Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: AstonTavernForever on February 16, 2013, 07:07:36 PM
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http://www.kumb.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=146250
I would be absolutely devastated if this was true......
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I think you'll remain absolutely un-devestated.
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No chance of it happening (I hope). But if that Fat Twat with an Easter Island statue for a head did rock up at VP i'd be tempted to stop going. Can't stand him or his shit football.
Although Risso would be happy for once! ;)
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That'd be the end of it for me, if that happened.
There's no way I'd want that anti-football wanker associated with our club.
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It'll be absolute bollocks, mind.
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It is complete bollocks.
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I said a few games ago that I'd almost consider getting the old bloater in, such was our dire form.
I stand to be corrected, but I don't think he's ever been part of a side relegated from the top flight? When you consider that he has -in the main- been managing sides like Bolton, West Ham and Blackburn, that's not too bad. Blackburn were in trouble when he went there in 2009, and he kept them up -quite comfortably, in the end.
With the personnel we have, I'd back him to grind out the required 3/4 wins we need. I'd have doubts that Lambert is up to that, but dropping Bennett last week and (finally) making us a bit harder to play through was a step in the right direction.
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We beat them, then take their anti football manager. Even Lerner could be so stupid.......could he?
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http://www.kumb.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=146250
I would be absolutely devastated if this was true......
i just heard it too, i was just shagging kirsty gallagher in the toilet in the park tavern when she shoved her finger up my poop chute and whispered it sexily as i sloshed all over her boat race! a definite!
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We beat them, then take their anti football manager. Even Lerner could be so stupid.......could he?
Much as I think this is nonsense, there is plenty of evidence to suggest Lerner is capable of being exceptionally stupid indeed, especially where managers are concerned.
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We beat them, then take their anti football manager. Even Lerner could be so stupid.......could he?
Much as I think this is nonsense, there is plenty of evidence to suggest Lerner is capable of being exceptionally stupid indeed, especially where managers are concerned.
Indeed. If they can appoint you know who they're stupid enough to pull a stunt like this.
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The big Sam has bigger fish to fry..Didn't know who to root for in the Real/United game. Like having to choose between two women I fully expect to sling one up in the future.
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Plus, I know Lerner has made some horrific decisions but if he's watching from home then surely he could see they were woeful last week and that Sam would bring nothing to the table
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I'm filing this, along with with the Benteke to Spurs story, in the folder marked "Utter Horseshit". Plenty of shit-stirring around when it comes to Villa at the moment.
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http://www.kumb.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=146250
I would be absolutely devastated if this was true......
i just heard it too, i was just shagging kirsty gallagher in the toilet in the park tavern when she shoved her finger up my poop chute and whispered it sexily as i sloshed all over her boat race! a definite!
The language of love
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Wishful thinking on the cockney urchins' part, I think.
If there is any truth in it, don't panic, I'll just hack into his Bluetooth headset when he's on the way up here and direct him off the nearest cliff.
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What a load of utter utter bollocks.
BFS using this a negotiating tool in contract with current / future employment.
The one time for BFS was a short term contract when the fucking obnoxious twunt Houllier and his Side Kick tried to be far too clever and dragged us into a relegation scrap after abjectly surrendering to That Lot in the League Cup not to mention the Liverpool Love In.
Thankfully the time passed and we would be no better off with him with this set of players. And if El Hadj Diouf turns up in a Villa (Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo)
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Not even worth the paper it's not written on. Mods please lock this thread.
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I'm sorry everybody. This is the real reason I was in Brum on business last weekend :(
(http://i391.photobucket.com/albums/oo360/melfarrellblueshirt/223594_10151401963355415_1801701924_n.jpg)
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You could make a better manager than Allardyce out of play-doh
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You could make a better manager than Allardyce out of play-doh
But would his tweets be as funny?
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What a load of shit..........
Having said that, we all thought that when the McLeish rumours were doing the rounds.
With Carbon Neutral pulling the strings, who knows?
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Apparently, Allardyce wants people running up and down with flags when we score. He did this at Bolton and Lerner is in favour of it. It looks like the darts music has been chosen. At least they are expecting to score goals.
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I'll say this for Allardyce, he has a touching faith in his own abilities. I still think he should be driving a high-end minicab.
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I'm sorry everybody. This is the real reason I was in Brum on business last weekend :(
(http://i391.photobucket.com/albums/oo360/melfarrellblueshirt/223594_10151401963355415_1801701924_n.jpg)
You'd need some playdoh to make that head! It's huge! Twice the size of Iv's head
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I'll say this for Allardyce, he has a touching faith in his own abilities. I still think he should be driving a high-end minicab.
I always see him as a gruff builder, oblivious to the everyday social niceties and only too willing to tell you how shoddy the previous work you had from somebody else was.
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utter cap
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We thought McLeish would 'never happen'... I wouldn't bet against PF and Lrrner doing this. Pricks.
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Complete bollocks that ITK shite. If that fat twat comes anywhere near Villa Park then Lerner will have to pay fans to go to games.!
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I'm sorry everybody. This is the real reason I was in Brum on business last weekend :(
(http://i391.photobucket.com/albums/oo360/melfarrellblueshirt/223594_10151401963355415_1801701924_n.jpg)
You should be banned from here for that. ;)
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I'm sorry everybody. This is the real reason I was in Brum on business last weekend :(
(http://i391.photobucket.com/albums/oo360/melfarrellblueshirt/223594_10151401963355415_1801701924_n.jpg)
You should be banned from here for that. ;)
I know! Though I must say he was a very nice man.
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I'm sorry everybody. This is the real reason I was in Brum on business last weekend :(
(http://i391.photobucket.com/albums/oo360/melfarrellblueshirt/223594_10151401963355415_1801701924_n.jpg)
You should be banned from here for that. ;)
I know! Though I must say he was a very nice man.
no. Lies.
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I'm sorry everybody. This is the real reason I was in Brum on business last weekend :(
(http://i391.photobucket.com/albums/oo360/melfarrellblueshirt/223594_10151401963355415_1801701924_n.jpg)
You should be banned from here for that. ;)
I know! Though I must say he was a very nice man.
no. Lies.
I think it is great that Fat Sam came all that way to pay homage to a Villa fan ;D
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No chance of it happening (I hope). But if that Fat Twat with an Easter Island statue for a head did rock up at VP i'd be tempted to stop going. Can't stand him or his shit football.
Although Risso would be happy for once! ;)
Easter Island Statue - genius
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I'm sorry everybody. This is the real reason I was in Brum on business last weekend :(
(http://i391.photobucket.com/albums/oo360/melfarrellblueshirt/223594_10151401963355415_1801701924_n.jpg)
You should be banned from here for that. ;)
I know! Though I must say he was a very nice man.
Course he was. he thought you were a West ham fan. Not saying for one second I want managing us but to say he isn't a good manager is simply wrong. In a results orientated business he has done brilliantly at Bolton, Blackburn, and West Ham. His brand of football may be crap but I'd argue that he is similar to O'Neill. Big men at the back and wingers and big bloke up front too. His Bolton side had Jay Jay Okocha and there was nothing bland or boring about that Bolton side. Especially when they ripped us apart one sunny semi-final.
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I'm sorry everybody. This is the real reason I was in Brum on business last weekend :(
(http://i391.photobucket.com/albums/oo360/melfarrellblueshirt/223594_10151401963355415_1801701924_n.jpg)
You should be banned from here for that. ;)
I know! Though I must say he was a very nice man.
The marketing people at Clarins need sacking. To be fair, neither of you makes a good advert for well groomed and moisturised gentlemen.
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Would've been a better transtional manager when we appointed TSM, 11-12 would've been a comfortable season.
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I'm sorry everybody. This is the real reason I was in Brum on business last weekend :(
(http://i391.photobucket.com/albums/oo360/melfarrellblueshirt/223594_10151401963355415_1801701924_n.jpg)
You should be banned from here for that. ;)
I know! Though I must say he was a very nice man.
Course he was. he thought you were a West ham fan. Not saying for one second I want managing us but to say he isn't a good manager is simply wrong. In a results orientated business he has done brilliantly at Bolton, Blackburn, and West Ham. His brand of football may be crap but I'd argue that he is similar to O'Neill. Big men at the back and wingers and big bloke up front too. His Bolton side had Jay Jay Okocha and there was nothing bland or boring about that Bolton side. Especially when they ripped us apart one sunny semi-final.
Completely agree Pete. I don't think he'll ever be known for his total football, but he's effective at what he does. He got Bolton up, got them competing then slowly turned them into a decent team to watch, with the likes of Campo and Okocha. He's got West Ham promoted and looks like keeping them up as well. The Hammers fans might prefer to see them as a yo-yo team playing tippy-tappy stuff, but his first concern was keeping them up. I'd have him over Lambert any day of the week. It's not like Lambert's football is anything to write home about in any case.
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Can't stand Allardyce. His sides suck the life out of football, just like Stoke. It might be effective but it bores people to death, it's risk free, percentage stuff. We've had our share of 'percentage' managers but he takes it to the nth degree.
Watching his interviews is also quite revealing. If they win, he talks about how his decisions influenced things, if they lose it's all the players fault.
He's a twat.
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No chance of it happening (I hope). But if that Fat Twat with an Easter Island statue for a head did rock up at VP i'd be tempted to stop going. Can't stand him or his shit football.
Although Risso would be happy for once! ;)
No, not until we have Steve Bruce. Love ya Riss
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I can only imagine how the Spammers would react if they thought that Lambert would be their next boss. Rubbish football AND dismal results.
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I take this kind of speculation with a pinch of salt , if lerner was going to pull the trigger on lambert he would have done so by now - nothing in this .
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Was he having a smootch before the game last weekend then? Most teams stay on broad street before they play us nowadays so the bullring isn't too far from that.
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Can't stand Allardyce. His sides suck the life out of football, just like Stoke. It might be effective but it bores people to death, it's risk free, percentage stuff. We've had our share of 'percentage' managers but he takes it to the nth degree.
Watching his interviews is also quite revealing. If they win, he talks about how his decisions influenced things, if they lose it's all the players fault.
He's a twat.
Bang on.
And anyone who rates is a jam fwool.
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He's better than TSM though....
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There's no way they'll appoint BFS at Villa Park.
Barry Fry was bad enough, sister wouldn't be any better.
Coat retrieved.
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He's better than TSM though....
i'd rather have TSM
there i said it
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I'd have him over Lambert any day of the week. It's not like Lambert's football is anything to write home about in any case.
Lets be honest, you'd be calling for his head within a few weeks of his anti-football, and you'd be right to do so.
Look at the way his teams play. Think back all of one week for the latest display. All that hoofing it up field into the penalty area, hoping something comes from the knock down.
I've too much pride in Villa to accept a manager who thinks that is an acceptable way to play football.
Everything about his football is revolting, and you might suggest he's no worse than Lambert now, but I bet you what you like you'd flip within a few iffy results of Big Sam's idea of the way football should be played.
At least Lambert is trying to get us playing football, even if it doesn't work too often. Allardyce over the last few years hasn't even tried. That way West Ham and Blackburn played, that's what he does.
No, ta.
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Completely agree Pete. I don't think he'll ever be known for his total football, but he's effective at what he does. He got Bolton up, got them competing then slowly turned them into a decent team to watch, with the likes of Campo and Okocha. He's got West Ham promoted and looks like keeping them up as well. The Hammers fans might prefer to see them as a yo-yo team playing tippy-tappy stuff, but his first concern was keeping them up. I'd have him over Lambert any day of the week. It's not like Lambert's football is anything to write home about in any case.
Bolton having a decent side. It was that long ago, even Liverpool were half decent in winning the Champions League. BFS has lived off a couple of seasons success that pre-dated MON. If getting somebody promoted and keeping them in the PL is your height of ambition, why are you so dead set against Lambert.
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I can believe there may have been preliminary talks.
Let's not pretend that the results over the past few months have given Lambert job security. Even if the club were still prepared to back him, they'd want a contingency plan.
The Villa job is one of the bigger jobs in football -and may be too big for someone like Lambert. It's rare for a modern manager to walk out on a job with the amount of money in the game now. But if he's feeling the pressure - and he's looked like a broken man at various stages since December- the club would need to be prepared. We've had one manager bail on us in fairly recent history, so Lerner, Faulkner and co should, if they have any cop on, be able to recognise the warning signs by now.
With his contract situation at West Ham, Fat Sam would be high up the list of alternatives. There'd be less of a payoff, for one thing (maybe the overriding concern for us, these past few years). Di Matteo would also be under consideration, and there was talk that preliminary discussions had taken place with him not so long back.
For all we know, the converstion might have gone as far as asking his agent "What's the current situation with his West Ham deal?" And the interest might not extend beyond that. Those kind of conversations (concerning both players and managers) would occur with a fair degree of frequency.
Just to be clear: I don't like the tired old bloater at all, would far rather that Lambert turns the thing around or we go for a more progressive manager in the summer. But having endured MON's approach to attacking football at home for four seasons, Houllier's disjointed pish in 2010/11, McLesh's joyless dirdge last season and Lambert's lack of nous this, I don't see how we criticise his style of football, in all honesty.
I'd take functional football and decent results over rubbish football and rubbish results any day of the week.
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Decent results as seen at West Ham, who seem engaged on a plan of action centred around dropping into the relegation places?
I can see the argument from both sides, but honestly, I am sick to the tits of chopping and changing at Villa, let's back the manager we have and trust him to get us performing and playing good football with results to match.
There isn't a magic bullet "make everything much better NOW" option, I'm afraid, and even if there was, I am sure it wouldn't involve appointing Sam Allardyce.
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I'd have him over Lambert any day of the week. It's not like Lambert's football is anything to write home about in any case.
Lets be honest, you'd be calling for his head within a few weeks of his anti-football, and you'd be right to do so.
Look at the way his teams play. Think back all of one week for the latest display. All that hoofing it up field into the penalty area, hoping something comes from the knock down.
I've too much pride in Villa to accept a manager who thinks that is an acceptable way to play football.
Everything about his football is revolting, and you might suggest he's no worse than Lambert now, but I bet you what you like you'd flip within a few iffy results of Big Sam's idea of the way football should be played.
At least Lambert is trying to get us playing football, even if it doesn't work too often. Allardyce over the last few years hasn't even tried. That way West Ham and Blackburn played, that's what he does.
No, ta.
I don't agree with a word of that, and please don't try to put words in my mouth.
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Words into your mouth?
Where? By suggesting you'd be calling for his head pretty sharpish? It's almost as if there's a precedent to go on.
You gave Lambert next to no time, so why would you be any different with Allardyce's mediocre record and shit football?
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I don't think Randy thinks that far ahead.
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I don't think Randy thinks that far ahead.
Well, we know he's not a fan of spending money, and Allardyce likes to travel with an enormous back room staff who would be expensive to liberate and employ, so there is at least that to pin our hopes on.
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Words into your mouth?
Where? By suggesting you'd be calling for his head pretty sharpish? It's almost as if there's a precedent to go on.
You gave Lambert next to no time, so why would you be any different with Allardyce's mediocre record and shit football?
Lambert was dismal from the word go. He started badly, and got steadily worse. He's the worst Villa manager I've seen in my Villa supporting life time; worse than O'Leary, worse than McNeill and Turner. Allardyce would be better. Lambert's football is shit, and the results have been humiliating. He's given us our worst ever start to a season, our worst ever result, and our Premier League place is in hanging in the balance. A terrible, terrible manager. Mediocre football would be a huge improvement to be honest.
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Stylish attacking football, fullbacks who overlap and bomb forward, trequartista's and all the other facets of the modern game that are synonymous with the better sides would be great.
But at present, I think I'd be reasonably content to see a Villa side defend corners with some degree of professionalism. Or to know that if we go a goal up, we might have a better than average chance of holding on to the lead. That would actually be progess, based on the past few years.
Naturally, I'd hope we'd be able to find a manager who could give us all that and play a decent style of football (and smaller clubs than us with less than half our budget have been able to deliver that). But if the latter isn't possible, I'll take the former.
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Words into your mouth?
Where? By suggesting you'd be calling for his head pretty sharpish? It's almost as if there's a precedent to go on.
You gave Lambert next to no time, so why would you be any different with Allardyce's mediocre record and shit football?
Lambert was dismal from the word go. He started badly, and got steadily worse. He's the worst Villa manager I've seen in my Villa supporting life time; worse than O'Leary, worse than McNeill and Turner. Allardyce would be better. Lambert's football is shit, and the results have been humiliating. He's given us our worst ever start to a season, our worst ever result, and our Premier League place is in hanging in the balance. A terrible, terrible manager.
What? Worse than Graham Turner? Worse than Billy McNeill? Really? If you genuinely mean that, you can't have been paying that much attention to those two at the time.
That's not the point, though. The point is, you're suggesting Allardyce is a better bet.
On the basis of what? His record of playing revolting anti-football bollocks that keeps pointless small clubs up?
It's one thing to mention the humiliation of some of Lambert's results, but you'd need to get used to it to want Allardyce running our club.
I can understand why anyone would want Lambert sacked - I'd disagree with them, for reasons already much discussed, but it's not difficult to see the reasons they'd want him out.
What i have a problem with is the suggestion that Sam Allardyce would be a better option. What would be the point of that? What kind of club is he going to build? I'll tell you. A club which resorts to snide gamesmanship only bettered by Stoke City, a club which spends most matches whacking the ball at a big man up front, a club which twats the ball up field and out of touch if need be, to gain some some of percentages advantage.
The sacking Lambert bit, I understand, but to replace him with Allardyce? Really?
If we're going to replace the manager, how about doing it with someone who could build something significantly better?
Isn't there a question when you say the Lambert is the worst Villa manager you've ever seen, but then recommend another bloke on the basis that "he's better than Lambert"?
Isn't "better than Lambert" - by your own definition - a pretty empty way to promote the values of a manager?
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Stylish attacking football, fullbacks who overlap and bomb forward, trequartista's and all the other facets of the modern game that are synonymous with the better sides would be great.
But at present, I think I'd be reasonably content to see a Villa side defend corners with some degree of professionalism. Or to know that if we go a goal up, we might have a better than average chance of holding on to the lead. That would actually be progess, based on the past few years.
Naturally, I'd hope we'd be able to find a manager who could give us all that and play a decent style of football (and smaller clubs than us with less than half our budget have been able to deliver that). But if the latter isn't possible, I'll take the former.
I'd rather take my chances and go down, if it were unavoidable, than cling to survival and commit ourselves to several years under a manager who doesnt even try to play football?
If that's the extent of our ambitions, we might as well have stuck with McLeish.
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Bolton played far better football under Allardyce than we do under Lambert, much better in fact. As I said before, he's a pragmatist. Build a solid base using the players at your disposal, then gradually improve things.
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I thought his Bolton side were a mix of industry and flair. The overall pattern of play wasn't hugely innovative or progressive, but they had decent quality in the final third. The likes of Anelka and Diouf weren't the kind of players you could just lump the ball up to.
I hated his Blackburn side, their only mode of attack seemed to be assault the opposing keeper at set pieces and hope to get lucky.
From what I've seen of West Ham, both this season and last, they have more variation in their play than Blackburn. I don't think they've been that bad - certainly not McLeish bad.
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Allardyce Out.
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We played the worst sort of anti-football against Bradford, and weren't even good enough at it to beat a 4th division side.
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That's true but it's pretty isolated, even though we've been bad this year I don't remember a Villa side scoring as many quality goals as we have this year.
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We played the worst sort of anti-football against Bradford, and weren't even good enough at it to beat a 4th division side.
So that's half an hour out of the season. Nobody's denying that results have been awful but to say that the team isn't at least trying to play football now is totally wrong.
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I thought his Bolton side were a mix of industry and flair. The overall pattern of play wasn't hugely innovative or progressive, but they had decent quality in the final third. The likes of Anelka and Diouf weren't the kind of players you could just lump the ball up to.
I hated his Blackburn side, their only mode of attack seemed to be assault the opposing keeper at set pieces and hope to get lucky.
From what I've seen of West Ham, both this season and last, they have more variation in their play than Blackburn. I don't think they've been that bad - certainly not McLeish bad.
I thought they were the worst side I've seen come to Villa Park for a long time, to be honest.
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Bolton played far better football under Allardyce than we do under Lambert, much better in fact. As I said before, he's a pragmatist. Build a solid base using the players at your disposal, then gradually improve things.
The Bolton he left six years ago?
The Bolton he was at for eight years?
I totally understand anyone who points out our poor results, some of the thrashings we've taken, and our league position - it isn't a secret, we've all watched it all season, and it hasn't been fun.
What I don't get is how anyone can seriously suggest Lambert isn't at least trying to get us to keep the ball and play football, even if he's largely failing. That just strikes me as "I don't like the results, so NOTHING about the manager is good, and ANYONE is better than him".
I also think the majority of Villa fans can see this too.
Otherwise, how do you explain a manager with a record (on paper) as poor as Lambert's, but who, on the keep or sack thread on this forum, still has more people backing him than sacking him?
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We haven't been adverse to the big hoof up to Benteke at various times this season.
As anti football goes, you'd have to go some way to outdo our shiteness against Norwich, Reading, Wigan, Tottingham and Southampton at home. Bradford we were actually a bit unlucky -if you can be unlucky to lose to a Fourth Divison side over two legs. We created enough chances to win 3/4 games.
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Bolton played far better football under Allardyce than we do under Lambert, much better in fact. As I said before, he's a pragmatist. Build a solid base using the players at your disposal, then gradually improve things.
No, they didn't.
The season they avoided relegation by a couple of points on the last day, that's when you'd have been calling for his head - probably by about mid-September. We're suffering at the moment from the club taking such a short term attitude to everything and changing manager again will just perpetuate that.
It's been a struggle this season, absolutely no doubt, but every so often there have been glimpses of what might be.
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We haven't been adverse to the big hoof up to Benteke at various times this season.
That's a totally different thing to basing our game around it, though.
Don't get me wrong, I am totally au fait with where we've looked poor this season, and there's not a man amongst us who didn't shrink into his chair at the sight of things like Bradford or Chelsea or several other games this season.
However, Allardyce is a manager whose entire ethos is based around horrible, physical percentages football, so I find it pretty staggering when people who have spent much of the last few years (alongside myself) pointing out the footballing failures of previous managers suddenly start to re-evaluate Sam Allardyce favourably.
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It's been a struggle this season, absolutely no doubt, but every so often there have been glimpses of what might be.
Exactly.
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In the right situation I'd have him. Not now though. And this is almost certainly bollocks anyway.
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We haven't been adverse to the big hoof up to Benteke at various times this season.
That's a totally different thing to basing our game around it, though.
Don't get me wrong, I am totally au fait with where we've looked poor this season, and there's not a man amongst us who didn't shrink into his chair at the sight of things like Bradford or Chelsea or several other games this season.
However, Allardyce is a manager whose entire ethos is based around horrible, physical percentages football, so I find it pretty staggering when people who have spent much of the last few years (alongside myself) pointing out the footballing failures of previous managers suddenly start to re-evaluate Sam Allardyce favourably.
Spot on.
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I thought his Bolton side were a mix of industry and flair. The overall pattern of play wasn't hugely innovative or progressive, but they had decent quality in the final third. The likes of Anelka and Diouf weren't the kind of players you could just lump the ball up to.
I hated his Blackburn side, their only mode of attack seemed to be assault the opposing keeper at set pieces and hope to get lucky.
From what I've seen of West Ham, both this season and last, they have more variation in their play than Blackburn. I don't think they've been that bad - certainly not McLeish bad.
I thought they were the worst side I've seen come to Villa Park for a long time, to be honest.
And yet they created the more clear cut openings and probably feel aggrieved to not get at least a point - despite not playing particularly well.
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And yet they created the more clear cut openings and probably feel aggrieved to not get at least a point - despite not playing particularly well.
If you're taking that as admissable evidence, how many times this season could we have considered ourselves aggrieved not to get more than we did?
How different would things be now had we held on for another minute or two at Everton? Or in several matches this season?
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What do you expect managers outside the top five or six to do? for most of them it's all about survival, thats what the so called football guardians have done to our game,Swansea are probably the exeption to the rule as they do play good football and are at the moment doing okay but i would take a bet that they will fall away sooner than later. I don't sympathise with Mcleish as he made a lot of money out of Villa but i do understand the huge problems he faced, he saw the option of playing ugly as the best chance of survival and who knows if he had gone the attractive football route we could be playing in the championship now.
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WBA, Everton, Swansea, ManUre etc etc
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Timing is everything. If, as I favoured, we'd have appointed BFS to replace Houllier in January of that year we'd have missed the joy of TSM's reign and probably be in a much stronger position as a club to be thinking about getting a more progressive replacement now. In hindsight though, I wish we'd have kept GMac as coach with GH as director of football.
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The mistake we made was that, when Houllier went, we didn't appoint a manager who would have carried on with the minor signs of progress we'd made under him.
