Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: Nii Lamptey on June 27, 2020, 03:24:41 PM
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Apart from the obvious..... Smith and co out of their depth, I'd put the blame mainly on recruitment - Suso's door.
We had to sign players to fill out the squad, but this season has if anything else proved, less is more.
Loan signings aside, this is a list of our purchases from the Summer and January windows:
Wesley - £22.5m
Mings – £20.07m
Douglas Luiz - £15.12m
Matt Targett - £13.95m
Ezri Konsa – £11.97m
Marvellous Nakamba – £10.8
Mbwana Samatta - £9.45m
Trezeguet - £9m
Anwar El Ghazi - £8.1m
Tom Heaton - £7.92m
Bjorn Engels - £7.2m
Jota - £4.05m
Kortney Hause - £3.06m
A grand total of £143.19m - ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY THREE MILLION, ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY THOUSAND POUNDS!!
Is quantity necessarily better than quality? For example, I'd much rather have seen Callum O'Hare getting game time over Trezeguet or El Ghazi. And what did Steer do wrong last season to get pushed out again this season - You could argue that his heroics helped to get us promoted and had earned that #1 jersey?
Doing a little digging, here are just 5 players I think would have had a positive impact on our performances this season.
Neal Maupay - £19.8m - Nasty little shit who cost less than Wesley
Aaron Mooy - £5.4m - Tidy player who likes a tackle... would have brought much needed steel into our midfield
Jarrod Bowen - £19.7m - Quality player, dad has links to Villa. Ended up signing for the porno dwarves.
Gary Cahill - FREE - Previous ties with club. Rumours that he didn't want to leave London, but surely the Villa link and close ties with Terry could have persuaded him?
and the final one -
Kalvin Phillips - £Whatever they want! - Can't believe nobody went in for him. A steal at whatever price.
Just the 4 players mentioned above would have cost just shy of 100 million pounds LESS than our current crop of misfits. And each one would have improved the team.
....and don't even get me started on the loan signings!!
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It went wrong in December 2019 when it was clear to everybody that the manager was out of his depth but the powers that be stuck their fingers in their ear instead of firing him.
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Yep. Agreed.... pretty much a perfect storm of wrongness!
Wrong manager, wrong director of football, wrong players.
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Yep. Agreed.... pretty much a perfect storm of wrongness!
Wrong manager, wrong director of football, wrong players.
Sickening to think that sorry lot cost that amount of money though. For Smith to not be able to get a song out of a squad that cost that much money (they've got to have something about them to command those transfer fees) is inexcuseable surely?!
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Some of those prices are exaggerated. £128m was the combined sum most accurately reported last summer. We didn't really over-pay, we just chose some wrong ones.
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2015 we sell Benteke and don't replace him. We cobble together a divided squad, with quality, but poorly utilised and organised and suffer a real abject relegation. The most rotten this club has perhaps ever been.
We are taken over by a snake oil salesman, with poor shoes. We chuck a lot of money at the problem and add a lot of wages onto the books relative to income. By October it all goes wrong and we are fire fighting for the rest of the season, with more mismanaged spending in January.
The following summer we go for short-termist policy and gamble and lose. The squad needs replacing while the club falls to the edge of oblivion, only to be rescued at the last minute. More bumbled recruitment takes place, with some solid gems in McGinn, Tammy, decent players for that level in AEG and another howler in Bolasie. Critically we leave ourselves beyond short in defence. Another window of desperate recruitment.
Smith comes in steadies us, improves us, falters and then does something pretty spectacular. We're left with promotion and a squad of around 14 players, because of the continued and persistent mismanaged recruitment strategy.
So we have to purchase 10+ players out of necessity and not design. The consequence is that we are left with a squad who are not good enough. The strikers we have recruited are not good enough for right now. Wesley maybe, Samatta perhaps, Davis never, but that is just one area and sadly the most crucial area where our recruitment failed.
Aston Villa do not have a cohesive and consistent transfer policy. That is where it all goes wrong, time and time again.
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No pace, no creativity.
No defender ever dreads playing against Wesley/Samatta/Davis/El Ghazi/Trezeguet.
Stop Grealish, stop Villa. That was the case in August when it was apparent we weren't going to be able to get Abraham back, we didn't address it. We clung onto a position where we could still stay up in January if we addressed that problem, again we failed to do so.
If teams have the lead against us, they have no fear that we will come back because we have so few frightening players.
When we have the lead, teams can camp in our half as we have no speed. When was the last time we scored on the counter attack? That's absolutely essential for nicking points at the bottom of the table. For all the stick our defence get, I think their goals against record isn't bad considering how little help at relieving pressure they get from our "attackers".
I don't expect us to be competing with Liberpool and Man City in the first season up. There is no reason whatsoever why nonsense teams like Watford and Southampton can have far better attackers than us.
Refusal to bring in attacking players of sufficient calibre has relegated us.
Our priorities for spending the Grealish money should be pace, pace and fucking pace.
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From the moment Lerner turned the taps off too far and too fast, the decision making at this club has been atrocious. Owner after owner, CEO after CEO, manager after manager, transfer after transfer, it never seems to get any better. One of the worst, in terms of how it will affect the club for the future, was not sacking Dean in December.
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The new guys bought in were over-priced. Most were either not 1st choice for their previous clubs or from mediocre teams. Not enough quality PL players bought in. Piss poor recruitment and a manager who is not up to the job as top flight manager. He should have gone in Dec and we should have sorted it out in Jan window. Suso and Smith have to go.
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Day after promotion.
Smith and Purslow on their soapboxes at VP crowing after promotion. Yes we were all delighted to go up but that's never been what this club is all about, getting giddy from being promoted from the second division.
Had Purslow saying we were too big and clever for loans anymore and DS saying we'd attack every team in the division home and away. Naive words then, naive words now.
I simply hope the club has learnt from this. Next time we get promoted to the premier league can we please try and attempt and sign a couple of experienced international standard players? The opposition we played today did that and they seem to be pretty good nowadays.
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You can go back to MON's walk out on the eve of the season. I also think that was when Lerner started to think he didn't want or need the grief of owning a club. Then we had a dodgy owner (the most positive thing in recent years is how relatively quickly we were shot of him and taken over by what I still consider to be very good owners). As for where it went wrong this season the answer is it never went right from day one. We had to assemble a whole new squad and percentage wise we bought more misses than hits. Apart from the fact we clearly needed to bring in another proven striker our recruitment look solid and promising. Thirty two Premier League games later our summer recruitment (and indeed our January recruitment) is not looking very clever.
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Yep. Agreed.... pretty much a perfect storm of wrongness!
Wrong manager, wrong director of football, wrong players.
Let's not leave Purslow out of this. General feeling was that this bloke knows football but he has either made or allowed some very poor decisions. He is more culpable than others IMO.
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2011. MON walking out 5 minutes before the season started.
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2011. MON walking out 5 minutes before the season started.
I used to think that but he was a busted flush , even if he stayed we would of struggled.His jobs after us have shown he was limited and as football developed he has been left behind.
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1901, introduction of the maximum wage.
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It has to start with the dissembling of the promotion winning team, chucking out all experience, losing the main goal threat.
Since then it has been a string of poor decisions in respect of squad management player recruitment, selection and game management.
The responsibility starts with the CEO, is Exacerbated by DOF and continued by the Manager and coaching staff.
We have had opportunity to address these issues during the campaign and again these guys have all failed.
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Getting hammered by Leicester early Dec gave us the jitters and we never truly recovered.
I was still optimistic we could do when we were sitting on seven wins at the end of Jan. But a lack of nous alongside Mings at centre half and minimal goal threat have done for us.
Our outlay in the summer was largely an advance on the TV deal. If the owners were determined to avoid relegation we needed more: a Premier League ready centre half alongside Tyrone, a competent defensive midfielder to allow Grealish and McGinn to do their thing and goals up top. Not the half baked experimentation they ultimately went with. Cahill or Shane Duffy from Brighton were available, and after Leicester struggled last season, I wonde if Rodgers had received a £30 million plus offer for Vardy in the summer whether he would have cashed in. They're not short of money, but it would have been more in the pot to reshape a young side the way he wants it. Vardy isn't one for the future but him (or a player of that ilk) could have been ideal for us for a year or two as we attempted to reestablish ourselves. Oh well.
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Being forced to play without a striker for, what was it, 3 or 4 games was an indication to me that off the pitch things weren't professional enough.
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We have picked shit managers, bought badly, over-promised and under-delivered. I said over six months ago and I say the same today that this club is ripe for a good quality manager to come in now and take us on a journey. We seem to have sorted the academy out and now need a manager to come in and build from the bottom up with a clear philosophy that is not built on intransigent thinking.
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The warning bells were loud and ringing from very early on even in games we got points in. Bottle job away at a dreadful Arsenal team, drawing at home to ten man West Ham, even a very fortunate win at home to Everton. Inaction at board level cost us dear and supporting Smith in January with Drinky, Baston, Reina and Samatta said a lot.
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Recently, we've been playing with a striker who I genuinely do not recall ever scoring for us.
This at a time where we are desperate to win games.
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Crap manager
Crap Director of Football
Crap transfers
Going into a Premier League season with a squad worse than the one that finished the Championship is idiocy of the highest order.
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Recently, we've been playing with a striker who I genuinely do not recall ever scoring for us.
This at a time where we are desperate to win games.
Yes whatever people think of Davis him starting as a lone striker is illustrative of poor management (at all levels of the club).
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Can't help but think the lack of crowd has fucked us at home.
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Crap manager
Crap Director of Football
Crap transfers
Going into a Premier League season with a squad worse than the one that finished the Championship is idiocy of the highest order.
I would change this slightly.
Manager out of his depth.
Crap DOF.
Crap transfers.
