Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: ROBBO on February 09, 2014, 12:47:58 AM
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We all have our own opinions about Randy Lerner but it got me thinking who makes a great example of a good owner. I'm not really counting the owners who throw money away like confetti aka Man City i mean an owner who has consistantly supported his club both financially and with good management.
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Everton have a good owner. Sensibly run, competitive for the guts of a decade, can keep hold of their better players when big clubs come sniffing and can finance big deals for the right players.
Take note Randy.
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What's the criteria for a good owner? If you take the emotion out of it, and just judge an owner by what he does or has done financially for the club including backing the manager in the market, or improvements to the facilities and work in the community then Randy has to be one of the best. But if you think this thread is going to go one page before Randy gets called a prick, or equivalent then that's not going to happen. A lot of other fans would love to have our owner looking at purely the facts of his backing and support of the club since 2006.
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For the football, City's owners are of course. But some things are, unbelievably, more important than football, and I never want Villa associated with people as vile as that horrible family of dictators, slavedrivers and murderers.
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The Swansea owner was seen in the stand today, on MOTD. Obviously a local bloke. That is what we want. An owner who shows leadership and does the best that he can. If he can't match the millions that some clubs have, at least he can put up a fight.
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The Swansea owner was seen in the stand today, on MOTD. Obviously a local bloke. That is what we want. An owner who shows leadership and does the best that he can. If he can't match the millions that some clubs have, at least he can put up a fight.
Don't Swansea have a shit load of owners? Including a South African?
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What's wrong with the Man City owners?
They've poured money into the club, but they've also barely put a foot wrong, done lots of work in the local deprived community etc etc.
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The Swansea owner was seen in the stand today, on MOTD. Obviously a local bloke. That is what we want. An owner who shows leadership and does the best that he can. If he can't match the millions that some clubs have, at least he can put up a fight.
Don't Swansea have a shit load of owners? Including a South African?
Maybe he was the Chairman but at least he was Welsh.
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What's wrong with the Man City owners?
They've poured money into the club, but they've also barely put a foot wrong, done lots of work in the local deprived community etc etc.
They're members of a family which, in their own country, throws not only political opponents into jail but also their political opponents' lawyers, routinely employs slave-labour on a mass-scale, is deeply connected to many nasty climate-change denying propeganda organisations in order to protect the oil by which they make the astonishing sums of wealth that remain conspicuously monopolised by the extreme wealthiest in that country and never to help their population, a population squashed under the most strictly-imposed aspects of Sharia while the Mansours live their astonishing playboy lifestyles. They're evil, dictatorial, hypocritical murderers and crooks.
Sorry. I just really hate those people.
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The Swansea owner was seen in the stand today, on MOTD. Obviously a local bloke. That is what we want. An owner who shows leadership and does the best that he can. If he can't match the millions that some clubs have, at least he can put up a fight.
Don't Swansea have a shit load of owners? Including a South African?
Maybe he was the Chairman but at least he was Welsh.
So we need an English chairman?
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The Swansea owner was seen in the stand today, on MOTD. Obviously a local bloke. That is what we want. An owner who shows leadership and does the best that he can. If he can't match the millions that some clubs have, at least he can put up a fight.
Don't Swansea have a shit load of owners? Including a South African?
Maybe he was the Chairman but at least he was Welsh.
really? Do you honestly think it makes a difference where the owner is from?
For what it's worth, I honestly think Lerner's interest in villa has pretty much evaporated. But if he renewed it, pumped a few more million in and actively involved himself in the running of the club to mount an assault on the top 6, then I wouldn't give a fuck if he was from balshall Heath, baltimore, or the Balkans in truth.
The main issue I see is that we're now drifting, largely due to his intransigence.
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The reason i discounted City owners and a couple of others is it is easy to build a team when money isn't an issue, i was looking at owners who do not have the luxury of spending 50 mil on any particlar problem but still by appointing good staff and being a smart operator keeps his club healthy. This doesn't solely apply to premiership clubs there must be clubs in lower divisions that just by size will never make it to the premiership but are still run very well.
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City are giving their managers the money so in that respect they are the best owner - if you discount them then kenwright .
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My money is on Kenwright he has given till the pips squeak for his club. I also rate Delia because like Kenwright she has stretched herself to the limit for her club and not just run it as a sometime hobby.
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... If you take the emotion out of it, and just judge an owner by what he does or has done financially for the club including backing the manager in the market, or improvements to the facilities and work in the community then Randy has to be one of the best....
You're right to point out the good things that Lerner has done; and I'm sure that - despite the good things that they've done - Delia and Kenwright will divide opinion at their respective clubs for lacking the 'ambition' to go the extra mile in the transfer market.
Lerner has done some good stuff at our club.What he has singularly failed to demonstrate is good judgement on the people side: an over-reliance on MON, the absence of a credible 'football man' as a close confidant, the absence of a more broadly-based executive board when he took over; these are all examples of a failing or naivety in the Chairman.
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The Lerner of 2-3 years ago I wouldn't have swapped for anyone. I put up with the mistakes etc because he seemed to care, was active and involved. Despite what we are being told now, I know that is no longer the case. It really isn't all about the money.....
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What's wrong with the Man City owners?
They've poured money into the club, but they've also barely put a foot wrong, done lots of work in the local deprived community etc etc.
... by the extreme wealthiest in that country and never to help their population, a population squashed under the most strictly-imposed aspects of Sharia while the Mansours live their astonishing playboy lifestyles. They're evil, dictatorial, hypocritical murderers and crooks.
Sorry. I just really hate those people.
I've no doubt that the Mansours are arseholes of the highest order, but your description of Abu Dhabi sounds more like Saudi Arabia. There's quite a big difference. In any case, there are lots of billionaires in this world, but very, very few of them are nice and decent people, which is probably how they became billionaires in the first place. From what I can deduce from his actions, Randy is a nice and decent man, which is probably why his fortune tends to run away from him.
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It's not like we even have to spent a huge amount to compete, yes to win the league...but Everton, Southampton and Newcastle are all comfortably ahead of us this season and none of them have spent huge money, probably on a par what we were spending between 2010-12.
