Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: Loxton01 on August 10, 2010, 11:50:06 PM
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The Evening Mail [so yes maybe a little bit out] did a spread of all the players bought and sold in the period of Martin O'neills tenure.
I totted it all up and the Spent is 121.5 and the Recouped is 39m [which excludes milner money]
That is a net spend of 82.5 million pounds
I think this simple stat shows how much our Chairman backed the manager
Wages were at 71million up 40% over the last two years. More than Spurs and way more than Everton
The more I think about this the more I realise Randy was right to question the manager and ask him to sell before he bought anymore players. How can he justify having more money and more importantly more money for wages
The General has posted this evening suggesting money is available but wages are the issue and particularly pointed out the issue regarding players not getting time on the pitch.
Martin O'neill bought all these players!!!! NRC, Sidwell, Luke Young, Shorey, Salifou, Harewood, Davies, Beye. Just think the annual wage for all those players. 20 million plus? Its incredible the amount of money are ex manager has wasted.
I would be interested to understand others thoughts!!!
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Above everything else, that has been the problem with MON not only at Villa, but everywhere he's managed. The wage bill is always at a much higher proportion of turnover when he leaves than it is when he arrives.
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Fully agree. He had to be accountable, I find it desperately disappointing that he chose to storm off like a spoilt child with the season just about upon us
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It's a ridiculous amount of money for a football team but it's not a lot of money for a top 6 Premier League team.
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What I fail to come to grips with is that MON has shown via Routledge that he's capable of understanding where a player he'd bought was not what he hoped and shipped out. So why the failure to do this with others?
Was it just the sheer number of players that he failed to integrate into the first team? Did he feel that having to fall on his sword so many times would damage his hard-earned reputation?
What I find most amusing is coments on here regarding most of MON's signings have been pretty much spot on. The contributors to this site really do know their stuff in the main whereas a man paid an enormous amount of money.....well, didn't.
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This will turn out to be in the best interests of the club, i doubt he would have lasted the season. He lost me when he bought Heskey, we were in a great position to get top four and he bought a donkey, not only that he changed the game plan to suit him.
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A net spend of roughly £20m a year and to acheive what he did is quite something. However, if the General is to be believed (and I've no reason not to) that is not the issue. The problem with paying high wages is that when you want to move players on, its very hard, especially in a downturn, as O'Neill was finding. I think this was the reason he couldn't sign anyone, as he couldn't free up his wage budget.
I was one of O'Neill's biggest fans, but if the General is right, and his story does seem to stack up, Then I have lost a huge amount of respect for MON, not only for throwing his toys out of the pram (something he specifically said he WOULD NOT do a couple of week ago) but more importantly for his timing.
Ego out of control.
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I don't see £20m a season over four years and repeated 6th place finishes as a great achievement. Had it been a couple of 4th places I'd have agreed though. 5th and 6th place are best of the rest positions really.
To use the same stats as the OP from the Mail, it looks as though for 2008-09 in isolation the net investment was £40m+. If O'Neill hadn't achieved the holy grail of CL football after that spend then perhaps Lerner felt disinclined to provide any more funds.
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I don't see £20m a season over four years and repeated 6th place finishes as a great achievement. Had it been a couple of 4th places I'd have agreed though. 5th and 6th place are best of the rest positions really.
To use the same stats as the OP from the Mail, it looks as though for 2008-09 in isolation the net investment was £40m+. If O'Neill hadn't achieved the holy grail of CL football after that spend then perhaps Lerner felt disinclined to provide any more funds.
Look how much Spurs and City, and Leeds and Newcastle before them spent, and see how many Champions League finishes they acheived.
£20m doesn't buy you a lot these days, and to go from almost being relegated to being within one game of Champions League within 2 seasons is still something, in my book anyway.
I think if you read the General's recent postings he says that funds were still available, but that wages had to come into line with turnover.
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Here's a detailed list of the ins & outs at Villa Park during the MoN era
LINK (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1301712/Buy-buy-Martin-How-ONeill-spent-120million-years-Aston-Villa.html)
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Trinity Middle said "£20m doesn't buy you a lot these days, and to go from almost being relegated to being within one game of Champions League within 2 seasons is still something, in my book anyway."