A has been CEO who's looking at his own career in non-executive sector now rather than interested in making us better.
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Treading into contentious territory here, but the owners have been marvellous in pouring money into the club, you can't doubt their commitment.
But their judgement on this?
Questionable?
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2006, with hindsight. If Lerner’s first managerial appointment had been more imaginative/progressive the whole future trajectory would have been different.
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2006, with hindsight. If Lerner’s first managerial appointment had been more imaginative/progressive the whole future trajectory would have been different.
I can't agree with that. He was arguably one of the most coveted managers in the game when we appointed him. It felt similar to when we appointed BFR. He had done excellently with Leicester winning promotion and two League Cups and with Celtic where he won seven trophies in five years and who he took to a European final, making him Celtic's most successful manager since Jock Stein.
We even recovered from MON's badly timed departure and recovered from a bad start under Houllier. I think it really went wrong with the appointment of McLeish. Can you imagine Liverpool appointing a manager who had just got Everton relegated? The next big mistake after appointing McLeish wasn't appointing Lambert as he seemed a good choice at the time. The mistake was not sacking him sooner than we did when he clearly wasn't up to the job.
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2006, with hindsight. If Lerner’s first managerial appointment had been more imaginative/progressive the whole future trajectory would have been different.
I can't agree with that. He was arguably one of the most coveted managers in the game when we appointed him. It felt similar to when we appointed BFR. He had done excellently with Leicester winning promotion and two League Cups and with Celtic where he won seven trophies in five years and who he took to a European final, making him Celtic's most successful manager since Jock Stein.
Wasn't it Doug who appointed O'Neill? Or have I misremembered that?
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Can't help but think the lack of crowd has fucked us at home.
It's a fair point. Through the entirety of 2018/19 and 2019/20 up until the enforced break we failed to score in home games twice. We've equalled that in three games since the restart.
That said, they are highly paid professional athletes and shouldn't have to rely on people singing "your support is fucking shit" or "shit on the city" every now and again in order to generate a bit of effort.
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I agree that the flouncing of MON should have been a positive development but we (Lerner) went on a huge guilt trip about it all when in reality is was a wonderful chance to leave behind the Jurassic age of football management. Since then we have been cursed by lack of imagination, of daring, of vision. The curse of the safe pair of hands the steady as she goes mentality. I think the actual pivot of where it all went wrong was Randy Lerner being pressured by his family who were also his business partners over how much his flirtation with "soccer" was costing the family. He simply cut us loose. Brothel creeper shoes walked into the Villa boardroom and the club was thrown at him gift wrapped. It is a miracle we survived without going into bankruptcy.
We have never really recovered from that turmoil. The club has been kept going by throwing excessively large amounts of money at problems that could be solved by good business management as they have been by other "smaller" clubs. Smith should have gone at Christmas while he could still be a mate of us all but somebody bottled it so he will get the cabbage treatment, albeit virtually.
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2006, with hindsight. If Lerner’s first managerial appointment had been more imaginative/progressive the whole future trajectory would have been different.
I can't agree with that. He was arguably one of the most coveted managers in the game when we appointed him. It felt similar to when we appointed BFR. He had done excellently with Leicester winning promotion and two League Cups and with Celtic where he won seven trophies in five years and who he took to a European final, making him Celtic's most successful manager since Jock Stein.
Wasn't it Doug who appointed O'Neill? Or have I misremembered that?
I think Doug wanted to take the credit and he probably suggested MON. But I am convinced that without Lerner taking over and rubber stamping the deal MON would not have signed up to work with Doug.
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Extremely ambitious approach in the transfer market that, with the benefit of hindsight needed a bit more certainty. Also refusing loans.
Again, fantasy manager with hindsight but someone like Cahill on a free and Harry Wilson on loan instead of £20m+ on Engels and Trezeguet would have given us some more players suited to the league and an experienced leader at the back.
Kalvin Phillips was another key signing we missed out on too and left us with Nakamba.
If we'd have signed those 3, even with the appaling centre-forward roster we've acquired I think we'd be safe
We were bumbling about on 1 point per game with Heaton, Mings, McGinn and Grealish in the side together and all playing well and carryin the side.
McGinn dropped off and we got worse. Then he got injured and we got even worse and Mings dropped off. Then Heaton got injured.
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Can't help but think the lack of crowd has fucked us at home.
It's a fair point. Through the entirety of 2018/19 and 2019/20 up until the enforced break we failed to score in home games twice. We've equalled that in three games since the restart.
That said, they are highly paid professional athletes and shouldn't have to rely on people singing "your support is fucking shit" or "shit on the city" every now and again in order to generate a bit of effort.
On the subject of goals, when the games restarted I expected the rustiness, lack of match sharpness and lack of fitness to result in more goals being scored in games. It has actually been the opposite and most games so far have been low scoring affairs.
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Chelsea being cheating ******. If we had Tammy, then perhaps in those tight games up to Christmas we'd have squeezed out 6 or 7 more points and be set for survival
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Lack of premier league experience. 3 senior, old heads on loan or cheap would have helped massively.
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Bodymoor Heath and the whole academy structure. Paltry reward.
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I miss Snoddy.
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Paltry for us Aldridge. A river of young talent going to other clubs.
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And Alex Cropley too. Every good Villa team needs a north of the border influence.
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I miss Snoddy.
I was thinking that earlier, talking about who we'd have if we have to try and get promoted again. He was such a positive force for us last season.
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I miss Snoddy.
I was thinking that earlier, talking about who we'd have if we have to try and get promoted again. He was such a positive force for us last season.
Season before, but still agree. Its not like he's ever had pace and his attitude was first class. A player, like Tammy, who I like a lot and I think he feels the same way about the club too.
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If they give the gig to Terry I could see that one happening.
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And would be a huge signal that although loaded they make terrible footballing decisions.
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Our current predicament shouldn't come as much as a surprise - we didn't exactly pull up many trees last season - granted we had a good streak of results but we weren't outstanding by any means
A savvy management would have rewarded Smith with a nice bonus but would have been ruthless and appointed a manager of repute - Smith has been out of his depth - embarrassingly so in respect of tactics/game management. All the positivity from last May has evaporated .......current world events make football appear somewhat trivial , however I can't help but think " what if" ........we had appointed " a big name manager "
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Billionaire owners, Brentford manager. Bit underwhelming really.
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Getting hammered by Leicester early Dec gave us the jitters and we never truly recovered.
I was still optimistic we could do when we were sitting on seven wins at the end of Jan. But a lack of nous alongside Mings at centre half and minimal goal threat have done for us.
Our outlay in the summer was largely an advance on the TV deal. If the owners were determined to avoid relegation we needed more: a Premier League ready centre half alongside Tyrone, a competent defensive midfielder to allow Grealish and McGinn to do their thing and goals up top. Not the half baked experimentation they ultimately went with. Cahill or Shane Duffy from Brighton were available, and after Leicester struggled last season, I wonde if Rodgers had received a £30 million plus offer for Vardy in the summer whether he would have cashed in. They're not short of money, but it would have been more in the pot to reshape a young side the way he wants it. Vardy isn't one for the future but him (or a player of that ilk) could have been ideal for us for a year or two as we attempted to reestablish ourselves. Oh well.
Yes Leicester was the start really. Before that game we were hovering above bottom 3 but we'd been competitive in majority of games and no one was hammering us. We'd beaten Newcastle comfortably, more than held our own at Old Trafford and were outplayed at Chelsea but only lost 2-1 so plenty of hope.
Lost Sir Ron the night before. Everyone expected a performance to remember as a tribute but it was the total opposite. That was certainly the day we were found out defensively in the premier league and we've never really recovered it. Things like Mings getting injured but staying on long enough to see Vardy run away and score.
Leicester game started the decline this season. Spurs at home mentally relegated us.
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Getting hammered by Leicester early Dec gave us the jitters and we never truly recovered.
I was still optimistic we could do when we were sitting on seven wins at the end of Jan. But a lack of nous alongside Mings at centre half and minimal goal threat have done for us.
Our outlay in the summer was largely an advance on the TV deal. If the owners were determined to avoid relegation we needed more: a Premier League ready centre half alongside Tyrone, a competent defensive midfielder to allow Grealish and McGinn to do their thing and goals up top. Not the half baked experimentation they ultimately went with. Cahill or Shane Duffy from Brighton were available, and after Leicester struggled last season, I wonde if Rodgers had received a £30 million plus offer for Vardy in the summer whether he would have cashed in. They're not short of money, but it would have been more in the pot to reshape a young side the way he wants it. Vardy isn't one for the future but him (or a player of that ilk) could have been ideal for us for a year or two as we attempted to reestablish ourselves. Oh well.
Yes Leicester was the start really. Before that game we were hovering above bottom 3 but we'd been competitive in majority of games and no one was hammering us. We'd beaten Newcastle comfortably, more than held our own at Old Trafford and were outplayed at Chelsea but only lost 2-1 so plenty of hope.
Lost Sir Ron the night before. Everyone expected a performance to remember as a tribute but it was the total opposite. That was certainly the day we were found out defensively in the premier league and we've never really recovered it. Things like Mings getting injured but staying on long enough to see Vardy run away and score.
Leicester game started the decline this season. Spurs at home mentally relegated us.
The best run we had all season was after Leicester.
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Treading into contentious territory here, but the owners have been marvellous in pouring money into the club, you can't doubt their commitment.
But their judgement on this?
Questionable?
They've done o.k so far. Good they rescued the club when we really were deep in the s*** but I can't believe they were the only ones in the frame who offered credible ownership.
Anyway as we saw in first four years of Lerner ownership (and even first 12 months of Xia) any new owners can come in and spend loads of money. Team starts winning a few games after year of defeats and fans lap it up as things are fun again.