I'm not asking for top 4 from a prospective new owner...not immediately anyway as seemed the plan when Randy came in, just an owner that will back a manager into signing decent flair players who can get us back in and around the top 6. Once we've finished there a few years AND the wages are under control then we can have a crack at top 4 again.
That was a problem with Lerner...we tried to do things too quickly although it was proved right with the Man. City takeover. That and the wrong manager to spend the 200m.
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What's wrong with the Man City owners?
They've poured money into the club, but they've also barely put a foot wrong, done lots of work in the local deprived community etc etc.
They're members of a family which, in their own country, throws not only political opponents into jail but also their political opponents' lawyers, routinely employs slave-labour on a mass-scale, is deeply connected to many nasty climate-change denying propeganda organisations in order to protect the oil by which they make the astonishing sums of wealth that remain conspicuously monopolised by the extreme wealthiest in that country and never to help their population, a population squashed under the most strictly-imposed aspects of Sharia while the Mansours live their astonishing playboy lifestyles. They're evil, dictatorial, hypocritical murderers and crooks.
Sorry. I just really hate those people.
yeah but apart from that monty, whats your problem with them ?
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We all have our own opinions about Randy Lerner but it got me thinking who makes a great example of a good owner. I'm not really counting the owners who throw money away like confetti aka Man City i mean an owner who has consistantly supported his club both financially and with good management.
Why exclude owners who "throw money around like confetti"?
In the modern game, an owner who is prepared to continually invest large sums of money is the best kind of owner.
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Not ours. His lack of knowledge in the field he entered coupled with decisions to not appoint any footballing experience has led him to lose a lot of money and us become a shambles. I couldn't give a shit that he's lost so much, with his Bird brain way of attempting to run things at the start he deserves it.
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What's wrong with the Man City owners?
They've poured money into the club, but they've also barely put a foot wrong, done lots of work in the local deprived community etc etc.
... by the extreme wealthiest in that country and never to help their population, a population squashed under the most strictly-imposed aspects of Sharia while the Mansours live their astonishing playboy lifestyles. They're evil, dictatorial, hypocritical murderers and crooks.
Sorry. I just really hate those people.
I've no doubt that the Mansours are arseholes of the highest order, but your description of Abu Dhabi sounds more like Saudi Arabia. There's quite a big difference. In any case, there are lots of billionaires in this world, but very, very few of them are nice and decent people, which is probably how they became billionaires in the first place. From what I can deduce from his actions, Randy is a nice and decent man, which is probably why his fortune tends to run away from him.
It's one law for the wealthy and for the foreign businessman and it's quite another for ordinary people living there, especially for Indian and Nepalese immigrant slaveworkers.
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I don't have a problem with Randy, I have a problem with the way he's running the club. The only place were goin though is down. Time for a change
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If Randy Lerner had spent billions on the team and we ended up winning and challening for trophies, but in the process been the biggest ****** by doing things such as shunning Acorns, renaming us Aston Coca Cola Villa and saying Birmingham is a shit hole, Villa fans would think he's the greatest owner ever.
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Jack Hayward was surely one of the best owners of a football club ever when he owned wolves.
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If Randy Lerner had spent billions on the team and we ended up winning and challening for trophies, but in the process been the biggest c*** by doing things such as shunning Acorns, renaming us Aston Coca Cola Villa and saying Birmingham is a shit hole, Villa fans would think he's the greatest owner ever.
No they wouldn't, because the fans would not have accepted the name of Aston Villa to change in the first place.
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If Randy Lerner had spent billions on the team and we ended up winning and challening for trophies, but in the process been the biggest c*** by doing things such as shunning Acorns, renaming us Aston Coca Cola Villa and saying Birmingham is a shit hole, Villa fans would think he's the greatest owner ever.
No they wouldn't, because the fans would not have accepted the name of Aston Villa to change in the first place.
I gurantee the vast majority wouldn't have cared if Villa had won the league.
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What's wrong with the Man City owners?
They've poured money into the club, but they've also barely put a foot wrong, done lots of work in the local deprived community etc etc.
... by the extreme wealthiest in that country and never to help their population, a population squashed under the most strictly-imposed aspects of Sharia while the Mansours live their astonishing playboy lifestyles. They're evil, dictatorial, hypocritical murderers and crooks.
Sorry. I just really hate those people.
I've no doubt that the Mansours are arseholes of the highest order, but your description of Abu Dhabi sounds more like Saudi Arabia. There's quite a big difference. In any case, there are lots of billionaires in this world, but very, very few of them are nice and decent people, which is probably how they became billionaires in the first place. From what I can deduce from his actions, Randy is a nice and decent man, which is probably why his fortune tends to run away from him.
It's one law for the wealthy and for the foreign businessman and it's quite another for ordinary people living there, especially for Indian and Nepalese immigrant slaveworkers.
You've oversimplified things. I've no doubt indentured labour is a shameful fact, but the majority of the UAE's population is made up of white collar Indians/Pakistanis who have the freedom to return to their own countries at any time. They don't because they have a better standard of living where they are. They know the rules and get along within them. Far be it from me to defend the regime, I hate a lot of what they do, but things are a little more complex than the version of events presented by the twisted UK press.
Back on topic. These days a 'good' owner needs a lot of money to compete, and a lot of that money is going to come from unpleasant places. The game is already dirty and paragons of virtue rarely feature at the top of it. The question is: are we happy to keep on doing the right thing and remain poor on the pitch, or, as a football club, should we concentrate solely on what happens when we cross that white line?
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If Randy Lerner had spent billions on the team and we ended up winning and challening for trophies, but in the process been the biggest c*** by doing things such as shunning Acorns, renaming us Aston Coca Cola Villa and saying Birmingham is a shit hole, Villa fans would think he's the greatest owner ever.
No they wouldn't, because the fans would not have accepted the name of Aston Villa to change in the first place.
I gurantee the vast majority wouldn't have cared if Villa had won the league.