I agree but it pales into significance when we look at our history and see that we went from third division champions to European champions inside 11 years!
Probably impossible these days, where money buys success rather than good or astute management
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A couple of the so-called "dead wood" will possibly get a new lease of life under a new manager ie Luke Young & NRC.
We still need a squad & if your 1st 11 are all fit then it is the managers porogative to pick them.
Villa are traditionaly not an attractive proposition to potential targets-The fact that we pay good wages may counter balance this problem.
I agree that MON has made some terrible decisions in the transfer market but lets be honest-We aren't going to go anywhere in this day & age without spending big money.If Randy isn't prepared to put any more money in (money he charges the club intrest on & money he will recouperate if he was to sell)then lets not kid ourselves that we are showing ambition-We are competing with the likes of Sunderland,Fulham & Everton for the outside chance of sneaking into the Europa play offs which start in July every year.
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How much money could be raised by selling the players that are left? I'd imagine £80million could be recouped easily.
Figures can be used both ways.
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How much money could be raised by selling the players that are left? I'd imagine £80million could be recouped easily.
Figures can be used both ways.
you'd get approx 50 mill for the sale of Milner and Young
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And we think it is only us?
Chelsea - 2009 Champions and FA cup winners have released in the last 4 weeks
Ballack
Cole J
Deco
Carvallio
4 players that would get in most teams in the prem so not considered dead wood by any means - reported saving on weekly wage bill of £460, 000
I think every club bar one have the same issues and are addressing it - seems only MON did not see why he had to
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The irony is he moaned persistently about money ruining football but was happy to arrange wages well above the norm for a club of our status. By and large, for players even he seemed to deem unworthy of a regular game at this level.
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I think he has wasted money on players who are not good enough for the first team but with the wages they were being paid as left us having to be more prudent. I hope the new man get's a chance to buy with out any restrictions.
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And we think it is only us?
Chelsea - 2009 Champions and FA cup winners have released in the last 4 weeks
Ballack
Cole J
Deco
Carvallio
4 players that would get in most teams in the prem so not considered dead wood by any means - reported saving on weekly wage bill of £460, 000
I think every club bar one have the same issues and are addressing it - seems only MON did not see why he had to
That's a misleading argument as those players at Chelsea were out of contract so automatically came off the wagebill, while we need to find clubs to pay a fee and take over the wages of our players. Two totally different tasks.
I think for the progress we made on field, which to me is from relegation candidates to consistent top 6 and a cup final, £80m is not an over spend. I also think that if he had spent it as badly as some make out that simply would not have happened. Overall we got value for money both in terms of results on the pitch and the potential resale value of the squad.
However, it seems his downfall was not fees, but wages. In this I can understand the need to control the ratio to turnover, but we have to accept that in doing so it may be one step back in order to take two forward.
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If I keep buying expensive Whiskys ,expensive wines and outrageous bottle of Champagnes for my shop and they are just left on the shelf not being sold. My business will be in trouble. As I wont have the money eventually to buy for future stock to keep my business going.... I cant keep going on being stupid.
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You own the store, you make the ultimate decision. If you get somebody to run your store and he fooks up, I'd look at yourself, not blame him.
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didnt the owner of the store choose not purchase any more expensive stock before the current stock was moved off the very expensive to run shelves, and the bloke who runs the store got his nickers in a twist and storm out the front door?
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You own the store, you make the ultimate decision. If you get somebody to run your store and he fooks up, I'd look at yourself, not blame him.
exactly, thats how i feel about MON...
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I think the owner of the store reneged on promises to buy more stock with proceeds of items sold.
The shop keeper being a man of honour, felt he could no longer work at shop.
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which would sort of contradict what the store owners partner has stated....
although, if the other items on sale were purchased above market value and then had ridiculous maintenance costs, then you can understand the store owners reluctance to purchase more stock before the existing stock was shipped out...
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To be fair to MON If we sold Young and Milner the net spend would be about 30mil which wouldn't be too bad over 5 years. That said I don't want to be fair to him, we couldn't make a profit on almost every signing he's made.
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MON is not to blame for thinking that further net investment was required to stand still, let alone advance.