We'd had the pain of that season, but then decided not to take any of the gain, and went and replaced him with a manager who made Houllier's predecessor look like Pep Guardiola.
I wasn't sold on the idea of replacing Houllier with Roberto Martinez, but at least in that you could see some sort of footballing continuity.
Where was the joined-up thinking in flitting from a Martinez knock back (and, no, he didn't have an interview and turn us down, but "no thanks, I don't want an interview" is in every sense a knock back) to a manager whose style was diametically opposed.
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What do you expect managers outside the top five or six to do? for most of them it's all about survival, thats what the so called football guardians have done to our game,Swansea are probably the exeption to the rule as they do play good football and are at the moment doing okay but i would take a bet that they will fall away sooner than later. I don't sympathise with Mcleish as he made a lot of money out of Villa but i do understand the huge problems he faced, he saw the option of playing ugly as the best chance of survival and who knows if he had gone the attractive football route we could be playing in the championship now.
McLeish wasn't converted to that style of football by the resources he had at his disposition here.
That's what he'd done ever since arriving in English football.
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Bolton played far better football under Allardyce than we do under Lambert, much better in fact. As I said before, he's a pragmatist. Build a solid base using the players at your disposal, then gradually improve things.
No, they didn't.
The season they avoided relegation by a couple of points on the last day, that's when you'd have been calling for his head - probably by about mid-September. We're suffering at the moment from the club taking such a short term attitude to everything and changing manager again will just perpetuate that.
It's been a struggle this season, absolutely no doubt, but every so often there have been glimpses of what might be.
If you're going to be so utterly childish, I'll respond in kind by saying that as you resolutely defended O'Leary and McLeish, you'd no doubt do the same for Allardyce the minute he was appointed.
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The person who started this thread should be shot. BFS MY FUCKING ARSE >:( >:(
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It won't happen. It's yet another ridiculous pile of internet bollocks.
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Good. We will be fine with the same manager next season as we have now, thank you very much.
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And yet they created the more clear cut openings and probably feel aggrieved to not get at least a point - despite not playing particularly well.
If you're taking that as admissable evidence, how many times this season could we have considered ourselves aggrieved not to get more than we did?
How different would things be now had we held on for another minute or two at Everton? Or in several matches this season?
Aye, maybe.
But it's a sad state of affairs when the team that is supposedly the worst to visit Villa Park for a long time (personally, I think Reading take that accolade -edging slightly ahead of us) isn't beaten out of sight.
They were largely dire last weekend -yet they wouldn't have been particularly lucky had they won.
However, Allardyce is a manager whose entire ethos is based around horrible, physical percentages football, so I find it pretty staggering when people who have spent much of the last few years (alongside myself) pointing out the footballing failures of previous managers suddenly start to re-evaluate Sam Allardyce favourably.
It's not really a re-evaluation on my part.
I thought he was a traditional, limited meat and potatoes British manager during his time at Bolton. And I still think that.
But the limitations of our current manager could see us drop into the Championship -something Fat Sam hasn't done despite working under even less favourable conditions at all his previous clubs.
You'd prefer us to go down than have someone like Allardyce in charge, fair enough. Personally, I think a stint out of the top flight -at a time when the new TV deal will widen the gap further between the haves and have nots- has the potential to be far more ruinous than a few years of having a gorilla with a bluetooth headset prowling the touchline.
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Bolton played far better football under Allardyce than we do under Lambert, much better in fact. As I said before, he's a pragmatist. Build a solid base using the players at your disposal, then gradually improve things.
No, they didn't.
The season they avoided relegation by a couple of points on the last day, that's when you'd have been calling for his head - probably by about mid-September. We're suffering at the moment from the club taking such a short term attitude to everything and changing manager again will just perpetuate that.
It's been a struggle this season, absolutely no doubt, but every so often there have been glimpses of what might be.
If you're going to be so utterly childish, I'll respond in kind by saying that as you resolutely defended O'Leary and McLeish, you'd no doubt do the same for Allardyce the minute he was appointed.
You've spent much of the last 4 seasons wanting the manager at the time sacked, it's hardly "utterly childish" to assume that you'd be the same with Allardyce under those circumstances. I was in hospital for much of McLeish's tim,e and hardly posted so didn't really have a lot of time for this resolute defence and I'm sick to death of having to keep explaining about O'Leary, that all I argued for was leaving a decision until the end of the season, which, as things turned out, was the right stance.
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Bolton played far better football under Allardyce than we do under Lambert, much better in fact. As I said before, he's a pragmatist. Build a solid base using the players at your disposal, then gradually improve things.
No, they didn't.
The season they avoided relegation by a couple of points on the last day, that's when you'd have been calling for his head - probably by about mid-September. We're suffering at the moment from the club taking such a short term attitude to everything and changing manager again will just perpetuate that.
It's been a struggle this season, absolutely no doubt, but every so often there have been glimpses of what might be.
If you're going to be so utterly childish, I'll respond in kind by saying that as you resolutely defended O'Leary and McLeish, you'd no doubt do the same for Allardyce the minute he was appointed.
You've spent much of the last 4 seasons wanting the manager at the time sacked, it's hardly "utterly childish" to assume that you'd be the same with Allardyce under those circumstances. I was in hospital for much of McLeish's tim,e and hardly posted so didn't really have a lot of time for this resolute defence and I'm sick to death of having to keep explaining about O'Leary, that all I argued for was leaving a decision until the end of the season, which, as things turned out, was the right stance.
Most of the last three years has been spent battling relegation, so yes, I wanted to see the back of the awful Houllier, the diabolical McLeish and the worst of the lot, Lambert.
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You'd prefer us to go down than have someone like Allardyce in charge, fair enough. Personally, I think a stint out of the top flight -at a time when the new TV deal will widen the gap further between the haves and have nots- has the potential to be far more ruinous than a few years of having a gorilla with a bluetooth headset prowling the touchline.
I'd rather not go down, end of, to be honest. If we do go down, the deciding factor will be our failure to strengthen in January, and I suspect that would have been the case whoever the manager.
If we are going down, though, I'd rather we rebuilt from there than appoint a gorilla like Allardyce and try to build on that. I don't give a toss about his bluetooth headset, I do give a toss about everything else about him.
As I said, there are two arguments here.
The first is that we need to replace Lambert.
The second is that we should do so with Allardyce.
The first I disagree with, but can see why people would want to. The second, I just don't get. If we're going to replace him, why not do so with a manager who could start to build something worthwhile here? Why do so with a dinosaur?
It's also not just "swap this manager for that one" - it is sack one manager and his team and pay a fortune for the pleasure of doing so, and then spend another fortune liberating a mediocre manager and his huge back room staff from West Ham.
It's all so short termist, and it's that that I am most sick about with Villa at the moment. How much more money are we going to burn through as we lurch from one plan to another?
We'd spend all that money, and what would we get? He'd maybe - maybe - keep us up but what would be the long term plan with Allardyce?
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We'd spend all that money, and what would we get? He'd maybe - maybe - keep us up but what would be the long term plan with Allardyce?
Any talk of a long term plan is meaningless with Lerner in charge, so I'd settle for staying in the Premier League until he sells. Going down will ruin us.
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Allardyce would be a totally short-term solution, you're right.
But without the short term, we might not have much of a medium>long term to speak of.
There would have been an argument to bring someone in post Wigan -and definitely post Southampton and Bradford. Now, I think we have to stick with Lambert -for good or for ill. If we make a change (or Lambert takes the decision out of our hands) I'd hope it's in the summer, that we're still in the top flight and that it isn't Sam Allthepies.
My point was not so much about defending the merits of Monkey Man, I just find it odd that so many Villa fans can be snobbish about his record and style of play. Graham Taylor's side first time around was a long ball outfit, John Gregory's side was largely safety first. Brian Little, after a promising few years, was similar. MON: his limitations have been done to death, and the less said about the last few the better. The only Villa manager in my lifetime who has had a commitment to attractive, attacking football has been BFR.
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Bolton played far better football under Allardyce than we do under Lambert, much better in fact. As I said before, he's a pragmatist. Build a solid base using the players at your disposal, then gradually improve things.
Norwich played better football last year than Allardyce ever has, with players of lesser technical ability than he's had to play with.
That fat-headed, self-aggrandising prick had players like Campo, Djorkaeff, Okacha and Anelka and he still employed the most cynical tactics possible.
Allardyce's approach to football is an affront the paying spectator.
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Bolton played far better football under Allardyce than we do under Lambert, much better in fact. As I said before, he's a pragmatist. Build a solid base using the players at your disposal, then gradually improve things.
A true numbers-man response and approach that.
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Did we play long-ball under Little at the end? Hmm...don't think so.
I wouldn't want Allardyce instead of Lambert even though I'm pretty sure we'd be top-half with BFS in charge. The unknown quality of Lambert - the fact that his early success as a manager could yet be something we see here with a bit more patience makes me want to stick with him even if our survival is in grave danger.
With Sam we'd be settling for three or four years of solid finishes. Nothing wrong with that and it would probably be music to the ears of certain supporters/perhaps even Lerner but I'd rather take the gamble on someone potentially more interesting and successful.
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Bolton under Alladyce played the same tedious, percentage football that the Fat Yammer has played his entire managerial career.
He was able to mix it up with a few old faces and the odd bit of flair, but in the end, it all came down to winning set pieces in and around the box and/or getting the high ball into the mixer as often as possible.
They were more effective than us at our worst this season, but it was an awful brand of football.
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Bolton played far better football under Allardyce than we do under Lambert, much better in fact. As I said before, he's a pragmatist. Build a solid base using the players at your disposal, then gradually improve things.
A true numbers-man response and approach that.
Oh do get stuffed Drummond.
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The thing about our playing style undre Lambert is that when we go a goal or two down, which happens too often, the players lose all confidence and take the easy option to go long. Despite that, anyone who wants to can see what type of football he's trying to play and should be recpetive to it.
So at best we're far better than a Fat Sam side and at worse we play the same way.
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Bolton played far better football under Allardyce than we do under Lambert, much better in fact. As I said before, he's a pragmatist. Build a solid base using the players at your disposal, then gradually improve things.
A true numbers-man response and approach that.
Oh do get stuffed Drummond.
Cut that out.
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BFS's brand of football at Bolton did seem to affect the crowd's at the Reebok. If i remember rightly, when we played them in the Semi Final of the League Cup a few years ago, the attendance for the first leg at their place was appalling.
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Bolton played far better football under Allardyce than we do under Lambert, much better in fact. As I said before, he's a pragmatist. Build a solid base using the players at your disposal, then gradually improve things.
A true numbers-man response and approach that.
Oh do get stuffed Drummond.
Cut that out.
Typical. Did you even see the insult from another poster that has nothing to do with the topic at hand? Of course not.
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Bolton played far better football under Allardyce than we do under Lambert, much better in fact. As I said before, he's a pragmatist. Build a solid base using the players at your disposal, then gradually improve things.
A true numbers-man response and approach that.
Oh do get stuffed Drummond.
Cut that out.
Typical. Did you even see the insult from another poster that has nothing to do with the topic at hand? Of course not.
If you think you're being treated unfairly, raise the matter privately with a mod.
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BFS's brand of football at Bolton did seem to affect the crowd's at the Reebok. If i remember rightly, when we played them in the Semi Final of the League Cup a few years ago, the attendance for the first leg at their place was appalling.
I think that was more to do with it being a mid-week televised game. The league game before that they had nearly 27,000 against Portsmouth. In fact they averaged 26,674 that season out of a capacity of 28,723, which is 93%. Compare that to our current average 33,520 out of 40,538, which is only 78%, with only Wigan and Fulham having a lower percentage. http://www.soccerstats.com/attendance.asp?league=england (http://www.soccerstats.com/attendance.asp?league=england)
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BFS's brand of football at Bolton did seem to affect the crowd's at the Reebok. If i remember rightly, when we played them in the Semi Final of the League Cup a few years ago, the attendance for the first leg at their place was appalling.
I think that was more to do with it being a mid-week televised game.
It was still a semi final of a cup competition and let's be honest 16,300 odd is pretty piss poor, bearing in mind 3,000 of that crowd would have been Villa fans.
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It was also a very good period of success in Bolton's recent history. Probably comparable to us under MON and how many empty seats, given as a percentage if you prefer, did we have for our semi against Blackburn?
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BFS's brand of football at Bolton did seem to affect the crowd's at the Reebok. If i remember rightly, when we played them in the Semi Final of the League Cup a few years ago, the attendance for the first leg at their place was appalling.
I think that was more to do with it being a mid-week televised game.
It was still a semi final of a cup competition and let's be honest 16,300 odd is pretty piss poor, bearing in mind 3,000 of that crowd would have been Villa fans.
They bought hardly any fans the leg at Villa park as well, despite being odds on to get to the final.
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They still played in front of near capacity crowds in the league all season.
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Middlesbrough, the other finallist that season, also had a load of empty seats in their home leg of the semi, and they'd beat Arsenal the game before.
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I don't really get it - we understand you think Allardyce would be a good appointment, but you're starting to sound like his agent now.
Forget the replacing Lambert part, that's clear enough, but would Allardyce be the best appointment?
And no, "better than Lambert" isn't enough - not if we accept your judgement of his merits. Would Allardyce genuinely be the one you wanted in to replace him? Above all others?
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Judge him after the Arse game! Strong poss win. Draw maybe?
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Dont Stoke play under near capacity crowds week in week out? Reached a FACup final. Watch the play and there are more similarities, getting the best out of what you have, pick up the second ball, slowly build more football into your side when you have established yourself. Is pulis a "poor mans" Allardyce? I always thought Sam was harshly treated at Newcastle, they were "suprised" that he tried to emply tactics that had been so successful for him previously, and they wouldnt have gone down with him at the helm. That said, I have watched Stoke, and Sam's Bolton, Blackburn and West ham, and while effective, its hardly the beautiful game. Im on a sticky wicket here, as our results are not good enough, but some (some) of the football we have played this season is as good, if not better than anything we have done for four years
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Judge him after the Arse game! Strong poss win. Draw maybe?
We could lose at Arsenal and still stay up. Stay up this season and kick on next season. That's what I'm looking for.
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Judge him after the Arse game! Strong poss win. Draw maybe?
We could lose at Arsenal and still stay up. Stay up this season and kick on next season. That's what I'm looking for.
Whilst it is fairest to judge the manager after 38 games, I think he needs some good form to bring a little belief back - both with the players and with the fans. Houllier had a wretched first half to his season here, and I was one of those on his back, but he probbaly deserved another crack at it, health issues aside, based on the post Jan form, which was top 6 level.
I don't think we'll that that sort of return between now and May, but an upturn that eases us away from the relegation places and shows promise for next season is what I'm looking for.
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I don't really get it - we understand you think Allardyce would be a good appointment, but you're starting to sound like his agent now.
Forget the replacing Lambert part, that's clear enough, but would Allardyce be the best appointment?
And no, "better than Lambert" isn't enough - not if we accept your judgement of his merits. Would Allardyce genuinely be the one you wanted in to replace him? Above all others?
I apologise wholeheartedly for bringing facts into the discussion.
I like Allardyce and think he'd be a good manager under our current shambles of an ownership structure. I also don't think that Lambert's football is anything to write home about, especially given how atrocious the results have been. Tony Mowbray got dog's abuse on here for playing decent football with West Brom, but taking them down, well Lambert's football is nowhere near as good as that and the results are worse, yet people talk as if he's on the way to being the next Guardiola.
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I think the difference is neither the fans, players or manager are saying 'I know we got beat, but look how pretty we played'.
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Lambert's got a better "win rate" as a manager than the Dog Head.
Although Allardyce does have a much higher "twat rate" than Lambert.
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Lambert's football is nowhere near as good as that and the results are worse, yet people talk as if he's on the way to being the next Guardiola.
They don't though, do they? It's merely been said by one or two posters that the football played has at times been better than the previous couple of seasons.
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Big sams style of football is not pleasant on the eye but he does get results - i think there are far better managers out there that i would prefer to him- i would however take big sam over lambert though.
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I don't really get it - we understand you think Allardyce would be a good appointment, but you're starting to sound like his agent now.
Forget the replacing Lambert part, that's clear enough, but would Allardyce be the best appointment?
And no, "better than Lambert" isn't enough - not if we accept your judgement of his merits. Would Allardyce genuinely be the one you wanted in to replace him? Above all others?
I apologise wholeheartedly for bringing facts into the discussion.
I like Allardyce and think he'd be a good manager under our current shambles of an ownership structure. I also don't think that Lambert's football is anything to write home about, especially given how atrocious the results have been. Tony Mowbray got dog's abuse on here for playing decent football with West Brom, but taking them down, well Lambert's football is nowhere near as good as that and the results are worse, yet people talk as if he's on the way to being the next Guardiola.
I just don't see how you can refer to Lambert's style of football negatively yet then suggest the right replacement is Allardyce - a manager known for shit football.
Either the quality of football matters to you or it doesn't. I'm surprised if you're now going to say it doesn't matter, given how much you and I both complained about the style of play under O'Neill, though.
As for the Guardiola comment, I think you'll find, as mentioned above, lots of people on here can see the outbreaks of decent football we have had this season. In fact, I can think of two or three people at most who refuse to admit that.
I also don't really see how Allardyce is going to be a good fit under our current leadership./
For starters, employing him would mean spending a huge amount of money not just getting shot of Lambert, but then employing a manager who is known for travelling with an enormous back-room staff.
I don't see how that squares with Lerner's reluctance to spend anything in recent times, so that's one obstacle right at the start.
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Lambert's football is nowhere near as good as that and the results are worse, yet people talk as if he's on the way to being the next Guardiola.
They don't though, do they? It's merely been said by one or two posters that the football played has at times been better than the previous couple of seasons.
Weirdly, I think I'd almost rather have nicer football and a scrape with relegation, than dour football and mid-table obscurity. At least this season is interesting (in a bum-clenching sort of way), with something really at stake and the promise of something better in the future if we can somehow avoid the drop.
It's shit or bust.
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Big sams style of football is not pleasant on the eye but he does get results
He isn't getting many results currently.
West Ham are at the moment 19th in the current form table, have lost five away games in a row (including a loss to us), and have won one of their last six matches.
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One thing that's very important for a club like Villa (in its current state) is the ability to generate value from player trading. Not sure what Big Sam's record is in that department. But I'd say Lambert has made the club a pretty penny on Benteke already. A few more like that and we'll be laughing.
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only two things would make me cry regarding football
one would be if we ever won the FA cup again,
the other would be if Allardyce/Pulis were ever appointed manager of the Villa
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I don't really get it - we understand you think Allardyce would be a good appointment, but you're starting to sound like his agent now.
Forget the replacing Lambert part, that's clear enough, but would Allardyce be the best appointment?
And no, "better than Lambert" isn't enough - not if we accept your judgement of his merits. Would Allardyce genuinely be the one you wanted in to replace him? Above all others?
Tony Mowbray got dog's abuse on here for playing decent football with West Brom, but taking them down, well Lambert's football is nowhere near as good as that and the results are worse, yet people talk as if he's on the way to being the next Guardiola.
Sorry Risso but the Guardiola comment was ridiculous.
As for Mowbray, don't bring him into the argument. The bloke's a mediocre manager.
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It's very well suggesting other managers but I just don't see where these players are that Lambert has had at his disposal to make us into a mid table side like West Ham this season? Allardyce began the summer with a better squad than ours and a squad he'd already had a season to assemble. They then spent a similar amount to us in transfer fees and most probably a shit load more on wages. It's got them mid table. Allardyce is clearly not a fool. He just plays an effective but extremely boring style of football that will keep getting him jobs in the industry.
Lambert spent roughly £23m adding to a squad which were arguably the worst in the league if the end of last season was anything to go by. We needed some major repair work on the squad and £23m on the amount of players we bought isn't a great deal in the current Premier League climate. With the players we have, we are where we should be. It's as simple as that. No Allardyce or Ferguson or whoever is going to change that fact. I think we'll be much better off in a few years when we've given Lambert sufficient time. It's a similar situation to Rodgers at Liverpool, I think he's turning them around following the poor spending era of King Kenny but it's not going to happen overnight. I suppose it comes down to whether you think it's the right call to build a squad who will see us in a better position in 5 years time, or spend more money on the here and now? There are pros and cons to both. Personally, I think building for the future and risk getting relegated in the short term is the better option.
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One thing that's very important for a club like Villa (in its current state) is the ability to generate value from player trading. Not sure what Big Sam's record is in that department. But I'd say Lambert has made the club a pretty penny on Benteke already. A few more like that and we'll be laughing.
Making a profit on transfers is not going to have me laughing , i would far rather see the good players kept and the club progress rather than be sold for profit- it may be good for randy but i prefer results on the pitch to making a profit on transfers.
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It's very well suggesting other managers but I just don't see where these players are that Lambert has had at his disposal to make us into a mid table side like West Ham this season? Allardyce began the summer with a better squad than ours and a squad he'd already had a season to assemble. They then spent a similar amount to us in transfer fees and most probably a shit load more on wages. It's got them mid table. Allardyce is clearly not a fool. He just plays an effective but extremely boring style of football that will keep getting him jobs in the industry.
Lambert spent roughly £23m adding to a squad which were arguably the worst in the league if the end of last season was anything to go by. We needed some major repair work on the squad and £23m on the amount of players we bought isn't a great deal in the current Premier League climate. With the players we have, we are where we should be. It's as simple as that. No Allardyce or Ferguson or whoever is going to change that fact. I think we'll be much better off in a few years when we've given Lambert sufficient time. It's a similar situation to Rodgers at Liverpool, I think he's turning them around following the poor spending era of King Kenny but it's not going to happen overnight. I suppose it comes down to whether you think it's the right call to build a squad who will see us in a better position in 5 years time, or spend more money on the here and now? There are pros and cons to both. Personally, I think building for the future and risk getting relegated in the short term is the better option.
Whilst I agree with the majority of your post, I do disagree with this bit.
I'm not in the 'Lambert out' camp, but he should have been able to get the defense better organised and tighter, thereby seeing us ship less goals and be a few places up the league in a relatively safe midfield position.
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It's very well suggesting other managers but I just don't see where these players are that Lambert has had at his disposal to make us into a mid table side like West Ham this season? Allardyce began the summer with a better squad than ours and a squad he'd already had a season to assemble. They then spent a similar amount to us in transfer fees and most probably a shit load more on wages. It's got them mid table. Allardyce is clearly not a fool. He just plays an effective but extremely boring style of football that will keep getting him jobs in the industry.
Lambert spent roughly £23m adding to a squad which were arguably the worst in the league if the end of last season was anything to go by. We needed some major repair work on the squad and £23m on the amount of players we bought isn't a great deal in the current Premier League climate. With the players we have, we are where we should be. It's as simple as that.
Sorry, but a duffer like McLeish managed to keep the same set of players up last year - and that was underperforming.
Lambert has had an extra £23 million to make the side even worse, that's not any measure of progress, in my book.
Also: player for player, we have a better first team and squad than West Ham, save possibly in midfield. There is a reason why they went down in 2010/2011. Fat Sam has spent a bit, but most of his deals have been free transfers, loans and budget deals.
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Of the club's Allardyce had managed, probably the best direct comparison to Villa (size wise, history wise) is his time at Newcastle.
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It's very well suggesting other managers but I just don't see where these players are that Lambert has had at his disposal to make us into a mid table side like West Ham this season? Allardyce began the summer with a better squad than ours and a squad he'd already had a season to assemble. They then spent a similar amount to us in transfer fees and most probably a shit load more on wages. It's got them mid table. Allardyce is clearly not a fool. He just plays an effective but extremely boring style of football that will keep getting him jobs in the industry.
Lambert spent roughly £23m adding to a squad which were arguably the worst in the league if the end of last season was anything to go by. We needed some major repair work on the squad and £23m on the amount of players we bought isn't a great deal in the current Premier League climate. With the players we have, we are where we should be. It's as simple as that. No Allardyce or Ferguson or whoever is going to change that fact. I think we'll be much better off in a few years when we've given Lambert sufficient time. It's a similar situation to Rodgers at Liverpool, I think he's turning them around following the poor spending era of King Kenny but it's not going to happen overnight. I suppose it comes down to whether you think it's the right call to build a squad who will see us in a better position in 5 years time, or spend more money on the here and now? There are pros and cons to both. Personally, I think building for the future and risk getting relegated in the short term is the better option.
I bet there are several squads in the Premier League that didn't cost £23m in total, never mind having that spent on them this summer.
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Sorry, but a duffer like McLeish managed to keep the same set of players up last year - and that was underperforming.
He had Dunne, Collins and Petrov for most of the season - where are our biggets weaknesses again? Plus Lambert hasn't actually relegated us, so comparisons like that are probably better left until 38 games have bene played.
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Big sams style of football is not pleasant on the eye but he does get results
He isn't getting many results currently.
West Ham are at the moment 19th in the current form table, have lost five away games in a row (including a loss to us), and have won one of their last six matches.