As someone who knows more about the politics of the Villa and the psyche of our supporters down the ages than any of us said at the time of the Witton Lane re-naming "If we win the league they could call it the Adolf Hitler stand and nobody would care."
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As long as we don't end up like Leeds:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2549988/Brian-McDermott-started-arguments-I-sack-New-Leeds-owner-Massimo-Cellino-explains-boss-pushed.html
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Who is the best owner?
Not our Randy
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I'm tempted to say Bill Kenwright aswell but not sure he's too popular with Evertonian's on the whole.
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If Randy Lerner had spent billions on the team and we ended up winning and challening for trophies, but in the process been the biggest c*** by doing things such as shunning Acorns, renaming us Aston Coca Cola Villa and saying Birmingham is a shit hole, Villa fans would think he's the greatest owner ever.
No they wouldn't, because the fans would not have accepted the name of Aston Villa to change in the first place.
I gurantee the vast majority wouldn't have cared if Villa had won the league.
As someone who knows more about the politics of the Villa and the psyche of our supporters down the ages than any of us said at the time of the Witton Lane re-naming "If we win the league they could call it the Adolf Hitler stand and nobody would care."
They just called it the Doug Ellis stand for short
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What's wrong with the Man City owners?
They've poured money into the club, but they've also barely put a foot wrong, done lots of work in the local deprived community etc etc.
They're members of a family which, in their own country, throws not only political opponents into jail but also their political opponents' lawyers, routinely employs slave-labour on a mass-scale, is deeply connected to many nasty climate-change denying propeganda organisations in order to protect the oil by which they make the astonishing sums of wealth that remain conspicuously monopolised by the extreme wealthiest in that country and never to help their population, a population squashed under the most strictly-imposed aspects of Sharia while the Mansours live their astonishing playboy lifestyles. They're evil, dictatorial, hypocritical murderers and crooks.
Apart from that?
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Everton have a good owner. Sensibly run, competitive for the guts of a decade, can keep hold of their better players when big clubs come sniffing and can finance big deals for the right players.
Take note Randy.
Remind me again who Arteta and Rooney play for?
As it happens I agree that they do seem well run, based on stability and long term planning, but like almost everyone else they have to sell from time to time to help finance it.
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I still think Lerner's a decent owner. He's discreet, professional in his dealings, he's ploughed money into the club, its facilities and the local community. He showed too much faith in O'Neill, but he's not the first to have made that mistake. Houllier was a left-field appointment, but there was a sound logic to it. Lambert was a popular appointment with the vast majority of fans. And I kind of respect him sticking by his man, come what may. He wants long-term stability and that means enduring bad times without flinching.
About the only thing he's really got wrong - and I grant you it's a clanger of titanic proportions - was to bring in McLeish, a decision that I still can't fathom to this day.
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What's the criteria for a good owner? If you take the emotion out of it, and just judge an owner by what he does or has done financially for the club including backing the manager in the market, or improvements to the facilities and work in the community then Randy has to be one of the best. But if you think this thread is going to go one page before Randy gets called a prick, or equivalent then that's not going to happen. A lot of other fans would love to have our owner looking at purely the facts of his backing and support of the club since 2006.
You haven't really set down much of criteria for a good owner though have you. Randy in my eyes meets many of the criteria of a good owner: Nice guy = yes, respects the history of the club = yes, has invested in the infrastructure of the club = yes, has done a lot of good for the community and charity = yes, has invested large amounts of money in the team (over the years) = yes. All good so far then.
However... most of this has been let down by his own stupidity and naivety.
Let's focus first on the element you highlight, 'backing the manager'. Randy has thrown an awful lot of money into this club over the years in regards to buying players and financing wages, unfortunately the verb i use there, 'thrown' is probably apt. His decision making from a footballing perspective has been awful. Yes he threw a lot of money into the club at the start, but it wasn't prudent investment in a sustainable model, it was literally in so many cases throwing money at a problem which he was unlikely to ever get back. That we've had to undergo the depressing cut backs over the last few years that we have, are of course, all his own fault in the first place. He overspent in an unsustainable manner and then had to try and get us back on a sustainable route.
His bad decisions then re having no footballing nous in his management team, in choosing bad managers and allowing them to give out unsustainable and bad contracts, in not choosing managers that had a consistent footballing ethos so that the next manager could pick up and build on what the previous manager had done, have led us to where we are. With the investment and money that have been put in this club since he has been here, we should be in a far better position than we are and should still be around those upper table spots with a strong squad of players. We wouldn't have to be completely rebuilding the squad and rebuilding on the miserly budget we have if he'd made the correct decisions along the road that he should have. The buck stops with him for everything that has happened since his tenure at the club.
Lastly, Randy seems to have forgotten the most important thing. As a business consultant there is one thing that crops up again and again about what makes a business successful and it's this simple rule... never forget what your core proposition is and make sure that this, among all other things, is what you get right.
As a football club, our core proposition is this... football! The thing that we play week in week out on that 115 by 72 yard patch of grass. This is primarily what the company and football club Aston Villa is all about, and he has failed us dismally in this regard year in year out. Football supporters want to see football, and good football at that, and especially at home. All the other stuff is the trimmings, yep it's great to have a good training complex, a great ground with historic features restored and good drinks and pies, a renovated pub, charity restaurant and gardens, charitable partnerships, good merchandising and so on, but without good football that satisfies it's core supporters, it will all fade away into nothing.
Randy then seems to have forgotten our core proposition, football, and for any owner/leader of a company that can be a fatal mistake. I can only think that he's sees us as a business, not a football club that has to be ran as a business. How else could he watch the dire turgid rubbish that has been served up for the majority of the last few years. He's an owner that looks at financial statistics and fails to see that we're not delivering in our core proposition.
As for who is the best owner, well to my mind it has to be the Jo Lewis/Levy combination. Whatever you think of Tottenham, i think they've perhaps been the shrewdest club in the premier league in their buying and selling. Yes far from perfect, as i expect any owner is, but how we can only dream that we'd been ran like them in the last few years.
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Everton have a good owner. Sensibly run, competitive for the guts of a decade, can keep hold of their better players when big clubs come sniffing and can finance big deals for the right players.