Randy is not to blame for doubting that such investment had a likelihood of producing results and anything like a return on the investment.
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MON wasted money by not using a squad system - the starting X1 named itself in th end which isn't that healthy.
I think Randy just got tipped over the edge by too many Sidwells costing not an inconsiderable amount of money to aqcuire and on decent wages only to be used very sparingly.
Both MON and Randy will have learnt from this - I just hope Randy will keep on investing and believing that his 'return on investment' will come in the form of the club's valuation when he sells out.
If Villa beomes a worldwide name in the next 10 years which we all hope it does, AVFC could be making Randy a great ROI.
Other than that, I hope Randy sells a portion of the club to a very wealthy investor who he lines up to put cash in now and then to buy Randy out totally in x years time.
Shared owneership, shared risk.
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Its interesting now the Emperor has been found without clothes how many of his followers still try to justify him
A man who was paranoid about people, players following his rules to the letter, a man who always said he never quit, ran away or left a job unfinished walked out with such short notice at a crucial time in the season because he couldn't seemingly follow the rules he'd agreed with his boss.
I'm sure when he's spoken to his advisor's he'll be back with renewed enthusiasm and proliferate excuses as to how he remains the Wonder some believe. Meanwhile,as when he left Leicester and Celtic, the person that follows in his wake will have the job of sorting through the mess left behind in conditions created by his profligacy and yet again, while he basks in the media spotlight, Randy will carry the can, and Villa fans will hope against hope the reaping of his past decisions is not too bad.
Now is the time to get behind the team, to offer the solidarity we are famous for in adversity and hope all those players he ostracised for not playing to his rules don't adopt his mentality and runaway, but push the favoured few to greater things.
If they do we might be amazed at the end result.
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And we think it is only us?
Chelsea - 2009 Champions and FA cup winners have released in the last 4 weeks
Ballack
Cole J
Deco
Carvallio
4 players that would get in most teams in the prem so not considered dead wood by any means - reported saving on weekly wage bill of £460, 000
I think every club bar one have the same issues and are addressing it - seems only MON did not see why he had to
That's a misleading argument as those players at Chelsea were out of contract so automatically came off the wagebill, while we need to find clubs to pay a fee and take over the wages of our players. Two totally different tasks.
I think for the progress we made on field, which to me is from relegation candidates to consistent top 6 and a cup final, £80m is not an over spend. I also think that if he had spent it as badly as some make out that simply would not have happened. Overall we got value for money both in terms of results on the pitch and the potential resale value of the squad.
However, it seems his downfall was not fees, but wages. In this I can understand the need to control the ratio to turnover, but we have to accept that in doing so it may be one step back in order to take two forward.
It still proves the fact that a club with a monumentally rich owner still drives to get the seldomly used high earners off the wage roll - free agents maybe but the clubs planned to run the contracts down to get them gone.
I am sure Randy knows we need a squad and that squad costs money - but it must be galling to pay out every week for players that basically turn up and train for it each week then to be told that we need more by a manager who clearly has no intention of playing them unless a serious injury effects the first X1 - in fact rumours are that even when injured he still maintained that senior pro's like Dunne, Milner would play injured before other got a chance
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To be fair to MON If we sold Young and Milner the net spend would be about 30mil which wouldn't be too bad over 5 years. That said I don't want to be fair to him, we couldn't make a profit on almost every signing he's made.
But to be even fairer to the original point, if we sell Milner and Young for around $50mill we would then have to buy replacements. Which would cost us how much?
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I think the difference is that Chelsea still recruited players and spent money while those contracts were being run down, which is something Randy wasn't prepared to do.
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A net spend of £80m over 4 years is not enough to turn a 16th placed team into one who should be assured of a CL place. A good return on that investment would be one that was able to challenge for 4th place and be in with a shout in the cups. Which would also give it a good foundation for pushing on with the right amount of further investment.
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But to be even fairer to the original point, if we sell Milner and Young for around $50mill we would then have to buy replacements. Which would cost us how much?
Well, you could argue with MON in charge that the replacements would cost £12m and £9.65m respectively, still leaving us with a net spend of around £52m.