I have being saying for weeks that West Ham are in a relegation battle. You can see why after their abysmal attempt at playing the game of football at B6. They have Spurs and Yanited coming up at home, couple that with their awful away form and its easy to see why they’re going to struggle.
A number of people complain about the way Lambert speaks, God knows what they would make of Alladyce who appears to watch games high on acid, such is the unfathomable, myopic, nonsense he comes out with post match.
He is a limited manager, employing an archaic style of football.
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Sorry, but a duffer like McLeish managed to keep the same set of players up last year - and that was underperforming.
He had Dunne, Collins and Petrov for most of the season - where are our biggets weaknesses again? Plus Lambert hasn't actually relegated us, so comparisons like that are probably better left until 38 games have bene played.
Lambert needs two more wins and 14 more points to equal last season.
I think we'll better that.
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Sorry, but a duffer like McLeish managed to keep the same set of players up last year - and that was underperforming.
He had Dunne, Collins and Petrov for most of the season - where are our biggets weaknesses again? Plus Lambert hasn't actually relegated us, so comparisons like that are probably better left until 38 games have bene played.
He chose to sell Collins, and then didn't buy a single defender with Premier League experience.
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Sorry, but a duffer like McLeish managed to keep the same set of players up last year - and that was underperforming.
He had Dunne, Collins and Petrov for most of the season - where are our biggets weaknesses again? Plus Lambert hasn't actually relegated us, so comparisons like that are probably better left until 38 games have bene played.
He chose to sell Collins, and then didn't buy a single defender with Premier League experience.
Yes, he did. And nobody argued a jot when Collins went. If he had bought PL experience it would have been an overpaid journey man, the sort you argued heavily against under MON, and we may not have had the money to buy Benteke.
Just because he didn't do something does not mean doing the opposite would have yielded better results.
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Putting Fat Sam aside for one moment, IF we go down, Lambert has to be sacked.
No way should he be allowed to stay on.
We'll see at the end of the season what Carbon Neutral and the Invisible Man intend to do.
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Big sams style of football is not pleasant on the eye but he does get results
He isn't getting many results currently.
West Ham are at the moment 19th in the current form table, have lost five away games in a row (including a loss to us), and have won one of their last six matches.
I have being saying for weeks that West Ham are in a relegation battle. You can see why after their abysmal attempt at playing the game of football at B6. They have Spurs and Yanited coming up at home, couple that with their awful away form and its easy to see why they’re going to struggle.
A number of people complain about the way Lambert speaks, God knows what they would make of Alladyce who appears to watch games high on acid, such is the unfathomable, myopic, nonsense he comes out with post match.
He is a limited manager, employing an archaic style of football.
Right on ;D
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It's very well suggesting other managers but I just don't see where these players are that Lambert has had at his disposal to make us into a mid table side like West Ham this season? Allardyce began the summer with a better squad than ours and a squad he'd already had a season to assemble. They then spent a similar amount to us in transfer fees and most probably a shit load more on wages. It's got them mid table. Allardyce is clearly not a fool. He just plays an effective but extremely boring style of football that will keep getting him jobs in the industry.
Lambert spent roughly £23m adding to a squad which were arguably the worst in the league if the end of last season was anything to go by. We needed some major repair work on the squad and £23m on the amount of players we bought isn't a great deal in the current Premier League climate. With the players we have, we are where we should be. It's as simple as that. No Allardyce or Ferguson or whoever is going to change that fact. I think we'll be much better off in a few years when we've given Lambert sufficient time. It's a similar situation to Rodgers at Liverpool, I think he's turning them around following the poor spending era of King Kenny but it's not going to happen overnight. I suppose it comes down to whether you think it's the right call to build a squad who will see us in a better position in 5 years time, or spend more money on the here and now? There are pros and cons to both. Personally, I think building for the future and risk getting relegated in the short term is the better option.
I bet there are several squads in the Premier League that didn't cost £23m in total, never mind having that spent on them this summer.
You're probably right, but I'll also bet these were built over several seasons where players have been given time to develop into Premier League players and the manager has been given time to assemble his own squad, not just over one summer window. Like Lambert at Norwich for example.
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Putting Fat Sam aside for one moment, IF we go down, Lambert has to be sacked.
No way should he be allowed to stay on.
We'll see at the end of the season what Carbon Neutral and the Invisible Man intend to do.
And replaced with who??
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It's very well suggesting other managers but I just don't see where these players are that Lambert has had at his disposal to make us into a mid table side like West Ham this season? Allardyce began the summer with a better squad than ours and a squad he'd already had a season to assemble. They then spent a similar amount to us in transfer fees and most probably a shit load more on wages. It's got them mid table. Allardyce is clearly not a fool. He just plays an effective but extremely boring style of football that will keep getting him jobs in the industry.
Lambert spent roughly £23m adding to a squad which were arguably the worst in the league if the end of last season was anything to go by. We needed some major repair work on the squad and £23m on the amount of players we bought isn't a great deal in the current Premier League climate. With the players we have, we are where we should be. It's as simple as that. No Allardyce or Ferguson or whoever is going to change that fact. I think we'll be much better off in a few years when we've given Lambert sufficient time. It's a similar situation to Rodgers at Liverpool, I think he's turning them around following the poor spending era of King Kenny but it's not going to happen overnight. I suppose it comes down to whether you think it's the right call to build a squad who will see us in a better position in 5 years time, or spend more money on the here and now? There are pros and cons to both. Personally, I think building for the future and risk getting relegated in the short term is the better option.
I bet there are several squads in the Premier League that didn't cost £23m in total, never mind having that spent on them this summer.
You're probably right, but I'll also bet these were built over several seasons where players have been given time to develop into Premier League players and not just over one summer window.
Lambert chose to go down the route he did. The fact that it's been a colossal mistake is his own fault.
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It's very well suggesting other managers but I just don't see where these players are that Lambert has had at his disposal to make us into a mid table side like West Ham this season? Allardyce began the summer with a better squad than ours and a squad he'd already had a season to assemble. They then spent a similar amount to us in transfer fees and most probably a shit load more on wages. It's got them mid table. Allardyce is clearly not a fool. He just plays an effective but extremely boring style of football that will keep getting him jobs in the industry.
Lambert spent roughly £23m adding to a squad which were arguably the worst in the league if the end of last season was anything to go by. We needed some major repair work on the squad and £23m on the amount of players we bought isn't a great deal in the current Premier League climate. With the players we have, we are where we should be. It's as simple as that. No Allardyce or Ferguson or whoever is going to change that fact. I think we'll be much better off in a few years when we've given Lambert sufficient time. It's a similar situation to Rodgers at Liverpool, I think he's turning them around following the poor spending era of King Kenny but it's not going to happen overnight. I suppose it comes down to whether you think it's the right call to build a squad who will see us in a better position in 5 years time, or spend more money on the here and now? There are pros and cons to both. Personally, I think building for the future and risk getting relegated in the short term is the better option.
I bet there are several squads in the Premier League that didn't cost £23m in total, never mind having that spent on them this summer.
You're probably right, but I'll also bet these were built over several seasons where players have been given time to develop into Premier League players and not just over one summer window.
Precisely.
Most of those squads would be the recently promoted clubs where they had those players at a lower level and developed with them.
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Putting Fat Sam aside for one moment, IF we go down, Lambert has to be sacked.
No way should he be allowed to stay on.
We'll see at the end of the season what Carbon Neutral and the Invisible Man intend to do.
And replaced with who??
Steve Mclaren
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Lambert chose to go down the route he did. The fact that it's been a colossal mistake is his own fault.
Have you built some sort of time machine and seen us playing in league 1 in 5 years time then?
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Putting Fat Sam aside for one moment, IF we go down, Lambert has to be sacked.
No way should he be allowed to stay on.
We'll see at the end of the season what Carbon Neutral and the Invisible Man intend to do.
And replaced with who??
That's for the club to decide.
If you employed an Electrician who kept electrocuting everybody with his fucked up wiring, you'd sack him, you wouldn't wait till you got a replacement.
If he takes us down after spending £25m, he'll have been a failure.
Surely it would be club policy anyway, McCatpiss (rightly) got the sack just for coming close.
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Lambert chose to go down the route he did. The fact that it's been a colossal mistake is his own fault.
It's a colossal mistake if we go down. If we don't, it's a calculated gamble that will pay off, or not, in a few years.
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Putting Fat Sam aside for one moment, IF we go down, Lambert has to be sacked.
No way should he be allowed to stay on.
We'll see at the end of the season what Carbon Neutral and the Invisible Man intend to do.
And replaced with who??
Gus poyet.
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Lambert chose to go down the route he did. The fact that it's been a colossal mistake is his own fault.
Have you built some sort of time machine and seen us playing in league 1 in 5 years time then?
Two, not five.
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Lambert chose to go down the route he did. The fact that it's been a colossal mistake is his own fault.
It's a colossal mistake if we go down. If we don't, it's a calculated gamble that will pay off, or not, in a few years.
Ditto.
It's not a colossal mistake, we are not sitting bottom of the league being cast adrift points wise.
It's more of a calculated risk. The colossal mistake was the appointment of TSM.
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Lambert chose to go down the route he did. The fact that it's been a colossal mistake is his own fault.
Have you built some sort of time machine and seen us playing in league 1 in 5 years time then?
Two, not five.
Nice work.
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Putting Fat Sam aside for one moment, IF we go down, Lambert has to be sacked.
No way should he be allowed to stay on.
We'll see at the end of the season what Carbon Neutral and the Invisible Man intend to do.
And replaced with who??
Gus poyet.
A man who hasn't achieved as much as Lambert, good call.
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Putting Fat Sam aside for one moment, IF we go down, Lambert has to be sacked.
No way should he be allowed to stay on.
We'll see at the end of the season what Carbon Neutral and the Invisible Man intend to do.
And replaced with who??
Gus poyet.
A man who hasn't achieved as much as Lambert, good call.
Let's get McLeish back then, he won the League Cup afterall.
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Putting Fat Sam aside for one moment, IF we go down, Lambert has to be sacked.
No way should he be allowed to stay on.
We'll see at the end of the season what Carbon Neutral and the Invisible Man intend to do.
And replaced with who??
Gus poyet.
A man who hasn't achieved as much as Lambert, good call.
Lambert is in his 8th year in management - i suspect that when gus poyet reaches his 8th year in management he will have already achieved far far more than mr lambert will ever achieve.
Sadly though i think poyet will end up at a much bigger job than villa and doubt we could tempt him.
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Putting Fat Sam aside for one moment, IF we go down, Lambert has to be sacked.
No way should he be allowed to stay on.
We'll see at the end of the season what Carbon Neutral and the Invisible Man intend to do.
And replaced with who??
Gus poyet.
A man who hasn't achieved as much as Lambert, good call.
Lambert is in his 8th year in management - i suspect that when gus poyet reaches his 8th year in management he will have already achieved far far more than mr lambert will ever achieve.
Sadly though i think poyet will end up at a much bigger job than villa and doubt we could tempt him.
Based on what?
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Fat Face spent as much as Lambert did last summer, add a free Andy Carroll and Joe Cole ( there's another £35m worth of "talent") and he's currently sitting 2 wins above us in the league after losing against us last week. His chairman, fans and, quite possibly, players seem to want him out of West Ham
Lambert might be no good, but Sam's no better.
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Putting Fat Sam aside for one moment, IF we go down, Lambert has to be sacked.
No way should he be allowed to stay on.
We'll see at the end of the season what Carbon Neutral and the Invisible Man intend to do.
And replaced with who??
Gus poyet.
A man who hasn't achieved as much as Lambert, good call.
Lambert is in his 8th year in management - i suspect that when gus poyet reaches his 8th year in management he will have already achieved far far more than mr lambert will ever achieve.
Sadly though i think poyet will end up at a much bigger job than villa and doubt we could tempt him.
Based on what?
Everything ive seen so far suggests to me poyet will be a top manager - i expect the likes of chelsea and spurs to be after him in future years while the likes of colchester and chesterfield covet mr lamberts services.
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Everything you said about Poyet could have and would have been said about Lambert prior to us appointing him.
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Everything you said about Poyet could have and would have been said about Lambert prior to us appointing him.
That could be said for many managers - some come off , some fail , unfortunately i think the job is too big for lambert- i hope he proves me and others wrong but i really cant see him being successful here.
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Think I would give up with football if we appointed another anti-football manager.
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Everything you said about Poyet could have and would have been said about Lambert prior to us appointing him.
And was - by many Villa fans. Perhaps we should resurrect the thread about him that was started halfway through TSM's reign?
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Oh for fucks sake, this endless doom saying is getting on my tits.
If Aston Villa snapped their fingers, then Gus Poyet would leave bloody Brighton in a flash.
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Putting Fat Sam aside for one moment, IF we go down, Lambert has to be sacked.
No way should he be allowed to stay on.
We'll see at the end of the season what Carbon Neutral and the Invisible Man intend to do.
And replaced with who??
Gus poyet.
A man who hasn't achieved as much as Lambert, good call.
Lambert is in his 8th year in management - i suspect that when gus poyet reaches his 8th year in management he will have already achieved far far more than mr lambert will ever achieve.
Sadly though i think poyet will end up at a much bigger job than villa and doubt we could tempt him.
Based on what?
Based on absolutely nothing at all. Lambert hasn't covered himself in glory this season, but FFS, now Gus Poyet is better than him. Give me a break. I realise the man's stock has fallen but to write him off to that level is nuts. One more defeat and he'll be below Phil Brown and Paul Jewell.
And fucking Sam Allardyce...we may as well just stop playing the game entirely if his carry on rolls into town.
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Everything you said about Poyet could have and would have been said about Lambert prior to us appointing him.
And was - by many Villa fans. Perhaps we should resurrect the thread about him that was started halfway through TSM's reign?
You are right , many of us wanted lambert but not many of us could ever have imagined the season being as bad as this - i am happy to hold my hands up and accept i was wrong - it was a mistake .
This is a forum and we are all entitled to our opinions .
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I'm sorry but Allardyce may be functional at what he does however that doesn't mean I want him near Villa. Lambert has cocked up a lot, but his ideas are in the right place. If he were to go, there must be plenty of better options than Allardyce.
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Putting Fat Sam aside for one moment, IF we go down, Lambert has to be sacked.
No way should he be allowed to stay on.
We'll see at the end of the season what Carbon Neutral and the Invisible Man intend to do.
And replaced with who??
Gus poyet.
A man who hasn't achieved as much as Lambert, good call.
Lambert is in his 8th year in management - i suspect that when gus poyet reaches his 8th year in management he will have already achieved far far more than mr lambert will ever achieve.
Sadly though i think poyet will end up at a much bigger job than villa and doubt we could tempt him.
Based on what?
Based on absolutely nothing at all. Lambert hasn't covered himself in glory this season, but FFS, now Gus Poyet is better than him. Give me a break. I realise the man's stock has fallen but to write him off to that level is nuts. One more defeat and he'll be below Phil Brown and Paul Jewell.
And fucking Sam Allardyce...we may as well just stop playing the game entirely if his carry on rolls into town.
Ah- yes phil brown and paul jewell, both managers who got their clubs to the premier league , kept them up and look where they are now , lambert will end up being classed at that level i feel- well done toronto , good comparison.
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Allerdyce could stabilise the team and keep us in the division, which I think Lambert can and will also do. What he can't do is build something longterm that can eventually take on the top sides without throwing money at it, which is what I believe Lambert can do through a focused youth and scouting policy.
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Allerdyce could stabilise the team and keep us in the division, which I think Lambert can and will also do. What he can't do is build something longterm that can eventually take on the top sides without throwing money at it, which is what I believe Lambert can do through a focused youth and scouting policy.
In todays climate i dont think you can build and take on the top sides without considerable finance - the problem will be once we unearth young gems they will be sold to the bigger clubs who with champions league revenue are way outvof our reach to compete with financially- without massive investment 7-10th place is as good as its likely to get.
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Allerdyce could stabilise the team and keep us in the division, which I think Lambert can and will also do. What he can't do is build something longterm that can eventually take on the top sides without throwing money at it, which is what I believe Lambert can do through a focused youth and scouting policy.
In todays climate i dont think you can build and take on the top sides without considerable finance - the problem will be once we unearth young gems they will be sold to the bigger clubs who with champions league revenue are way outvof our reach to compete with financially- without massive investment 7-10th place is as good as its likely to get.
I think it's about growing organically and starting to generate income that pushes you on.
Spurs in the example I think of - started a youth policy with Jol and although lost a few along the way (Berbatov and Carrick) reinvested and kept going.
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Spurs had a youth policy?
How did I miss that?
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Allerdyce could stabilise the team and keep us in the division, which I think Lambert can and will also do. What he can't do is build something longterm that can eventually take on the top sides without throwing money at it, which is what I believe Lambert can do through a focused youth and scouting policy.
In todays climate i dont think you can build and take on the top sides without considerable finance - the problem will be once we unearth young gems they will be sold to the bigger clubs who with champions league revenue are way outvof our reach to compete with financially- without massive investment 7-10th place is as good as its likely to get.
I think it's about growing organically and starting to generate income that pushes you on.
Spurs in the example I think of - started a youth policy with Jol and although lost a few along the way (Berbatov and Carrick) reinvested and kept going.
Exactly if we sell Benteke for 25m and reinvest that money in buying 2-3 players with equal potential then we might have 3 who are being fought over in a years time, maybe 1-2 of them leave but we get another 3-4 and 'go again'. It's all about reinvesting. Our problem has been that we've reinvested badly, at some point we need to stop that rot.
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Ah- yes phil brown and paul jewell, both managers who got their clubs to the premier league , kept them up and look where they are now , lambert will end up being classed at that level i feel- well done toronto , good comparison.
No, I didn't compare him to either of those, you just did. You really have cornered the H&V market on sensationalism and melodrama which is is why you feel so at home in the transfer thread. Now, you're touting Gus Poyet as the next big thing, who has achieved all of one promotion in his illustrious managerial career from League One to the Championship, and never managed in the Premier League. Yet he's the saviour. Hilarious.
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Poyet may or may not be the saviour - lambert sure as hell is not , but i expect by the end of the season even you toronto will finally see that.
I am not touting poyet just suggesting he along with many others would be an alternative to the current manager.
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Growing organically is important, for sure. And I think our carbon neutral status will allow us to tap into the key vegan lesbian demographic.
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I think judgement on Lambert should be reserved until the end of the season. It's not been as good as we all expected and at times it's been unbearable to watch. I think it's a bit early to be calling for the likes of BFS or Poyet though.
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Poyet may or may not be the saviour - lambert sure as hell is not , but i expect by the end of the season even you toronto will finally see that.
I am not touting poyet just suggesting he along with many others would be an alternative to the current manager.
You need to be a bit more forward thinking, decide who you want as the manager after next for when you turn this time next year. Just thinking one sacking at a time is getting us nowhere.
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It's pretty amazing to suggest Lambert is this year's "promoted manager who disappears into obscurity" but to then suggest the obvious replacement a bloke who is right down the league and hasn't achieved more than a promotion from the bottom flight.
To then go on and suggest he's way out of our grasp is laughably nonsensical.
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Spurs had a youth policy?
How did I miss that?
I was amazed to hear that, too.
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Fat Face spent as much as Lambert did last summer,
Not sure how you've arrived at that conclusion, by my calculations Lambert spent loads more.
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The end of the season means nothing. It's as clear as day that the season could go either way. There's no point sticking with Lambert now unless we are prepared to see it through. If we sack him at the end of the season we would have been far better off sacking him at the start of January. We need to stick with him for a couple of seasons at the bare minimum to see whether this policy of investing in youth is actually working. Judging him and this policy after one season is completely pointless imo.
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Fat Face spent as much as Lambert did last summer,
Not sure how you've arrived at that conclusion, by my calculations Lambert spent loads more.
What are your calculations?
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Fat Face spent as much as Lambert did last summer,
Not sure how you've arrived at that conclusion, by my calculations Lambert spent loads more.
What are your calculations?
According to transferleague.co.uk West Ham spent £18,250,000
We spent 23.7m, so more, but not really "loads more".
Then there's the fact that, if we wanted to - and I am sure our glorious leaders are itching to - we could sell one of those players Lambert bought and cover a massive chunk of that total outlay.
I think you need to cotton on to the way things are, JR, it's not enough that our league results and position are shit, it actually has to be EVERYTHING that is shit, which means all his signings are gash, too.
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The end of the season means nothing. It's as clear as day that the season could go either way. There's no point sticking with Lambert now unless we are prepared to see it through. If we sack him at the end of the season we would have been far better off sacking him at the start of January. We need to stick with him for a couple of seasons at the bare minimum to see whether this policy of investing in youth is actually working. Judging him and this policy after one season is completely pointless imo.
I agree entirely with this.
If we got relegated, what kind of manager do people think we'd get in and give us a chance of bouncing straight back?
I've had enough of the endless squandering of money paying off managers and paying for new ones to come in, let's put some trust in the bloke (which the board seem to have done, and which most people here have done), back him with the money needed (fingers crossed on that one, because January was a shambles) and give him time to rebuild the club.
I understand those who are angry at the way this season has gone, but just think we need to be a bit calmer about this and not give in to our natural desire to sack the bloke / make someone pay for it.
EDIT it actually isn't "what kind of manager do we think we'd get in", it should be "what kind of manager do we think Lerner and Faulkner would get in". We've seen their cluelessness already with managerial appointments, and that was when we were operating as a top flight club.
I shudder to think what sort of dross they'd get in if we were in the championship.
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£2.5m of West Ham's spend in the summer was on James Collins.....
£11m on Jarvis
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Fat Face spent as much as Lambert did last summer,
Not sure how you've arrived at that conclusion, by my calculations Lambert spent loads more.
What are your calculations?
According to transferleague.co.uk West Ham spent £18,250,000
We spent 23.7m, so more, but not really "loads more".
Then there's the fact that, if we wanted to - and I am sure our glorious leaders are itching to - we could sell one of those players Lambert bought and cover a massive chunk of that total outlay.
I think you need to cotton on to the way things are, JR, it's not enough that our league results and position are shit, it actually has to be EVERYTHING that is shit, which means all his signings are gash, too.
paulie, i agree totaly with you, but you are fighting a losing battle here
if people cant see a difference between the football Lambert is trying to get us playing and the stuff BFS plays, then there is no point arguing
if people really believe that Lamberts football is no better than TSM's best efforts then its a non argument, its going no where
you can compare results, and make a case that lambert has performed very poorly so far, and in respect of TSM you can say he has faired no better, but thats not the only criteria, and on what PL is trying to produce is simply miles different from anything TSM, BFS or Pullis can even dream about
if people cant see that, then its time to close the door, because they never will
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£2.5m of West Ham's spend in the summer was on James Collins.....
£11m on Jarvis
£7.5m I think you'll find. You can't spend add ons until the trigger event happens, if it ever does.
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£7.5m I think you'll find.
I'll bow t the bean counter
still dont make Sam the new Guardiola though, as some would talk of him.
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There is a case for sticking with Lambert if we do go down. Look at M'Boro for example. They kept Southgate on after he took them down, sacked him about 6-7 games in (it may have been more) and i think they were 3rd at the time. They employed Mowbray and are still trying to get back up.
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The end of the season means nothing. It's as clear as day that the season could go either way. There's no point sticking with Lambert now unless we are prepared to see it through. If we sack him at the end of the season we would have been far better off sacking him at the start of January. We need to stick with him for a couple of seasons at the bare minimum to see whether this policy of investing in youth is actually working. Judging him and this policy after one season is completely pointless imo.
I agree entirely with this.
If we got relegated, what kind of manager do people think we'd get in and give us a chance of bouncing straight back?
I've had enough of the endless squandering of money paying off managers and paying for new ones to come in, let's put some trust in the bloke (which the board seem to have done, and which most people here have done), back him with the money needed (fingers crossed on that one, because January was a shambles) and give him time to rebuild the club.
I understand those who are angry at the way this season has gone, but just think we need to be a bit calmer about this and not give in to our natural desire to sack the bloke / make someone pay for it.
EDIT it actually isn't "what kind of manager do we think we'd get in", it should be "what kind of manager do we think Lerner and Faulkner would get in". We've seen their cluelessness already with managerial appointments, and that was when we were operating as a top flight club.
I shudder to think what sort of dross they'd get in if we were in the championship.
So if the wrong man is in the job and takes us down we stick with him - no thanks , should have gone a month ago - the people saying stick with lambert are in the main the ones who called for mcleish to go thos time last season and we are worse off points wise than a year ago and have had humiliation after humiliation- if you make a mistake you put your hand up and admit it , not blindly carry on with the same mumbling incompetent .
The day lambert goes i will celebrate with a bottle of bubbly in the same way i celebrated the day o neill went - good riddance to both.
The pro and anti lambert brigade have made their minds up and are not going to change our opinions so we must accept each others views.
I will return on saturday in the hope we can get a much needed result but until then i will steer clear or this lambert love in - enjoy your week all!