The true test is the decisions the owner takes when things start to go wrong as this season has. Lerner was clueless from the minute MON walked out and his heart wasn't in it anymore either.
Leicester last season had the tragedy of their owner dying but his son has stepped up magnificently. They could've continued treading water in premier league with Claude Puel but sacked him mid season to get in Brendan Rodgers who was in another job at the time. That's simply something I could never see us doing until we actually do it.
Wolves finished 16/17 just above us in mid table championship with Paul Lambert as manager and Weimann upfront. They've done o.k since.
Next 12 months ownership can still make decisions that make us a premier league force in 3-4 years time. Or they get things wrong that mean we'll be stuck in championship for another three seasons.
Over to them.
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Billionaire owners, Brentford manager. Bit underwhelming really.
Have to remember they wanted Henry initally who went and flopped at Monaco and is now in MLS (actually replaced Remi Garde) and was also talk of a former Mourinho assistant being high up in the list. Not sure who advised them about Dean Smith (I doubt either had heard of him) but guess once they looked at his background his style of management probably suited what they wanted.
Does feel like a major point for us now in shaping the mentality for next decade and what to expect. Do we got for a steady eddie type like a Howe, Dyche or Hughton who you could hang your hat on getting us up in two years and then being more capable than DS of then keeping us up but not really progressing much further and playing conservative football in process. Or will we really stretch out and appoint a capable and modern coach from europe.
Someone who can rip up the championship and then use contacts to sign decent players from abroad who could get us top half in premier league in reasonably quick time.
Think I know which option I'd do given the last decade.
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Getting hammered by Leicester early Dec gave us the jitters and we never truly recovered.
I was still optimistic we could do when we were sitting on seven wins at the end of Jan. But a lack of nous alongside Mings at centre half and minimal goal threat have done for us.
Our outlay in the summer was largely an advance on the TV deal. If the owners were determined to avoid relegation we needed more: a Premier League ready centre half alongside Tyrone, a competent defensive midfielder to allow Grealish and McGinn to do their thing and goals up top. Not the half baked experimentation they ultimately went with. Cahill or Shane Duffy from Brighton were available, and after Leicester struggled last season, I wonde if Rodgers had received a £30 million plus offer for Vardy in the summer whether he would have cashed in. They're not short of money, but it would have been more in the pot to reshape a young side the way he wants it. Vardy isn't one for the future but him (or a player of that ilk) could have been ideal for us for a year or two as we attempted to reestablish ourselves. Oh well.
Yes Leicester was the start really. Before that game we were hovering above bottom 3 but we'd been competitive in majority of games and no one was hammering us. We'd beaten Newcastle comfortably, more than held our own at Old Trafford and were outplayed at Chelsea but only lost 2-1 so plenty of hope.
Lost Sir Ron the night before. Everyone expected a performance to remember as a tribute but it was the total opposite. That was certainly the day we were found out defensively in the premier league and we've never really recovered it. Things like Mings getting injured but staying on long enough to see Vardy run away and score.
Leicester game started the decline this season. Spurs at home mentally relegated us.
The best run we had all season was after Leicester.
League game. After that we lost to Sheffield United, Southampton and Watford in next 4 games and were terrible in all of them particularly at the back. Southampton and Watford were also still below us in the league at the time so did us mentally aswell seeing these adrift teams going above us and more than likely finish above us now.
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Getting hammered by Leicester early Dec gave us the jitters and we never truly recovered.
I was still optimistic we could do when we were sitting on seven wins at the end of Jan. But a lack of nous alongside Mings at centre half and minimal goal threat have done for us.
Our outlay in the summer was largely an advance on the TV deal. If the owners were determined to avoid relegation we needed more: a Premier League ready centre half alongside Tyrone, a competent defensive midfielder to allow Grealish and McGinn to do their thing and goals up top. Not the half baked experimentation they ultimately went with. Cahill or Shane Duffy from Brighton were available, and after Leicester struggled last season, I wonde if Rodgers had received a £30 million plus offer for Vardy in the summer whether he would have cashed in. They're not short of money, but it would have been more in the pot to reshape a young side the way he wants it. Vardy isn't one for the future but him (or a player of that ilk) could have been ideal for us for a year or two as we attempted to reestablish ourselves. Oh well.
Yes Leicester was the start really. Before that game we were hovering above bottom 3 but we'd been competitive in majority of games and no one was hammering us. We'd beaten Newcastle comfortably, more than held our own at Old Trafford and were outplayed at Chelsea but only lost 2-1 so plenty of hope.
Lost Sir Ron the night before. Everyone expected a performance to remember as a tribute but it was the total opposite. That was certainly the day we were found out defensively in the premier league and we've never really recovered it. Things like Mings getting injured but staying on long enough to see Vardy run away and score.
Leicester game started the decline this season. Spurs at home mentally relegated us.
The best run we had all season was after Leicester.
League game. After that we lost to Sheffield United, Southampton and Watford in next 4 games and were terrible in all of them particularly at the back. Southampton and Watford were also still below us in the league at the time so did us mentally aswell seeing these adrift teams going above us and more than likely finish above us now.
That was what I mean. For all that we played badly against Leicester and afterwards, our best run of the season was in January. Losing that game wasn't the defining moment.
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O'Neill is to blame. He squandered millions, walked, and we've never recovered because we've been paying the price ever since. We spent three years in a division we should never have been in, and have picked up an Inferiority complex along the way. We're a frightened team who have just got used to losing. I was in New York at the end of November and watched us play Utd off the park at Old Trafford and easily beat Newcastle a few days later which left me thinking that maybe we've turned the corner. But that's the thing with the modern day Villa...they always disappoint. Always.
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Randy letting O’Neill do what he wanted with no proper checks and balances in place was where it all went wrong, for me. Hindsight is great eh?
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the events of ten years ago - and longer - have no relevance whatsoever in my opinion. We have spent money profligately both in the PL and out of it. Money can be a curse and is to most top division teams, very few get it right and most are technically bankrupt, which the pandemic has brought into very sharp focus.The most important signing any club can make is the management team. Leeds haven't had a pot to piss in for years but took a leaf out of Wolves' book and made an inspired managerial appointment, the same is true of Sheffield United. It's not money it's management, and that's what we simply have to get right next time.
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This season? We’ve not really recovered from the 2-1 home defeat to Liverpool. Had we hung on things probably would’ve been very different.
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Agree Mr Underhill, we walk out if Wembley with promotion, togetherness and enthusiasm, what happens next?
The pre season and season has seen a series of piss poor decisions on and off the field.
The owners must be thinking, what the fuck do we do now.
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Personally, I think the whole recruitment/coaching set up has been the downfall. It’s always seemed to me that this group of people has been forced upon each other, possibly against individuals wishes, however they shut up and got on with it because in pretty much every case it was the best opportunity they’d ever get.
Now, as it is clear that is isn’t working it’s unravelling and it won’t be long before fingers are being pointed and we may start to hear stories that we probably rather wouldn’t, which will sour what was a brilliant (albeit very short) chapter for the club.
The big question now is, what do the owners do to put things right, and quite frankly, who do they trust to make these calls? By this I mean our CEO. This next decision is a very big one.
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Our CEO was given a pretty simple objective, stay up.
So right now and until the end of the season it’s his call.
I can not see him surviving relegation.
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From the moment Lerner turned the taps off too far and too fast, the decision making at this club has been atrocious. Owner after owner, CEO after CEO, manager after manager, transfer after transfer, it never seems to get any better. One of the worst, in terms of how it will affect the club for the future, was not sacking Dean in December.
Well summed up. Just no longterm stability with player recruitment. Supposedly decent players come here on crazy wages and sit on easy street (McCormack, Lansbury). Go all out for Sean Dyche to replace DS.
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My view entirely Hilts. The first card to be pulled out of the Aston Villa house of cards was Randy Lerner cutting and running. There has been a compedium of fuck ups since then but that was the match that set us ablaze.
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Not marketing ourselves properly in the 90s when we were finishing in the top 4, winning cups and consistently in Europe. This coupled with Doug selling 5 years too late in my opinion is where it all went wrong. More specifically would be want could have happened if we had signed a better option that Collymore for £7 million when we still had Yorke.
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The 21st century has been mainly dull for us.
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the events of ten years ago - and longer - have no relevance whatsoever in my opinion. We have spent money profligately both in the PL and out of it. Money can be a curse and is to most top division teams, very few get it right and most are technically bankrupt, which the pandemic has brought into very sharp focus.The most important signing any club can make is the management team. Leeds haven't had a pot to piss in for years but took a leaf out of Wolves' book and made an inspired managerial appointment, the same is true of Sheffield United. It's not money it's management, and that's what we simply have to get right next time.
I’ve disagreed with much of what you’ve said this season in relation to Smith. However, I think your largely spot on here. The idea of blaming O’Neil for our current plight, 10 years after he left is a bit bizarre to me. Unlike society where Thatchers decisions 30odd/40 years ago still haunt us, football for me moves much quicker than this.
We were mismanaged after winning the European Cup leading to a fairly rapid decline and relegation 5 years later. However, with some bumps and low points along the way within 3 years of relegation we were challenging for the league, leading to a relative golden decade of high league finishes, league cup triumphs and other semi final/final appearances.
The point I’m making is we came back from a period of mis management quickly to have a period of success with largely good management appointments (SGT, BFR, Brian Little) And largely good signings, there was the odd poor season, but largely a successful era.
The idea then that we haven’t had time to recover from O’Neil walking out is wide of the mark, we’ve had plenty of time.
Lerner pulled the plug and also hit us with the double of whammy of not selling straight away that led to lots of poor managerial decisions, no investment etc and eventually relegation. Unlike the relegation in the 80s there was no stability at boardroom level and no inspired managerial appointment such as Taylor.