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To be fair to MON If we sold Young and Milner the net spend would be about 30mil which wouldn't be too bad over 5 years. That said I don't want to be fair to him, we couldn't make a profit on almost every signing he's made.
But to be even fairer to the original point, if we sell Milner and Young for around $50mill we would then have to buy replacements. Which would cost us how much?
You could argue we have replacements with Albrighton and Downing.... Milner has mainly been a right sided midfielder for us. He never replaced Fat Baz. That said your point is valid.
It is an interesting point though, is there another player MON has bought that we could now make a profit on?
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A net spend of £80m over 4 years is not enough to turn a 16th placed team into one who should be assured of a CL place. A good return on that investment would be one that was able to challenge for 4th place and be in with a shout in the cups. Which would also give it a good foundation for pushing on with the right amount of further investment.
That's misleading though.
We still had players of the class of Barry, Mellberg, Gabby, Laursen, Bouma etc. That team should never have been 16th in the first place.
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Anyone know Saggyface's net spend at Tottenham?
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Old hangdog's spend will be balanced a bit by the sale of Berbatov, nut I'd be willing to bet it would still be 50 mill.
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Anyone know Saggyface's net spend at Tottenham?
In the same 4 year period Spurs have roughly the same net spend as us but were clearly starting from a much higher base as they've been investing at that level for longer.
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A net spend of £80m over 4 years is not enough to turn a 16th placed team into one who should be assured of a CL place. A good return on that investment would be one that was able to challenge for 4th place and be in with a shout in the cups. Which would also give it a good foundation for pushing on with the right amount of further investment.
That's misleading though.
We still had players of the class of Barry, Mellberg, Gabby, Laursen, Bouma etc. That team should never have been 16th in the first place.
We had some good players but lots of average ones, it was definitely a bottom 8 squad.
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Anyone know Saggyface's net spend at Tottenham?
In the same 4 year period Spurs have roughly the same net spend as us but were clearly starting from a much higher base as they've been investing at that level for longer.
Just interested to see what it was if anyone has an idea
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We still had players of the class of Barry, Mellberg, Gabby, Laursen, Bouma etc. That team should never have been 16th in the first place.
Three of which he lost for no incoming fees, which only goes to further justify the need for a significant net spend to get us to where we are now.
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A net spend of £80m over 4 years is not enough to turn a 16th placed team into one who should be assured of a CL place. A good return on that investment would be one that was able to challenge for 4th place and be in with a shout in the cups. Which would also give it a good foundation for pushing on with the right amount of further investment.
That's misleading though.
We still had players of the class of Barry, Mellberg, Gabby, Laursen, Bouma etc. That team should never have been 16th in the first place.
We had some good players but lots of average ones, it was definitely a bottom 8 squad.
Was it heck. The same side had finished 6th and 10th in the two seasons before. Players like Davis and Cahill might have been "average" but then the players who immediately replaced them like Sidwell and Knight/Davies are no better.
Nobody's denying that O'Neill had a good bit of rebuilding to do, but things weren't as bad as you're painting, and if he hadn't wasted a good 50% of his transfer budget, he'd maybe still have a job, and we'd be in the top 4 instead of Spurs.
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What also has to be considered is that MON took over from a very unpopular manager in an era of great optimism at the end of the Ellis soap opera years. Any competent manager would have found it almost impossible not to get into the top half dozen
Martin O'Neill's persona as the reincarnation of Brian Clough is a media myth spun for the consumption of armchair football watchers. If he is the incarnation of anybody he is the incarnation of Kevin Keegan - always provided that incarnation means the embodiment of somebody not yet dead.
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Martin O'Neill's persona as the reincarnation of Brian Clough is a media myth spun for the consumption of armchair football watchers. If he is the incarnation of anybody he is the incarnation of Kevin Keegan - always provided that incarnation means the embodiment of somebody not yet dead.
Sense, as ever from Mr Green Snr.
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A net spend of £80m over 4 years is not enough to turn a 16th placed team into one who should be assured of a CL place. A good return on that investment would be one that was able to challenge for 4th place and be in with a shout in the cups. Which would also give it a good foundation for pushing on with the right amount of further investment.
That's misleading though.