Take note Randy.
Remind me again who Arteta and Rooney play for?
As it happens I agree that they do seem well run, based on stability and long term planning, but like almost everyone else they have to sell from time to time to help finance it.
Don't disagree but I do love hindsight. Everton have been pleading poverty for years now. Kenwright was for many years actively trying to sell the club. Everton have sat in the bottom 3 or close to it in December a few years back. The fact that in almost as long as us they have won fuck all. It's all good well after all of these years looking at them and thinking that's the way to run a club, but nobody ever sees what happened in detail during that time. Everton fans have been livid during those player sales, during those lean years, playing 4-6-0 formations or early cup exits. The problem is we analyze our club with a fine tooth comb and then only look at the highlights elsewhere. Things aren't great for us right at this minute theres no denying that. But Everton didn't get to where they are today without a number of difficult years even as they advocated stability with one manager.
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Everton's last trophy was in fact longer ago than ours.
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If Randy Lerner had spent billions on the team and we ended up winning and challening for trophies, but in the process been the biggest c*** by doing things such as shunning Acorns, renaming us Aston Coca Cola Villa and saying Birmingham is a shit hole, Villa fans would think he's the greatest owner ever.
No they wouldn't, because the fans would not have accepted the name of Aston Villa to change in the first place.
I gurantee the vast majority wouldn't have cared if Villa had won the league.
As someone who knows more about the politics of the Villa and the psyche of our supporters down the ages than any of us said at the time of the Witton Lane re-naming "If we win the league they could call it the Adolf Hitler stand and nobody would care."
They just called it the Doug Ellis stand for short
Why name it after the bloke who lost the war when you can name it after the bloke who single handedly won it.
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The flippant answer to the original question has to be Carsen Yeung.
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Everton have a good owner. Sensibly run, competitive for the guts of a decade, can keep hold of their better players when big clubs come sniffing and can finance big deals for the right players.
Take note Randy.
Remind me again who Arteta and Rooney play for?
As it happens I agree that they do seem well run, based on stability and long term planning, but like almost everyone else they have to sell from time to time to help finance it.
And Fellaini and I have no doubt Barkley will go in the summer. Everton have become the flavour of the day now as they have been lucky with some loan signings but no doubt will finish 7th.
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What's wrong with the Man City owners?
They've poured money into the club, but they've also barely put a foot wrong, done lots of work in the local deprived community etc etc.
They're members of a family which, in their own country, throws not only political opponents into jail but also their political opponents' lawyers, routinely employs slave-labour on a mass-scale, is deeply connected to many nasty climate-change denying propeganda organisations in order to protect the oil by which they make the astonishing sums of wealth that remain conspicuously monopolised by the extreme wealthiest in that country and never to help their population, a population squashed under the most strictly-imposed aspects of Sharia while the Mansours live their astonishing playboy lifestyles. They're evil, dictatorial, hypocritical murderers and crooks.
Sorry. I just really hate those people.
Well said Monty. Dreadful horrible people. Last year something like 700 young men died working on construction sites around the Gulf due to diabolical health and safety issues. Their poor families on the Indian sub-continent had to pay to have their bodies returned home.
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I still think Lerner's a decent owner. He's discreet, professional in his dealings, he's ploughed money into the club, its facilities and the local community. He showed too much faith in O'Neill, but he's not the first to have made that mistake. Houllier was a left-field appointment, but there was a sound logic to it. Lambert was a popular appointment with the vast majority of fans. And I kind of respect him sticking by his man, come what may. He wants long-term stability and that means enduring bad times without flinching.
About the only thing he's really got wrong - and I grant you it's a clanger of titanic proportions - was to bring in McLeish, a decision that I still can't fathom to this day.
Agree with that, but I would also say that not appointing someone who understands how football works in this country to a senior position at the club was another huge mistake. Faulkner seems to be gettings some things right off the field, but judging by his comments in he media over the years, doesn't have much of an understanding about on-the-field issues.
The fact that the kind of comments we are seeing in this thread mirror exactly the kind of comments made by Cleveland Browns fans a few years ago can't be coincidence.
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In some ways Gibson at Middlesbrough seems pretty decent, although he has also made some poor choices in terms of manager and let them waste huge amounts of money. Definitely seems to have the club's best interests at heart.
Don't think they'd have had so many Premier League seasons without his investment, their fan support wasn't very good.
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Everton have a good owner. Sensibly run, competitive for the guts of a decade, can keep hold of their better players when big clubs come sniffing and can finance big deals for the right players.
Take note Randy.
Remind me again who Arteta and Rooney play for?
As it happens I agree that they do seem well run, based on stability and long term planning, but like almost everyone else they have to sell from time to time to help finance it.
And Fellaini and I have no doubt Barkley will go in the summer. Everton have become the flavour of the day now as they have been lucky with some loan signings but no doubt will finish 7th.
Plus Lescott, plus Rodwell. In fact, they've made a huge amount from selling their best players over the last decade
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Stan Flashman
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There's always a club/owner you can unfavourably compare your own to. I remember Peter Ridsdale driving into the North Stand car park and being applauded by our supporters.
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Everton have a good owner. Sensibly run, competitive for the guts of a decade, can keep hold of their better players when big clubs come sniffing and can finance big deals for the right players.
Take note Randy.
Remind me again who Arteta and Rooney play for?
As it happens I agree that they do seem well run, based on stability and long term planning, but like almost everyone else they have to sell from time to time to help finance it.
And Fellaini and I have no doubt Barkley will go in the summer. Everton have become the flavour of the day now as they have been lucky with some loan signings but no doubt will finish 7th.
I also think they will finish 7th but considering the money spent and income of the clubs above them thats about where they should be expected to finish - they have been around the top 6 for the best part of a decade and spent less than we have in doing so - they have not been lucky with loan signings they were good shrewd deals .
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I think the point with Everton is that while they have to sell their best players from time to time they seem to be able to do it without becoming significantly weaker.
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Everton have a good owner. Sensibly run, competitive for the guts of a decade, can keep hold of their better players when big clubs come sniffing and can finance big deals for the right players.