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See you some time within the next ten minutes no doubt Eastie.
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eastie,
my minds not made up on Lambert, if we are in the same situation next year (asuming we stay up) then i will probably be thinking he's not up to the job
there is a difference in wanting to get rid of a manager after just a few months and thinking he's the bees knees
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So if the wrong man is in the job and takes us down we stick with him - no thanks , should have gone a month ago - the people saying stick with lambert are in the main the ones who called for mcleish to go thos time last season and we are worse off points wise than a year ago and have had humiliation after humiliation- if you make a mistake you put your hand up and admit it , not blindly carry on with the same mumbling incompetent .
That's the point though.
McLeish happened, we can't pretend otherwise, we're another massive waste of money on compensation down the line to be talking about binning Lambert.
Ultimately, the difference between Lambert and McLeish is that Lambert has a record of getting his previous teams playing decent stuff, and has tried - tried - to get us doing so.
Some of this has shown, but not enough yet.
So, you're stuck, you either stick with what you have and back him to build on what he has got thus far, or you totally throw away any real gain which came with the pain of this season - yet again - and start all over again.
Except this time, you're in the Championship and looking at an even lower quality of candidate.
You can also go on about how he should have been sacked ages ago yada yada, but ultimately, he wasn't was he? We can only look at where we are now, or more pressingly, where we will be at the end of the season.
For starters, go down, and your Allardyce dream appointment doesn't have a hope in hell of coming off. So then who do you look at?
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Fat Face spent as much as Lambert did last summer,
Not sure how you've arrived at that conclusion, by my calculations Lambert spent loads more.
What are your calculations?
According to transferleague.co.uk West Ham spent £18,250,000
We spent 23.7m, so more, but not really "loads more".
Then there's the fact that, if we wanted to - and I am sure our glorious leaders are itching to - we could sell one of those players Lambert bought and cover a massive chunk of that total outlay.
I think you need to cotton on to the way things are, JR, it's not enough that our league results and position are shit, it actually has to be EVERYTHING that is shit, which means all his signings are gash, too.
paulie, i agree totaly with you, but you are fighting a losing battle here
if people cant see a difference between the football Lambert is trying to get us playing and the stuff BFS plays, then there is no point arguing
if people really believe that Lamberts football is no better than TSM's best efforts then its a non argument, its going no where
you can compare results, and make a case that lambert has performed very poorly so far, and in respect of TSM you can say he has faired no better, but thats not the only criteria, and on what PL is trying to produce is simply miles different from anything TSM, BFS or Pullis can even dream about
if people cant see that, then its time to close the door, because they never will
What is this maverick, revolutionary type of approach he's trying to bring about then?
During his time at Norwich -the perod that seems to be the highlight of his career so far- they were quite capable of the big boof ball to Holt and Morrison and working the flanks.
During the past few months we've seen that at various stages at Villa too.
There are the odd 15/20 minute spells where we knock the ball about- usually when the opposition have the lead, mind. And are content to sit back and soak up pressure. Even relegated sides have periods of 15/20 minutes in a game where they don't look totally dismal. We still have major issues with movement and running off the ball, so if this is being worked on -like our set piece efforts- the work is falling far short.
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We still have major issues with movement and running off the ball, so if this is being worked on -like our set piece efforts- the work is falling far short.
At least Allardyce could sort that out. The movement would just be legging it upfield and hoping for a knock down from Andy Carroll.
In fact, he'd solve our midfield problem too, as we wouldn't need one. The big man up front, and James Collins at the back, witlessly hoofing out everything that comes anywhere near him.
*wink*
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Fat Face spent as much as Lambert did last summer,
Not sure how you've arrived at that conclusion, by my calculations Lambert spent loads more.
What are your calculations?
According to transferleague.co.uk West Ham spent £18,250,000
We spent 23.7m, so more, but not really "loads more".
Then there's the fact that, if we wanted to - and I am sure our glorious leaders are itching to - we could sell one of those players Lambert bought and cover a massive chunk of that total outlay.
I think you need to cotton on to the way things are, JR, it's not enough that our league results and position are shit, it actually has to be EVERYTHING that is shit, which means all his signings are gash, too.
paulie, i agree totaly with you, but you are fighting a losing battle here
if people cant see a difference between the football Lambert is trying to get us playing and the stuff BFS plays, then there is no point arguing
if people really believe that Lamberts football is no better than TSM's best efforts then its a non argument, its going no where
you can compare results, and make a case that lambert has performed very poorly so far, and in respect of TSM you can say he has faired no better, but thats not the only criteria, and on what PL is trying to produce is simply miles different from anything TSM, BFS or Pullis can even dream about
if people cant see that, then its time to close the door, because they never will
What is this maverick, revolutionary type of approach he's trying to bring about then?
During his time at Norwich -the perod that seems to be the highlight of his career so far- they were quite capable of the big boof ball to Holt and Morrison and working the flanks.
During the past few months we've seen that at various stages at Villa too.
There are the odd 15/20 minute spells where we knock the ball about- usually when the opposition have the lead, mind. And are content to sit back and soak up pressure. Even relegated sides have periods of 15/20 minutes in a game where they don't look totally dismal. We still have major issues with movement and running off the ball, so if this is being worked on -like our set piece efforts- the work is falling far short.
i dont think its revolutionary, just a whole lot better than Mcliesh, Allardyce etc
to be honest i dont have a problem if people dont think Lambert is the man, thats just an opinion, he might not be
but anyone who prefers the sort of guff Allardyce and TSM have served up there whole careers cant like football very much
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James Beckenbauer Collins coming back to Villa is another in the plus column, naturally. ;)
On a serious point, I'd take their midfield options over ours.
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James Beckenbauer Collins coming back to Villa is another in the plus column, naturally. ;)
On a serious point, I'd take their midfield options over ours.
cant say there midfield were to impresive last time out, but that was only one game i suppose
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I really don't think you can compare Lambert with TSM. McLeish signed has-beens for stupid money, whereas Lambert has clearly adopted what he considers to be a financially sustainable approach, buying youngsters whose value will increase rather than depreciate.
Of course, if we get relegated it'll be a big setback, but by investing in youth he's sacrificing short-term stability in the hope of longer term success, and I share his belief that it's the right way to go.
Just a shame he's spent so long being shite at organising a competent defence.
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Has the eastie and clampy love in started yet ? ::)
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Has the eastie and clampy love in started yet ? ::)
He's off the site now until Saturday. I'm so upset.
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Has the eastie and clampy love in started yet ? ::)
He's off the site now until Saturday. I'm so upset.
No need for crocodile tears Clampy. eastie will be back with avengance. ;)
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I actually think there are a lot of wrongs written about TSM as well. Tin hat time I think....
I agree with everyone that says his brand of football was woeful and boring to watch, but I certainly don't think he's as useless a manager as some people make out. The season before he took over we finished on 48 points. The following summer from the side that started the most games the previous season we lost Friedel, Luke Young, Downing, Ashley Young and Reo-Coker. That's a fairly big chunk of the first XI and a massive chasm in quality to fill. So then we signed N'Zogbia, Given and Hutton - clearly not enough to stem the slide down the table. It would have been an impressive feat to even reach the 48 points we got in 10-11. But before we lost Petrov we were actually on for roughly 43 points last season. Not bad considering all the talent we lost in the summer?
Saying all that, I like to see my team play with a bit of attacking intent and I didn't ever want him as manager. To say he was completely useless is way off the mark though. I think both managers have just been victims of a club intent on cost cutting for the past 2 years.
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Has the eastie and clampy love in started yet ? ::)
He's off the site now until Saturday. I'm so upset.
No need for crocodile tears Clampy. eastie will be back with avengance. ;)
Damn right he will danny boy ! ;D
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Has the eastie and clampy love in started yet ? ::)
He's off the site now until Saturday. I'm so upset.
No need for crocodile tears Clampy. eastie will be back with avengance. ;)
Damn right he will danny boy ! ;D
Welcome back eastie. You could nomore stay of this site than become a Nose. ;D
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An hour and a half is good going for him to be fair. Saturday was a bit optimistic.
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Fat Face spent as much as Lambert did last summer,
Not sure how you've arrived at that conclusion, by my calculations Lambert spent loads more.
What are your calculations?
According to transferleague.co.uk West Ham spent £18,250,000
We spent 23.7m, so more, but not really "loads more".
Then there's the fact that, if we wanted to - and I am sure our glorious leaders are itching to - we could sell one of those players Lambert bought and cover a massive chunk of that total outlay.
I think you need to cotton on to the way things are, JR, it's not enough that our league results and position are shit, it actually has to be EVERYTHING that is shit, which means all his signings are gash, too.
So if we take off the £3.25m adds on for Jarvis if the initial fee was around £7.5m that leaves them having a net spend of around £15m.
That site also has Beast down as costing £10m so, presuming they're adds on as well and taking away the £2m it has down for Sylla we would be on around £18.7m for the summer. Not bad considering we needed around 5/6 to slot straight into the first team. So the question is, considering West Ham started the summer with a stronger squad than we did, then spent around £3.7 million less, is BFS really doing that much of a better job than Lambert with his team currently 6 points ahead of us?
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Those figures are just plain wrong. And yes, Allardyce is clearly doing a much better job than Lambert, with a newly promoted side. Lambert has performed appallingly, and West Ham are comfortably mid-table.
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Di Canio is available...
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If there is anything in the Allardyce link then West Ham have a replacement awaiting...
In all seriousness, you could see why Randy might want Allardyce (although I agree the the rumour is almost certainly bollocks). If he absolutely wants us to stay up and has lost faith in Lambert then it makes sense in the short term. However, you would question why he didn't just allow Lambert to spend the money it would cost to sack him/sign Allardyce.
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So our Managerial contenders are
1- A Bagpuss looking, sourfaced arse of a football manager or
2- Adolf Hitlers closest living relative.
How could things get any better? Oh dear me.
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If there is anything in the Allardyce link then West Ham have a replacement awaiting...
In all seriousness, you could see why Randy might want Allardyce (although I agree the the rumour is almost certainly bollocks). If he absolutely wants us to stay up and has lost faith in Lambert then it makes sense in the short term. However, you would question why he didn't just allow Lambert to spend the money it would cost to sack him/sign Allardyce.
You are assuming Randy knows what he is doing - history contradicts that assumption.
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I may have missed something or accidentally skipped a page or so, but just to clarify:
Is there any evidence to support this other than what some bloke told some bloke who posts on a west ham forum?
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Nope.
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Those figures are just plain wrong. And yes, Allardyce is clearly doing a much better job than Lambert, with a newly promoted side. Lambert has performed appallingly, and West Ham are comfortably mid-table.
Points are by far a better judge of a team's overall ability than where they are in the table. I'm surprised you think it's the other way round? West Ham are 6 points ahead of us - not a great deal.
Regardless of whether they are a newly promoted side the squad they started the summer with was better than ours - or do you dispute this? Out of the team that has started most games for them this season, 7 of them were there last season (8 if you include Tomkins who has the same amount of starts as Collins). Out of our most started XI this season, we've replaced 10 of the players from last season due to injuries and financial reasons. I don't really see where there is a case for saying he is doing a better job if he has only spent roughly £3.5/£4m less on a squad that were better in the first place? Or are you saying the figures given on that website are totally inaccurate? If so, what do you think the figures are? I'm geniunely interested to see if there is a better case for saying Allardyce is doing a better job. For the record, I don't think Allardyce is a bad manager, I think he's done well at West ham. He just plays a brand of football that makes you want to ram your head through a brick wall.
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I think he is a limited manager who gets results with a tedious brand of anti-football.
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http://westhamonline.net/forum_flat.php?6664140||1||
These Hammers think he's going to end up a bit further north of B6. Bolton again.
The ITK in the first post is quite funny, though.
Alerted to this development (if that's the word) by a friendly Hammer on the phone not long ago.
Doesn't want to keep BFS, but also doesn't want DeCanio. A lot of them do, however.
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Those figures are just plain wrong. And yes, Allardyce is clearly doing a much better job than Lambert, with a newly promoted side. Lambert has performed appallingly, and West Ham are comfortably mid-table.
Points are by far a better judge of a team's overall ability than where they are in the table. I'm surprised you think it's the other way round? West Ham are 6 points ahead of us - not a great deal.
Regardless of whether they are a newly promoted side the squad they started the summer with was better than ours - or do you dispute this? Out of the team that has started most games for them this season, 7 of them were there last season (8 if you include Tomkins who has the same amount of starts as Collins). Out of our most started XI this season, we've replaced 10 of the players from last season due to injuries and financial reasons. I don't really see where there is a case for saying he is doing a better job if he has only spent roughly £3.5/£4m less on a squad that were better in the first place? Or are you saying the figures given on that website are totally inaccurate? If so, what do you think the figures are? I'm geniunely interested to see if there is a better case for saying Allardyce is doing a better job. For the record, I don't think Allardyce is a bad manager, I think he's done well at West ham. He just plays a brand of football that makes you want to ram your head through a brick wall.
In the context of our season where it takes us more than 6 games to earn 6 points, that points gap is huge. Not to mention the enormous goal difference.
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Those figures are just plain wrong. And yes, Allardyce is clearly doing a much better job than Lambert, with a newly promoted side. Lambert has performed appallingly, and West Ham are comfortably mid-table.
Points are by far a better judge of a team's overall ability than where they are in the table. I'm surprised you think it's the other way round? West Ham are 6 points ahead of us - not a great deal.
Regardless of whether they are a newly promoted side the squad they started the summer with was better than ours - or do you dispute this? Out of the team that has started most games for them this season, 7 of them were there last season (8 if you include Tomkins who has the same amount of starts as Collins). Out of our most started XI this season, we've replaced 10 of the players from last season due to injuries and financial reasons. I don't really see where there is a case for saying he is doing a better job if he has only spent roughly £3.5/£4m less on a squad that were better in the first place? Or are you saying the figures given on that website are totally inaccurate? If so, what do you think the figures are? I'm geniunely interested to see if there is a better case for saying Allardyce is doing a better job. For the record, I don't think Allardyce is a bad manager, I think he's done well at West ham. He just plays a brand of football that makes you want to ram your head through a brick wall.
In the context of our season where it takes us more than 6 games to earn 6 points, that points gap is huge. Not to mention the enormous goal difference.
Fair point, but as we're well past the halfway point I'd say West Ham should be looking at finishing about 9 points ahead of us unless either team goes on some lucky/unlucky run between now and the end of the season. That's hardly enough to suggest he's done a far better job in one season when you consider all the above. I think it would be ridiculous not to put the goal difference down to the period over Xmas where we got lost 3 games to an aggregate score of 15-0 at a time where experienced players in the squad were virtually none existent due to injuries. Any news on the figures?
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Di Canio is available...
.....for the West Ham job, aaaarrrggghhh its all falling into place.
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I recommend that eastie check Gus Poyet's managerial record against Graham Turner's when we appointed him. Eerily similar.
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Those figures are just plain wrong. And yes, Allardyce is clearly doing a much better job than Lambert, with a newly promoted side. Lambert has performed appallingly, and West Ham are comfortably mid-table.
They're better off in terms of points - at the moment - but play one of the most horrendous brands of "football" you'll see anywhere.
If you can accept that way of playing and you're happy with it, then good for you, but you'll find yourself in a minority.
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I think you need to cotton on to the way things are, JR, it's not enough that our league results and position are shit, it actually has to be EVERYTHING that is shit, which means all his signings are gash, too.
It certainly seems to be that way Paulie. I can understand people being angry and venting frustrations at what has happened with the club recently, I'm sure we all feel the same frustration and anger. I just don't understand the refusal in some parts to have a look back and the acknowledge the facts concerning the playing staff that have left the club in the last 2 years and how much money has been spent to replace them. Logic seems to have gone right out of the window.
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I think you need to cotton on to the way things are, JR, it's not enough that our league results and position are shit, it actually has to be EVERYTHING that is shit, which means all his signings are gash, too.
It certainly seems to be that way Paulie. I can understand people being angry and venting frustrations at what has happened with the club recently, I'm sure we all feel the same frustration and anger. I just don't understand the refusal in some parts to have a look back and the acknowledge the facts concerning the playing staff that have left the club in the last 2 years and how much money has been spent to replace them. Logic seems to have gone right out of the window.
And the weird thing is that a lot of the people who don't acknowledge that are perfectly happy to slate Lerner (as he deserves to be) for it, yet somewhat silent on it when discussing how the manager has done.
Lambert has got lots of stuff wrong, some of which was his fault, some of which was attributable to the people above him in the power structure, but I find it hard to take anyone seriously if they're not prepared to admit there's a single thing he's got right.
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I guess it ultimately comes down to this: Has he got enough right to keep his job?
After presiding over our dismal run of form in Dec>Jan (and considering our form prior to that was non too hot either) I'd say no, in all honesty. At just about any other top flight club, he'd have been made to walk the plank.
It seems that even those going out on a limb to defend him do more so because of the fear of upheaval and instability again, rather than any great faith in Lambert's ability to turn things around. Though I'm past the point of defending him, I get that. And feel the same way for the most part. But sometimes it comes down to a lesser of two evils. At the end of the season, we might look back at this period as the last chance to have altered our course.
As to what he's got right so far, I'd say
1. Benteke
2.Ditching Warnock and Hutton
3. Not playing with 9 men behind the ball, as per McLeish
Billy McNeill signed Alan McInally. O'Leary signed Laursen. The Nazis built fantastic roads.
So what?
Credit to him for not fudging every major decision he's had to make. But he's got enough wrong to put his job in jeopardy.
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Graham Taylor signed McInally.
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If Sam does come in (which I currently regard as baseless dross) someone at the top of the food chain needs to be fired. You can't employ a new manager every 8 months and expect anything to actually change. The short-sightedness and loser mentality of this club is astounding. By bringing in another manager it completely exposes an ineptitude in creating a plan and also an inability to act on plans once they are in place. (ie. the last 3+ campaigns)
If I'm honest, I can't see it happening. BUT, if it were to occur someone in the upper brass needs to be hung out to dry and thrown under the bus. Address the mess! Heads should've been rolling in the last off season, but now for it all to continue and persist at an even greater level of distaste than before is appalling.
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I guess it ultimately comes down to this: Has he got enough right to keep his job?
After presiding over our dismal run of form in Dec>Jan (and considering our form prior to that was non too hot either) I'd say no, in all honesty. At just about any other top flight club, he'd have been made to walk the plank.
It seems that even those going out on a limb to defend him do more so because of the fear of upheaval and instability again, rather than any great faith in Lambert's ability to turn things around. Though I'm past the point of defending him, I get that. And feel the same way for the most part. But sometimes it comes down to a lesser of two evils. At the end of the season, we might look back at this period as the last chance to have altered our course.
As to what he's got right so far, I'd say
1. Benteke
2.Ditching Warnock and Hutton
3. Not playing with 9 men behind the ball, as per McLeish
Billy McNeill signed Alan McInally. O'Leary signed Laursen. The Nazis built fantastic roads.
So what?
Credit to him for not fudging every major decision he's had to make. But he's got enough wrong to put his job in jeopardy.
Although a fair post on balance, the question I ask myself is "How well could he have realistically done?"
If you factor in the poor squad he inherited, missing Dunne and Petrov all season and the fundemantal changes he need to make to the way we were playing, what were our actual expectations this season? And was the £20m or so he had to spend all that much given the cost of players and the amount we needed?
So when people say he's done a shit job, are they fully appreciating the difficulty of the job he had/has?
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After presiding over our dismal run of form in Dec>Jan (and considering our form prior to that was non too hot either) I'd say no, in all honesty. At just about any other top flight club, he'd have been made to walk the plank.
That doesn't mattter though, does it?
It wasn't any other top flight club, it was ours, ours which has been on a downward spiral for a couple of years, which has an owner who has clearly lost interest.
How many other clubs have had the managerial turbulence we've had and managed to achieve anything?
It seems that even those going out on a limb to defend him do more so because of the fear of upheaval and instability again, rather than any great faith in Lambert's ability to turn things around. Though I'm past the point of defending him, I get that. And feel the same way for the most part. But sometimes it comes down to a lesser of two evils. At the end of the season, we might look back at this period as the last chance to have altered our course.
That's my take, I want stability at the club, but I also think Lambert is the man to achieve something here, something forward looking and not built on foundations of sand, like our last spell of decent performances was.
I entirely understand he's done enough wrong to risk his job, I've said loads of times that, if you look at the table and the results this season, then yes, it's not difficult to conclude that he deserves the sack.
My argument, though, is that we've seen enough hints of what he is trying to do to make him worth persevering. Certainly so if the alternative is another managerial lurch and the appointment of a man who plays an entirely different brand of football - yet again.
What do people think would happen if Allardyce came in? Do they think we'd automatically sail up the table?
We'd have the same weak, unbalanced squad, the same wage bill issue, the same financial turmoil, these are all problems which are not going to just disappear overnight.
Lambert needs time, and I think most of us appreciate that, and you can cal it just a longing for stability, whatever the cost, but that's wrong. Lots of us are sick of the managerial merry-go-round and the accompanying burning of huge sums of money, and want the club to look a bit longer term.
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I think the only thing that Lambert will achieve this year is relegation, and then you have to ask how viable the club will be going forward. If it's the case that Lerner couldn't afford to buy the players that the world and his dog could see we needed this January, then he isn't going to be able to sustain the club in the Championship.
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If the club gets relegated, the major influencing factor will be that the squad isn't strong enough - and it isn't, quite frankly.
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I agree we need stability but i am far from convinced lambert is the right man - there are many managers about , if looking for experience , or up and coming or foreign - ralf rangnick for example would be another candidate to consider.
The next 12 games will reveal a lot about lamberts character and we will see where we are in may - i do not want him to fail but i have been hugely disappointed by his reign so far .
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If the club gets relegated, the major influencing factor will be that the squad isn't strong enough - and it isn't, quite frankly.
In fairness, i still think the squad we have is better than where we are in the table.
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If the club gets relegated, the major influencing factor will be that the squad isn't strong enough - and it isn't, quite frankly.
In fairness, i still think the squad we have is better than where we are in the table.
Not too sure about that.
Which teams above us would you say have a weaker squad than us?
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If the club gets relegated, the major influencing factor will be that the squad isn't strong enough - and it isn't, quite frankly.
In fairness, i still think the squad we have is better than where we are in the table.
With the money spent in assembling this squad i agree, i feel we should be around midtable .
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If the club gets relegated, the major influencing factor will be that the squad isn't strong enough - and it isn't, quite frankly.
In fairness, i still think the squad we have is better than where we are in the table.
Not too sure about that.
Which teams above us would you say have a weaker squad than us?
I don't think West Ham's is too much better than ours for example. Maybe their midfield is a bit stronger than ours though. There also a case for throwing in Southampton's and Norwich's as well.
I'm not saying we should be up there in the top 6 but we should'nt be in a position where we have to play 12 cup final's either.
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If the club gets relegated, the major influencing factor will be that the squad isn't strong enough - and it isn't, quite frankly.
I agree and very obviously top heavy, it's a tough one but I think the defence is probably the weakest area.
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If the club gets relegated, the major influencing factor will be that the squad isn't strong enough - and it isn't, quite frankly.
In fairness, i still think the squad we have is better than where we are in the table.
Not too sure about that.
Which teams above us would you say have a weaker squad than us?
Very few, if any, in the defence and midfield areas. That's as long as you factor in experience as well as ability.
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I think our squad is good enough for about 16th place.
I'd take that now.
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If the club gets relegated, the major influencing factor will be that the squad isn't strong enough - and it isn't, quite frankly.
I agree and very obviously top heavy, it's a tough one but I think the defence is probably the weakest area.
I think midfield is weaker, plenty of players but hugely lacking in quality- when you look at ireland and nzog and their contribution over the last 2 years for what they cost and get paid its depressing - nzogbia has shown good signs lately though, but the likes of bannan, herd, kea, delph are not inspiring.
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If the club gets relegated, the major influencing factor will be that the squad isn't strong enough - and it isn't, quite frankly.
The squad could, and should have been better if Lambert had spent the money available to him differently in the summer. He assembled a squad that isn't good or experienced enough, and he's failed to coach/motivate them as well.
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If the club gets relegated, the major influencing factor will be that the squad isn't strong enough - and it isn't, quite frankly.
The squad could, and should have been better if Lambert had spent the money available to him differently in the summer. He assembled a squad that isn't good or experienced enough, and he's failed to coach/motivate them as well.
I agree risso, he has spent more than many in this league and although some decent signings his failure to get better from the players has been a cause of concern.
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I think our squad is good enough for about 16th place.
I'd take that now.
Bloody hell I'd be ecstatic with that at the end of the season.
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If the club gets relegated, the major influencing factor will be that the squad isn't strong enough - and it isn't, quite frankly.
The squad could, and should have been better if Lambert had spent the money available to him differently in the summer. He assembled a squad that isn't good or experienced enough, and he's failed to coach/motivate them as well.