We still had players of the class of Barry, Mellberg, Gabby, Laursen, Bouma etc. That team should never have been 16th in the first place.
3 of them left for nothing and only me and O'Neill thought Gabby was any good at the time.
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M'ON did a reasonable job with the money spent and that's it. I think other manager's could have done it without falling out with so many players.
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Regardless of what your views on MON, i would say the 4 years he had here was one of the best periods of supporting Villa in the last 30 years.
For me only the Saunders/Barton period, and BFRs first 2 years were better.
What i would say about MON is that he has left us in a good state.A yardstick of a manager for me is how much would he get for the players he has bought, and i think MONs buys would if necessary leave us in positive territory.
Its over now, hes gone, who was right or wrong i don't really care, its time to move on, and know that we have a good basis for a very good young team, and the next appointment will hopefully carry us on.
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Regardless of what your views on MON, i would say the 4 years he had here was one of the best periods of supporting Villa in the last 30 years.
For me only the Saunders/Barton period, and BFRs first 2 years were better.
What i would say about MON is that he has left us in a good state.A yardstick of a manager for me is how much would he get for the players he has bought, and i think MONs buys would if necessary leave us in positive territory.
Its over now, hes gone, who was right or wrong i don't really care, its time to move on, and know that we have a good basis for a very good young team, and the next appointment will hopefully carry us on.
What about Little? I liked Gregory for a while as well.
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And me Percy.......whilst everyone else was having orgasms over Luke Moore, i always said Gabby would be better.
And the Fonz will be better than Gabby, and don't start me off on how good Delph should be.
We will look back in about 10 years time, and thank MON for buying Delph.
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For me 1st...Saunders/Barton 75-82 period.
2nd...BFR...1st 2 years...1994 magnificent.
3rd..MON and BLs first 2 years.
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3 of them left for nothing and only me and O'Neill thought Gabby was any good at the time.
With all due respect Percy, that really is bollocks. I personally wasn't sure about him but I was in a very small minority amongst the masses that thought Gabby was going to be the next Gary Lineker.
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Anyone who thinks spending £20m per season for 4 years is going to turn relegation fodder into champions league is deluded. MON did pretty well with this in mind. What i objected to was the shite football that was served up over the last 2 seasons at home. And i do agree that if the wages were out of hand they need sorting out, and i can understand the board being pissed off with MON bringing players in on these wages and not using them. I hope for the future that if we can get the wage bill to a more acceptable level, transfer funds will be available once again to any new manager. And hopefully this one will unearth some gems for decent fees and affordable wages, which was obviously something O'Neill was incapable of. It was like John Gregory all over again.
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Was talking to a mate of mine who's seen plenty of O Neill in the Wycombe days, and knows a someone who knows Martin, and he probably hit the nail on the head, as he puts it: You can't call his bluff. He probably made his ultimatum, Randy calls his bluff, and Martin walks. He's stubborn as they come, for better or worse.
I don't particularly agree about the "too big for his boots" angle. I don't think Martin is like Mourinho, and incredibly arrogant. He's got a bit of that in him, but he's just pig headed. That's done us good at times, and not so in others.
Still, his timing was shitty, but that's O Neill for you. He decided to walk, and did so. He leaves us in decent nick. To have genuinely become a competitive top 4 side, which was the initial plan, we'd need to invest a lot more cash for more quality, which wasn't do-able sadly. No fault of Randy's. He's ploughed the cash in and Martin has misused a fair wedge. He evidently feels that Randy should risk a bit more in order to bridge the gap. Maybe he should, maybe he shouldn't. I think Randy's right though. We don't want the club to go down the pan by overextending ourselves, that's for sure. And Randy's no idiot. He's put his own wealth in, but he's not gonna piss his money away willy nilly. At some juncture he wants to turn a profit. Fair enough.
It's just one of those football things. A butting of heads, with one head housing one of the most stubborn brains in the game.
Onwards and, at the very least I hope, sidewards.
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Anyone know Saggyface's net spend at Tottenham?
In the same 4 year period Spurs have roughly the same net spend as us but were clearly starting from a much higher base as they've been investing at that level for longer.
Just interested to see what it was if anyone has an idea
I make it just over £50m net since January last year.