Take note Randy.
Remind me again who Arteta and Rooney play for?
As it happens I agree that they do seem well run, based on stability and long term planning, but like almost everyone else they have to sell from time to time to help finance it.
And Fellaini and I have no doubt Barkley will go in the summer. Everton have become the flavour of the day now as they have been lucky with some loan signings but no doubt will finish 7th.
I also think they will finish 7th but considering the money spent and income of the clubs above them thats about where they should be expected to finish - they have been around the top 6 for the best part of a decade and spent less than we have in doing so - they have not been lucky with loan signings they were good shrewd deals .
Definitely. Extremely well run club. There's no luck about it. I also expect Barry to be signed permanently. They're not struggling for cash at all, but they've always chose to spend wisely, and not suddenly spunk all their money willy nilly when it's at hand. They have Fellaini cash in the bank to spend. Furthermore, losing key players has never crippled the club. They've always moved on fairly seemlessly to be fair to them. If they lose Barkley, I'm sure they'll come up with a replacement of good value, while milking Barkley for all he's worth. He'll 20 mill in the coffers at least.
We've been a disaster since Randy took over. He's run things very naively and we've had to have too big a polar shift from spending more than we should, to struggling to balance the books. Losing Milner, Young and Downing in 2 summers, absolutely killed us.
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Carson.
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Seem to have a decent youth policy with a lot of young players developing into quality players , Rooney, rodwell, Barkley, being the stand out ones .
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The Bhatti Brothers
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Ray Ransom's syndicate
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Terry Ramsden
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Michael Knighton
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Michael Knighton
What a complete bell end he was. Fucking juggling the ball in front of the crowd at Old Trafford. Massive twat alert. To think he could have bought them for something like 20m as well. Amazing what has happened to the game.
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Michael Knighton
What a complete bell end he was. Fucking juggling the ball in front of the crowd at Old Trafford. Massive twat alert. To think he could have bought them for something like 20m as well. Amazing what has happened to the game.
A very misunderstood man. When he wanted to buy them he said that with him as owner they would have a £100m turnover within twenty years and was generally laughed at. In 1988 it had been £7.5m. When he couldn't find the money Martin Edwards basically stole his business plan and they hit the £100m figure in nine years.
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What's wrong with the Man City owners?
They've poured money into the club, but they've also barely put a foot wrong, done lots of work in the local deprived community etc etc.
They're members of a family which, in their own country, throws not only political opponents into jail but also their political opponents' lawyers, routinely employs slave-labour on a mass-scale, is deeply connected to many nasty climate-change denying propeganda organisations in order to protect the oil by which they make the astonishing sums of wealth that remain conspicuously monopolised by the extreme wealthiest in that country and never to help their population, a population squashed under the most strictly-imposed aspects of Sharia while the Mansours live their astonishing playboy lifestyles. They're evil, dictatorial, hypocritical murderers and crooks.
Sorry. I just really hate those people.
Well said Monty. Dreadful horrible people. Last year something like 700 young men died working on construction sites around the Gulf due to diabolical health and safety issues. Their poor families on the Indian sub-continent had to pay to have their bodies returned home.
And the support for Islamic militant groups now causing great misery in Syria.
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What's wrong with the Man City owners?
They've poured money into the club, but they've also barely put a foot wrong, done lots of work in the local deprived community etc etc.
They're members of a family which, in their own country, throws not only political opponents into jail but also their political opponents' lawyers, routinely employs slave-labour on a mass-scale, is deeply connected to many nasty climate-change denying propeganda organisations in order to protect the oil by which they make the astonishing sums of wealth that remain conspicuously monopolised by the extreme wealthiest in that country and never to help their population, a population squashed under the most strictly-imposed aspects of Sharia while the Mansours live their astonishing playboy lifestyles. They're evil, dictatorial, hypocritical murderers and crooks.
Sorry. I just really hate those people.
Well said Monty. Dreadful horrible people. Last year something like 700 young men died working on construction sites around the Gulf due to diabolical health and safety issues. Their poor families on the Indian sub-continent had to pay to have their bodies returned home.
And the support for Islamic militant groups now causing great misery in Syria.
Well they're part of the giant proxy Shia-Sunni war going out there, in which we're implicitly on the side of the Sunnis due to our friendliness with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states and the strain in relations with Iran (who are perhaps more famously sponsoring the Assad arseholes in Syria). It's a big fight between bad guys.
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Everton, Swansea and Arsenal spring to mind for well run clubs.
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They're members of a family which, in their own country, throws not only political opponents into jail but also their political opponents' lawyers, routinely employs slave-labour on a mass-scale, is deeply connected to many nasty climate-change denying propeganda organisations in order to protect the oil by which they make the astonishing sums of wealth that remain conspicuously monopolised by the extreme wealthiest in that country and never to help their population, a population squashed under the most strictly-imposed aspects of Sharia while the Mansours live their astonishing playboy lifestyles. They're evil, dictatorial, hypocritical murderers and crooks.
Until I got to "Sharia" I thought you were on about the United States.
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They're members of a family which, in their own country, throws not only political opponents into jail but also their political opponents' lawyers, routinely employs slave-labour on a mass-scale, is deeply connected to many nasty climate-change denying propeganda organisations in order to protect the oil by which they make the astonishing sums of wealth that remain conspicuously monopolised by the extreme wealthiest in that country and never to help their population, a population squashed under the most strictly-imposed aspects of Sharia while the Mansours live their astonishing playboy lifestyles. They're evil, dictatorial, hypocritical murderers and crooks.
Until I got to "Sharia" I thought you were on about the United States.
America's no prize but come on, we don't get anywhere by erasing nuance. The US is deeply guilty of a hell of a lot, but it's not yet as bad as the lives of a subcontinental slave in the UAE. It's a bit of a knife-edge, there are quite prominent people who really do want to make it like that, but let's not be unnuanced here.