The three years in the championship were a shambles saved only by lots of things clicking into place in the most unlikely of the ways from the end of Feb onwards last year, manager, grealish, Mings, McGinn, Tammy.
With all that in hindsight, it was going to take the most astute of signings and a stable inspired management to keep us up this season. We needed at least and older head at the back and centre mid and a goal scorer.
There are a catalogue of mistakes and wrong turns all the way through the last decade, O’Neils departure is the bottom of that list.
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I do sometimes wonder how it would have panned out if Houllier hadn't been taken ill and had taken us into the next season instead of McLeish.
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Or even been moved upstairs and let Gary Mac continue.
From the list of targets we had lined up Houllier wanted to spend money though. Appointing McLeish gave Lerner the chance to offload Ashley Young and Downing in the same summer (a manager in a stronger position than McLeish wouldn't have tolerated that) and paved the way for our own austerity drive.
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Not marketing ourselves properly in the 90s when we were finishing in the top 4, winning cups and consistently in Europe. This coupled with Doug selling 5 years too late in my opinion is where it all went wrong. More specifically would be want could have happened if we had signed a better option that Collymore for £7 million when we still had Yorke.
At least we were a genuinely big club still in that decade. Decline from that started by losing FA cup final and half the squad wanting to leave.
From being top 6 regulars in the 90s and higher we've only now finished four times in the top 6 in twenty years in premier league which is a sobering thought.
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By my schoolboy maths, our investment of c£140 million has bought us 27 points, that’s almost £6 million pounds a point. Fucking hell.
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Our CEO was given a pretty simple objective, stay up.
So right now and until the end of the season it’s his call.
I can not see him surviving relegation.
Twelve months ago I thought we were fortunate to have Purslow.
After Watford away, I wondered why the man had thought sleepwalking to relegation was acceptable for Aston Villa after all his big talk in the summer.
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That cringey interview Purslow did with Smith just after the Play Off final hasn't aged especially well, particularly the bit about the comparison with Norwich.
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Purslow is gutless.
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Agreeing to go to Villa 1 Blues 0 as an 8 year old on 3rd March 1979. Just think how many years of wow I could have spared myself if I’d stayed at home and played Scalextric instead.
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That cringey interview Purslow did with Smith just after the Play Off final hasn't aged especially well, particularly the bit about the comparison with Norwich.
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Urgh, burn it with fire.
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In fairness, we are above Norwich.
Below everyone else, but as ever so humble Aston Villa we shouldn’t ask for too much.
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Personally, I think the whole recruitment/coaching set up has been the downfall. It’s always seemed to me that this group of people has been forced upon each other, possibly against individuals wishes, however they shut up and got on with it because in pretty much every case it was the best opportunity they’d ever get.
Now, as it is clear that is isn’t working it’s unravelling and it won’t be long before fingers are being pointed and we may start to hear stories that we probably rather wouldn’t, which will sour what was a brilliant (albeit very short) chapter for the club.
The big question now is, what do the owners do to put things right, and quite frankly, who do they trust to make these calls? By this I mean our CEO. This next decision is a very big one.
Yep,Des.
We can talk about MON and the subsequent 'decade of dashed dreams', but right now we are where we are because we prepared poorly for the return to the top flight. For which Purslow has to take ultimate responsibility.
I wouldn't necessarily want him to go, since he seems to know the football establishment, and that is really important. But he does need to make some bold decisions about who should be given the role to sort out all the issues about the players, coaching and tactics ... i.e. new manager, new coaching staff, new recruitment process, etc.
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And, I'd add:
When you see how much we spent on Trez and Jota (for example), why the hell did we not give RHM and COH a place in the squad and play them? They can't have been any worse! and in fact may well have been very good.
And, seeing Lansbury holding a squad place all season boils my blood.
There have been some fcukin' weird recruitment decisions!
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Personally, I think the whole recruitment/coaching set up has been the downfall. It’s always seemed to me that this group of people has been forced upon each other, possibly against individuals wishes, however they shut up and got on with it because in pretty much every case it was the best opportunity they’d ever get.
Now, as it is clear that is isn’t working it’s unravelling and it won’t be long before fingers are being pointed and we may start to hear stories that we probably rather wouldn’t, which will sour what was a brilliant (albeit very short) chapter for the club.
The big question now is, what do the owners do to put things right, and quite frankly, who do they trust to make these calls? By this I mean our CEO. This next decision is a very big one.
Yep,Des.
We can talk about MON and the subsequent 'decade of dashed dreams', but right now we are where we are because we prepared poorly for the return to the top flight. For which Purslow has to take ultimate responsibility.
I wouldn't necessarily want him to go, since he seems to know the football establishment, and that is really important. But he does need to make some bold decisions about who should be given the role to sort out all the issues about the players, coaching and tactics ... i.e. new manager, new coaching staff, new recruitment process, etc.
I'm at the point where I want Purslow /Suso and Smith gone. Purslow talks well but at the moment all his talk has been hot air , we have not competed in this league well enough and his appointments and decisions with recruitment are a big part of the problem.
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That cringey interview Purslow did with Smith just after the Play Off final hasn't aged especially well, particularly the bit about the comparison with Norwich.
I'm going against the grain here but there's still a nagging doubt with me about Purslow. Speaks a good game and clearly competent given his employment record. Still haven't put my finger on it but even little things like him interjecting "100%" when Dean said his favorite goal was Jack's away at Rotherham. Just let the manager talk about football matters.
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Not marketing ourselves properly in the 90s when we were finishing in the top 4, winning cups and consistently in Europe. This coupled with Doug selling 5 years too late in my opinion is where it all went wrong. More specifically would be want could have happened if we had signed a better option that Collymore for £7 million when we still had Yorke.
Agree with that 100% although you could be ultra cynical and say that when it comes to the "modern football" era not being founded in London.
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That cringey interview Purslow did with Smith just after the Play Off final hasn't aged especially well, particularly the bit about the comparison with Norwich.
I'm going against the grain here but there's still a nagging doubt with me about Purslow. Speaks a good game and clearly competent given his employment record. Still haven't put my finger on it but even little things like him interjecting "100%" when Dean said his favorite goal was Jack's away at Rotherham. Just let the manager talk about football matters.
BT showed quite a long clip yesterday of Smith clearly talking tactics in the tunnel with Purslow.
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That cringey interview Purslow did with Smith just after the Play Off final hasn't aged especially well, particularly the bit about the comparison with Norwich.
I'm going against the grain here but there's still a nagging doubt with me about Purslow. Speaks a good game and clearly competent given his employment record. Still haven't put my finger on it but even little things like him interjecting "100%" when Dean said his favorite goal was Jack's away at Rotherham. Just let the manager talk about football matters.
Pitarch has some nice shoes though.
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Was speaking to someone this morning who is close friends with someone who works in the administration side of things at Villa in a fairly senior role I think. She said she had spoken to her friend on Friday who had said that it had been a tough week as the players contracts had been sorted and that people were getting nervous that we might get relegated.
I did say to her (jokingly) to tell her friend that many fans were getting nervous about getting relegated in December, yet nothing was done about it.
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That cringey interview Purslow did with Smith just after the Play Off final hasn't aged especially well, particularly the bit about the comparison with Norwich.
I'm going against the grain here but there's still a nagging doubt with me about Purslow. Speaks a good game and clearly competent given his employment record. Still haven't put my finger on it but even little things like him interjecting "100%" when Dean said his favorite goal was Jack's away at Rotherham. Just let the manager talk about football matters.
BT showed quite a long clip yesterday of Smith clearly talking tactics in the tunnel with Purslow.
They mentioned in the commentary as well that Dean Smith had been having an in-depth conversation with Pursliw in the tunnel about the changes he had made.
Remarked to the person I was watching it with at the time that that sounded a bit ominous.
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That cringey interview Purslow did with Smith just after the Play Off final hasn't aged especially well, particularly the bit about the comparison with Norwich.
I'm going against the grain here but there's still a nagging doubt with me about Purslow. Speaks a good game and clearly competent given his employment record. Still haven't put my finger on it but even little things like him interjecting "100%" when Dean said his favorite goal was Jack's away at Rotherham. Just let the manager talk about football matters.
Pitarch has some nice shoes though.
Glad to hear he buys his shoes in Northampton and not our players. How are his watches?
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That cringey interview Purslow did with Smith just after the Play Off final hasn't aged especially well, particularly the bit about the comparison with Norwich.
I'm going against the grain here but there's still a nagging doubt with me about Purslow. Speaks a good game and clearly competent given his employment record. Still haven't put my finger on it but even little things like him interjecting "100%" when Dean said his favorite goal was Jack's away at Rotherham. Just let the manager talk about football matters.
Pitarch has some nice shoes though.
Glad to hear he buys his shoes in Northampton and not our players. How are his watches?
Didn't notice I'm ashamed to say.
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Dean Smith getting Villa promoted, was the equivalent of him punching way above his weight.
I've said it time and time again that Smith didn't get us promoted, Jack did. Someone else mentioned the same thing on a thread here the other day too. Prior to Jack's return from injury, we were on a dismal run, winning 2 games from 14. If a manager can't get more than 2 wins out of 14 with the squad we had in the Championship, no matter which player is out, there should be alarm bells ringing somewhere surely?
I swear if we hadn't got promotion, we'd have lost Jack in the summer, and with Smith at the helm, we'd be nowhere near the promotion spots this season. Jack basically carried him. At this level, his limitations have been found out - Nowhere near good enough! Christ, even Brentford are better since he left!?
Starting to question Purslow too. He talks a good talk, but any footballing man can see that we're only heading in one direction - Doesn't appear to have the balls to do what's best for the club. And as for the appointment of this Suso guy - Who the fuck? We could have got Maupay with change instead of Wesley for one. That alone is unforgiveable.