Jan 2009
Jermain Defoe (£15m, Portsmouth), Wilson Palacios (£12m, Wigan), Pascal Chimbonda (£2.5m, Sunderland), Robbie Keane (£12m, Liverpool)
Total: £41.5m
Out: none
Total: £0
Net: £41.5
Summer 2009
In: Kyle Naughton (£8m, Sheffield United), Kyle Walker (£2m, Sheffield United), Peter Crouch (£9m, Portsmouth), Sebastian Bassong (£8m, Newcastle United), Niko Kranjcar (£2.5m, Portsmouth)
Total: £29.5m
Out: Didier Zokora (£7.75m, Sevilla), Chris Gunter (£1.75m, Nottingham Forest), Darren Bent (£10m, Sunderland), Pascal Chimbonda (£2m, Blackburn Rovers), Kevin-Prince Boateng (£4m, Portsmouth
Total: £25.5m
Net: £4m
Jan 2010
In: Younes Kaboul (£5m, Portsmouth)
Total: £5
Out: None
Total: £0
Net £5m
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For me 1st...Saunders/Barton 75-82 period.
2nd...BFR...1st 2 years...1994 magnificent.
3rd..MON and BLs first 2 years.
the start of Gregory's time in charge was pretty decent to say the least.
GT Mk1 too??
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A net spend of £80m over 4 years is not enough to turn a 16th placed team into one who should be assured of a CL place. A good return on that investment would be one that was able to challenge for 4th place and be in with a shout in the cups. Which would also give it a good foundation for pushing on with the right amount of further investment.
That's misleading though.
We still had players of the class of Barry, Mellberg, Gabby, Laursen, Bouma etc. That team should never have been 16th in the first place.
As much as I share your admiration for some of the players O'Neill inherited, the only reason we have a relatively high net spend is that the entire squad has brought in only £40m cash on the transfer market.
Of course, that low market value was fully reflected in the extremely low purchase price for the club of £64m. We still have Gabby, Carew and Petrov.
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Anyone who thinks spending £20m per season for 4 years is going to turn relegation fodder into champions league is deluded. MON did pretty well with this in mind. What i objected to was the shite football that was served up over the last 2 seasons at home. And i do agree that if the wages were out of hand they need sorting out, and i can understand the board being pissed off with MON bringing players in on these wages and not using them. I hope for the future that if we can get the wage bill to a more acceptable level, transfer funds will be available once again to any new manager. And hopefully this one will unearth some gems for decent fees and affordable wages, which was obviously something O'Neill was incapable of. It was like John Gregory all over again.
Spot on.
That's what gets on my tits, that whole "well, if you expected us to break the CL, you're deluded" thing.
I never thought he had what it takes to move us into the top four, but that wasn't the thing that made me lose it with him. Sixth is decent, after all.
It was precisely what you said, two entire years of absolutely shit football at home. Going to the match became predictable and boring. Maybe it was the euphoria of the preceeding two years, the first of the new regime, and that made it stand out more, but the best thing for me now is thinking that from Saturday, perhaps it won't be all quite so predictable.
As for signings, driving home tonight I heard Kenwynne Jones had signed for Stoke and found myself automatically start thinking "well, thank god for that, that means we won't be signing him" then had to remind myself that MON is gone, and so, hopefully, is the unimaginative, myopic transfer policy.
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3 of them left for nothing and only me and O'Neill thought Gabby was any good at the time.
With all due respect Percy, that really is bollocks. I personally wasn't sure about him but I was in a very small minority amongst the masses that thought Gabby was going to be the next Gary Lineker.
To be fair Dave, that wasn't the case when I said he'd better than Lennon when DOL was manager. Some said I was jumping the gun, and nearly everybody else took the piss. It was only after MON started picking him all the time that 'some' other posters saw sense. Except you of course. *wink*
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A net spend of £80m over 4 years is not enough to turn a 16th placed team into one who should be assured of a CL place. A good return on that investment would be one that was able to challenge for 4th place and be in with a shout in the cups. Which would also give it a good foundation for pushing on with the right amount of further investment.
That's misleading though.
We still had players of the class of Barry, Mellberg, Gabby, Laursen, Bouma etc. That team should never have been 16th in the first place.