What is worrying is whether he saw his purchases as additional to the experienced players already at the club. He must have known - from the exploits during the GHou / TSM years and / or from talking to others in the game - that he was inheriting some overpaid, late-career mediocrity. Not to have brought in some reliable, EPL-savvy players seems pretty strange.
I suspect he thought that KEA and Vlaar would be able to adapt more effectively than they have and become the experienced lynchpins. A schoolboy error, it seems, in hindsight.
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If the club gets relegated, the major influencing factor will be that the squad isn't strong enough - and it isn't, quite frankly.
The squad could, and should have been better if Lambert had spent the money available to him differently in the summer. He assembled a squad that isn't good or experienced enough, and he's failed to coach/motivate them as well.
Go on then Paul Daniels, tell me how.
Maybe we could have picked up Ji-Sun Park, or Junior Hoilett, or Bosingwa, or one of the Brazillian twins, or Rob Green even.
Some real Premiership experience. We'd have been alright then.
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The biggest mistake made was not buying an experienced CM and CB in January.
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The biggest mistake made was not buying an experienced CM and CB in January.
Time will tell.
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There is still a glimmer of hope.
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The biggest mistake made was not buying an experienced CM and CB in January.
Fully agree. But was that his fault or Randy's?
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I don't think we'll ever really know the full truth behind that.
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I don't think we'll ever really know the full truth behind that.
If only someone on here had some ITK info about how much there was to spend.......
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Not much and certainly not enough to avoid being in the relegation battle right to the wire.
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There is still a glimmer of hope.
I think the past two and a half games have shown more than a glimmer. Three weeks ago, I could not see how we would win another game!
Now, despite the rally Reading have shown, events are back in our own hands and we have the best forward line by a country mile in the bottom half, with a system that is finally exploiting its potential.
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If the club gets relegated, the major influencing factor will be that the squad isn't strong enough - and it isn't, quite frankly.
The squad could, and should have been better if Lambert had spent the money available to him differently in the summer. He assembled a squad that isn't good or experienced enough, and he's failed to coach/motivate them as well.
I agree risso, he has spent more than many in this league and although some decent signings his failure to get better from the players has been a cause of concern.
I think that’s a duff point to be honest.
The squad Lambert inherited was only just good enough to stay in the top flight last season. He had £20 million to buy full backs, centre halves, central midfielders, attacking midfielders and forwards.
£20 million to re-build a squad and inside three months too.
When you put the money spent into context, then there are few other clubs in the league who have a similar set of circumstances. QPR are one and they will finish bottom.
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Bit of a rock and a hard place type choice for you lot.
Watching dull, boring, soul destroying football every week - or getting Allardyce in!
Seriously though, as I say to a lot of people who bang on about the "West Ham way", in the Premier League you have to earn the right to play - I'd rather we got the basics right and gave ourselves a platform to start playing nice attacking football from, rather than trying to go tappy tappy all the time and getting spanked every week anyway.
Grinding out dull 1-0 wins beats losing 8-0 at the west London rent boys any day of the week. As much as the football is dire at times, I have no doubts at all that Allardyce will keep us up.
Luckily for you lot this story is almost certainly a fabrication, created most likely by Allardyce's agent to pushed Gold & Sullivan into giving him a new contract sooner rather than later (his contract is up in the summer).
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Why do people bang on about the West Ham Way or conversely why are West Ham fans proud of the West Ham Way?
You’ve won 3 FA Cups in your entire history and are up and down nearly as often as Small Heath.
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Grinding out dull 1-0 wins beats losing 8-0 at the west London rent boys any day of the week. As much as the football is dire at times, I have no doubts at all that Allardyce will keep us up.
Hmm, not too sure about that Sendo, it's not a fair comparison.
For starters, the 8 goal pasting at Chelsea isn't something that's going to happen every week, whereas the dull, grinding, rugby style of Allardyce's management does happen pretty much every week.
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Grinding out dull 1-0 wins beats losing 8-0 at the west London rent boys any day of the week. As much as the football is dire at times, I have no doubts at all that Allardyce will keep us up.
Hmm, not too sure about that Sendo, it's not a fair comparison.
For starters, the 8 goal pasting at Chelsea isn't something that's going to happen every week, whereas the dull, grinding, rugby style of Allardyce's management does happen pretty much every week.
Especially as West Ham's fortunes take a nose dive and those tedious one nil wins become increasingly rare. As I said, they're right in the mix with Yanited and Spurs at home and their awful away form to take to the likes of Stamford Bridge.
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Grinding out dull 1-0 wins beats losing 8-0 at the west London rent boys any day of the week. As much as the football is dire at times, I have no doubts at all that Allardyce will keep us up.
Hmm, not too sure about that Sendo, it's not a fair comparison.
For starters, the 8 goal pasting at Chelsea isn't something that's going to happen every week, whereas the dull, grinding, rugby style of Allardyce's management does happen pretty much every week.
The 8-0 doesn't happen every week, but playing badly and losing has happened more weeks than not. You must watch a lot of West Ham games to know that West Ham play the same style every week. The fact that a decent player like Mark Noble has thrived there suggests that you're doing nothing more than repeating media sterotypes.
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Noble is a decent player?
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Grinding out dull 1-0 wins beats losing 8-0 at the west London rent boys any day of the week. As much as the football is dire at times, I have no doubts at all that Allardyce will keep us up.
Hmm, not too sure about that Sendo, it's not a fair comparison.
For starters, the 8 goal pasting at Chelsea isn't something that's going to happen every week, whereas the dull, grinding, rugby style of Allardyce's management does happen pretty much every week.
The 8-0 doesn't happen every week, but playing badly and losing has happened more weeks than not. You must watch a lot of West Ham games to know that West Ham play the same style every week. The fact that a decent player like Mark Noble has thrived there suggests that you're doing nothing more than repeating media sterotypes.
Ha, Mark Noble's wank.
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Noble is a decent player?
Beat me to it!
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I don't think we'll ever really know the full truth behind that.
If only someone on here had some ITK info about how much there was to spend.......
Indeed.
It would be interesting to know though who the defender was that Lambert spoke about that we were talking to but could'nt afford to get in.
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Hmm, not too sure about that Sendo, it's not a fair comparison.
For starters, the 8 goal pasting at Chelsea isn't something that's going to happen every week, whereas the dull, grinding, rugby style of Allardyce's management does happen pretty much every week.
No, some weeks you get spanked at home to Wigan, and we stick three past Chelsea. ;)
To be fair, both teams have been largely crap to watch although both teams have put in good performances at times. However the table doesn't lie, and as much as I don't particularly like Allardyce or his brand of football he gets the best out of the players under him and more importantly gets results.
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Seems that some players we were interested in just werent interested in us - the window has gone , we must make do with what we have and go with it - it will be a nerve wracking season from now on but i hope we can pull it off.
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Seems that some players we were interested in just werent interested in us - the window has gone , we must make do with what we have and go with it - it will be a nerve wracking season from now on but i hope we can pull it off.
Or maybe there wasn't any money to spend and pelty was just having you on.
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Seems that some players we were interested in just werent interested in us - the window has gone , we must make do with what we have and go with it - it will be a nerve wracking season from now on but i hope we can pull it off.
Or maybe there wasn't any money to spend and pelty was just having you on.
Who is this pelty to whom you refer?
If there was no money to spend why did lambert admit trying and failing to sign the likes of sissoko? What was he hoping to sign him with - a dozen boxes of haggis ?
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I don't think we'll ever really know the full truth behind that.
If only someone on here had some ITK info about how much there was to spend.......
Indeed.
It would be interesting to know though who the defender was that Lambert spoke about that we were talking to but could'nt afford to get in.
I'm tempted to say Lescott, as Lambert did speak publicly about him, but given what we did end up spending he'd have never been on our radar, surely?
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Grinding out dull 1-0 wins beats losing 8-0 at the west London rent boys any day of the week. As much as the football is dire at times, I have no doubts at all that Allardyce will keep us up.
Hmm, not too sure about that Sendo, it's not a fair comparison.
For starters, the 8 goal pasting at Chelsea isn't something that's going to happen every week, whereas the dull, grinding, rugby style of Allardyce's management does happen pretty much every week.
The 8-0 doesn't happen every week, but playing badly and losing has happened more weeks than not. You must watch a lot of West Ham games to know that West Ham play the same style every week. The fact that a decent player like Mark Noble has thrived there suggests that you're doing nothing more than repeating media sterotypes.
Ha, Mark Noble's wank.
Indeed.
I've not just arrived at this conclusion re Allardyce's style. It's not like he's a fresh faced manager, he's had his teams playing like that for years now, regardless of how much Risso tries to make us believe that Bolton side of his was actually a latter day Brazil 1970.
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Grinding out dull 1-0 wins beats losing 8-0 at the west London rent boys any day of the week. As much as the football is dire at times, I have no doubts at all that Allardyce will keep us up.
Hmm, not too sure about that Sendo, it's not a fair comparison.
For starters, the 8 goal pasting at Chelsea isn't something that's going to happen every week, whereas the dull, grinding, rugby style of Allardyce's management does happen pretty much every week.
The 8-0 doesn't happen every week, but playing badly and losing has happened more weeks than not. You must watch a lot of West Ham games to know that West Ham play the same style every week. The fact that a decent player like Mark Noble has thrived there suggests that you're doing nothing more than repeating media sterotypes.
Ha, Mark Noble's wank.
By that you mean he didn't have that good a game against us. I saw a bit of the Spammers game against Norwich, and he was superb, far better than any midfield performance any of our rabble have managed this season. He's certainly a far better player than the likes of Delph, KEA, Bannan et al.
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Possibly may have been Lescott early on in the window but I've a feeling he tried for someone else before the window closed. Anyway I'm just glad we got a couple in at least. Dawkins looks like he could make a difference coming off the bench.
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What i want in the main is to see my side win games, if we win with style all the better but the result means more than the performance .
The days of george grahams boring arsenal grinding out 1-0 wins would suit me as long as we win - we all want to win and score loads of goals with free flowing football but give me a scrappy 1-0 win over a 3-3 draw anyday.
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I've not just arrived at this conclusion re Allardyce's style. It's not like he's a fresh faced manager, he's had his teams playing like that for years now, regardless of how much Risso tries to make us believe that Bolton side of his was actually a latter day Brazil 1970.
Bolton played decent football and he assembled a very good collection of footballers there. Not many teams finish 6th by playing an exclusive brand of Pulis-style hoofball. I watched a fair bit of Bolton back then as we lived there and the wife and all her family are Bolton fans, plus we entertained clients there at our firm's executive box and they were a decent side, physical when necessary, but capable of some very exciting play as well. Ask any Bolton fan, they'll put you right.
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we all want to win and score loads of goals with free flowing football but give me a scrappy 1-0 win over a 3-3 draw anyday.
Strange - MON gave you plenty of those yet you celebrated when he went.
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If there was no money to spend why did lambert admit trying and failing to sign the likes of sissoko? What was he hoping to sign him with - a dozen boxes of haggis?
The actual fee for Sissoko wasn't all that much more than we ended up paying for Sylla.
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If there was no money to spend why did lambert admit trying and failing to sign the likes of sissoko? What was he hoping to sign him with - a dozen boxes of haggis?
The actual fee for Sissoko wasn't all that much more than we ended up paying for Sylla.
The wages and the contract were vastly different though.
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Growing organically is important, for sure. And I think our carbon neutral status will allow us to tap into the key vegan lesbian demographic.
I'm not sure if that would help or hinder attendances.
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What i want in the main is to see my side win games, if we win with style all the better but the result means more than the performance .
The days of george grahams boring arsenal grinding out 1-0 wins would suit me as long as we win - we all want to win and score loads of goals with free flowing football but give me a scrappy 1-0 win over a 3-3 draw anyday.
Funny how Allardyce is suddenly flavour of the month when O'Neill was regularly slagged off for his own pragmatic approach.
I suppose options begin to run out after a while for those who serially want the manager sacked. It won't be long before the Pulis bandwagon gets going.
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I've not just arrived at this conclusion re Allardyce's style. It's not like he's a fresh faced manager, he's had his teams playing like that for years now, regardless of how much Risso tries to make us believe that Bolton side of his was actually a latter day Brazil 1970.
Bolton played decent football and he assembled a very good collection of footballers there. Not many teams finish 6th by playing an exclusive brand of Pulis-style hoofball.
You seemed pretty keen to see the back of O'Neill for that reason though and sixth was pretty much where we finished exclusively.
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What i want in the main is to see my side win games, if we win with style all the better but the result means more than the performance .
The days of george grahams boring arsenal grinding out 1-0 wins would suit me as long as we win - we all want to win and score loads of goals with free flowing football but give me a scrappy 1-0 win over a 3-3 draw anyday.
Funny how Allardyce is suddenly flavour of the month when O'Neill was regularly slagged off for his own pragmatic approach.
I suppose options begin to run out after a while for those who serially want the manager sacked. It won't be long before the Pulis bandwagon gets going.
The main objection with O'Neill, as you well know, was that he was spending money hand over fist on players who weren't worth the money, and that he appeared to have reached his glass ceiling. As we were constantly being reassured by the likes of Krulak that money spent and losses weren't a problem, it wasn't unreasonable for Villa fans to hope for a manager that looked capable of taking us the extra step into the top 4. The fact that we were lied to by the likes of Krulak and the club has since imploded doesn't make that view unreasonable.
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If there was no money to spend why did lambert admit trying and failing to sign the likes of sissoko? What was he hoping to sign him with - a dozen boxes of haggis?
The actual fee for Sissoko wasn't all that much more than we ended up paying for Sylla.
The wages and the contract were vastly different though.
That was pretty much what I was getting at.
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Grinding out dull 1-0 wins beats losing 8-0 at the west London rent boys any day of the week. As much as the football is dire at times, I have no doubts at all that Allardyce will keep us up.
Hmm, not too sure about that Sendo, it's not a fair comparison.
For starters, the 8 goal pasting at Chelsea isn't something that's going to happen every week, whereas the dull, grinding, rugby style of Allardyce's management does happen pretty much every week.
The 8-0 doesn't happen every week, but playing badly and losing has happened more weeks than not. You must watch a lot of West Ham games to know that West Ham play the same style every week. The fact that a decent player like Mark Noble has thrived there suggests that you're doing nothing more than repeating media sterotypes.
Ha, Mark Noble's wank.
By that you mean he didn't have that good a game against us. I saw a bit of the Spammers game against Norwich, and he was superb, far better than any midfield performance any of our rabble have managed this season. He's certainly a far better player than the likes of Delph, KEA, Bannan et al.
No, by that I mean Mark Noble's wank, and I wouldn't swap his sub-Sidwell huffing and puffing for any of our lot.
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I've not just arrived at this conclusion re Allardyce's style. It's not like he's a fresh faced manager, he's had his teams playing like that for years now, regardless of how much Risso tries to make us believe that Bolton side of his was actually a latter day Brazil 1970.
Bolton played decent football and he assembled a very good collection of footballers there. Not many teams finish 6th by playing an exclusive brand of Pulis-style hoofball.
You seemed pretty keen to see the back of O'Neill for that reason though and sixth was pretty much where we finished exclusively.
See my reply to Chris for a rebuttal of similar nonsense.
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we all want to win and score loads of goals with free flowing football but give me a scrappy 1-0 win over a 3-3 draw anyday.
Strange - MON gave you plenty of those yet you celebrated when he went.
Mon under achieved given the amount of money he spent - there were many good times under him but he had to go .
The mistake was not appointing a suitable replacement at the time.
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No, by that I mean Mark Noble's wank, and I wouldn't swap his sub-Sidwell huffing and puffing for any of our lot.
Good lord, I mean fair play to you for sticking to your guns and all, but really, you wouldn't swap him for the likes of KEA, Delph or Bannan? Honestly?
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No, by that I mean Mark Noble's wank, and I wouldn't swap his sub-Sidwell huffing and puffing for any of our lot.
Good lord, I mean fair play to you for sticking to your guns and all, but really, you wouldn't swap him for the likes of KEA, Delph or Bannan? Honestly?
Yes, with big silver bastard bells on.
I really don't rate him at all.
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But you've seen KEA play. And Bannan. Anybody worse than those two isn't going to be playing for a Premier League Club in all honesty.
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No, by that I mean Mark Noble's wank, and I wouldn't swap his sub-Sidwell huffing and puffing for any of our lot.
Good lord, I mean fair play to you for sticking to your guns and all, but really, you wouldn't swap him for the likes of KEA, Delph or Bannan? Honestly?
I wouldn't swap him for Delph at the moment, personally. He has improved a lot and hopefully will continue to.
The other two though. I do like Noble. Collison isn't too shabby either
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But you've seen KEA play. And Bannan. Anybody worse than those two isn't going to be playing for a Premier League Club in all honesty.
This the same Mark Noble who was part of their last relegated side, yes? And who now plays in one of two most redundant midfields in the country?
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Personally id swap bannan for a pukka pie - would at least get more enjoyment from that.
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Noble is West Ham's Gerrard I suppose. A local boy with no intention of leaving his boyhood club or jellied eels. Unlike Gerrard though he's a nothing to shout about midfielder who's done well for himself.
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What i want in the main is to see my side win games, if we win with style all the better but the result means more than the performance .
The days of george grahams boring arsenal grinding out 1-0 wins would suit me as long as we win - we all want to win and score loads of goals with free flowing football but give me a scrappy 1-0 win over a 3-3 draw anyday.
Funny how Allardyce is suddenly flavour of the month when O'Neill was regularly slagged off for his own pragmatic approach.
I suppose options begin to run out after a while for those who serially want the manager sacked. It won't be long before the Pulis bandwagon gets going.
The main objection with O'Neill, as you well know, was that he was spending money hand over fist on players who weren't worth the money, and that he appeared to have reached his glass ceiling. As we were constantly being reassured by the likes of Krulak that money spent and losses weren't a problem, it wasn't unreasonable for Villa fans to hope for a manager that looked capable of taking us the extra step into the top 4. The fact that we were lied to by the likes of Krulak and the club has since imploded doesn't make that view unreasonable.
That's a dressing up of the argument after the event when in fact a regular criticism was that the football was dull and unimaginative.
Allardyce is not the answer unless the question is "name a fat ugly bastard from Dudlley synonymous with turgid football".
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Noble is West Ham's Gerrard I suppose. A local boy with no intention of leaving his boyhood club or jellied eels. Unlike Gerrard though he's a nothing to shout about midfielder who's done well for himself.
I think nolan is more the ,main man in west hams midfield- i would certainly like him at villa.
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That's a dressing up of the argument after the event when in fact a regular criticism was that the football was dull and unimaginative.
And that is specifically the thing I don't understand.
People who were moaning about the quality of football under O'Neill - when that turgid football got us sixth three years in a row - now prepared to put up with a style that makes O'Neill's look amazing by comparison, and purveyed by a manager who traditionally occupies the mid level of the table at best.
It is precisely what you said, just the reflection of the next stop in the ongoing managerial merry-go-round, and if it weren't Allardyce, no doubt it'd be Pullis next.
I also find it hard to accept the fact that some of the very same people who were pointing out - rightly - how terrible we were last season under McLeish seem to think that, actually, that should have been magically brushed aside, and that one season is enough to recover from it.
It isn't, and it was never going to be, and yes, the odds were probably on things continuing to get worse for a fair old while before they started to get better.
I guess it is all about opinions, but I am somewhat glad to see that a decent chunk of the Villa support is prepared to stay calm and not panic and start calling for the appointment of managers they wouldn't have thought twice about taking on a few months ago.
And, FWIW, I don't even think Allardyce is one of the most harebrained suggestions.
Those would be the ones calling for the appointment of John Gregory or Brian Little or whichever combination of people who used to play for us, because they "love the club", despite their total lack of experience in management at this level.
It's like they didn't spot what happened when Newcastle tried that with Shearer.
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Noble is West Ham's Gerrard I suppose. A local boy with no intention of leaving his boyhood club or jellied eels. Unlike Gerrard though he's a nothing to shout about midfielder who's done well for himself.
I think nolan is more the ,main man in west hams midfield- i would certainly like him at villa.
Nolan does nothing but look for the knock downs from the witless balls into the box.
Still, if you got your dream Allardyce appointment, I suspect you'd be happy, as Nolan would be the first face through the door.
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Noble is West Ham's Gerrard I suppose. A local boy with no intention of leaving his boyhood club or jellied eels. Unlike Gerrard though he's a nothing to shout about midfielder who's done well for himself.
I see him more as a Lee Hendrie type. Half decent one club player who never looked like he could play at a higher level.
Gerrard had been carring Liverpool for years up until about two years ago.
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But you've seen KEA play. And Bannan. Anybody worse than those two isn't going to be playing for a Premier League Club in all honesty.
This the same Mark Noble who was part of their last relegated side, yes? And who now plays in one of two most redundant midfields in the country?
How is their midfield redundant? Noble and Nolan are two of their three top scorers, and Nolan on average attempts nearly twice as many passes a game as any of our midfielders including Westwood, with a similar completion rate of around 80%. Even Nolan whose job it is to get into the box and score makes as many passes as any of our midfield. Honestly, there's opinions and all, but what exactly are you basing yours on, as they're at complete odds with the actual facts.
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Noble is West Ham's Gerrard I suppose. A local boy with no intention of leaving his boyhood club or jellied eels. Unlike Gerrard though he's a nothing to shout about midfielder who's done well for himself.
I think nolan is more the ,main man in west hams midfield- i would certainly like him at villa.
Nolan does nothing but look for the knock downs from the witless balls into the box.
Still, if you got your dream Allardyce appointment, I suspect you'd be happy, as Nolan would be the first face through the door.
Right where the hell did i say allardyce was a dream appointment - i could compile a list of managers id take of whom rangnick and poyet would be on - allardyce would not be in my top 10 choices- he would as i said however be better than the current incumbent mr lambert.
You were on loads of match threads last month after games agreeing lambert should go, now youve changed your tune and backed lambert- ive never said allardyce would be a dream manager , just better than lambert .
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That's a dressing up of the argument after the event when in fact a regular criticism was that the football was dull and unimaginative.
And that is specifically the thing I don't understand.
People who were moaning about the quality of football under O'Neill - when that turgid football got us sixth three years in a row - now prepared to put up with a style that makes O'Neill's look amazing by comparison, and purveyed by a manager who traditionally occupies the mid level of the table at best.
It is precisely what you said, just the reflection of the next stop in the ongoing managerial merry-go-round, and if it weren't Allardyce, no doubt it'd be Pullis next.
I also find it hard to accept the fact that some of the very same people who were pointing out - rightly - how terrible we were last season under McLeish seem to think that, actually, that should have been magically brushed aside, and that one season is enough to recover from it.
It isn't, and it was never going to be, and yes, the odds were probably on things continuing to get worse for a fair old while before they started to get better.
I guess it is all about opinions, but I am somewhat glad to see that a decent chunk of the Villa support is prepared to stay calm and not panic and start calling for the appointment of managers they wouldn't have thought twice about taking on a few months ago.
And, FWIW, I don't even think Allardyce is one of the most harebrained suggestions.
Those would be the ones calling for the appointment of John Gregory or Brian Little or whichever combination of people who used to play for us, because they "love the club", despite their total lack of experience in management at this level.
It's like they didn't spot what happened when Newcastle tried that with Shearer.
Harking back to O'Neill is utterly irrelevant as he worked under circumstances that will never be repeated under Lerner. Until Lerner sells, then I'd rather stay in the Premier League, and I think Allardyce would give us a better chance of that than Lambert. Lambert and his kids aren't going to turn us into a footballing academy based on loads of wonder kids, he's going to turn us into an absolutely skint Championship level team. Allardyce wouldn't be my dream appointment by a long way, but I do think that he'd do a better job than Lambert who has been farcically bad.
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Allardyce would be horrible, and also he tends to sign quite a lot of older players on high wages. If Lambert was to go, I'm sure we can be a bit more inventive than Allardyce.
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But you've seen KEA play. And Bannan. Anybody worse than those two isn't going to be playing for a Premier League Club in all honesty.
This the same Mark Noble who was part of their last relegated side, yes? And who now plays in one of two most redundant midfields in the country?
How is their midfield redundant? Noble and Nolan are two of their three top scorers, and Nolan on average attempts nearly twice as many passes a game as any of our midfielders including Westwood, with a similar completion rate of around 80%. Even Nolan whose job it is to get into the box and score makes as many passes as any of our midfield. Honestly, there's opinions and all, but what exactly are you basing yours on, as they're at complete odds with the actual facts.
I'm basing it on what I see, I'll leave the number crunching to you mate.
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That's a dressing up of the argument after the event when in fact a regular criticism was that the football was dull and unimaginative.
And that is specifically the thing I don't understand.
People who were moaning about the quality of football under O'Neill - when that turgid football got us sixth three years in a row - now prepared to put up with a style that makes O'Neill's look amazing by comparison, and purveyed by a manager who traditionally occupies the mid level of the table at best.