Can't even bring myself to watch the remaining games - ESPECIALLY against the best football club in the world™ next weekend. Enough stress to deal with in these times, without that bunch of fucktards adding a little bit on top for good measure.
Why can't we get it right... just once. That's all we ask?
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In think if you put Grealish, McGinn, Mings and Abraham in any Championship side, they'd be fancied for at least a play off spot.
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In think if you put Grealish, McGinn, Mings and Abraham in any Championship side, they'd be fancied for at least a play off spot.
Any team with just McGinn, Mings and Abraham should too, but we were a million miles away from it without Jack.
Dean Smith Tactics 101 - 'Give the ball to Jack and hopefully he'll bale me out, cos this management team doesn't have a fucking clue'.
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There is an argument with those 4, building a team to stay up should not be an impossible challenge.
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If we come up again it is unlikely that our team will have four players of the ability of Jack, John, Tyrone or Tammy. We may well come back again. When it happens depends on having fewer players in our team who are not so unspeakably inferior.
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If we come up again it is unlikely that our team will have four players of the ability of Jack, John, Tyrone or Tammy. We may well come back again. When it happens depends on having fewer players in our team who are not so unspeakably inferior.
The critical signing was replacing Tammy and they got that spectacularly wrong.
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In spades. Replaced an England striker with one who does not like heading the ball. How bad do you have to be in football before you get a boot up the arse.
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Not marketing ourselves properly in the 90s when we were finishing in the top 4, winning cups and consistently in Europe. This coupled with Doug selling 5 years too late in my opinion is where it all went wrong. More specifically would be want could have happened if we had signed a better option that Collymore for £7 million when we still had Yorke.
I agree with all of what you have said except Collymore. It was on paper a perfect signing. The team that won the League cup in 96, reached the FA cup semi final and finished 4th was not properly supported by Ellis. He was happy with that achievement instead of having the vision to invest and really dominate English football. That was a chance missed to keep us in the elite group.
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It was obviously that fucking Leicester game.
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Not marketing ourselves properly in the 90s when we were finishing in the top 4, winning cups and consistently in Europe. This coupled with Doug selling 5 years too late in my opinion is where it all went wrong. More specifically would be want could have happened if we had signed a better option that Collymore for £7 million when we still had Yorke.
I agree with all of what you have said except Collymore. It was on paper a perfect signing. The team that won the League cup in 96, reached the FA cup semi final and finished 4th was not properly supported by Ellis. He was happy with that achievement instead of having the vision to invest and really dominate English football. That was a chance missed to keep us in the elite group.
Brian Little was perfectly happy with the amount of money he had; we just bought the wrong players.
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Moscow
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I said at the beginning of MON's final season that it was clear his strengths had got us to 6th but his weaknesses would prevent us from going any higher. I thought that would have been the ideal time to replace him but that was considered to be disloyal. Fast forward to the beginning of the following season and we all saw just what disloyalty was. We've never since been in a such a strong position to attract top drawer managers.
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I said at the beginning of MON's final season that it was clear his strengths had got us to 6th but his weaknesses would prevent us from going any higher. I thought that would have been the ideal time to replace him but that was considered to be disloyal. Fast forward to the beginning of the following season and we all saw just what disloyalty was. We've never since been in a such a strong position to attract top drawer managers.
This, in answer to the original post, is where it all went wrong.
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Yep. Agreed.... pretty much a perfect storm of wrongness!
Wrong manager, wrong director of football, wrong players.
Wrong CEO and wrong owners too.
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25th December 1938.
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I said at the beginning of MON's final season that it was clear his strengths had got us to 6th but his weaknesses would prevent us from going any higher.
Completely agree. It was unfortunate for him that his transfer sights didn't extend further than the shores of the UK and Ireland. He was seemingly addicted to buying completely over-priced UK based players. Wasn't it Lerner's refusal to sanction the signing of McGeady for £10m+ that finally led to Pubehead spitting his dummy and walking?
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bloke who sits next to me at work reckons if DOL had the cash MON had it wouldn't have gone wrong...
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25th December 1938.
The day between a 0-2 defeat at home to Grimsby and a 5-1 win at Sunderland apparently.
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bloke who sits next to me at work reckons if DOL had the cash MON had it wouldn't have gone wrong...
As he demonstrated with pug-nosed panache when he was at Leeds.
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Not defending anything MON did after the Moscow/Stoke debacle, but I certainly felt like there was a sense of standards and accountability when he was manager. For all of his faults, there was somebody running the football side of things with whom the buck stopped. I'm not sure we've had that since, whether through lack of commitment, ability or respect.
We've seemed like a rudderless ship which, to me, explains why there are still such discussions about our subsequent managers: Was Houllier just a victim of ill health, despite most of that season being quite painful?; McLeish, it is commonly accepted, wasn't up to the job, but who appointed him and why?; Was Lambert an up and coming manager who was undermined and became the fall guy for Lerner's withdrawal or was he a one-job wonder who chose to fill the squad with crap?; Was Sherwood found out at the end of his season and we lacked the ruthlessness to bin him?; Did RDM have the right idea but got unlucky by not being a strong enough character to revive a club in decline?; Was Bruce a failure who wasted resources superior to the rest of the division with his negativity, or did he arrest our slide, make us a bit more difficult to beat and get us at least looking upwards?; Is Smith a lower league manager who is indulged because he's one of our own, or is he hampered by recruitment that is out of his hands?
MON was the most recent manager where most people feel confident to believe the narrative. He was a great motivator who set up teams to play very well on the counter, but was one-dimensional, wasted a lot of money and left us in the shit out of spite.
I don't intend to resurrect arguments about the MON era, or any of the managers since, but the day MON walked out was the last time I felt there was any semblance of leadership at the club, for better or worse. Who is the figurehead? Who is the person you look to and think 'despite our frustrations, he won't let things get too bad'?
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Football has changed, at one time the managr went to the owner and told him who he wanted and the owner said yes or no, but at least the players bought were who the manager wanted. These days you have people like Suso bringing in players whether the manager wants them or not, yet it's the manager who gets all the stick. This is not a shout out for Smith whom i believe is out of his depth.
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I find it hard to believe the manager has no say in recruitment.
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bloke who sits next to me at work reckons if DOL had the cash MON had it wouldn't have gone wrong...
Tell the bloke at work to move his chair a full 2 metres away as you don't want to listen to his ridiculous comments. He's probably a nose who wanted us to finish up the 3rd division like Leeds did.
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bloke who sits next to me at work reckons if DOL had the cash MON had it wouldn't have gone wrong...
Tell the bloke at work to move his chair a full 2 metres away as you don't want to listen to his ridiculous comments. He's probably a nose who wanted us to finish up the 3rd division like Leeds did.
I spoke to a couple of people in the game and they both, independent of one another, said that Mr Sugarbag was very lazy and wasn't a good manager. Hence the open letter from the players.
MON also had his faults as a manager, particularly around training cultures but at least he got the club earning the respect of other fans.
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And ultimately very little respect from our fans. I would put him in the top three of the most loathed ex Villa managers. And he has plenty of competition.
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And ultimately very little respect from our fans. I would put him in the top three of the most loathed ex Villa managers. And he has plenty of competition.
I agree Brian, and it's mostly to do with how he left us, which was done with as much spite and intention to cause damage as possible. If he'd left at the end of the season, he'd have been remembered as as pretty successful manager, but whose limitations had ultimately stopped us taking that extra step. As it is, he's an abslute Grade A thundercunt.
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Yes Martin, my views exactly. His departure was not even angry or cold. It was premeditated vengefulness designed and executed to cause the club as much damage as possible. There have been other Villa hating managers to leave us, DOL, Southgate, Tactics Tim, Eric Black and KMac to name but five but their bile stopped short (just about in some instances) of actually trying to damage the club. MON not only did act proactively against us but then enjoyed having the supine rich kid owner shit his pants and throw money at him after doing it.
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We've simply had really poor leadership from the top down running the football club for decades. In the Premier League era we've had no vision, overarching plan or joined up thinking from owners down to CEOs and first team managers ever, as far as I can tell. The vision, ambition and targets ultimately must come from the owners - could any club survive the misfortune of being hit by the treble whammy of Ellis, Lerner and Xia in rapid succession? I really think not.
The bottom line for me is that we need ambitious, driven winners, who consistently put the success of the football club first, in our boardroom.
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And ultimately very little respect from our fans. I would put him in the top three of the most loathed ex Villa managers. And he has plenty of competition.
Thought you were on about O'Leary! Who wouldn't shut up about Leeds for 12 months after coming here although the good end to 03/04 made people forget that.
He never really got us or seemed to want to hence the banners. For all MON's fault he did at least seem to relish managing us for first 3 years at least. After Moscow the connection between him and a few fans started to erode.
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The biggest, most frustrating, irony of the lot is that when we did have relatively big money to spend we gave it to the most myopic managers imaginable.
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The biggest, most frustrating, irony of the lot is that when we did have relatively big money to spend we gave it to the most myopic managers imaginable.
This situation feels similar in a way. New owners who are stupidly wealthy, and we gambled (and look likely to lose) our hard won Premier League status on a bog standard Championship manager and a completely incompatible Director of Football, who between them have arsed things up completely.
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Yes. You would think very wealthy people would be reasonably astute.
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they are, but for some inexplicable reason, most successful billionaire businessmen transform into Gerald Ratner the moment they buy as football club
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In spades. Replaced an England striker with one who does not like heading the ball. How bad do you have to be in football before you get a boot up the arse.
It’s why I don’t like loaning players. In effect we gave our leading international class goal scorer for about 30 years a free transfer
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We all wanted Bowen but I think FFP was against us. We needed a striker more.
