Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: dave.woodhall on January 20, 2019, 02:06:46 PM
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Discuss:
http://thebirminghampress.com/2019/01/of-lions-and-tigers/
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Excellently insightful.
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The last bit scares me. The thought of going up through the playoffs and having to buy at very inflated prices a whole side essentially. I’m almost at the point of using the rest of this window, this season committing to a plan, buying players so we actually dominate the league next season (teams likely coming up and down aren’t that scary) and go up in 19/20 in a much better state.
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Good article Dave, you're right TV the last bit is worrying. Promotion or no promotion, off the top of my head there's around 12 players we need to off load. Huge amount of work to do in the summer.
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Next season we will look very, very different whichever league we are in. And given the quality of the PL, it almost makes sense to do a lot of that rebuilding in the Championship. But we simply have to build with mostly our own players buying players who will be part of Dean Smith’s long term vision. We have seen what that can look like and it’s wonderful.
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Next season we will look very, very different whichever league we are in. And given the quality of the PL, it almost makes sense to do a lot of that rebuilding in the Championship. But we simply have to build with mostly our own players buying players who will be part of Dean Smith’s long term vision. We have seen what that can look like and it’s wonderful.
I totally agree with you. I also agree that i would be happy to wait for season 19/20 by which time Deano's team should be in place and hopefully we can batter the league that season.
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The last bit scares me. The thought of going up through the playoffs and having to buy at very inflated prices a whole side essentially. I’m almost at the point of using the rest of this window, this season committing to a plan, buying players so we actually dominate the league next season (teams likely coming up and down aren’t that scary) and go up in 19/20 in a much better state.
I thought Fulham looked an excellent team last season. Then they spent 100million and have been rubbish since then. Maybe its just the gulf in class in the Prem.
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Respectfully it is what is between the ears of whoever controls the purse strings if/when we are promoted.
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I think that Dave’s point that buying promotion and then trying to buy an instant team in the PL is fraught with danger.
At some point we have to start building a sustainable culture, style and team.
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It should have started with Eric Black.
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The last bit scares me. The thought of going up through the playoffs and having to buy at very inflated prices a whole side essentially. I’m almost at the point of using the rest of this window, this season committing to a plan, buying players so we actually dominate the league next season (teams likely coming up and down aren’t that scary) and go up in 19/20 in a much better state.
I thought Fulham looked an excellent team last season. Then they spent 100million and have been rubbish since then. Maybe its just the gulf in class in the Prem.
In a way Fulham came from nowhere to have this miraculous run to get promoted. Did it happen all too fast and thus could it be maintained? Did they have the squad depth or was it more a case of being very fortunate with injuries that helped them maintain form? To the best of my memory none of their truly key players got hurt.
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I believe that no player should be taken on loan unless there is an agreement to buy. Our leading goal scorer belongs to another club and will not be with us next season, our key defender before getting injured belongs to another club and on form they will keep him. How can you build a solid foundation when some of the bricks are to be removed when the building is complete.
One or two in an emergency can be justified but as a club we have sacrificed long term planning and team unity for a get rich quick Ponzi scheme that always ends in disaster.
If my recollection is accurate Smith has already stated he is not fond of loaning players for me that is a positive but as a supporter I have to recognise that any fundamental change takes time and results will be inconsistent, if we still believe that we are too good for this division we are doomed.
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In the summer, when the shit hit the fan and there was no sign of the knight in shining armour in the form of a new billionaire or two riding in to rescue us, I secretly hoped that for once we might think long term with our planning. I was perversely looking forward to the new season with the majority of the side being made up of our under 23s plus Jack Grealish and one or two old heads. My theory was that the youngsters may get battered week after week. We may even have got relegated, but those youngsters will have got battle hardened and come back stronger and like a phoenix from the ashes we might have seen a new, stronger, leaner Aston Villa. Unfortunately what we have now is some flabby ageing old wreck of team. I'm sick of us borrowing rejects from other teams or blooding other teams academy players. If our academy can't produce it's own players then it's not fit for purpose, but how will we ever know if they don't get any game time. A new way of thinking is salvation from the last decade of mismanagement and boom and bust. Maybe it needs to get worse before it can get better.
