Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: supertom on October 21, 2012, 09:34:22 AM
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Was just thinking about 03-04. GT had just narrowly avoided relegation with a really outdated brand of football and left a squad still weighted with previous managers overinflated signings as well as his own uninspired and average signings.
In comes O Leary. Good rep (Leeds finances aside). I was excited too. A promise of a better brand of football and a good record with young players.
The first few months of the season were then a struggle. We were still hungover from relegation scrapping. There were some good things. We played the ball better. Players seemed more interested. Granted it got to Decemeber time and if I recall we were right down in the arse end of the table, where we didn't want to be.
Then something clicked and we just started to work. Obviously from then on results came with performances and we won games and played some decent stuff.
January came in and O Leary made an inspired signing in Nol Solano. He and Angel gelled very well too.
I know I've just used the word positive and O Leary in the heading. But ignoring the next two seasons and focusing on the first, it was good. Hopefully we'll see something similar this time out. I'm just hoping that like then, something clicks, the results start coming. DOL almost got us into the top four, half a season after we were struggling with another relegation scrap.
I think Lambert can long term really take us places. He doesn't have the arse headed arrogance and ignorance of O Leary or O Neill, and that will hold him in good stead. So he'll get the time. More so, I hope we have a couple of games where our season suddenly turns round. I think the Wolves game in O Leary's season was one?? I just remember we'd been very unlucky in a few games and someone was due a pasting and then we twatted them.
Similarly after O Neills unbeaten start he had that long mid stretch of 15 odd games winless and then we looked in trouble again. Then we had a good late run and finished comfortably mid-table.
I reckon Lambo's got it in his locker to take us on a good run. Hopefully it won't come too late though.
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I tend to agree with the above post, those missed Benteke chances go in and we would be looking way more optimistic.
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We had much better players available back then. Mellberg, Solano, Angel, Barry. We have nobody anywhere near that class in the squad these days. Lambert needed to add some real quality to the squad, but he risked his dosh on foreign unknowns and lower division gambles. It doesn't look like working.
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We had much better players available back then. Mellberg, Solano, Angel, Barry. We have nobody anywhere near that class in the squad these days. Lambert needed to add some real quality to the squad, but he risked his dosh on foreign unknowns and lower division gambles. It doesn't look like working.
Yes that's another problem which makes me feel it's less feasible to have a similar turnaround. I also think O Learys first two signings paid off (at first) very well, in Sorenson and McCann.
I'm gonna blindly hope that we do turn things around. Like 03-04 though, I do think a decent january signing (or three) will help immensely.
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There's also the fact that this is only Lambert's second Premier League season. O'Leary had had 5 mostly successful years with Leeds (and yes, I remember how that turned out).
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We had much better players available back then. Mellberg, Solano, Angel, Barry. We have nobody anywhere near that class in the squad these days. Lambert needed to add some real quality to the squad, but he risked his dosh on foreign unknowns and lower division gambles. It doesn't look like working.
It's easy to say, with hindsight, the players were better back then. At the time, though, after we had just escaped relegation, those self same "better players" were getting stick and fans were getting depressed. We have just as much potential and skill in this current squad.
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Thing is, the season before under SGT was a blip. He took over when we were sixth the previous Feb and nearly got us relegated. A year later, and hey presto we were sixth again. This rut has been going on for two years and we haven't got the players who got us to sixth anymore.
I remember saying around the time of the Wolves game that if we bought Solano and Izzet(I know, I know) in January we would qualify for Champions League. In the end we only got Solano and missed out by four points I think.
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Good on you for a bit of positivity but I have to agree that back then we at least had a good experienced spine to the side with the players mentioned by Risso, plus Delaney, Vassell and Hendrie were more than useful. I think it's much tougher call to get this group of players up to scratch.
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Fair points Percy and ktvillan.
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We had much better players available back then. Mellberg, Solano, Angel, Barry. We have nobody anywhere near that class in the squad these days. Lambert needed to add some real quality to the squad, but he risked his dosh on foreign unknowns and lower division gambles. It doesn't look like working.
This is the first time ever that I had never heard of any of our summer signings. Literally not one had I heard of previously.
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We had much better players available back then. Mellberg, Solano, Angel, Barry. We have nobody anywhere near that class in the squad these days. Lambert needed to add some real quality to the squad, but he risked his dosh on foreign unknowns and lower division gambles. It doesn't look like working.
This is the first time ever that I had never heard of any of our summer signings. Literally not one had I heard of previously.
Same here.
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I think the turning point in O'Leary's first season was the League cup QF against Chelsea. Gave the players real confidence. If we can somehow win one of the Utd/City/Arse games next month hopefully it'll have the same effect.