It is precisely what you said, just the reflection of the next stop in the ongoing managerial merry-go-round, and if it weren't Allardyce, no doubt it'd be Pullis next.
I also find it hard to accept the fact that some of the very same people who were pointing out - rightly - how terrible we were last season under McLeish seem to think that, actually, that should have been magically brushed aside, and that one season is enough to recover from it.
It isn't, and it was never going to be, and yes, the odds were probably on things continuing to get worse for a fair old while before they started to get better.
I guess it is all about opinions, but I am somewhat glad to see that a decent chunk of the Villa support is prepared to stay calm and not panic and start calling for the appointment of managers they wouldn't have thought twice about taking on a few months ago.
And, FWIW, I don't even think Allardyce is one of the most harebrained suggestions.
Those would be the ones calling for the appointment of John Gregory or Brian Little or whichever combination of people who used to play for us, because they "love the club", despite their total lack of experience in management at this level.
It's like they didn't spot what happened when Newcastle tried that with Shearer.
Harking back to O'Neill is utterly irrelevant as he worked under circumstances that will never be repeated under Lerner. Until Lerner sells, then I'd rather stay in the Premier League, and I think Allardyce would give us a better chance of that than Lambert. Lambert and his kids aren't going to turn us into a footballing academy based on loads of wonder kids, he's going to turn us into an absolutely skint Championship level team. Allardyce wouldn't be my dream appointment by a long way, but I do think that he'd do a better job than Lambert who has been farcically bad.
It's language like that that gets me - it seems to just be going for shock value. If he's been farcically bad, then that suggests we should be much further up the table than we are. He had a relatively small amount of money to try and turn around the fortunes of a club in steep decline, yet people say things like that, and advocate managers like Poyet over him.
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But you've seen KEA play. And Bannan. Anybody worse than those two isn't going to be playing for a Premier League Club in all honesty.
This the same Mark Noble who was part of their last relegated side, yes? And who now plays in one of two most redundant midfields in the country?
How is their midfield redundant? Noble and Nolan are two of their three top scorers, and Nolan on average attempts nearly twice as many passes a game as any of our midfielders including Westwood, with a similar completion rate of around 80%. Even Nolan whose job it is to get into the box and score makes as many passes as any of our midfield. Honestly, there's opinions and all, but what exactly are you basing yours on, as they're at complete odds with the actual facts.
I'm basing it on what I see, I'll leave the number crunching to you mate.
You must be watching a different team then, the 'numbers' only back up what actually happens.
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Concrete john i have copied and saved your last post - lets hope we are both around in 4 years and we will see where lambert and poyet are - i suggest that poyet will be managing chelsea or spurs while lambert will be maybe scratching around at some lower league club - time will tell my friend.
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Stats showed NRC had a great pass compleption rate for us.
Just saying.
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It's language like that that gets me - it seems to just be going for shock value. If he's been farcically bad, then that suggests we should be much further up the table than we are. He had a relatively small amount of money to try and turn around the fortunes of a club in steep decline, yet people say things like that, and advocate managers like Poyet over him.
What language would you use for a manager who has given us:
Our worst ever result
Our worst ever start to a season
Humiliated by a 4th division team over two legs
Knocked out by a crap 2nd division team in the same week.
A truly dismal defence
And he didn't have a relatively small amount, he had more money to spend than a good deal of the Premier League.
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But you've seen KEA play. And Bannan. Anybody worse than those two isn't going to be playing for a Premier League Club in all honesty.
This the same Mark Noble who was part of their last relegated side, yes? And who now plays in one of two most redundant midfields in the country?
How is their midfield redundant? Noble and Nolan are two of their three top scorers, and Nolan on average attempts nearly twice as many passes a game as any of our midfielders including Westwood, with a similar completion rate of around 80%. Even Nolan whose job it is to get into the box and score makes as many passes as any of our midfield. Honestly, there's opinions and all, but what exactly are you basing yours on, as they're at complete odds with the actual facts.
I'm basing it on what I see, I'll leave the number crunching to you mate.
You must be watching a different team then, the 'numbers' only back up what actually happens.
Are you suggesting West Ham play fluid football through midfield?
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Are you suggesting West Ham play fluid football through midfield?
No, but their midfield certainly isn't redundant as you suggested. They have more passing, more goals and more assists than ours, and they provide more protection for the defence. In short, everything that Lambert has been getting so badly wrong this season.
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It's language like that that gets me - it seems to just be going for shock value. If he's been farcically bad, then that suggests we should be much further up the table than we are. He had a relatively small amount of money to try and turn around the fortunes of a club in steep decline, yet people say things like that, and advocate managers like Poyet over him.
What language would you use for a manager who has given us:
Our worst ever result
Our worst ever start to a season
Humiliated by a 4th division team over two legs
Knocked out by a crap 2nd division team in the same week.
A truly dismal defence
And he didn't have a relatively small amount, he had more money to spend than a good deal of the Premier League.
All those things were awful, and in isolation possibly farcical, but they also all happened, apart from the start, during a horrible period we have hopefully now come out of. Him being a farciacally manager would mean things like that were happening all the time and we were 10 points adrify at the bottom.
Abd £20m in modern times IS a relatively small amount for the major rebuilding job we needed.
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Are you suggesting West Ham play fluid football through midfield?
No, but their midfield certainly isn't redundant as you suggested. They have more passing, more goals and more assists than ours, and they provide more protection for the defence. In short, everything that Lambert has been getting so badly wrong this season.
Well they've secured six more points than us so far.
And Mark Noble's wank.
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Are you suggesting West Ham play fluid football through midfield?
No, but their midfield certainly isn't redundant as you suggested. They have more passing, more goals and more assists than ours, and they provide more protection for the defence. In short, everything that Lambert has been getting so badly wrong this season.
Well they've secured six more points than us so far.
And Mark Noble's wank.
Six points is huge, at our current rate we'll have 6 more points sometime towards the end of April, if we're lucky. And if saying he's crap makes you happy, crack on. At least you're not pretending that opionion is based on anything worthwhile any more which is something I suppose.
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Allardyce? The football would be crap but I'd fully expect results to improve short-term.
The crux of the matter though, is why appoint Lambert with the remit to start a project that's not expected to come to fruition for several seasons, only to take a u-turn and retread the steps that didn't work with McLeish, at the first sign of trouble.
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Allardyce? The football would be crap but I'd fully expect results to improve short-term.
The crux of the matter though, is why appoint Lambert with the remit to start a project that's not expected to come to fruition for several seasons, only to take a u-turn and retread the steps that didn't work with McLeish, at the first sign of trouble.
Several seasons? Do you really see lerner or lambert being here that long?
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There's no reason to think that Lerner won't be here in 5 years time.
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Allardyce? The football would be crap but I'd fully expect results to improve short-term.
The crux of the matter though, is why appoint Lambert with the remit to start a project that's not expected to come to fruition for several seasons, only to take a u-turn and retread the steps that didn't work with McLeish, at the first sign of trouble.
Several seasons? Do you really see lerner or lambert being here that long?
The project should be viable enough to survive a change in manager. Obviosuly, if Randy did sell up then it may well be scrapped, dependent on the incoming owners.
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There's no reason to think that Lerner won't be here in 5 years time.
Thanks clampy , you really have depressed me now :(
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There's no reason to think that Lerner won't be here in 5 years time.
Thanks clampy , you really have depressed me now :(
Maybe if you'd stuck to the arse biscuits you wrote on here yesterday about not logging back on here until Saturday, you might not have read it. :)
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Allardyce? The football would be crap but I'd fully expect results to improve short-term.
The crux of the matter though, is why appoint Lambert with the remit to start a project that's not expected to come to fruition for several seasons, only to take a u-turn and retread the steps that didn't work with McLeish, at the first sign of trouble.
It's not a project, it's a desperate fight to avoid relegation.
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I agree John, any club should be able to weather a management change. They don't always come through choice after all.
Surely though, part of keeping things on an even keel is to find a replacement who will buy into the continuation of project blueprints.
It just seems we go from one end of the scale to the other every time, and these changes in direction have proved to be very very expensive.
You could replace O Neill with Allardyce without the need to rebuild the squad. Not so with Houllier, who now wants footballing centre backs and continental flair. Hence rebellions amongst the players who most object to and resist the change in football-thesis.
Ditto for Houllier to McLeish and McLeish to Lambert.
All I'm saying is, if you want to replace Lambert, lets find someone who can work with and improve this squad.
I don't think that man is Allardyce or his ilk.
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It's not a project, it's a desperate fight to avoid relegation.
Do you think that if we do manage to avoid the drop, Lambert will improve things next season or beyond? I guess that's what it comes down to.
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I don't think we'll avoid the drop to be honest.
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But you reckon Fat Sam could save us, though?
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It was Roy Keane who was going to save us last month
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It seems like an internet thing. People like change just for something to write about.
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It seems like an internet thing. People like change just for something to write about.
I believe you when you say you have lumps of it round the back clamps!
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It seems like an internet thing. People like change just for something to write about.
I believe you have lumps of it round the back clamps!
Crucifixtion Eastie? Good.
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! fail
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But you've seen KEA play. And Bannan. Anybody worse than those two isn't going to be playing for a Premier League Club in all honesty.
This the same Mark Noble who was part of their last relegated side, yes? And who now plays in one of two most redundant midfields in the country?
How is their midfield redundant? Noble and Nolan are two of their three top scorers, and Nolan on average attempts nearly twice as many passes a game as any of our midfielders including Westwood, with a similar completion rate of around 80%. Even Nolan whose job it is to get into the box and score makes as many passes as any of our midfield. Honestly, there's opinions and all, but what exactly are you basing yours on, as they're at complete odds with the actual facts.
I certainly agree with you on one thing Risso, I think Noble is underrated and I would definitely have him in our side. However, I think you need to acknowledge the fact that several of our team are at an age and stage in their careers where they can only improve. Noble has had several Premier League seasons under his belt at West Ham and should be playing somewhere near his footballing peak. Who can we say the same applies to in our central midfield? El Ahmadi is the only one. You could even make a case out for him being better when he's had a season to adjust to the league similar to Petrov.
I think you're being harsh on our guys in terms of their passing ability though. 3 of our guys have a pass completion rate above 84% (Westwood, El Ahmadi and Delph who is on an impressive 87.3%), the closest West Ham come to this is Diame with 82.8%.
I honestly can't believe you're trying to dress Allardyce's style as close to 'decent' though? Yes his sides probably play more football than they are given credit for but the height of the team tells you all you need to know surely? Not to mention the fact they're second only to Stoke in aerial duels won and have on average the most crosses per game in the division. They've also scored no goals on the counter this season. There's nothing subtle about it. They occasionally attempt to mix it up as they should do, but on the whole they lump balls into the box when they can, win flick ons and look to pounce on the second ball. They have one of the worst passing success rates in the league - we have a bad percentage because we have a poor team compared to the standard of the league, they have this because they deliberately go out of their way to play a brand of football that achieves this. They do not even come close to what people would call a decent footballing side.
Their style of play stands out like a sore thumb when you look at who is dragging down the overall passing percentage. As well the obvious 2 lumbering gents up front, the wide players Jarvis, Vaz Te and Taylor all have poor passing success rates by Premier League wide player standards. Why? Because they get it wide, then whack it in the box to a big man.
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That's a fine post Jockey, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to pick you up on one thing:
Mark Noble is wank.
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Mark Noble is wank.
I strongly feel that this could become the new 'Shit Happens'
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That's a fine post Jockey, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to pick you up on one thing:
Mark Noble is wank.
Noble strikes me as a not-quite-as-good Craig Gardner.
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That's a fine post Jockey, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to pick you up on one thing:
Mark Noble is wank.
Noble strikes me as a not-quite-as-good Craig Gardner.
Sounds fair to me.
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Mark Noble is wank.
I strongly feel that this could become the new 'Shit Happens'
I won't mention it again.
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That's a dressing up of the argument after the event when in fact a regular criticism was that the football was dull and unimaginative.
And that is specifically the thing I don't understand.
People who were moaning about the quality of football under O'Neill - when that turgid football got us sixth three years in a row - now prepared to put up with a style that makes O'Neill's look amazing by comparison, and purveyed by a manager who traditionally occupies the mid level of the table at best.
I don't know what's funny or difficult to understand about it.
If the budget is there, I'd rather have a baked Alaska over bread and butter pudding.
But if money is tight, I'd take a jam doughnut over a shit sandwich.
I'd have been depressed as hell had we been linked with BFS in 2010, 2011 or even last summer.
But Aston Villa 2013 are different proposition.
If we continue on our largely downward trajectory, Mad Mick McCarthy might start looking like a decent alternative in October/November.
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That's a dressing up of the argument after the event when in fact a regular criticism was that the football was dull and unimaginative.
And that is specifically the thing I don't understand.
People who were moaning about the quality of football under O'Neill - when that turgid football got us sixth three years in a row - now prepared to put up with a style that makes O'Neill's look amazing by comparison, and purveyed by a manager who traditionally occupies the mid level of the table at best.
I don't know what's funny or difficult to understand about it.
If the budget is there, I'd rather have a baked Alaska over bread and butter pudding.
But if money is tight, I'd take a jam doughnut over a shit sandwich.
I'd have been depressed as hell had we been linked with BFS in 2010, 2011 or even last summer.
But Aston Villa 2013 are different proposition.
If we continue on our largely downward trajectory, Mad Mick McCarthy might start looking like a decent alternative in October/November.
I give up now.
Bagpuss
A Neo Nazi
And now Old Big Nose Twistyface.
Bloody hell. ;)
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Kevin, it's that sort of short term thinking that has largely got us into this mess. When he's alienated half the support and we're in the bottom third again we'd have people suggesting Ossie Ardiles as his replacement.
I don't 'know' if Lambert will be a success or not but I do know for a fact that lurching about from one extreme to another has been an unmitigated failure.
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That's a dressing up of the argument after the event when in fact a regular criticism was that the football was dull and unimaginative.
And that is specifically the thing I don't understand.
People who were moaning about the quality of football under O'Neill - when that turgid football got us sixth three years in a row - now prepared to put up with a style that makes O'Neill's look amazing by comparison, and purveyed by a manager who traditionally occupies the mid level of the table at best.
I don't know what's funny or difficult to understand about it.
I'll explain.
It is the way that some people, those who were so vocal over their dislike of the style of football we played under O'Neill are now sufficiently happy to entrust our future - because it would be that, not just a few months to keep us up and then get shot of him - in a man whose anti-football credentials are only exceeded by one other manager in the top flight.
I understand the "I want shot of Lambert" stuff, just not the perceived best option for us (ie Allardyce).
If you want to sack him, why not do so and replace him with someone who'll at least try to get us playing football, rather than the "any port in a storm" desperation that sees people touting the likes of Allardyce.
It is exactly the sort of lack of overall vision that has got us into this rut in the first place. The brainlessness of Lerner and co to go from someone with the beliefs of Houllier to the diametric opposite in McLeish. To then switch to a manager who wants us to play football again and then back to a prehistoric relic would be an extra stupid display of bad management.
One other thing - how many of the people calling for Allardyce now would be amongst the very first to start calling for his head once we'd got off to an iffy start and spent hours of our lives watching witless long punts at a big man up front while Kevin Nolan waits for the knock downs?
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I don't want to be the one to invoke Godwin's Law, but this is how Hitler got into power.
'I know he's a violent, anti-Semitic demagogue, but he can't be any worse than that twat Hindenburg'
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Beggars can't be choosers.
You've nailed your colours to the mast and said you'd prefer to see Lambert take us down 'trying' to play football (in the same way he probably 'tries' to get us to defend set pieces).
I could wear Sam Allthepies brand of football for the next few months (for the next 18 months >2 years if needs be) if it meant we got the 3/4 victories we need this season to stay up. We'd probably be reasonably safe next year too, even if the football is less than spellbinding. We've survived O'Neill and McLeish, so we should be well primed when it comes to dull, unimaginative football. Would Big Sam really be such a culture shock?
The ideal scenario is that Lambert does turn it around, and things suddenly click. But I am not so enamoured with his approach, his vision or what he is 'trying' to do that I think a spell in the Championship is a price worth paying.
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That's the point, though, Kev.
It wouldn't be just the next few months, or the next year or two. Sam travels with a huge backroom staff. We'd need to spend a significant amount of money getting shot of our current team and getting him in. It isn't going to be a year or two of dullness and off he goes.
I'd also wonder whether, currently attracting crowds of 30k, we can afford to be putting people off coming to the matches any more than we already have.
I didn't suggest I think a spell in the Championship is a price worth paying, either, for what it's worth. I think relegation could be a disaster for the club. I just look at the possible appointments should we go down, and can't see any which would offer more than sticking with the bloke we have got.
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Just to clarify again paulie , I have not seen one person say allardyce would be a dream
Manager, I've seen some argue he would be better than lambert- nothing more than that.
If I compiled a shortlist ralf rangnick and gus poYet would figure but big Sam wouldn't - I agree with Risso that he would do a better job than lambert but so would many other managers.
You were on more than one post match thread last month saying you agreed lambert should go and yet now you say you cannot think of anyone better - why the huge change of heart?
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It is exactly the sort of lack of overall vision that has got us into this rut in the first place. The brainlessness of Lerner and co to go from someone with the beliefs of Houllier to the diametric opposite in McLeish. To then switch to a manager who wants us to play football again and then back to a prehistoric relic would be an extra stupid display of bad management.
I think you make a great point here. The style switch in managers the board has chosen is laughable when you look back at it. Swansea have consistently built on their success by appointing managers who have continued where the other left off. Our board seem to have not even considered style of football at all. People must also remember that if we appointed someone like Allardyce, he'd probably get shot of quite a few of our better players in favour of several Lebron James types. I'd imagine someone like Weimann would be in danger of the chop. This would also cost an arm and a leg to get his players in to replace the old ones. It's exactly the sort of decision, if we go by previous decisions they've made that the board could quite easily make. I'm trying to be positive though and hoping they've seen the error of their ways.
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Just to clarify again paulie , I have not seen one person say allardyce would be a dream
Manager, I've seen some argue he would be better than lambert- nothing more than that.
If I compiled a shortlist ralf rangnick and gus poYet would figure but big Sam wouldn't - I agree with Risso that he would do a better job than lambert but so would many other managers.
That's the thing.
If in one breath you (or whoever) says "Lambert is the worst manager we've ever had" then in the next, supports some other bozo with the claim that "he's better than Lambert", then surely by their own definition, that's really not the greatest of criteria on which to base a manager.
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I'd hate Allardyce or Pulis to be in charge of Villa, much like I hated Mcleish being in charge. Lambert has done a poor job, but he has tried to win games at least and we have played nice football in places. If Lambert has to go, then looking at the likes of Allardyce is not the way to go. He'd saddle us with old players on high salaries, lets not forget he wanted Warnock, he would just drag us back towards what we're trying to get away from.
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There's the cost of hiring him, his science crew, his roadies and anyone else.
And then there's the cost of going down.
Again, in a lesser of two evils I know which scenario -to me- is more palatable.
Not that that matters much, RL's reluctance to spend in Jan indicates he's quite prepared to drift with the current and hope for the best.
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For me ralf rangnick would be first choice if we are looking for a quality manager, poyet maybe if we are looking at an up and coming manager , I haven't seen anyone who would make big Sam first choice - for what it's worth I hope lambert proves me and other doubters wrong - I will be more than happy if he succeeds .
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For me ralf rangnick would be first choice if we are looking for a quality manager, poyet maybe if we are looking at an up and coming manager , I haven't seen anyone who would make big Sam first choice - for what it's worth I hope lambert proves me and other doubters wrong - I will be more than happy if he succeeds .
Hasn't Rangnick been out of the game since he had his mental problems at Schalke? He was in a bad place, I know that. I'm not sure whether we'd want to take a punt on that.
It's not about making Big Sam first choice. It is about, seemingly, sacking Lambert and replacing him with Allardyce, ie thinking he'd be a sufficiently better option.
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There's the cost of hiring him, his science crew, his roadies and anyone else.
And then there's the cost of going down.
And then there's the fact it is almost the end of February to consider.
It'd be more money thrown away in a desperate hope to change something, which probably wouldn't change anything this season any way.
Also, I don't know if you've checked out West Ham's form recently, but it is hardly stellar.
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It depends on the ambition of the club I guess, we could all throw names in but would they want to come and work under the current financial guides , it could all come down to who would want the job - I certainly can't see anything happening until the season ends so let's see where we are and hope we can survive.
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I think Lambert has done badly so far, and probably should have gone by now. But if he's getting until the end of the season we may as well stick with him through the Summer whatever division we're in. I don't think he's a bad manager, just that he got the Summer transfer window horribly wrong.
I just hope it hasn't gone too far. Alot similarities between us and Coyle at Bolton last year.
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It depends on the ambition of the club I guess, we could all throw names in but would they want to come and work under the current financial guides , it could all come down to who would want the job - I certainly can't see anything happening until the season ends so let's see where we are and hope we can survive.
Agreed, Eastie, it depends hugely on the financial ambitions of the club.
Unfortunately, recent experience suggest they are unambitious in the extreme, so wasting another 10m (or whatever, it won't be cheap) pounds on paying off / hiring new teams and lurching from one football style to another yet again strikes me as something we can't afford.
I also appreciate that relegation is something we can't afford, either, but in my opinion, the major contributor to us getting relegated will be the cumulative effects of three years of flogging and not replacing our best players, combined with a dogmatic approach to reducing the wage bill which has been reflected in the players we've got in of late.
That isn't going to go away in a hurry. I too could list twenty managers I'd rather have than Lambert, but they'd all be managers who either wouldn't come here *now* or would never come here.
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I'm still waiting for someone to offer a detailed case as to why they think Lambert is having such a horror show this season. It just seems to be a lot of people saying he's having a shocker but having no regard for the repair job that was needed at the start of the summer.
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Our goals against record, suffering our record defeat, and losing to a fourth division team over two legs is pretty horrific, is it not?
When it comes to absolving Lambert of blame for any of the above (and our league position, and our worst ever start to a Premier League season) you have to ask: would it have been different under another manager? Or would most of the above occurred regardless?
Based on our squad as a whole, mid table> lower would have realistically been about as good as we could hope for this year. There were gaps in the squad -gaps he's failed to address.
His fault, as far as I'm concerned. The money was there last summer.
The other regular horror shows that have occured on his watch have definitely been avoidable -even with Laurel and Hardy in the boardroom.
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I'm still waiting for someone to offer a detailed case as to why they think Lambert is having such a horror show this season. It just seems to be a lot of people saying he's having a shocker but having no regard for the repair job that was needed at the start of the summer.
I'd also like to hear which if these other teams above us that spent less than we did needed to spread it around 9 players?
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It depends on the ambition of the club I guess, we could all throw names in but would they want to come and work under the current financial guides , it could all come down to who would want the job - I certainly can't see anything happening until the season ends so let's see where we are and hope we can survive.
Agreed, Eastie, it depends hugely on the financial ambitions of the club.
Unfortunately, recent experience suggest they are unambitious in the extreme, so wasting another 10m (or whatever, it won't be cheap) pounds on paying off / hiring new teams and lurching from one football style to another yet again strikes me as something we can't afford.
I also appreciate that relegation is something we can't afford, either, but in my opinion, the major contributor to us getting relegated will be the cumulative effects of three years of flogging and not replacing our best players, combined with a dogmatic approach to reducing the wage bill which has been reflected in the players we've got in of late.
That isn't going to go away in a hurry. I too could list twenty managers I'd rather have than Lambert, but they'd all be managers who either wouldn't come here *now* or would never come here.
I bet some of them would if a rich Arab took over. If Shitty can do it then i see no reason why we would not have the chance.
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Did we need nine players though?
We absolutely needed 3/4 good ones -and two of those positions have still yet to be fllled.
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Did we need nine players though?
We absolutely needed 3/4 good ones -and two of those positions have still yet to be fllled.
Given the size of our squad, I fail to see where we're over loaded with players that suggests we didn't? Fullback if you include Warnock and Hutton.
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Did we need nine players though?
We absolutely needed 3/4 good ones -and two of those positions have still yet to be fllled.
Of course we did, we had a weak squad last season and lost more players in the summer.
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The players we lost were players we wanted to get shot of, and -in the case of Cuellar- they weren't first team regulars anyway. So it's not as if PL inherited a decimated squad compared to 2011/12.
A left back, centre mid, and centre back were obvious priorities. Such was his buying prowess last summer, two of those positions still are.
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When you take out the guys unavailable throughout the season through injury and the youth who've hardly featured look at what we started with:
GK - Given, Marshall
Defence - Hutton, Lichaj, Collins, Clark, Baker, Warnock, Stevens
Midfield - Delph, Bannan, Herd, Holman, N’Zogbia, Albrighton, Ireland
Forwards - Agbonlahor, Bent, Weimann, Delfouneso
Surely one of the worst squads in the league at the start of the summer? You'd have be a pretty positive person to say otherwise. In my view they would have finished rock bottom. No depth and little Premier league quality. Look at the form we were in at the end of the season following the loss of Petrov.