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In spades. Replaced an England striker with one who does not like heading the ball. How bad do you have to be in football before you get a boot up the arse.
It’s why I don’t like loaning players. In effect we gave our leading international class goal scorer for about 30 years a free transfer
We probably wouldn't have came up without him. I'd say we got a bloody good deal there.
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We overpay very average footballers!
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Too many different and interconnected reasons for the decline over the last 10 years to list them all outside of a book.
This season? Main reason is player turnover. You're not gonna have any sort of squad cohesion when you've got 16 players arriving, and the same amount leaving. Add in a big COVID shaped break and we were always behind everyone else. Obviously not much we could do about that given the circumstances leading up to the mass arrivals/departures but no sensible club has that sort of squad instability if they can help it.
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That twat Rudiger randomly deciding to kick the ball out for a corner yesterday.
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In spades. Replaced an England striker with one who does not like heading the ball. How bad do you have to be in football before you get a boot up the arse.
It’s why I don’t like loaning players. In effect we gave our leading international class goal scorer for about 30 years a free transfer
Also happened with Darren Bent who wasn't a loan.
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In spades. Replaced an England striker with one who does not like heading the ball. How bad do you have to be in football before you get a boot up the arse.
It’s why I don’t like loaning players. In effect we gave our leading international class goal scorer for about 30 years a free transfer
We probably wouldn't have came up without him. I'd say we got a bloody good deal there.
I don’t think there’s any probably about it. What it did do was create a false position which came home to roost with Tammy’s ineffectual replacement.
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What false position?
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in terms of this season I would say Bournemouth away. After we beat Watford it should have been comfortable. massively distracted by the league cup run
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The biggest, most frustrating, irony of the lot is that when we did have relatively big money to spend we gave it to the most myopic managers imaginable.
Or management teams who have completely got it wrong. Last summer and this January being a prime example, along with our first season after relegation.
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From the moment John McGinn wasn’t given the penalty at Spurs day 1 we lost any promotion momentum and confidence. The stupid Heaton penalty against Bournemouth followed by a deflected second. We had many early season opportunities just to get a few extra points but through either VAR/refereeing blunder when in position to do so we couldn’t take them. We been chasing ever since to keep up with the point a game needed for survival.
The Southampton and Bournemouth away performances though showed that we almost didn’t care, for those alone we deserve to go down, any sense of fight in those games would have given us at least 4 extra points.
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For this season it's a combination of an inexperienced (at PL level) manager who has looked out of his depth, a "talent" recruiter who mistakes unpolished turds for rough diamonds, and a Chief Exec/Owners who sanctioned over payments for mediocre/piss poor players and were not ruthless enough when the writing was on the wall months ago.
It's almost as if we planned for another stint in the Champioship...
Prior to that, well it was that idiot Lerner that started it all, one insane cock up after another culminating in a sale to Tony cheap shoes the charlatan from China.
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The biggest, most frustrating, irony of the lot is that when we did have relatively big money to spend we gave it to the most myopic managers imaginable.
This is the root of my immense dislike of O'Neill, less to do with the way he left, that was just typical of the man and I was glad to see the back of him. It's the arrogantly short-sighted way he took advantage of Lerner's well-financed stupidity to piss away the family silver chasing 6th spot. That was the best chance we ever had of establishing ourselves as a CL level club. He blew it.
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The biggest, most frustrating, irony of the lot is that when we did have relatively big money to spend we gave it to the most myopic managers imaginable.
This is the root of my immense dislike of O'Neill, less to do with the way he left, that was just typical of the man and I was glad to see the back of him. It's the arrogantly short-sighted way he took advantage of Lerner's well-financed stupidity to piss away the family silver chasing 6th spot. That was the best chance we ever had of establishing ourselves as a CL level club. He blew it.
My feelings exactly
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The biggest, most frustrating, irony of the lot is that when we did have relatively big money to spend we gave it to the most myopic managers imaginable.
This is the root of my immense dislike of O'Neill, less to do with the way he left, that was just typical of the man and I was glad to see the back of him. It's the arrogantly short-sighted way he took advantage of Lerner's well-financed stupidity to piss away the family silver chasing 6th spot. That was the best chance we ever had of establishing ourselves as a CL level club. He blew it.
My feelings exactly
Seconded.
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The biggest, most frustrating, irony of the lot is that when we did have relatively big money to spend we gave it to the most myopic managers imaginable.
This is the root of my immense dislike of O'Neill, less to do with the way he left, that was just typical of the man and I was glad to see the back of him. It's the arrogantly short-sighted way he took advantage of Lerner's well-financed stupidity to piss away the family silver chasing 6th spot. That was the best chance we ever had of establishing ourselves as a CL level club. He blew it.
My feelings exactly
Seconded.
Thirded.
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What false position?
We got promoted largely on the goals of another clubs player. I think that’s a false position.
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What false position?
We got promoted largely on the goals of another clubs player. I think that’s a false position.
Who should have been promoted in our place then? Leeds(four loans)? The Stripeys (six)? Derby (five)? Or was it somehow our fault because our loans were better than theirs?
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What false position?
We got promoted largely on the goals of another clubs player. I think that’s a false position.
Surely getting promoted far outweighs any development Tammy may have made while he was here? Whether he does well for Chelsea or not, and whether his value has gone up, has very little relevance to us.
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Fourthed
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Abraham played his part in getting us promoted. I can't understand how anyone can see a downside to that.
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I would add that it was not only the manner and timing of O'Neill's departure that was the fulcrum on which our history turned, it was also the manner in whuch O'Neill was able to pin the club for compensation. I do not have the knowledge nor do I have the skill to judge whether or not the club were as spineless behind closed doors as they appeared to be at the time but a message went out to the wider world of football that Aston Villa were a soft touch. A reputation they have done much to perpetuate in recent times. A fill yer boots club for agents. IMO.
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I would add that it was not only the manner and timing of O'Neill's departure that was the fulcrum on which our history turned, it was also the manner in whuch O'Neill was able to pin the club for compensation. I do not have the knowledge nor do I have the skill to judge whether or not the club were as spineless behind closed doors as they appeared to be at the time but a message went out to the wider world of football that Aston Villa were a soft touch. A reputation they have done much to perpetuate in recent times. A fill yer boots club for agents. IMO.
It wasn't necessarily his fault, but up until the moment O'Neill left, Villa were always pro-active. After that, we never seemed on top of events and I think a lot of that is down to the way we'd ignored the press in the good days.
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Do you think we will ever get back to challenge the top six within the next ten years after having year's of being mediocre.
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Yes. If the current owners pick a good manager and continue to pump the money in.
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With the Turnover gap between 6 clubs and the rest standing at about £200-£300 million I’d suggest it would take a full decade with a fortuitous following wind to be competitive with those Clubs.
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You are much closer to the coal face than I am Dave but I still get the impression that there is only superficial openness with the media even today. My impression, based I admit on opinions of my sons in the media, that Villa are still a bit Crossroads professionally.
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Do you think we will ever get back to challenge the top six within the next ten years after having year's of being mediocre.
Leicester are managing it.
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It’s a huge gap,
1. Get in a position to compete top 8.
2. Get into Europa.
3. Be competitive in Europa without falling out of top 8.
4. Build a team from there to somehow break into top 4.
This assumes starting as a PL club which is between extremely difficult to impossible. Add get out of the 2nd division, survive a couple of seasons to get to 1 and you begin to see the enormity of the task.
So sadly the answer is No.
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It’s a huge gap,
1. Get in a position to compete top 8.
2. Get into Europa.
3. Be competitive in Europa without falling out of top 8.
4. Build a team from there to somehow break into top 4.
This assumes starting as a PL club which is between extremely difficult to impossible. Add get out of the 2nd division, survive a couple of seasons to get to 1 and you begin to see the enormity of the task.
So sadly the answer is No.
Added to which....
Stay compliant with FFP at all times.
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Football fans love to be dramatic. We don't measure in tiny percentages, which in reality is all that separates the very best from the ordinary (and when you play against a professional or an ex-professional you truly appreciate just how bloody ordinary you are) but instead its miles. And not just miles, but incalculable miles up to the truly desperate light years.
Utter bollocks, as clubs continue to prove and will always continue to prove. Let's hope we're one of them sooner rather than later.
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Football fans love to be dramatic. We don't measure in tiny percentages, which in reality is all that separates the very best from the ordinary (and when you play against a professional or an ex-professional you truly appreciate just how bloody ordinary you are) but instead its miles. And not just miles, but incalculable miles up to the truly desperate light years.
Utter bollocks, as clubs continue to prove and will always continue to prove. Let's hope we're one of them sooner rather than later.
Your optimistic predictions don’t tend to stand the test of time sadly.
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Football fans love to be dramatic. We don't measure in tiny percentages, which in reality is all that separates the very best from the ordinary (and when you play against a professional or an ex-professional you truly appreciate just how bloody ordinary you are) but instead its miles. And not just miles, but incalculable miles up to the truly desperate light years.
Utter bollocks, as clubs continue to prove and will always continue to prove. Let's hope we're one of them sooner rather than later.
Your optimistic predictions don’t tend to stand the test of time sadly.
Wolves are the most recent example supporting what Ads says.
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Football fans love to be dramatic. We don't measure in tiny percentages, which in reality is all that separates the very best from the ordinary (and when you play against a professional or an ex-professional you truly appreciate just how bloody ordinary you are) but instead its miles. And not just miles, but incalculable miles up to the truly desperate light years.
Utter bollocks, as clubs continue to prove and will always continue to prove. Let's hope we're one of them sooner rather than later.
Your optimistic predictions don’t tend to stand the test of time sadly.
I've not made a prediction, its a comment on a predilection of football fans to dramatise.