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I think the turning point in O'Leary's first season was the League cup QF against Chelsea. Gave the players real confidence. If we can somehow win one of the Utd/City/Arse games next month hopefully it'll have the same effect.
We'v just beaten City. Didn't seem to have the desired effect on our confidence.
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We had much better players available back then. Mellberg, Solano, Angel, Barry. We have nobody anywhere near that class in the squad these days. Lambert needed to add some real quality to the squad, but he risked his dosh on foreign unknowns and lower division gambles. It doesn't look like working.
It's easy to say, with hindsight, the players were better back then. At the time, though, after we had just escaped relegation, those self same "better players" were getting stick and fans were getting depressed. We have just as much potential and skill in this current squad.
That's a fair point. If you went back in time to the lowest point in O'Leary's first season and said, "what do you think of the quality in the squad?" what would the answer have been?
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We had much better players available back then. Mellberg, Solano, Angel, Barry. We have nobody anywhere near that class in the squad these days. Lambert needed to add some real quality to the squad, but he risked his dosh on foreign unknowns and lower division gambles. It doesn't look like working.
It's easy to say, with hindsight, the players were better back then. At the time, though, after we had just escaped relegation, those self same "better players" were getting stick and fans were getting depressed. We have just as much potential and skill in this current squad.
That's a fair point. If you went back in time to the lowest point in O'Leary's first season and said, "what do you think of the quality in the squad?" what would the answer have been?
I honestly think the answer would have been "very good". I remember the game against Southampton at Villa Park when we were in the bottom three, and there was the anti-Ellis march. Some of the banners read "top six manager and players, bottom three owner" or words to that effect. People mostly thought the squad was too small, not that it wasn't good enough.
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I'd heard of Guzan.
Sorry.
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I'd heard of Guzan.
Sorry.
I need to be punished for lying through my back teeth....:-)
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We had much better players available back then. Mellberg, Solano, Angel, Barry. We have nobody anywhere near that class in the squad these days. Lambert needed to add some real quality to the squad, but he risked his dosh on foreign unknowns and lower division gambles. It doesn't look like working.
This is a red herring Risso. Saturday saw a team with Hughes and Sidwell take 3 points off us. Both heavily pilloried in the past. Neither of these players have the quality mentioned but you can still get them to perform well with the right approach. also,none of the above were mentioned at the time of Dolly as being World or International class and were generally viewed by others as good-but not great.
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If we'd won 1-0 on Saturday instead of losing nobody would be saying it was a fluke, as it was we missed chances and lost to a soft goal after defending well up to then. I accept that's not a good combination and if it's still happening in January then we should worry but for now I'm happy to give them all the benefit of the doubt. The players are having to learn how to play together on the job, but I don't get any sense that they're miles out of their depth or unhappy with Lambert's methods.
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Very similar back then as it is now.
We weren't scoring that many goals back then either pretty much until JPA hit a great goalscoring run from December onwards (Vassell didn't even score a goal until the new year).
We were in the bottom 3 until December 15th when we beat Wolves and that sparked off the great second half of the season.
I do certainly think we'll be much better after xmas this time aswell. We will need to be as I don't think our position at xmas in the league will look very clever at all.
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I was more confident about some of our players then than I am now. I thought Mellberg was one of the best defenders in the league and Angel had the potential to be brilliant if used properly. I remember being frustrated with Barry after he looked like he should've been playing for England under Taylor. Then again, we had to alternate between Ronny Johnsen and Dion Dublin at centre back which is probably less ideal than what we face now. There were question marks over the potential of players such as Samuel, Hitzlsperger, Whittingham and Crouch, pretty similar to those of our new signings and young players coming through.
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We had much better players available back then. Mellberg, Solano, Angel, Barry. We have nobody anywhere near that class in the squad these days. Lambert needed to add some real quality to the squad, but he risked his dosh on foreign unknowns and lower division gambles. It doesn't look like working.
This is a red herring Risso. Saturday saw a team with Hughes and Sidwell take 3 points off us. Both heavily pilloried in the past. Neither of these players have the quality mentioned but you can still get them to perform well with the right approach. also,none of the above were mentioned at the time of Dolly as being World or International class and were generally viewed by others as good-but not great.
I quite liked Hughes when he was here. Seemed to be a bit of a scapegoat on here and he did go a bit shite at the end but thought he always had a good cross on him and set up a few goals in 05/06.
He's played really well for Fulham alongside Hangeland, infact it makes you think why the hell we didn't just play him at centre half alongside Mellberg instead of Ridgewell who was conceding a penalty every game at that point.
Sidwell is still as mediocre as ever, one of his shots on saturday nearly hit the roof!