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America's no prize but come on, we don't get anywhere by erasing nuance. The US is deeply guilty of a hell of a lot, but it's not yet as bad as the lives of a subcontinental slave in the UAE. It's a bit of a knife-edge, there are quite prominent people who really do want to make it like that, but let's not be unnuanced here.
I'm simply making the (admittedly rather obvious) point that most, if not all, of that which you condemn the UAE for is currently or has recently been equally applicable to the USA. And that's without getting into other hobbies such as the exporting of war across the globe and destabilizing democracies they don't like.
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Well one thing which pertains very strongly to this debate over the Man City owners is something extremely un-American - nationalisation, namely of oil. The extreme personal wealth of the Mansours is down to their personal monopoly of the major product of the country they run.
As for the other things, well, you do have to distinguish between the government and what the government of the country allows, and what it allows for an immensely complex number of reasons. The United States has an inadequate minimum wage, but that is not the same as the central government repeatedly using brutal slave labour. The United States government is far too tolerant of and cosy with extremely corrupt multi-billionaires who can do whatever they want, but that's not quite the same as those being exactly the same people. Furthermore, the United States has a more than dubious attitude towards its own dissidents, but does not throw people and their lawyers in jail simply for being members of opposition parties, because opposition parties are not banned in the US - in fact, their commitment to freedom of speech is near-fanatical (freedom of speech being distinct from whistleblowing here). They are predominant polluters, and a country which could be said to have founded the climate-sceptic blight on world politics, but it's also the country of California, Oregon, Washington State, states greener than almost any country in Europe. And as for sponsoring and conducting bad wars, of course, they're extremely overfond of the old gun-barrel solutions, but some of their influence has been for the better in the world, overall, and not every American statesman is Henry Kissinger, while the crimes of the UAE and others in stoking the local sectarian wars of Islam are overt government policy aimed at absolutely nothing but the protection of the wealth of one family.
Like I say, the US is not the world's most wonderful country, but by and large I find that the side which says 'it's all the same' on any issue tends to be the side in the wrong.
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Like I say, the US is not the world's most wonderful country, but by and large I find that the side which says 'it's all the same' on any issue tends to be the side in the wrong.
I'm not saying it's all the same: I'm saying the USA is a much greater blight on the world than the UAE, however despicably the latter treat their migrant workers. It's quite breathtaking to hear an American offer, apparently without a trace of irony, such criticism of the UAE.
There are so many holes in what you've written there that's it's scarcely believable. To pick just one: you surely can't be unaware that the US tortures and detains people indefinitely without trial?
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Like I say, the US is not the world's most wonderful country, but by and large I find that the side which says 'it's all the same' on any issue tends to be the side in the wrong.
I'm not saying it's all the same: I'm saying the USA is a much greater blight on the world than the UAE, however despicably the latter treat their migrant workers. It's quite breathtaking to hear an American offer, apparently without a trace of irony, such criticism of the UAE.
There are so many holes in what you've written there that's it's scarcely believable. To pick just one: you surely can't be unaware that the US tortures and detains people indefinitely without trial?
Yes, but not merely for being an opposition. If you don't wish to see the difference then you don't wish to see the difference, that's fine.
And yes, the US is worse for the world than the UAE in the bad things it does, but it's also better in the good things it does, because it's unbelievably huge and does everything. The UAE is one tiny unambiguously malign place, whereas the US is an enormous superpower which is necessarily going to have large impacts on either side of the moral fence.
Also - not American, other than technically. I have an American passport on my mother's side, but I've lived in Britain my whole life and my mother has since she was eight and doesn't even sound American (and, by the way, all my American family are much more critical of the US than I tend to be, so that attempt to discredit me by nationality wasn't just false, it was false in its premise that Americans are necessarily biased in favour of their country).
Finally, I know you don't care about the migrant workers, but you can't ignore the effects of a country on the people who live in that country. Not all influence is external, and the United States does actually treat its citizens better than the UAE.
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Probably off topic now. I hated Doug Ellis. He was a complete egomaniac knobsack. But there is no way he'd have put up with the crap we are currently being served by the present Manager. I would also like to think that he'd never, ever have appointed Alex wotsitbluenose.
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Probably off topic now. I hated Doug Ellis.
Well that's a shame. I heard Doug said you are "like a son" to him.
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Yes, but not merely for being an opposition.
And that makes it acceptable???
I'm not trying to discredit you by your nationality, simply pointing out my reaction to what you wrote. Your bias or otherwise towards your country is entirely your affair but you must accept that criticising another country for stuff that your own country ("technically") also gets up to, when it's not indulging in even worse practices, rings incredibly hollow.
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Probably off topic now. I hated Doug Ellis.
Well that's a shame. I heard Doug said you are "like a son" to him.
We are All Doug's Sons.
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Like I say, if you don't see the nuance then you don't see it, that's fine with me. Of course I'm not saying that torture is ever acceptable, I'm merely saying that the reasons for their torturing are different, and less threatening to the world than a regime which tortures for simple opposition. It's a horrible world, but you surely can't be incapable of comprehending that not torturing people for merely formal other political parties is better than doing so, whatever else they get up to.
Also, your continuing to refer to it as my country confirms your familiar 'going for the man not the ball' method is clearly in deployment here. Why must I be bound by policies of a government which I don't agree with? Your generalising of the actions of a government to all of its people, and saying that those people are therefore unable to criticise those of any other country, is insane, and doesn't bode well for any British people (my real country). It could well be asked, following that reasoning, what a Brit is doing criticising the United States for considering the crimes of this country has committed near-constantly for centuries.
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Having read through the thread I do not think you can ever be happy. You inevitably finish up with the mega rich who simply buy you silverware, a well meaning fan who cannot financially compete, a crook, a nutter, or an idiot.
It's time to do away with private ownership of all major football clubs and nationalise the lot of them. I'm convinced `socialist football` is our only hope and salvation of winning trophies again ( or at least receiving an equitable and fair share of each trophy each season).
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Like I say, if you don't see the nuance then you don't see it, that's fine with me. Of course I'm not saying that torture is ever acceptable, I'm merely saying that the reasons for their torturing are different, and less threatening to the world than a regime which tortures for simple opposition. It's a horrible world, but you surely can't be incapable of comprehending that not torturing people for merely formal other political parties is better than doing so, whatever else they get up to.