We've then got a few more high earners off the wage bill, spent roughly £23m on players who by all accounts are on relatively low wages, yet people still suggest he's done a shocking job by taking us from a squad that probably would have finished bottom to a place above the relegation zone? I just don't understand it.
When you take out Hutton, Collins and Warnock and consider we spent £23m which included finding replacements for them, questioning the job he's done seems even more wrong.
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Exactly right Kevin. Lambert chose to buy the players he did, nobody forced him to buy the likes of Bennett who is clearly years off being ready for the Premier League. Sacking Lambert would cost a few quid of course, but the cost to the club of him relegating us will be twenty times that, at least. Lambert taking us down could set us back years, even if Lerner can afford to finance the club in the Championship, which I doubt.
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All of our players were performing within a comfort zone. I am struggling to think of a single one I would have kept out of choice.
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The players we lost were players we wanted to get shot of, and -in the case of Cuellar- they weren't first team regulars anyway. So it's not as if PL inherited a decimated squad compared to 2011/12.
A left back, centre mid, and centre back were obvious priorities. Such was his buying prowess last summer, two of those positions still are.
I reckon you're the only one who thought the squad from last season only needed 3 or 4 players, even before the departures in the summer.
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Exactly right Kevin. Lambert chose to buy the players he did, nobody forced him to buy the likes of Bennett who is clearly years off being ready for the Premier League. Sacking Lambert would cost a few quid of course, but the cost to the club of him relegating us will be twenty times that, at least. Lambert taking us down could set us back years, even if Lerner can afford to finance the club in the Championship, which I doubt.
So you doubt Lerner could afford to finance the club in the Championship? but then say Lambert chose to buy the players he did? So if he wanted to buy experienced Premier League players for more money on bigger contracts, you think Lerner would have said yes to this? Or are you saying we should have gambled the long term future of the club by doing a QPR and staying in the league for the holy grail of the TV money?
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yet people still suggest he's done a shocking job by taking us from a squad that probably would have finished bottom to a place above the relegation zone? I just don't understand it.
Firstly, I don't think that squad even as was was the worst in the league. Worse than Reading? Worse than Norwich, Southampton, West Ham and Wigan?
Petrov's absence was known from the time he took the job. The only situation where PL might have been unlucky is Dunne's absence, which was believed to be short-term initially.
That might have impacted his decision making re central defence -but if he was being proactive, he'd have known Dunne's best days were behind him anyway, and would have gone about sourcing a replacement.
As to your last part, after the season we've endured so far, is it any wonder some might think he's done a shocking job? If you don't get that now, you never will.
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Exactly right Kevin. Lambert chose to buy the players he did, nobody forced him to buy the likes of Bennett who is clearly years off being ready for the Premier League. Sacking Lambert would cost a few quid of course, but the cost to the club of him relegating us will be twenty times that, at least. Lambert taking us down could set us back years, even if Lerner can afford to finance the club in the Championship, which I doubt.
So you doubt Lerner could afford to finance the club in the Championship? but then say Lambert chose to buy the players he did? So if he wanted to buy experienced Premier League players for more money on bigger contracts, you think Lerner would have said yes to this? Or are you saying we should have gambled the long term future of the club by doing a QPR and staying in the league for the holy grail of the TV money?
Ho could have bought better players with the money he spent. It's only really Benteke that's been an outright success.
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The players we lost were players we wanted to get shot of, and -in the case of Cuellar- they weren't first team regulars anyway. So it's not as if PL inherited a decimated squad compared to 2011/12.
A left back, centre mid, and centre back were obvious priorities. Such was his buying prowess last summer, two of those positions still are.
I reckon you're the only one who thought the squad from last season only needed 3 or 4 players, even before the departures in the summer.
I'll clarify that, we needed 3/4 players good enough to come straight into the side.
Probably 6/7 additions in total, be they promising youngsters, free transfers or whatever else. We were obviously not in the market fot the very best free transfers -they'd have had better options than us.
But the scope was there to address our major weakspots and strengthen the squad as a whole.
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yet people still suggest he's done a shocking job by taking us from a squad that probably would have finished bottom to a place above the relegation zone? I just don't understand it.
Firstly, I don't think that squad even as was was the worst in the league. Worse than Reading? Worse than Norwich, Southampton, West Ham and Wigan?
Petrov's absence was known from the time he took the job. The only situation where PL might have been unlucky is Dunne's absence, which was believed to be short-term initially.
That might have impacted his decision making re central defence -but if he was being proactive, he'd have known Dunne's best days were behind him anyway, and would have gone about sourcing a replacement.
As to your last part, after the season we've endured so far, is it any wonder some might think he's done a shocking job? If you don't get that now, you never will.
Regardless of whether you think the squad was the worst or not you must surely acknowledge they were definitely up there? Plus all those sides you mentioned were built over at least one previous season and they did not have the repair job we had on our hands when he took the job.
You last comment sums it up for me - after the season we've endured so far? We were shite at the start of the summer, we finished a stumbling over the line 16th ffs! Missing Petrov for the whole season would probably have seen us relegated. Currently we are still struggling after a massive overhaul and the birth of a plan which will only bear fruit a few years from now. Just because we are Aston Villa does not give us some right to be performing at a higher level than the quality of our team suggests. I think that must be where a lot of this belief that he's done a bad job has come from, because the facts just don't back this up.
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Exactly right Kevin. Lambert chose to buy the players he did, nobody forced him to buy the likes of Bennett who is clearly years off being ready for the Premier League. Sacking Lambert would cost a few quid of course, but the cost to the club of him relegating us will be twenty times that, at least. Lambert taking us down could set us back years, even if Lerner can afford to finance the club in the Championship, which I doubt.
So you doubt Lerner could afford to finance the club in the Championship? but then say Lambert chose to buy the players he did? So if he wanted to buy experienced Premier League players for more money on bigger contracts, you think Lerner would have said yes to this? Or are you saying we should have gambled the long term future of the club by doing a QPR and staying in the league for the holy grail of the TV money?
Ho could have bought better players with the money he spent. It's only really Benteke that's been an outright success.
Any chance of any names? Who could we have got here on £20k a week that are better than what we have?
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Any chance of any names? Who could we have got here on £20k a week that are better than what we have?
Is there any evidence that all of our new recruits are on £20k max?
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Any chance of any names? Who could we have got here on £20k a week that are better than what we have?
Is there any evidence that all of our new recruits are on £20k max?
There have been rumours of this but I put this out there as more of an average of what I think the recent signings are on. Are you saying you think we can afford regular signings of £30k/£40k a week players?
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Any chance of any names? Who could we have got here on £20k a week that are better than what we have?
Is there any evidence that all of our new recruits are on £20k max?
There have been rumours of this but I put this out there as more of an average of what I think the recent signings are on. Are you saying you think we can afford regular signings of £30k/£40k a week players?
It seems unlikely that after going through all that pain to reduce the wage bill we'd then spend the same sort of wages on lesser known replacements.
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Exactly right Kevin. Lambert chose to buy the players he did, nobody forced him to buy the likes of Bennett who is clearly years off being ready for the Premier League. Sacking Lambert would cost a few quid of course, but the cost to the club of him relegating us will be twenty times that, at least. Lambert taking us down could set us back years, even if Lerner can afford to finance the club in the Championship, which I doubt.
So you doubt Lerner could afford to finance the club in the Championship? but then say Lambert chose to buy the players he did? So if he wanted to buy experienced Premier League players for more money on bigger contracts, you think Lerner would have said yes to this? Or are you saying we should have gambled the long term future of the club by doing a QPR and staying in the league for the holy grail of the TV money?
Ho could have bought better players with the money he spent. It's only really Benteke that's been an outright success.
There's really no arguing with spin like that, you're so determined to cast everything in the darkest light possible.
What about Westwood? There seems to be general agreement he's done very well. Most people would also suggest Lowton has done well, too.
And then what about Guzan - who had actually left the club before Lambert got him back in?
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Exactly right Kevin. Lambert chose to buy the players he did, nobody forced him to buy the likes of Bennett who is clearly years off being ready for the Premier League. Sacking Lambert would cost a few quid of course, but the cost to the club of him relegating us will be twenty times that, at least. Lambert taking us down could set us back years, even if Lerner can afford to finance the club in the Championship, which I doubt.
So you doubt Lerner could afford to finance the club in the Championship? but then say Lambert chose to buy the players he did? So if he wanted to buy experienced Premier League players for more money on bigger contracts, you think Lerner would have said yes to this? Or are you saying we should have gambled the long term future of the club by doing a QPR and staying in the league for the holy grail of the TV money?
Ho could have bought better players with the money he spent. It's only really Benteke that's been an outright success.
There's really no arguing with spin like that, you're so determined to cast everything in the darkest light possible.
What about Westwood? There seems to be general agreement he's done very well. Most people would also suggest Lowton has done well, too.
And then what about Guzan - who had actually left the club before Lambert got him back in?
well that's because that isn't much but a dark light. Yes Lowton and westwood have done well but only Benteke has been an outstanding success. Other than him which other of our players do you think any other teams would want? we'd pick one or two from most around us. We're just ahead of Reading. Great.
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I think that must be where a lot of this belief that he's done a bad job has come from, because the facts just don't back this up.
Aye.
If you ignore the league table, our goals against, our goal difference and the various maulings we've had this campaign, you're probably right.
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I suppose it all comes down to how much you believe in Lambert and his youth plan and whether we should follow it through. Imo it's short term pain, long term gain - there you go Lerner, get those next bright future style scarves printed!
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well that's because that isn't much but a dark light. Yes Lowton and westwood have done well but only Benteke has been an outstanding success. Other than him which other of our players do you think any other teams would want? we'd pick one or two from most around us. We're just ahead of Reading. Great.
He said outright success, not outstanding success, though.
Personally, I wouldn't even describe Benteke as an outstanding success, but I think it is unfair to lumber the likes of Westwood, Guzan et al with the implied label of failure (which is what I am sure Risso is trying to do).
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I think that must be where a lot of this belief that he's done a bad job has come from, because the facts just don't back this up.
Aye.
If you ignore the league table, our goals against, our goal difference and the various maulings we've had this campaign, you're probably right.
It's more a case of you ignoring the fact we got 38 points last season, lost our captain and best midfielder after 29 games, then didn't win a game after that. So yeah you're probably right that squad he inherited were outstanding weren't they?
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Westwood has looked OK in patches, but how many assists does he have? How much protection does he afford the defence? Not much in the way of either. And Lowton has been as bad as the rest of the defence for months now, after a bright start.
And really, Guzan as a Lambert signing? He'd been offered a new deal at the end of the season.
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Any chance of any names? Who could we have got here on £20k a week that are better than what we have?
Is there any evidence that all of our new recruits are on £20k max?
There have been rumours of this but I put this out there as more of an average of what I think the recent signings are on. Are you saying you think we can afford regular signings of £30k/£40k a week players?
I'd imagine there's a budget for transfer fee and wages. I'm sure that if Lambert wanted to spend the £10K a week that Bowery gets by paying somebody £30K instead of £20K, that would have been allowed.
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It was widely accepted that we underperformed last year, due to the conservative nature of the manager.
We could (and probably should) have been well clear of any notions of relegation long before we lost Petrov at the tail end of the campaign. And -as unpopular as this might be- was he really a key influence for us by that stage?
There were post many match threads advocating we needed better than Stan as far back as 2010/11, that he tired quickly, was slowing down (not that he was ever particularly quick) and was a yard or two off the pace.
Regardless, if his absence left such a huge void, the current manager had the funds to address that. He failed to do so.
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I think that must be where a lot of this belief that he's done a bad job has come from, because the facts just don't back this up.
Aye.
If you ignore the league table, our goals against, our goal difference and the various maulings we've had this campaign, you're probably right.
It's more a case of you ignoring the fact we got 38 points last season, lost our captain and best midfielder after 29 games, then didn't win a game after that. So yeah you're probably right that squad he inherited were outstanding weren't they?
No, you're right, the squad was pretty poor. So what sort of idiot looks at it, and thinks "aye, that squad that just avoided relegation, I know what will do the trick, a load of League 1 and cheap foreign signings". Brilliant.
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Westwood has looked OK in patches, but how many assists does he have?
More than Mikel Arteta and Frank Lampard combined. Statistics aren't useless, but they rarely tell the whole story.
And really, Guzan as a Lambert signing? He'd been offered a new deal at the end of the season.
Of course he's a Lambert signing. He left the club and could have signed for any club that was interested. Equally, Lambert could have chosen whichever keeper he wanted and chose to sign Guzan.
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And -as unpopular as this might be- was he really a key influence for us by that stage?
I'd very much say so. Wasn't he scoring more goals for us than any other time in his Villa career? Some players get better in their later years and Petrov's form when he has to stop playing was as good as it ever was.
And I think it's safe to say that what we really need right now is an experienced player who will do exactly the job that Petrov's done for the last two years. I'd say he's been a massive loss.
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Westwood has 3 assists, which is 1 more than our hero Mark Noble. I also remember seeing stats a website that said that with Westwood we gain a hell of a lot more points than without him. It basically suggested he was our most vital player. It was similar sort of figures to the ones presented by Sky when they examined the influence of Yacob/Mulumbu for Albion.
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It was widely accepted that we underperformed last year, due to the conservative nature of the manager.
We could (and probably should) have been well clear of any notions of relegation long before we lost Petrov at the tail end of the campaign. And -as unpopular as this might be- was he really a key influence for us by that stage?
There were post many match threads advocating we needed better than Stan as far back as 2010/11, that he tired quickly, was slowing down (not that he was ever particularly quick) and was a yard or two off the pace.
Regardless, if his absence left such a huge void, the current manager had the funds to address that. He failed to do so.
We underperformed in 11-12 because we lost Young/Downing and host of other talented players that saw us plummet to 16th. Not because TSM was a completely useless tool. You suggest the influence of Petrov wasn't that big of a deal. That facts of the run in suggest otherwise. I think I'd prefer to side with those over your opinion. You also say the manager had the funds to address the squad? Are you saying you know how much room he had to deal with on the wage bill? The way that Hutton (who came out and said he was rejected for financial reasons) and Warnock were dealt with certainly seems to suggests there was very little room for manoeuvre on this front. Or are you basing this view solely on transfer fees?
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And -as unpopular as this might be- was he really a key influence for us by that stage?
I'd very much say so. Wasn't he scoring more goals for us than any other time in his Villa career? Some players get better in their later years and Petrov's form when he has to stop playing was as good as it ever was.
And I think it's safe to say that what we really need right now is an experienced player who will do exactly the job that Petrov's done for the last two years. I'd say he's been a massive loss.
Agreed. To question Petrov's influence is daft and blind in my opinion. We were all over the place when he wasn't on the field and found cohesion when he was on it.
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I think that must be where a lot of this belief that he's done a bad job has come from, because the facts just don't back this up.
Aye.
If you ignore the league table, our goals against, our goal difference and the various maulings we've had this campaign, you're probably right.
It's more a case of you ignoring the fact we got 38 points last season, lost our captain and best midfielder after 29 games, then didn't win a game after that. So yeah you're probably right that squad he inherited were outstanding weren't they?
No, you're right, the squad was pretty poor. So what sort of idiot looks at it, and thinks "aye, that squad that just avoided relegation, I know what will do the trick, a load of League 1 and cheap foreign signings". Brilliant.
I think it was more a case of "Well if I do the same shit they've previously been doing we'll end up in a bigger financial mess with a new bunch of overpaid average players. Why don't I make sure I'm in it for the long haul, suggest that we buy young and cheap, then build a side who will be comfortably mid table in 4/5 years time and give us a solid base to sell/buy players to work our way slowly up the league?" Brilliant!
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Westwood has 3 assists, which is 1 more than our hero Mark Noble. I also remember seeing stats a website that said that with Westwood we gain a hell of a lot more points than without him. It basically suggested he was our most vital player. It was similar sort of figures to the ones presented by Sky when they examined the influence of Yacob/Mulumbu for Albion.
A very quick check shows that Westwood has made 18 appearances in the league, with 18 points. That means in the 8 games he hasn't appeared in, we've got 6 points. Two points different then. A hell of a lot more, indeed. And if indeed you want to compare him to Noble, then Noble's stats show he's scored 4 goals to Westwood's 0, and makes nearly twice as many passes and tackles a game.
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I think it was more a case of "Well if I do the same shit they've previously been doing we'll end up in a bigger financial mess with a new bunch of overpaid average players. Why don't I make sure I'm in it for the long haul, suggest that we buy young and cheap, then build a side who will be comfortably mid table in 4/5 years time and give us a solid base to sell/buy players to work our way slowly up the league?" Brilliant!
To quote that evil twat Sarah Palin, "How's that hopey changey thing workin' out for ya?" The above would have been a good plan if it didn't involved a good chance of getting relegated. Then the players like Benteke who would provide that basis in 4/5 years time would instead be playing Champions League football with the likes of Spurs, while we're still playing in front of 25k crowds in the Championship.
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You suggest the influence of Petrov wasn't that big of a deal. That facts of the run in suggest otherwise. I think I'd prefer to side with those over your opinion.
I tend to think our woeful second half to the campaign had more to do with the absence of Bent and the goal threat he provided rather than a lack of square balls from Petrov, but each to his own.
Funny how you'd cite that example as 'fact' (which many other people might class it as merely coincidence) yet abstract concepts such as league tables, results and so forth can be overlooked to suit. A very arbitrary system, if you don't mind me saying (that's my opinion, of course, not a fact. So I don't expect you to side with that either, ;) )
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Westwood has 3 assists, which is 1 more than our hero Mark Noble. I also remember seeing stats a website that said that with Westwood we gain a hell of a lot more points than without him. It basically suggested he was our most vital player. It was similar sort of figures to the ones presented by Sky when they examined the influence of Yacob/Mulumbu for Albion.
A very quick check shows that Westwood has made 18 appearances in the league, with 18 points. That means in the 8 games he hasn't appeared in, we've got 6 points. Two points different then. A hell of a lot more, indeed. And if indeed you want to compare him to Noble, then Noble's stats show he's scored 4 goals to Westwood's 0, and makes nearly twice as many passes and tackles a game.
That is indeed very impressive stats regarding Westwood. You play those figures out over over the course of a season and you're looking at one player making a difference of nearly 10 points more! Certainly shows his worth to the side. Also when you consider a lot of players will actually chalk up a negative team impact figure here, that sort of difference certainly shows how valuable he is.
All of Noble's goals were from penalties I presume? Westwood actually has a higher pass success rate than Noble, nearly 2% more in fact. Just because Noble makes 5 million 5 yard passes out to the wingers in preparation for the big hoof into the mixer, doesn't mean he's better at finding a team mate than Westwood is. I don't want to knock him though, especially to what appears to be only other person on here that rates him!
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I think it was more a case of "Well if I do the same shit they've previously been doing we'll end up in a bigger financial mess with a new bunch of overpaid average players. Why don't I make sure I'm in it for the long haul, suggest that we buy young and cheap, then build a side who will be comfortably mid table in 4/5 years time and give us a solid base to sell/buy players to work our way slowly up the league?" Brilliant!
To quote that evil twat Sarah Palin, "How's that hopey changey thing workin' out for ya?" The above would have been a good plan if it didn't involved a good chance of getting relegated. Then the players like Benteke who would provide that basis in 4/5 years time would instead be playing Champions League football with the likes of Spurs, while we're still playing in front of 25k crowds in the Championship.
So what would your plan have been with the wage structure and transfer budget we had at the start of the summer?
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Jesus 26 pages about something that's never gonna happen.....you can tell its been 10 days since a game
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You suggest the influence of Petrov wasn't that big of a deal. That facts of the run in suggest otherwise. I think I'd prefer to side with those over your opinion.
I tend to think our woeful second half to the campaign had more to do with the absence of Bent and the goal threat he provided rather than a lack of square balls from Petrov, but each to his own.
Funny how you'd cite that example as 'fact' (which many other people might class it as merely coincidence) yet abstract concepts such as league tables, results and so forth can be overlooked to suit. A very arbitrary system, if you don't mind me saying (that's my opinion, of course, not a fact. So I don't expect you to side with that either, ;) )
I think you've overlooked the fact that I said the facts of the run in suggested otherwise. I did not state it was a fact. All I said was I'd prefer to side with the fact that we didn't win a game after he stopped playing as a better argument for gauging his value to the side, rather than your view that his legs were gone. Jeez this thread is starting to sound like one of those PPI claim adverts - "FACT!!" :)
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Okay, we sack Lambert and we approach Easter Island Head. What tells his backers he is going to run out on West Ham mid season when they are a decent sized club who are six points better off? He won't. If the Fat Dudleyonite came at any time it would be at the end of the season. And I don't think there is any chance of him doing so if we're in the Championship which just so happens to be where many of the same people who are talking him up believe we will be.
I've always had this weird belief that we should appoint the right man for Aston Villa rather than the first doomed lifeboat off a sinking ship. If we sack Lambert, I'd like us to go and get that guy, not Samuel 'Long Ball' Allardyce. Especially when the idea of him joining is a downright unlikely flight of fantasy invented by the supporters of his current team more in hope than expectation.
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It was widely accepted that we underperformed last year, due to the conservative nature of the manager.
We could (and probably should) have been well clear of any notions of relegation long before we lost Petrov at the tail end of the campaign. And -as unpopular as this might be- was he really a key influence for us by that stage?
There were post many match threads advocating we needed better than Stan as far back as 2010/11, that he tired quickly, was slowing down (not that he was ever particularly quick) and was a yard or two off the pace.
Regardless, if his absence left such a huge void, the current manager had the funds to address that. He failed to do so.
We underperformed in 11-12 because we lost Young/Downing and host of other talented players that saw us plummet to 16th. Not because TSM was a completely useless tool. You suggest the influence of Petrov wasn't that big of a deal. That facts of the run in suggest otherwise. I think I'd prefer to side with those over your opinion. You also say the manager had the funds to address the squad? Are you saying you know how much room he had to deal with on the wage bill? The way that Hutton (who came out and said he was rejected for financial reasons) and Warnock were dealt with certainly seems to suggests there was very little room for manoeuvre on this front. Or are you basing this view solely on transfer fees?
So you think that sacking McLeish was harsh? 16th was as good as we could have hoped for? Like when it happened with O'Dreary, I would argue we under-achieved and that's why both managers were given the heave-ho.
As you stated, Young and Downing were sold in summer 2011. McLeish chose to sign N'Zogbia as one replacement and failed to get the best out of him while Albrighton, after a fine season under Houllier, was meant to mitigate the loss of the other winger. Presumably there was also hope that Stephen Ireland would be brought back into the fold and that this would further lessen the impact of Young and Downing's departures. Challenging tasks, but ones McLeish believed he was cut out for. As with Zog, McLeish failed to get any consistency from Albrighton or Ireland.
The only other "host of talented players" we lost in summer 2011 were Friedel and L Young. Replaced by Given and Hutton respectively - like N'Zogbia, two more resounding successes and still chewing off the wage bill (Given for another three and a quarter years). Reo-Coker left too, but Delph was emerging and Jenas was also brought in despite his horrendous injury record. So, I'd say, largely by virtue of his dour football, failure to get the most from key and emerging players and dodgy transfer decisions, McLeish failed.
I do agree that Petrov's absence was and is a big blow. As Dave mentioned, he was beginning to add goals to his game last season and his presence over the last 12 months would have won us a fair few more points, I'm quite sure.
Finally, regarding Lambert's budget last summer - while we don't know for sure, Fulham's acceptance of our bid for Clint Dempsey and this money being separate to the funds earmarked for the subsequent purchase of Benteke (don't have a quote for that but Lambert said as much according to posts I've read on here) suggests that there was more to play with than the manager spent. Conflicting reports that this money, or approx 5m-7m, was available in January but not spent as opposed to the only hard evidence that saw us bring in two more wannabee top flight players on deadline day will mean different people will believe different things to suit their stance.
Personally, I have a bad feeling that Lambert might be far more comfortable coaching young, unproven talents and shies away from players who have more PL experience than him. The instant jettisoning of Warnock and Hutton, his difficulties involving Bent and now Ireland (some of those players you might argue are now unmanageable) and there's been enough comments from him completely downplaying the importance of experience at this level to suggest that there might be something in that.
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Having just read the last few pages its clear that the pro and anti lambert brigade have made up their mind and are unlikely to be convinced by the other side .
My stance is that lambert has not bought badly but my problem with him has been team selections, formation and tactics rather than his signings, he has taken over 20 games to settle on his best formation and best team and even now im not sure he knows - his motivational skills also seem questionable .
There have been signs in the last couple of games that we have improved but lets see how the next 12 games pan out - i hope for all our sakes that he gets it right and turns things around .