I imagine there were several people with lee jeans and black shoes on, down in the dumps post Brighton, heading to the 3rd tier, no washing machines to tat. "Wim light year away bae wae". And now in a blink of an eye they're suddenly competing. Like Sheffield United. Like just about every club who makes consistently good recruitment decisions.
Light years. Ok.
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Trouble is Ads, respectfully, that consistently good recruitment decisions are, in football, as rare as owners who are treble minted. We can see what Bournemout and Watford and Brighton have done but it is the doing of it that is the hard part. If my Auntie had balls she would be my Uncle reality.
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Trouble is Ads, respectfully, that consistently good recruitment decisions are, in football, as rare as owners who are treble minted. We can see what Bournemout and Watford and Brighton have done but it is the doing of it that is the hard part. If my Auntie had balls she would be my Uncle reality.
Absolutely, clubs rise and fall all the time. The game has changed in some respects with the Champions League to provide a consistent cash cow. That cow is milked and keeps clubs at the very pinnacle. But plenty still have aspirations to get to that level and scrap about in the rungs below.
For most of my years Spurs have been mid-table wank, but then I could have sworn I saw them being robbed by a dodgy penalty decision in a European Cup final.
They didn't spend for 18 months and guess what? They're mid-table.
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Oh to be mid table wank!
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Football fans love to be dramatic. We don't measure in tiny percentages, which in reality is all that separates the very best from the ordinary (and when you play against a professional or an ex-professional you truly appreciate just how bloody ordinary you are) but instead its miles. And not just miles, but incalculable miles up to the truly desperate light years.
Utter bollocks, as clubs continue to prove and will always continue to prove. Let's hope we're one of them sooner rather than later.
Your optimistic predictions don’t tend to stand the test of time sadly.
Wolves are the most recent example supporting what Ads says.
They aren't really Chris, as they have a unique set up there that can't really be replicated anywhere else.
Seeing where Burnley and Sheffield United currently are though, would suggest finishing in the top ten on a regular basis could be achievable with the right set up.
A thought struck me watching those two play at the weekend that given the usually spaced out nature of the Premier League (few midweek games, international breaks etc.) the old adage of taking one game at a time is very applicable to that league.
For most of the teams in it, it requires a very short-term approach and the spread out nature of the games allows plenty of time for preparation. Being solid, well organised and nicking goals where possible are the key and I think it is probably why Steve Bruce has done a better job so far at Newcastle than he did at a club where the onus was on trying to be on the front foot and taking the game to teams.
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The best, possibly only great, appointment of recent years is Klopp. He's done a magnificent job up there, the bastard and Liverpool will thrive on it for some time.
As for us, well we appointed one of our own who'd done reasonably well elsewhere. He's growing, learning and developing, he was never the finished article. So why are people now expecting a rapid improvement? Seriously what did you expect? Younger, more inexperienced people make mistakes and over time they learn.
None of us know what will happen next year. Last season, Smith inherited all of Bruce's players, brought in a couple and we were, against all the odds, promoted. This season. we've not achieved what we'd hoped we would. But for some individual errors in games, by players and coaches, we'd be fairly safe right now. This was never a smooth road, and Smith needs the chance to drive it, the car's not a write-off, it's just got some scratches on it and needs a service.
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Wolves maximise what they've got. Leicester do, Sheffield United do, Burnley do. Its why they're successful relative to their means and aspirations. No different to Liverpool or Man City. There's no alchemy to success in football; buy well. We don't and haven't for years.
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Absolutely. I once went to Belfast on a business trip with Bob Lord. He was such a tight arsed curmudgeon I got off the plane feeling glad that we had Ellis, that is what Bob Lord was like. Back then I would have predicted Burnley doing an Accrington Stanley. Now we look up to them reverentially.
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And for every "Why are Spurs so much better than us when we used to be above them?" there's an Ipswich, Derby, Stoke, Coventry who were two divisions better than us and playing in Europe when I started going regularly.
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Exactly so. Things can and do change, all the time in football and not always for the better, but equally, not always for the worst. And you're never more than two or three good transfer windows away from success or disaster.
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The Premier League
Wolves maximise what they've got. Leicester do, Sheffield United do, Burnley do. Its why they're successful relative to their means and aspirations. No different to Liverpool or Man City. There's no alchemy to success in football; buy well. We don't and haven't for years.
Buy and sell well, and appoint good managers.
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Abraham played his part in getting us promoted. I can't understand how anyone can see a downside to that.
I think that was a big turning point. In normal seasons we'd have signed him for 25m as he'd have wanted to play week in week out and he'd enjoyed it here. Doubt we'd have signed Wesley instead who came in at a similar price.
Chelsea getting that banned really messed us over as they've never shown much interest before in blooding home grown players. Sarri showed little interest in them and was talking about extending Higuain's loan for another season. Instead he went back to Italy and they went for the first English manager of the Abramovich era who was signed purely because he knew many of the young players (had two of them on loan with him at Derby).
A bit of a perfect storm we got caught up in and it's cost us 6-8 points I think.
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Do you think we will ever get back to challenge the top six within the next ten years after having year's of being mediocre.
Leicester are managing it.
Leicester's buying and selling of players has been consistently excellent since their title win and even in the period immediately before that. They have raked in big money for some of their title winning side and replaced them brilliantly. They appointed Ranieri and he won them the title. They chose to replace him and put Shakespeare in charge, who guided them to the Champions League quarter finals. They appointed Puel who did reasonably okay but they weren't happy enough with him so replaced him with Rodgers who has done a great job. Leicester's player and management recruitment has been excellent. A lot of the credit was given to their player recruitment guy at the time Steve Walsh but their transfer business has continued to be successful even since he left. The last time we had a successful recruitment spell like that it was appointing SGT, quickly realising our mistake with Dr Jo, then moving on successfully with BFR, Brian Little and John Gregory.
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Do you think we will ever get back to challenge the top six within the next ten years after having year's of being mediocre.
Yes. We can do it in five no problem even if we go down. If the board get in a european renowned manager in his relative prime and also make proper commitment to sell the club's plans to 3-4 top class european players.
When we were finishing 6th regularly we had the core of Mellberg-Laursen-Petrov-Carew so that is the template for me, quality international standard players. Same in the 90s.
Since 2014 newly promoted Leicester, Burnley and Wolves have all played european football through league qualification. Sheffield United still have a small chance of doing it this season so let's not make out it's some impossible dream. As ever we seem to make it twice as hard for ourselves as other clubs in similar positions.
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Exactly so. Things can and do change, all the time in football and not always for the better, but equally, not always for the worst. And you're never more than two or three good transfer windows away from success or disaster.
We have a few shall we say glass empty types on this forum but I think if someone had come on here in May 2010 and said for next 5 years we'd be fighting constant relegation battles they'd have been laughed out of here. Yet it happened.
At some point we'll become reasonably good again. Frustration is we've wasted the momentum we had built last summer.
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Do you think we will ever get back to challenge the top six within the next ten years after having year's of being mediocre.
Leicester are managing it.
Leicester's buying and selling of players has been consistently excellent since their title win and even in the period immediately before that. They have raked in big money for some of their title winning side and replaced them brilliantly. They appointed Ranieri and he won them the title. They chose to replace him and put Shakespeare in charge, who guided them to the Champions League quarter finals. They appointed Puel who did reasonably okay but they weren't happy enough with him so replaced him with Rodgers who has done a great job. Leicester's player and management recruitment has been excellent. A lot of the credit was given to their player recruitment guy at the time Steve Walsh but their transfer business has continued to be successful even since he left. The last time we had a successful recruitment spell like that it was appointing SGT, quickly realising our mistake with Dr Jo, then moving on successfully with BFR, Brian Little and John Gregory.
They actually lost their way after the title win. Signed Islam Slimani (remember him) and Musa for about 50m and both massively flopped. Also that Portugese midfielder who they signed about a minute after midnight and had to wait six months to play him, he's on loan at Monaco now (with Slimani of course).
In recent times they've been much better. Got in Ricardo Peireria who was excellent at Euro 2016 for Portugal and had CL experience. Youri Tielemans struggled at Monaco but has got his career going again. Maddison was a really good pick up from championship. They also signed Johnny Evans for 3m. He was 30 years old when they got him. With our transfer strategy would we consider a 30 year old CB who's just been relegated?
We need to start looking at that standard of players next time we're in premier league rather than looking at next Club Brugge hotshot.
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When I was a boy the game I dreaded most was the impending hammering by Grimsby. Liverpool were thought of like Wimbledon forty years later. A team of brutal, classless cloggers.
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Abraham played his part in getting us promoted. I can't understand how anyone can see a downside to that.
Totally agree and fantastic he was too. However this thread is entitled “where did it all go wrong” the obvious downside is his goals have not been replaced. As I said earlier in the thread we effectively gave the best striker at Villa Park for many a long year and an international to boot, a free transfer. I may not be the brightest but I see using another clubs player to get us promoted with his goal input and then him leaving as a place it might have started going wrong
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What false position?
We got promoted largely on the goals of another clubs player. I think that’s a false position.
Who should have been promoted in our place then? Leeds(four loans)? The Stripeys (six)? Derby (five)? Or was it somehow our fault because our loans were better than theirs?
Your missing my point not replacing him is where it all went wrong IMO I don’t care who else loaned players and in what number it’s irrelevant. The fact is we got promoted with the goals of another teams player.
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What false position?
We got promoted largely on the goals of another clubs player. I think that’s a false position.
Who should have been promoted in our place then? Leeds(four loans)? The Stripeys (six)? Derby (five)? Or was it somehow our fault because our loans were better than theirs?
Your missing my point not replacing him is where it all went wrong IMO I don’t care who else loaned players and in what number it’s irrelevant. The fact is we got promoted with the goals of another teams player.