Also, your continuing to refer to it as my country confirms your familiar 'going for the man not the ball' method is clearly in deployment here. Why must I be bound by policies of a government which I don't agree with? Your generalising of the actions of a government to all of its people, and saying that those people are therefore unable to criticise those of any other country, is insane, and doesn't bode well for any British people (my real country). It could well be asked, following that reasoning, what a Brit is doing criticising the United States for considering the crimes of this country has committed near-constantly for centuries.
If you don't see the fundamental double standard behind your original post then there's little point in continuing this, because that is the reason for my original reply. But while we're on the subject of double standards, you're seemingly quite happy to accuse me of "generalising the actions of a government to all of its people" while yourself describing an entire country as "one tiny unambiguously malign place".
You obviously don't know me as well as you like to think because you'd never find me defending the practices of UK governments past or present and you'd definitely never catch me trying to soft-pedal torture and detention without trial as being "less threatening to the world" - whatever the fuck that means. It's phrases like that which give you away, despite all your protestation.
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Your failing to see my argument, which I'm more than willing to ascribe to my failings in putting it across. Where I said 'place' in that quote I really should have said 'state' or 'government', so fair enough, I amend that.
I do not claim to know you by anything other than your posts on here, many of which I have seen attacking injustices perpetrated by the UK government and the US government, which is obviously fine. I was not saying that you couldn't attack them as much as you want, merely that your line of argument against me - that my US citizenship (which, while we're on the subject of claiming to know someone better than you do, is a complicated family matter for me you know nothing about but continued to insist on referring to the US as "your [my] country") somehow automatically undermines anything I have to say relating to that country - would lead to a line of argument whereby you couldn't attack the US because the government of your own country has done bad things. That wasn't my argument, that was yours. As for 'soft-pedaling torture and detention without trial', I was saying that I think it's probably worse if the reason for doing so is joining a political party rather than training suicide bombers. Of course the penalty (if that's the right word) for the crimes of torture and suspension without trial would be equal whatever the motive, but the mindset behind it is different. Just trying not to leave out any arguments.
You're argument is totally valid without your needing to resort to those puerile ad hominem attacks you always do. I tried to debate your points without ever casting aspersions on your psychological reasons for making them. I assume you make your arguments in good faith - please try to do the same without bringing in personal matters of mine you know nothing about.
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Can we please leave it there. You've been at it at great length for most of the day.
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http://www.theguardian.com/sport/david-conn-inside-sport-blog/2010/jan/27/aston-villa-randy-lerner
An old article that is worth a read.
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With better advice from someone more in touch with the game here, a certain mister R Lerner wouldnt have been a bad shout.
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it is hard to admit... but Ellis was a better owner than Lerner....we should have won the league twicw when he was chairman..two league cups..f a cup final...finished in the top 6 two years running which hadnt been acheived since before ww2.we played some great football.the club was run well....yes i was one of the anti ellis brigade.but he would never have let the club get in this position.....i appreciate we were poor in the 1986 87 season.. but he bought graham taylor in who did a fantastic job first time around.Ellis had his faults he interfered but he just loved the club....i woder how hes feeling
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it is hard to admit... but Ellis was a better owner than Lerner....we should have won the league twicw when he was chairman..two league cups..f a cup final...finished in the top 6 two years running which hadnt been acheived since before ww2.we played some great football.the club was run well....yes i was one of the anti ellis brigade.but he would never have let the club get in this position.....i appreciate we were poor in the 1986 87 season.. but he bought graham taylor in who did a fantastic job first time around.Ellis had his faults he interfered but he just loved the club....i woder how hes feeling
Ellis was a decade behind the curve - a 70's chariman in the 80's, an 80's chariman in the 90's etc...
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Ellis held the purse strings but he surrounded himself with people cleverer than himself and people who knew the game, take away Ansell & Stride and we'd be in big trouble, just like we are today.
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yes i agree and lerner should have let stride stay
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yes i agree and lerner should have let stride stay
I do believe that it has been oft said on here that Stride wanted to leave.
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it is hard to admit... but Ellis was a better owner than Lerner....we should have won the league twicw when he was chairman..two league cups..f a cup final...finished in the top 6 two years running which hadnt been acheived since before ww2.we played some great football.the club was run well....yes i was one of the anti ellis brigade.but he would never have let the club get in this position.....i appreciate we were poor in the 1986 87 season.. but he bought graham taylor in who did a fantastic job first time around.Ellis had his faults he interfered but he just loved the club....i woder how hes feeling
I agree he would never let the club come close to relegation, so yes, let's just quickly gloss over 86/87 because of how much Ellis loved the club.
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Yeah, I must have imagined 1988-89 under Doug Ellis listening in trepidation to Liverpool v West Ham at Anfield on the radio knowing that if West Ham won we were down, because Doug would never have let the club get into this position.
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Doug Ellis may have loved/still love the Villa. He also, presumably, loved Small Heath and Wolves. If he'd had the chance he would have loved Derby. But he never loved any of them as much as he loved Doug Ellis.
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Doug Ellis may have loved/still love the Villa. He also, presumably, loved Small Heath and Wolves. If he'd had the chance he would have loved Derby. But he never loved any of them as much as he loved Doug Ellis.
VG
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Ellis knocked the Trinity down. Lerner had a holiday romance with us, changed the badge and then fucked off back to his bat cave to leave us lot in the dark.
I woudn't piss on either of them if they were on fire.
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As a combination i preferred doug and Steve stride to randy and faulkner - and yes I know there were many faults during the Ellis era as well as many highs too .
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Ellis knocked the Trinity down. Lerner had a holiday romance with us, changed the badge and then fucked off back to his bat cave to leave us lot in the dark.
I woudn't piss on either of them if they were on fire.
I'd consider it if I had drunk a litre of petrol half an hour before.
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My only near relegation experiences of Doug were 1994-95, 2002-03 and his last season in 2005-06.