As much as I share your admiration for some of the players O'Neill inherited, the only reason we have a relatively high net spend is that the entire squad has brought in only £40m cash on the transfer market.
Of course, that low market value was fully reflected in the extremely low purchase price for the club of £64m. We still have Gabby, Carew and Petrov.
Two of the players he mentioned had to retire through injury, one left with a year to go on his contract (and we still got 12m for him), one ran his contract down, and the other is still playing for us.
How much more would he have had to spend, had he not had those players to start with?
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3 of them left for nothing and only me and O'Neill thought Gabby was any good at the time.
With all due respect Percy, that really is bollocks. I personally wasn't sure about him but I was in a very small minority amongst the masses that thought Gabby was going to be the next Gary Lineker.
To be fair Dave, that wasn't the case when I said he'd better than Lennon when DOL was manager. Some said I was jumping the gun, and nearly everybody else took the piss. It was only after MON started picking him all the time that 'some' other posters saw sense. Except you of course. *wink*
I know you and a couple of others were bigging him up from reserve games (Mazrim was probably another), but I still seem to remember quite a buzz about him mainly from his goal scoring exploits in the Academy. Maybe I'm using a bit of hindsight, but from what I can remember he was picked as "the next big thing" by a lot of people.
I'll admit I was wrong though, I saw nothing to excite me that much. You'll be pleased to know that I have said the same about Delfouneso!
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A net spend of £80m over 4 years is not enough to turn a 16th placed team into one who should be assured of a CL place. A good return on that investment would be one that was able to challenge for 4th place and be in with a shout in the cups. Which would also give it a good foundation for pushing on with the right amount of further investment.
That's misleading though.
We still had players of the class of Barry, Mellberg, Gabby, Laursen, Bouma etc. That team should never have been 16th in the first place.
As much as I share your admiration for some of the players O'Neill inherited, the only reason we have a relatively high net spend is that the entire squad has brought in only £40m cash on the transfer market.
Of course, that low market value was fully reflected in the extremely low purchase price for the club of £64m. We still have Gabby, Carew and Petrov.
Carew and Petrov were bought after the sale to Lerner???
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A net spend of £80m over 4 years is not enough to turn a 16th placed team into one who should be assured of a CL place. A good return on that investment would be one that was able to challenge for 4th place and be in with a shout in the cups. Which would also give it a good foundation for pushing on with the right amount of further investment.
That's misleading though.
We still had players of the class of Barry, Mellberg, Gabby, Laursen, Bouma etc. That team should never have been 16th in the first place.
As much as I share your admiration for some of the players O'Neill inherited, the only reason we have a relatively high net spend is that the entire squad has brought in only £40m cash on the transfer market.
Of course, that low market value was fully reflected in the extremely low purchase price for the club of £64m. We still have Gabby, Carew and Petrov.
Carew and Petrov were bought after the sale to Lerner???
Petrov was bought before the sale and Carew was a swap with Baros. In effect he got them and Gabby within the £64m sale price.
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A net spend of £80m over 4 years is not enough to turn a 16th placed team into one who should be assured of a CL place. A good return on that investment would be one that was able to challenge for 4th place and be in with a shout in the cups. Which would also give it a good foundation for pushing on with the right amount of further investment.
That's misleading though.
We still had players of the class of Barry, Mellberg, Gabby, Laursen, Bouma etc. That team should never have been 16th in the first place.
As much as I share your admiration for some of the players O'Neill inherited, the only reason we have a relatively high net spend is that the entire squad has brought in only £40m cash on the transfer market.
Of course, that low market value was fully reflected in the extremely low purchase price for the club of £64m. We still have Gabby, Carew and Petrov.
Two of the players he mentioned had to retire through injury, one left with a year to go on his contract (and we still got 12m for him), one ran his contract down, and the other is still playing for us.
How much more would he have had to spend, had he not had those players to start with?
Are we talking at cross purposes?
O'Neill has replaced all of the ones that left within that £80m net spend.
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You're entirely missing the point by looking at the purchase price of the club as some realistic measure of the quality of the players we had.