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I'll tell you what, it makes a fucking change in the modern game to have a manager trying to sort the club out for the long term, a long term that he probably won't feature in or get credit for.
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Having just read the last few pages its clear that the pro and anti lambert brigade have made up their mind and are unlikely to be convinced by the other side .
Of course people are going to change their mind. Opinions change as the evidence changes. I'm pretty sure that if we win every game between now and the end of the season to finish eighth then you'll probably change your mind about wanting him fired.
If he loses every game and we finish bottom then I expect a lot more people will begin to want him sacked.
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Having just read the last few pages its clear that the pro and anti lambert brigade have made up their mind and are unlikely to be convinced by the other side .
My stance is that lambert has not bought badly but my problem with him has been team selections, formation and tactics rather than his signings, he has taken over 20 games to settle on his best formation and best team and even now im not sure he knows - his motivational skills also seem questionable .
There have been signs in the last couple of games that we have improved but lets see how the next 12 games pan out - i hope for all our sakes that he gets it right and turns things around .
I haven't made up my mind to be pro or anti anything, I'm just applying reason.
Things can change.
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Okay, we sack Lambert and we approach Easter Island Head. What tells his backers he is going to run out on West Ham mid season when they are a decent sized club who are six points better off? He won't. If the Fat Dudleyonite came at any time it would be at the end of the season. And I don't think there is any chance of him doing so if we're in the Championship which just so happens to be where many of the same people who are talking him up believe we will be.
To be honest, I'd assumed that this is when the rumour is referring to.
As sendo has pointed out, Allardyce is out of contract at the end of the season and at the moment this looks very much like a tactic by his agent to see a new contract put in front of him.
However, we get relegated, Lambert is moved on, Allardyce is out of a job, Faulkner sees a manager to whom he doesn't need to pay compensation with recent experience of getting a recently relegated side promoted.
I don't think it's particularly far-fetched.
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I think the time to really worry is when a manager loses the dressing room and i've not seen any sign of that with Lambert as yet.
I said after the Everton game that i felt we were turning the corner slowly, especially away from home. Not many teams go to Goodison and score 3 goals. We know where the main problem lies though so if we can sort that out, then hopefully we should be ok.
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Can i ask your opinion on lambert and his reign so far dave , or are you reserving judgement?
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I think the time to really worry is when a manager loses the dressing room and i've not seen any sign of that with Lambert as yet.
I said after the Everton game that i felt we were turning the corner slowly, especially away from home. Not many teams go to Goodison and score 3 goals. We know where the main problem lies though so if we can sort that out, then hopefully we should be ok.
We have been here before though clamps, after liverpool away we thought we had turned the corner , after swansea at home we saw good signs , lets hope this time we continue to show good signs - arsenal and man city may not be ideal games but both are in a bad run and it may suit us playing them now.
I think if we could put 2 or 3 good results together we would see confidence rise - heads drop quickly and with confidence flowing the team may be much better.
It is sad that we have lost the lead in the dying minutes at swansea , albion and everton - a couple of wins there would have really lifted everyone.
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Can i ask your opinion on lambert and his reign so far dave , or are you reserving judgement?
Very disappointing but not without promise. At least he seems to have ideas about what he wants to do, even if he's not been very good at implementing them. For me that's better than not having the ideas in the first place (like the last bloke).
If the decision was taken to fire him then I don't think he can have too many complaints, but I would be very worried about who would be next in the door. It's like not like the people making the decision have shown much aptitude for it so far.
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Can i ask your opinion on lambert and his reign so far dave , or are you reserving judgement?
Very disappointing but not without promise. At least he seems to have ideas about what he wants to do, even if he's not been very good at implementing them. For me that's better than not having the ideas in the first place (like the last bloke).
If the decision was taken to fire him then I don't think he can have too many complaints, but I would be very worried about who would be next in the door. It's like not like the people making the decision have shown much aptitude for it so far.
A fair assessment .
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I'm with Dave on his assessment of Lambert. It's a bit like the Houiller season. He's made huge gaffes, his tactics at times are questionable to say the least and some of the results have been embarrasing. Like Houiller though, he does seem to be looking to the future and he's trying to get us playing football worth watching again.
The players he has brought in have been on the whole ok. It's just that whilst his transfer dealings have been meant for the long term, he forgot about the short term and that's been his main downfall.
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Noble's stats show he's scored 4 goals to Westwood's 0, and makes nearly twice as many passes and tackles a game.
If you're giving the ball away more by hacking it up field, then you're going to need to make more tackles.
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Im not against his new signings as they all shown promise although kea has been disappointing and bennett has potential maybe more as a left midfielder- for me its more the tactics and formation that have worried me, we have seen at times the team can play very well even against the likes of man utd, liverpool, everton but i find that he got so little from them against much lesser teams very disappointing.
To play so well at anfield and so poorly against wigan for example- lets hope things have turned the corner this time.
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I'll tell you what, it makes a fucking change in the modern game to have a manager trying to sort the club out for the long term, a long term that he probably won't feature in or get credit for.
I'm not sure, if we stay up, and its looking more likely at the moment, then I think he will be here long term.
I am part way convinced that Lerner's scheme for the club was be to buckle down until the new TV deal comes in, all the while clearing the wages down. With the likes of Dunne, Bent, Given and Ireland likely to go in the summer, the wage issue will likely be sorted once and for all.
Then it will be easy to provide a manager with say £30million to spend on players due to the large increase in TV money. As long as you're not doing all your shopping in the Premier League, then you should avoid inflated prices.
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I think you're giving Lerner too much credit Ads, I've seen nothing to suggest he has a plan beyond cutting costs.
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Can i ask your opinion on lambert and his reign so far dave , or are you reserving judgement?
Very disappointing but not without promise. At least he seems to have ideas about what he wants to do, even if he's not been very good at implementing them. For me that's better than not having the ideas in the first place (like the last bloke).
If the decision was taken to fire him then I don't think he can have too many complaints, but I would be very worried about who would be next in the door. It's like not like the people making the decision have shown much aptitude for it so far.
spot on for me
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I think you're giving Lerner too much credit Ads, I've seen nothing to suggest he has a plan beyond cutting costs.
I see it as him keeping the wage bill down to a manageable level. The days of paying the likes of Habib Beye and Stephen Warnock silly amounts a week are thankfully gone.
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I think you're giving Lerner too much credit Ads, I've seen nothing to suggest he has a plan beyond cutting costs.
I see it as him keeping the wage bill down to a manageable level. The days of paying the likes of Habib Beye and Stephen Warnock silly amounts a week are thankfully gone.
Unfortunately, the days of us being a competitive Premier League team are also long gone.
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I think you're giving Lerner too much credit Ads, I've seen nothing to suggest he has a plan beyond cutting costs.
I see it as him keeping the wage bill down to a manageable level. The days of paying the likes of Habib Beye and Stephen Warnock silly amounts a week are thankfully gone.
Unfortunately, the days of us being a competitive Premier League team are also long gone.
At this moment in time you're right.
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So you think that sacking McLeish was harsh? 16th was as good as we could have hoped for? Like when it happened with O'Dreary, I would argue we under-achieved and that's why both managers were given the heave-ho.
As you stated, Young and Downing were sold in summer 2011. McLeish chose to sign N'Zogbia as one replacement and failed to get the best out of him while Albrighton, after a fine season under Houllier, was meant to mitigate the loss of the other winger. Presumably there was also hope that Stephen Ireland would be brought back into the fold and that this would further lessen the impact of Young and Downing's departures. Challenging tasks, but ones McLeish believed he was cut out for. As with Zog, McLeish failed to get any consistency from Albrighton or Ireland.
The only other "host of talented players" we lost in summer 2011 were Friedel and L Young. Replaced by Given and Hutton respectively - like N'Zogbia, two more resounding successes and still chewing off the wage bill (Given for another three and a quarter years). Reo-Coker left too, but Delph was emerging and Jenas was also brought in despite his horrendous injury record. So, I'd say, largely by virtue of his dour football, failure to get the most from key and emerging players and dodgy transfer decisions, McLeish failed.
I do agree that Petrov's absence was and is a big blow. As Dave mentioned, he was beginning to add goals to his game last season and his presence over the last 12 months would have won us a fair few more points, I'm quite sure.
Finally, regarding Lambert's budget last summer - while we don't know for sure, Fulham's acceptance of our bid for Clint Dempsey and this money being separate to the funds earmarked for the subsequent purchase of Benteke (don't have a quote for that but Lambert said as much according to posts I've read on here) suggests that there was more to play with than the manager spent. Conflicting reports that this money, or approx 5m-7m, was available in January but not spent as opposed to the only hard evidence that saw us bring in two more wannabee top flight players on deadline day will mean different people will believe different things to suit their stance.
Personally, I have a bad feeling that Lambert might be far more comfortable coaching young, unproven talents and shies away from players who have more PL experience than him. The instant jettisoning of Warnock and Hutton, his difficulties involving Bent and now Ireland (some of those players you might argue are now unmanageable) and there's been enough comments from him completely downplaying the importance of experience at this level to suggest that there might be something in that.
O'Leary is a seperate issue, but I think for the points TSM achieved with the players available it was slightly harsh, although I'd agree his transfer decisions were poor on the whole. But as I never wanted him here, not because he was a nose but because his style of football bored me to tears, I think the board finally saw sense and recognised we needed to get the crowd back onside with someone trying to play a better brand of football as well as stem the slide we were on. I'm simply trying to point out the main reason we struggled was because of losing quality talent, and not even coming to close to replacing them.
As you say we lost A Young, Downing, Friedel, L Young and Reo-Coker who all played their part in the previous season, I suppose you can also count Walker in terms of his impact on our 2nd half of the season although he was a loan obviously. The key point here though, is that these guys were not just squad players, they were first XI guys getting selected for many of the games in the previous season. Delph only made 10 appearances. Albrighton did well in a side that at least had some attacking intent, but under Mcleish he struggled in a defensive system. Clearly not the only player ever to struggle in a system which didn't suit their strengths. Now his confidence appears shot to pieces. Ireland is just an enigma and looks like he'll never find the player he was at City 08-09 again and it's not just TSM that couldn't find this player. That would say to me it's more to do with issues the player has rather than coaching.
Following Mcleish's signings (which were no where near enough to make up for loss of quality we suffered), we had a poor year, but if you look at how many points we were on for roughly before the loss of Petrov, that would be about 43 points. Only 5 points lower than the 48 the team achieved in the previous season. Even when you look at the first team players lost being the 10 points we eventually were behind that total wouldn't really be a surpise would it?
I think eastie makes a good point which is probably a good way of highlighting why I think Lambert shouldn't be getting the pasting he gets by some:
My stance is that lambert has not bought badly but my problem with him has been team selections, formation and tactics rather than his signings, he has taken over 20 games to settle on his best formation and best team and even now im not sure he knows - his motivational skills also seem questionable .
That's a fair point, but it's my personal belief that the standard coaching and studying of every aspect of the game is now so high that tactics and formations are given far more substance than they are worth. It's the 11 players we send out on to the pitch that make the difference in games and their own individal quality and decision making throughout the match. The manager can only do so much. So looking at the players that have left the club and the quality of the replacements over the last few years, I don't think we've underachieved at any point. We've been where we should have been all along. The cost cutting has seen to this.
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McLeish had less quality to work on than Houllier, agreed. But being canny in the market was part of his remit and practically all his signings (apart from Keane on-loan) were ropey. And he may have only got 10 less points than Houllier but in terms of injuries I think the French one was far more unlucky (even accounting for Petrov and Bent's layoffs last year). Under Houllier our injury-record for his first three months or so was as bad as it has been in modern times - probably worse than this winter. He had to blood Clark, Herd, Bannan, Hogg and Delfouneso together for quite a few games (two years on, similarly inexperienced players are playing at the same time seemingly more by choice of the manager) and we were in the relegation zone at the beginning of Jan 2011. After that, when injuries cleared and we brought in Bent, Makoun and Walker, our form for the second half of the season was top-six.
It's galling that plenty of clubs with less resources like West Brom, Norwich, Fulham, Swansea seem to have relatively comfortable times in staying-up while we flounder yet again with a mixture of players on huge money and young guys on far less. I don't expect us to have been in the top 6-8 over the past two years but I think most half-decent manager would have had us comfortably safe this and last season. If last season had gone on for one more game - had Scudamore's fabled "39th game" idea come to fruition, I'm pretty sure we would have got relegated as we were in freefall, failing to win any of our last ten games.
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I think you're giving Lerner too much credit Ads, I've seen nothing to suggest he has a plan beyond cutting costs.
I see it as him keeping the wage bill down to a manageable level. The days of paying the likes of Habib Beye and Stephen Warnock silly amounts a week are thankfully gone.
Whilst I agree we should be paying the likes of Beye, because that was idiotic given how much he paid. Our wage bill has been cut beyond what is reasonable, and it's got to be very low now in comparison to most Premier League clubs. Eventually you need to speculate to accumulate and we need a better quality of player.
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I think the five wages of dunne, given , bent , nzogbia, and ireland would probably cover the wages of maybe 8 or even 10 players at some other premier clubs.
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I think the five wages of dunne, given , bent , nzogbia, and ireland would probably cover the wages of maybe 8 or even 10 players at some other premier clubs.
Based on the rumours we hear, I'd estimate that the players named above are on a combined total of over £300,000 per week. Add the recently departed Hutton and Warnock to that list and it would be more like £400,000. The fact that only one of those players is currently a starter in the side makes it even worse.
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re the McLeish sacking.
I suspect one reason was they'd looked at the enormous fall off in numbers of ST holders renewing after his appointment, and also looked at the initial figures for what would have been his second season, and suspected they'd made a mistake.
No evidence for that (other than the actual season ticket numbers dropping so sharply - I recall MON's last season we had 28k or so, yet under McLeish, I remember them saying late on that they'd sold about 20k).
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The renewals last May compared with 2011 had fallen by a huge margin. We had sold something like 1500.
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Jesus 26 pages about something that's never gonna happen.....you can tell its been 10 days since a game
The voice of reason strikes again! ;)
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Okay, we sack Lambert and we approach Easter Island Head. What tells his backers he is going to run out on West Ham mid season when they are a decent sized club who are six points better off? He won't. If the Fat Dudleyonite came at any time it would be at the end of the season. And I don't think there is any chance of him doing so if we're in the Championship which just so happens to be where many of the same people who are talking him up believe we will be.
To be honest, I'd assumed that this is when the rumour is referring to.
As sendo has pointed out, Allardyce is out of contract at the end of the season and at the moment this looks very much like a tactic by his agent to see a new contract put in front of him.
However, we get relegated, Lambert is moved on, Allardyce is out of a job, Faulkner sees a manager to whom he doesn't need to pay compensation with recent experience of getting a recently relegated side promoted.
I don't think it's particularly far-fetched.
The idea of Allardyce as a replacement doesn't hold huge appeal to me, but it would only really make sense in the context of someone who can come in now and get the results we need to get over the line.
If we get to the summer and stay up, Lambert will most likely stay (unless he himself decides to bail). If we're down, because of his past record there's an argument to suggest PL would be as good as many candidates to get us back up (then there's the argument that we'd be rewarding failure with longevity and security of contract).
As to Fat Sam's current contract situation, because it is close to expiry and because both the West Ham board and support base seem -at best- ambivalent towards him, there might not be a huge issue regarding compensation. He's probably exceeded expectations, in all honesty. They've been comfortably mid table all season, and exiting on a high -before the fans truly turn on him- would make a degree of sense.
Would he come to Villa? West Ham are obviously doing better than us at present, but he might see us as the better long term bet. One thing he would share with BFR (apart from the BFS abbreviation sounding similar) is a degree of arrogance, a surefire belief in himself. He has that in spades. For a job as big (and often thankless) as the Villa one is, it's not a bad quality to have.
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Why would Allardyce be more likely to keep us in the division than Lambert? The players we have were not bought with his style of anti-football, where everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator, in mind.
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Because the kind of changes he'd oversee don't take as long to impliment?
How many months/years does it require to pick a few more 6ft+ players and make matches more attritional?
It would be ugly, initially (like the man himself). And might not look a whole lot better in 12 months time. But then I think of losses to Southampton (twice), Wigwam, Tottingham, Chelsea, Bradford and so on and ask myself could it really be any worse.
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Because the kind of changes he'd oversee don't take as long to impliment?
How many months/years does it require to pick a few more 6ft+ players and make matches more attritional?
It takes until the transfer window opens again at least, not much use for this season.
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Why would Allardyce be more likely to keep us in the division than Lambert? The players we have were not bought with his style of anti-football, where everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator, in mind.
Well Lambert hasn't got them playing well in any discernible style, so I'm not sure what you base that on. At least Allardyce would organise the defence, something that Lambert has failed to do all season long.
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By my reckoning, we already have 6 totem poles we could shoehorn into the side now, consistent with the way he likes to play.
--------------Guzan---------------
Lowton----Vlaar--Baker----Lichaj
-----------Sylla---Clark------------
Ireland-----Bowery---------N'Zog
------------Benteke----------------
Swap Delph for Bowery if we want to be more adventurous.
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By my reckoning, we already have 6 totem poles we could shoehorn into the side now, consistent with the way he likes to play.
--------------Guzan---------------
Lowton----Vlaar--Baker----Lichaj
-----------Sylla---Clark------------
Ireland-----Bowery---------N'Zog
------------Benteke----------------
Swap Delph for Bowery if we want to be more adventurous.
Don't give up the day job.
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Why would Allardyce be more likely to keep us in the division than Lambert? The players we have were not bought with his style of anti-football, where everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator, in mind.
Well Lambert hasn't got them playing well in any discernible style, so I'm not sure what you base that on. At least Allardyce would organise the defence, something that Lambert has failed to do all season long.
Just because you're unable to discern it, doesn't mean it isn't there. ;¬)
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By my reckoning, we already have 6 totem poles we could shoehorn into the side now, consistent with the way he likes to play.
--------------Guzan---------------
Lowton----Vlaar--Baker----Lichaj
-----------Sylla---Clark------------
Ireland-----Bowery---------N'Zog
------------Benteke----------------
Swap Delph for Bowery if we want to be more adventurous.
Don't give up the day job.
Don't ever give up being a patronising, snide cxnt. (winky bloke)
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By my reckoning, we already have 6 totem poles we could shoehorn into the side now, consistent with the way he likes to play.
--------------Guzan---------------
Lowton----Vlaar--Baker----Lichaj
-----------Sylla---Clark------------
Ireland-----Bowery---------N'Zog
------------Benteke----------------
Swap Delph for Bowery if we want to be more adventurous.
Don't give up the day job.
Don't ever give up being a patronising, snide cxnt. (winky bloke)
It looks to me like you're trying to squeeze too many square pegs into round holes, just to avoid conceding a point. A right back at left back, a centre half and a bloke with little experience as our defensive midfield, an inexperienced striker from the lower leagues in the hole and a half arsed, mentalist on the right of midfield.
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Lichaj has played on the left before, Clark played in CM last season and Bowery played in midfield only last week.
Ireland is an oddball -and always was- but with more cover behind him, he might be more effective. Then again...
I'm not advocating this, BTW.
But it's clear to me that (a) We are in trouble. So much so, that an appointment such as Sam Allthepies isn't a completely ludicrous concept (b) Owing to the way he plays and sets sides up, he wouldn't need months, years or even until the next transfer window to implement his limited ideas.
It's not as if he'd be inheriting Barcelona (at least, not yet) a set of technically excellent players only really suited to playing it on the deck.
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Why would Allardyce be more likely to keep us in the division than Lambert? The players we have were not bought with his style of anti-football, where everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator, in mind.
Well Lambert hasn't got them playing well in any discernible style, so I'm not sure what you base that on. At least Allardyce would organise the defence, something that Lambert has failed to do all season long.
Just because you're unable to discern it, doesn't mean it isn't there. ;¬)
Perhaps you could let the players know what the style is then, as they seem as unable to see it as me!
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We'll have to agree to disagree, Kevin. As a parting shot I'd like to say that the thought of turning up at Villa Park and having that fat bastard introduced as our new manager is the stuff of nightmares, I honestly think I'd prefer relegation!
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Big SAM - is this some sort of joke!!!
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Noooooooooooooooooo!!....
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Big SAM - is this some sort of joke!!!
Read through the thread and you'll gain a new appreciation of Big Sam's qualities.
Only joking!
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Why would Allardyce be more likely to keep us in the division than Lambert? The players we have were not bought with his style of anti-football, where everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator, in mind.
Well Lambert hasn't got them playing well in any discernible style, so I'm not sure what you base that on. At least Allardyce would organise the defence, something that Lambert has failed to do all season long.
Just because you're unable to discern it, doesn't mean it isn't there. ;¬)
Perhaps you could let the players know what the style is then, as they seem as unable to see it as me!
I think he has found that width is not the devil in the past few games and that pace outwide is a danger to anyside and we've looked a lot better for it.
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We'll have to agree to disagree, Kevin. As a parting shot I'd like to say that the thought of turning up at Villa Park and having that fat bastard introduced as our new manager is the stuff of nightmares, I honestly think I'd prefer relegation!
A few wins would soon put you right.
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How about the Villa win six or seven more games this season, we don’t get relegated and we don’t get Alladyce.
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I'm pretty sure Allardyce will hold out for the Arsenal job.
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I'm pretty sure Allardyce will hold out for the Arsenal job.
No chance, big eck is nailed on for that! :)
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How about the Villa win six or seven more games this season, we don’t get relegated and we don’t get Alladyce.
Deal.
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How about the Villa win six or seven more games this season, we don’t get relegated and we don’t get Alladyce.
I don't think anybody would disagree with that, I just think the first requirement is a bit unlikely. Six or seven more points maybe.
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So, Allardyce has requested contract talks as he's worried about the silence from the board.
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How about the Villa win six or seven more games this season, we don’t get relegated and we don’t get Alladyce.
I don't think anybody would disagree with that, I just think the first requirement is a bit unlikely. Six or seven more points maybe.
At half time against Newcastle I would have agreed, but I think something has changed.
There was a genuine resilliance and a real competative streak against West Ham, plus some very good play against Newcastle second half and Everton.
We have enough quality up front and Charlie has come to the party at last. Despite how bad it has been since mid-December, where the wheels fell off like nothing we've seen in a generation, we are still out of the bottom three.
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So, Allardyce has requested contract talks as he's worried about the silence from the board.
Gold already made clear there will be contract talks at this moment in time and big sam must either like it or lump it - i think gold and sullivan have already made their minds up.
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So, Allardyce has requested contract talks as he's worried about the silence from the board.
Gold just used him to get out of the Championship, then probably felt like he had to give him another year, or he thought Sam would keep them up. I don't think Allardyce will take them (or us) on to another, higher level next season. He will not be managing a team in Claret and Blue next season.
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How has this got to 30 pages? Anyone would think there was the tiniest morsel of truth in it.
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How has this got to 30 pages? Anyone would think there was the tiniest morsel of truth in it.
I had a peek earlier at the thread on the spammers board from the OP. It now bears a striking resemblance to this one!
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How about the Villa win six or seven more games this season, we don’t get relegated and we don’t get Alladyce.
I don't think anybody would disagree with that, I just think the first requirement is a bit unlikely. Six or seven more points maybe.
At half time against Newcastle I would have agreed, but I think something has changed.
There was a genuine resilliance and a real competative streak against West Ham, plus some very good play against Newcastle second half and Everton.
We have enough quality up front and Charlie has come to the party at last. Despite how bad it has been since mid-December, where the wheels fell off like nothing we've seen in a generation, we are still out of the bottom three.
Saying we'll only get 6 or 7 more points is blatantly ridiculous. After 26 games we have 24 points, so we'd roughly need to be twice as bad for the rest of the season for that to happen.
The maths is actually quite simple - match or better the results of the clubs below us. And with QPR and Wigan we even have a bit of margin for error in that.
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I can't believe I have just read the words 'silence' and 'West Ham board' in the same sentence.
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Saying we'll only get 6 or 7 more points is blatantly ridiculous.
Indeed, as is saying we'll get 6 or 7 more wins, which is the point I was making.
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Saying we'll only get 6 or 7 more points is blatantly ridiculous.
Indeed, as is saying we'll get 6 or 7 more winds, which is the point I was making.
Get a job lot of baked beans from Aldi and we might manage it ;)
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Saying we'll only get 6 or 7 more points is blatantly ridiculous.
Indeed, as is saying we'll get 6 or 7 more winds, which is the point I was making.
I'd imagine the actual return will be somewhere between those two daft extremes.
I do think we'll pick up points where we'd not expect to do so, though.
Tomorrow is one possibility. I suspect we'll get a point. Either that or we're going to get a Chelsea-esque trouncing, I think it is going to be either really good or really bad, no in between.
Ah, fuck it, I don't know what I think any more.
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Ah, fuck it, I don't know what I think any more.
Sums up the season perfectly.
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I'm not daft.
You'll see!