On each of those occasions he took action. On two of those occasions we followed our relegation scrap by competing strongly in the top six. On the final occasion he finally sold the club. From all that I have read, what he did in the 1980s is unforgivable. That said,t he complaint in the 1990s/2000s tended to be that he was holding villa back, that we should be pushing on from top eight/mid-table to challenge the very top.
I think any objective observer would have to concede that the past four years have been as bad as anything since the club was promoted in 1988.
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To be fair Lerner did take action in 2012. He fired Mcleish and we went in this "young and hungry" direction. And at the end of last season there did appear to be promise that this strategy may bear fruit.
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We punched below are weight for many of the Ellis years and whenever we were on the brink of something (1990, 93
, 94, 96, 2000 etc.. we slipped back - not all of which was his fault.
That said the bearest minimum we should expect nowadays is to not in anyway to be involved in relegation scraps - let alone 4. On the trot.
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My only near relegation experiences of Doug were 1994-95, 2002-03 and his last season in 2005-06.
On each of those occasions he took action. On two of those occasions we followed our relegation scrap by competing strongly in the top six. On the final occasion he finally sold the club. From all that I have read, what he did in the 1980s is unforgivable. That said,t he complaint in the 1990s/2000s tended to be that he was holding villa back, that we should be pushing on from top eight/mid-table to challenge the very top.
I think any objective observer would have to concede that the past four years have been as bad as anything since the club was promoted in 1988.
The world has changed since then. I don't know if it's in this thread or another where I said that no club throughout the nineties had as many opportunities as we did, and most of them were handed to us on a plate.
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To be fair Lerner did take action in 2012. He fired Mcleish and we went in this "young and hungry" direction. And at the end of last season there did appear to be promise that this strategy may bear fruit.
It's an unforgiving league. In 1995 we signed really good players that were established. I know the finances are different these days but the basic principle remains. There are a certain amount of good players and if you want to compete you have to try sign any quality available to you.
We have taken a lot of punts and added these to a side built from similar.
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To be fair Lerner did take action in 2012. He fired Mcleish and we went in this "young and hungry" direction. And at the end of last season there did appear to be promise that this strategy may bear fruit.
It's an unforgiving league. In 1995 we signed really good players that were established. I know the finances are different these days but the basic principle remains. There are a certain amount of good players and if you want to compete you have to try sign any quality available to you.
We have taken a lot of punts and added these to a side built from similar.
Let's not rewrite history here. They were very good players but Southgate and Draper had just been relegated and Savo had never played outside his own country.
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To be fair Lerner did take action in 2012. He fired Mcleish and we went in this "young and hungry" direction. And at the end of last season there did appear to be promise that this strategy may bear fruit.
Nobody in their right mind would criticise him for firing McLeish.
Nobody in their right mind would defer from criticising him for hiring McLeish him in the first place though.
Many wanted a young and hungry after what had become clear of 3 dinosaurs.
Many wanted Lambert - me included.
I still hope to be proved wrong. I'm increasingly concerned I may not be.
Sunday could be pivotal.
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Doug made mistakes with managers but admitted them and took action - we have drifted for 4 years and it should not continue any longer.
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To be fair Lerner did take action in 2012. He fired Mcleish and we went in this "young and hungry" direction. And at the end of last season there did appear to be promise that this strategy may bear fruit.
It's an unforgiving league. In 1995 we signed really good players that were established. I know the finances are different these days but the basic principle remains. There are a certain amount of good players and if you want to compete you have to try sign any quality available to you.
We have taken a lot of punts and added these to a side built from similar.
Let's not rewrite history here. They were very good players but Southgate and Draper had just been relegated and Savo had never played outside his own country.
Tommy Johnson was virtually untried, Alan Wright unknown and Gary Charles a bit of a journeyman. Brian Little was a better judge of a player than he was given credit for.
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To be fair Lerner did take action in 2012. He fired Mcleish and we went in this "young and hungry" direction. And at the end of last season there did appear to be promise that this strategy may bear fruit.
Nobody in their right mind would criticise him for firing McLeish.
Nobody in their right mind would defer from criticising him for hiring McLeish him in the first place though.
Many wanted a young and hungry after what had become clear of 3 dinosaurs.
Many wanted Lambert - me included.
I still hope to be proved wrong. I'm increasingly concerned I may not be.
Sunday could be pivotal.
I agree many wanted lambert , me included but I accept I was wrong , he has been a huge disappointment.
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To be fair Lerner did take action in 2012. He fired Mcleish and we went in this "young and hungry" direction. And at the end of last season there did appear to be promise that this strategy may bear fruit.
It's an unforgiving league. In 1995 we signed really good players that were established. I know the finances are different these days but the basic principle remains. There are a certain amount of good players and if you want to compete you have to try sign any quality available to you.
We have taken a lot of punts and added these to a side built from similar.
Let's not rewrite history here. They were very good players but Southgate and Draper had just been relegated and Savo had never played outside his own country.
To be fair he also signed Alan Wright in 1995 and Gary Charles, Tommy Johnson and Ian Taylor shortly after he arrived at end of 04 / start of 95.
All had Premiership experience and were comparatively young.
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To be fair Lerner did take action in 2012. He fired Mcleish and we went in this "young and hungry" direction. And at the end of last season there did appear to be promise that this strategy may bear fruit.
Nobody in their right mind would criticise him for firing McLeish.
Nobody in their right mind would defer from criticising him for hiring McLeish him in the first place though.
Many wanted a young and hungry after what had become clear of 3 dinosaurs.
Many wanted Lambert - me included.
I still hope to be proved wrong. I'm increasingly concerned I may not be.
Sunday could be pivotal.
I agree many wanted lambert , me included but I accept I was wrong , he has been a huge disappointment.
And I too was totally wrong. I thought Lambert was going to be a manager of immense quality. Practically everything he has done has proved me wrong. Lerner must be horrified!
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Ellis held the purse strings but he surrounded himself with people cleverer than himself and people who knew the game, take away Ansell & Stride and we'd be in big trouble, just like we are today.
In what parallel universe was Mark Ansell a 'football man'?