Barry was turned into an England regular by O'Neill. The point is, he was a decent player in the first place, and we were fortunate to have him at the club. The material was there for MON to work with.
Carew was a swap for Baros. We were fortunate to have a striker valued sufficiently highly by someone to swap for Carew at the club.
Two players who were in our squad in 2006 are in the England squad tonight, and another one would be there were it not for injury.
There's not getting away from the fact that that was not a top six squad by any stretch of the imagination, but it was not a relegation squad either.
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A net spend of £80m over 4 years is not enough to turn a 16th placed team into one who should be assured of a CL place. A good return on that investment would be one that was able to challenge for 4th place and be in with a shout in the cups. Which would also give it a good foundation for pushing on with the right amount of further investment.
That's misleading though.
We still had players of the class of Barry, Mellberg, Gabby, Laursen, Bouma etc. That team should never have been 16th in the first place.
As much as I share your admiration for some of the players O'Neill inherited, the only reason we have a relatively high net spend is that the entire squad has brought in only £40m cash on the transfer market.
Of course, that low market value was fully reflected in the extremely low purchase price for the club of £64m. We still have Gabby, Carew and Petrov.
Two of the players he mentioned had to retire through injury, one left with a year to go on his contract (and we still got 12m for him), one ran his contract down, and the other is still playing for us.
How much more would he have had to spend, had he not had those players to start with?
Are we talking at cross purposes?
Do you know what?
I can't actually work it out. Its been a long day.
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3 of them left for nothing and only me and O'Neill thought Gabby was any good at the time.
With all due respect Percy, that really is bollocks. I personally wasn't sure about him but I was in a very small minority amongst the masses that thought Gabby was going to be the next Gary Lineker.
To be fair Dave, that wasn't the case when I said he'd better than Lennon when DOL was manager. Some said I was jumping the gun, and nearly everybody else took the piss. It was only after MON started picking him all the time that 'some' other posters saw sense. Except you of course. *wink*
To be fair, if you thought he was a winger comparable to Lennon then I'm not sure I'd back your logic either.
Two entirely different players. I'm aware that DOL funnelled him out to the wing in 05/06, but he was a forward in the youths when he was generating all sorts of hype. And his finish v Everton on his league debut was every inch a strikers goal.
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Two of the players he mentioned had to retire through injury, one left with a year to go on his contract (and we still got 12m for him), one ran his contract down, and the other is still playing for us.
How much more would he have had to spend, had he not had those players to start with?
Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious, but does the fact that he lost them through injury, plus Mellberg on a free, not mean he DID have to replace them? And for no incoming fees, does that not make the net spend look more impressive?
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What also has to be considered is that MON took over from a very unpopular manager in an era of great optimism at the end of the Ellis soap opera years. Any competent manager would have found it almost impossible not to get into the top half dozen
Martin O'Neill's persona as the reincarnation of Brian Clough is a media myth spun for the consumption of armchair football watchers. If he is the incarnation of anybody he is the incarnation of Kevin Keegan - always provided that incarnation means the embodiment of somebody not yet dead.
Several nails hit on the head there Brian. O'Neill's "greatness" is a media creation swallowed whole by far too many people.
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Regardless of what your views on MON, i would say the 4 years he had here was one of the best periods of supporting Villa in the last 30 years.
For me only the Saunders/Barton period, and BFRs first 2 years were better.
What i would say about MON is that he has left us in a good state.A yardstick of a manager for me is how much would he get for the players he has bought, and i think MONs buys would if necessary leave us in positive territory.
Its over now, hes gone, who was right or wrong i don't really care, its time to move on, and know that we have a good basis for a very good young team, and the next appointment will hopefully carry us on.
I disagree. Considering all but O'Neill worked under Ellis, I think most managers had as many moments some even won trophies. JG's win ratio was better, GT managed 2nd BL's and BFR's teams had some great exciting times.
None of them had the working conditions Mon did and had any of them left behind older highly paid players like Heskey, Petrov, Friedel, Beye and so on, or so many disafected high cost players like Coker, Young, Davies, some supporters would be using it as a whipping stick.
Sorry lame justifications mean little on a site like this were the majority know too much about football and Villa to be fooled by such views.
But keep trying