012-13
- Chelsea 0-8
- The 0-15 over three matches in late 2012
- Bradford City
- Millwall
This sequence set the tone for the acceptance of, and apathy towards, abject failure and performances.
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Someone mentioned this on a similar thread more eloquently than I am about to but having Acorns on the shirt strikes me as representing something of an alarm bell with the benefit of glorious hindsight. It's all well and good basking in the glow of the moral high ground it afforded us at the time and Randy Lerner was widely feted for not accepting whatever sponsorship deals were on the table on the grounds that they were not what he thought the club was worth. However, the money on offer might have proved the difference between signings like Davies and Beye and Shorey and signing an entire new back four 12 months later.
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2012-13
- Chelsea 0-8
- The 0-15 over three matches in late 2012
- Bradford City
- Millwall
This sequence set the tone for the acceptance of, and apathy towards, abject failure and performances.
Lambert should have been booted into oblivion after that result. I never wanted a manager more sacked than him after that. Had we done so I doubt the rest would have transpired.
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The turning point was when Randy Lerner turned up at Ellis's office with a shiny Cleveland Browns helmet. Only now do we understand the symbolism in that gesture.
Not being funny, no-one can deny that Randy has proven to be a disaster, but which of the alternatives would you have gone for?
Ray Ranson? The man who facilitated Ridsdale bankrupting Leeds so he could earn a few quid, then pitched up at Coventry and helped drive them almost to extinction?
The 50 year old lawyer still living at home with his mother?
Doug who'd run out of money that wasn't his own, and had recognised that he couldn't really hack it in the jungle of modern football anymore?
Gillette and Hicks.
Michael 'Broadband' Neville.
Sven.
I quite fancied the Venezuelan billionaire, Gustavo Cisneros. He sounded like a decent, honourable, incredibly rich sort of fella
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Someone mentioned this on a similar thread more eloquently than I am about to but having Acorns on the shirt strikes me as representing something of an alarm bell with the benefit of glorious hindsight. It's all well and good basking in the glow of the moral high ground it afforded us at the time and Randy Lerner was widely feted for not accepting whatever sponsorship deals were on the table on the grounds that they were not what he thought the club was worth. However, the money on offer might have proved the difference between signings like Davies and Beye and Shorey and signing an entire new back four 12 months later.
You might be right, but I suspect we'd have just ended up with another couple of Harewood and Shorey types clogging up the squad and wage bill.
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Signing Emile Heskey.
On the 22 January, 2009, we were in the top 4 on 44 points from 22 games. We were handily placed, only 3 points behind Man U and Liverpool in joint 1st, a point behind Chelsea in 2nd, and 3 points ahead of Arsenal.
If not just Heskey, then that transfer window. Arsenal brought in Arshavin, Spurs brought in Defoe and Robbie Keane (and sold Bent 8 months later) and it was Man City's first winter window spending £40+ million.
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Another one I thought of which no one has mentioned before...August 1st or whenever it was when we signed Gestede.
Adebayor was supposed to sign on the same day remember. I know he's a mentalist but he's had some decent games for Palace including yesterday when he played a major point in the goal.
Sherwood had coaxed good form out of him at Spurs and we desperately needed an experienced premier league frontman to replace Benteke.
As much as it's been painful to watch Gestede for a lot of this season he has had some decent cameos off the bench, Saturday, at home to Leicester and also off the bench at Newcastle over xmas.
So I don't think things would've been so dismal with Adebayor as the experienced frontman upfront with Gestede in reserve. Probably would've kept Sherwood in a job until xmas.
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2012-13
- Chelsea 0-8
- The 0-15 over three matches in late 2012
- Bradford City
- Millwall
This sequence set the tone for the acceptance of, and apathy towards, abject failure and performances.
Lambert should have been booted into oblivion after that result. I never wanted a manager more sacked than him after that. Had we done so I doubt the rest would have transpired.
Lerner probably didnt know we had played, let alone the aggregate scores.
But yes, that run was a collection of shocking and sackable performances.
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I think we may have just hit another turning point, going from steady decline into outright nosedive.
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turning point of the QE2 and lescotts backside no contest.
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Another turning point today with the news of King and Bernstein quitting. No idea what it means but we all thought it was good them being at the club. So from being what should have been a good turning point it has become a terrible one.
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The introduction of the maximum wage in 1901. We've never dominated football since.
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Right now founding the Football League seems like a mistake.
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A turning point from a season gone by would be when we were top of the league at Xmas. What we needed was a big investment to get in a top striker and maybe a midfielder. DD didn't sanction any of it.
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A turning point from a season gone by would be when we were top of the league at Xmas. What we needed was a big investment to get in a top striker and maybe a midfielder. DD didn't sanction any of it.
Those were the days!
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A turning point from a season gone by would be when we were top of the league at Xmas. What we needed was a big investment to get in a top striker and maybe a midfielder. DD didn't sanction any of it.
Those were the days!
Oh for a season like this!