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In the summer, when the shit hit the fan and there was no sign of the knight in shining armour in the form of a new billionaire or two riding in to rescue us, I secretly hoped that for once we might think long term with our planning. I was perversely looking forward to the new season with the majority of the side being made up of our under 23s plus Jack Grealish and one or two old heads.
Jack Grealish would not have been here without the new billionaire or two that you mention. He would now be wearing a shirt with a cockerel on the front.
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That may be true, but my point remains valid. There is no point in having an under 23 squad if it doesn't deliver, or if we are going to continue to loan in players from other teams reserves.
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Great read Dave how we could do with another Sid Cowans in midfield Dave.
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That may be true, but my point remains valid. There is no point in having an under 23 squad if it doesn't deliver, or if we are going to continue to loan in players from other teams reserves.
Christian Purslow agrees with you. At the AVST meeting last Wednesday he said that the U23 team should be the reserves and not have anyone without 1st team potential;our own youngsters with promise and players on the way back from injury. No more aging players with no resale value.
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It should have started with Eric Black.
I've never thought that he did it deliberately, but he could have done much more in the time when we were absolutely and totally doomed. You look at that lot in Smethwick last year and although they were effectively relegated with a month to go they battled and got a sense of purpose for the forthcoming season, whereas we kicked off in the Championship with much the same air of defeatism that we arrived with.
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It should have started with Eric Black.
I've never thought that he did it deliberately, but he could have done much more in the time when we were absolutely and totally doomed. You look at that lot in Smethwick last year and although they were effectively relegated with a month to go they battled and got a sense of purpose for the forthcoming season, whereas we kicked off in the Championship with much the same air of defeatism that we arrived with.
I got really annoyed with Black at the time because it was clear that we were done so it should've been the start of the rebuild instead of some sort of cathartic exercise of being able to boo at shit like Lescott for the last 7-8 games of the season. I don't know if it'd have made much of a difference but whimpering out the rest of the fixtures to get to the summer is, in my opinion, the true low point, that's the only time where I really disliked the club.
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It seems a reasonable theory that if we were to go up this season, as unlikely as that appears as things stand, we'd get battered in the Premier League unless we revamped not just the team but half the first team squad, and therefore we might be better staying down for another season to regroup under new owners and a new management team. I can see some logic in that.
Leaving aside the sour grapesy 'okay we failed to get promoted but we didn't want promotion anyway' aspect to it, as each season goes by in the Championship we fall further behind those we're trying to catch. Another season of attempted strengthening for us is another season of the same for everyone else. We may get stronger ourselves but there's no guarantee that that puts us ahead of the rest. You have to consider that if we do stay down, some of our better players will leave which will, at least initially, make us weaker than we were to start with.
On balance I'd much much rather have promotion this season. I don't see that another season in the Championship will necessarily make us better prepared for survival in the Premier League should we reach it. And in any case why assume that we'd get promoted next season? As we've seen, one season down here can become two and then three.
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Good post Robbo - I posted in a similar vein on the Dean Smith thread
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I believe that no player should be taken on loan unless there is an agreement to buy. Our leading goal scorer belongs to another club and will not be with us next season, our key defender before getting injured belongs to another club and on form they will keep him. How can you build a solid foundation when some of the bricks are to be removed when the building is complete.
One or two in an emergency can be justified but as a club we have sacrificed long term planning and team unity for a get rich quick Ponzi scheme that always ends in disaster.
If my recollection is accurate Smith has already stated he is not fond of loaning players for me that is a positive but as a supporter I have to recognise that any fundamental change takes time and results will be inconsistent, if we still believe that we are too good for this division we are doomed.
The agreement to buy loan idea is good in theory, but if we had that as a hard and fast rule and Chelsea didn't agree regarding Abraham and we had then backed out altogether we would have been cutting off our nose to spite our face. And that would then happen with other players too.
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Good article -though it was my view that it was Hull hanging on at the end, not us.