I answered your point, then you changed it. First you said that we shouldn't have had a loan player ("false position") then that we didn't replace him. Whether we replaced him with Wesley or with Lionel Messi, the situation was still the same. Teams loan players; that's a fact of modern football. We just happened to strike the best loan deal we've ever made, and one that was better than any other club managed. As a result we got promoted within the rules of the competition we were playing in. No false position, no missed point.
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Not replacing him is very different to being promoted being a 'false position'. By that logic pretty much no team should be promoted as most if not all use loan players, you have to in that league.
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Not replacing Tami was the biggest failure of our transfer strategy. I don’t think any one can argue that
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Not replacing Tami was the biggest failure of our transfer strategy. I don’t think any one can argue that
If and its a big if Tammy would have been wiling to sign for us if Chelsea had released him it would not have been for £22m. Probably nearer £40m than £30m! Replacing him in our first year back was a massive task and any other strategy to the fill the gap was bound to be risky. Picking up free scoring premier league strikers while filling a dozen other positions would have been a miracle.
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What false position?
We got promoted largely on the goals of another clubs player. I think that’s a false position.
Who should have been promoted in our place then? Leeds(four loans)? The Stripeys (six)? Derby (five)? Or was it somehow our fault because our loans were better than theirs?
Your missing my point not replacing him is where it all went wrong IMO I don’t care who else loaned players and in what number it’s irrelevant. The fact is we got promoted with the goals of another teams player.
I answered your point, then you changed it. First you said that we shouldn't have had a loan player ("false position") then that we didn't replace him. Whether we replaced him with Wesley or with Lionel Messi, the situation was still the same. Teams loan players; that's a fact of modern football. We just happened to strike the best loan deal we've ever made, and one that was better than any other club managed. As a result we got promoted within the rules of the competition we were playing in. No false position, no missed point.
I don’t think I said we shouldn’t have had a loan player. I said I didn’t like the loan system Because in this instance it’s left us without our best goal scorer for many a long year. We wouldn’t have got promoted without tammys goals. He wasn’t our player and therefore that’s a “false position” IMO
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Every club in the Championship had loan players last season. Presumably they were all in false positions, or is this something that only affects the Villa?
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Every club in the Championship had loan players last season. Presumably they were all in false positions, or is this something that only affects the Villa?
I don’t care about the others Dave. I only care about us. What cannot be denied is we won promotion on Tammys goals. Then we lost him and we don’t look like scoring again this season. We look certs for relegation which I’ll argue that we wouldn’t be if Tammy was our number 9. Back to the name of this thread ”where did it all go wrong” losing Tammy is high on my list. I don’t like loans for that reason. We won promotion due to another clubs player.
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I'm not quite sure I follow. Surely you're just highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of a loan? The ability to attract a quality player you perhaps couldn't do otherwise and the risks of losing him if circumstances dictate. Chelsea being banned from signing players being such a circumstance.
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Every club in the Championship had loan players last season. Presumably they were all in false positions, or is this something that only affects the Villa?
I don’t care about the others Dave. I only care about us. What cannot be denied is we won promotion on Tammys goals. Then we lost him and we don’t look like scoring again this season. We look certs for relegation which I’ll argue that we wouldn’t be if Tammy was our number 9. Back to the name of this thread ”where did it all go wrong” losing Tammy is high on my list. I don’t like loans for that reason. We won promotion due to another clubs player.
And if we were the only club in the Championship not to use loan players, and as a result finished twelfth in perpetuity, what would you say then?
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Every club in the Championship had loan players last season. Presumably they were all in false positions, or is this something that only affects the Villa?
I don’t care about the others Dave. I only care about us. What cannot be denied is we won promotion on Tammys goals. Then we lost him and we don’t look like scoring again this season. We look certs for relegation which I’ll argue that we wouldn’t be if Tammy was our number 9. Back to the name of this thread ”where did it all go wrong” losing Tammy is high on my list. I don’t like loans for that reason. We won promotion due to another clubs player.
And if we were the only club in the Championship not to use loan players, and as a result finished twelfth in perpetuity, what would you say then?
Yes your right of course. But really, are we much better off now standing on the edge of a return to the Championship without Tammys goals? Maybe my point is we were too reliant on a loan player in such a key position and then lose him. When we needed his goals most, he was performing for Chelsea
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As others have said, if it wasn’t for Chelsea’s own issues, we might have had a good chance of keeping Tammy.
I remember when they interviewed him on the pitch after the POF and asked him if he might stay, he just said “never say never”.
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If we’re solely looking at this season I would point out the dropped points at home to Burnley. They huffed and puffed finally got ahead and the blew it like 90 seconds later. Them 2 points would be invaluable now.
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Tammy has gone off the boil for Chelsea even with good players around him, not sure how well he would have done in a Villa shirt with the lack of talent we have.
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If we’re solely looking at this season I would point out the dropped points at home to Burnley. They huffed and puffed finally got ahead and the blew it like 90 seconds later. Them 2 points would be invaluable now.
Yes, I think that game wounded me more than most and I came away thinking we're going to struggle if we can't put away a game like that.
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The one that broke my heart was the stupid defeat by Bournemouth at home. Full house, VP rocking, back in the Premiership still euphoric from the Wembley play off final. An exprienced, mature England international goalkeeper gives away a needless penalty in front of the Holte in the first minute. Suddenly the old, insecure, inferiority riddled Villa were back. This has been the season from hell. I have done several relegations, including down to the third division but the sheer endless agony of uncertainty makes this the worst.
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The one that broke my heart was the stupid defeat by Bournemouth at home. Full house, VP rocking, back in the Premiership still euphoric from the Wembley play off final. An exprienced, mature England international goalkeeper gives away a needless penalty in front of the Holte in the first minute. Suddenly the old, insecure, inferiority riddled Villa were back. This has been the season from hell. I have done several relegations, including down to the third division but the sheer endless agony of uncertainty makes this the worst.
Agree Brian, I was there and got stick for saying those are the sort of incidents that can have a lasting effect.
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Billings could and should have been sent off 3 times over that day.
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Every club in the Championship had loan players last season. Presumably they were all in false positions, or is this something that only affects the Villa?
I don’t care about the others Dave. I only care about us. What cannot be denied is we won promotion on Tammys goals. Then we lost him and we don’t look like scoring again this season. We look certs for relegation which I’ll argue that we wouldn’t be if Tammy was our number 9. Back to the name of this thread ”where did it all go wrong” losing Tammy is high on my list. I don’t like loans for that reason. We won promotion due to another clubs player.
And if we were the only club in the Championship not to use loan players, and as a result finished twelfth in perpetuity, what would you say then?
Yes your right of course. But really, are we much better off now standing on the edge of a return to the Championship without Tammys goals? Maybe my point is we were too reliant on a loan player in such a key position and then lose him. When we needed his goals most, he was performing for Chelsea
Resolution - you only want to see us loan players if there's a buy-out clause inserted into the contract?
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Loaning Tammy was brilliant for us. There was always a chance he wasn't coming back. Which is fine too; you just have to replace him properly, like when any player leaves. That's the bit we fucked right up.
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Loaning Tammy was brilliant for us. There was always a chance he wasn't coming back. Which is fine too; you just have to replace him properly, like when any player leaves. That's the bit we fucked right up.
Yes exactly even better would have been not having to replace him at all
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Billings could and should have been sent off 3 times over that day.
It was only after about the 5th bookable offence did the ref decide to sub him.
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The one that broke my heart was the stupid defeat by Bournemouth at home. Full house, VP rocking, back in the Premiership still euphoric from the Wembley play off final. An exprienced, mature England international goalkeeper gives away a needless penalty in front of the Holte in the first minute. Suddenly the old, insecure, inferiority riddled Villa were back. This has been the season from hell. I have done several relegations, including down to the third division but the sheer endless agony of uncertainty makes this the worst.
Steve Harmison, Brisbane, 2006.
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I did enjoy the january transfer window when Tammy was linked with Wolves, and their fans were gloating about how he would dump us and join them.
For him to choose Championship Villa over Premier League Wolves was a great moment, and that was also a good example of where it all went right.
If he had left us then, we would still be in the championship now.
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The one that broke my heart was the stupid defeat by Bournemouth at home. Full house, VP rocking, back in the Premiership still euphoric from the Wembley play off final. An exprienced, mature England international goalkeeper gives away a needless penalty in front of the Holte in the first minute. Suddenly the old, insecure, inferiority riddled Villa were back. This has been the season from hell. I have done several relegations, including down to the third division but the sheer endless agony of uncertainty makes this the worst.
Yes, that result was hard to take. I was in a foul humour after that one and knew this would be a slog. The Arsenal game, Palace, Liverpool and Spurs at home. We should have 4 points from those.
This has been a really horrible season.
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Something else that makes this season even harder to bear is all the smoke and mirrors of responsibility around its awfulness. Back in the day our pain could be eased a little by having bogeymen we could blame for us being so shit. Doug Ellis, Tommy Docherty, Vic Crowe, Bingo Billy, O'Leary, Graham Turner, Eric Black, Kevin McDonald, Lambert's brother in law. We knew they were not individually and personally responsible but they acted as lightning conductors for our pain and anger.
Fast forward to the present day. Who is to blame for all this? Who actually said Wesley Moraes was worth £22.5 million? Who actually decided that Danny Drinkwater should be shoehorned into a failing side? Who actially thought we could survive in the Premiership without a proven goal scorer? Who failed to pick up on Nyland's neurosis? Who actually decided that RHM, Green and O'Hare should be got rid of while equally bad players on massive wages keep getting get out of jail cards? We shall never know and that is the way those responsible like it to be.
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The one that broke my heart was the stupid defeat by Bournemouth at home. Full house, VP rocking, back in the Premiership still euphoric from the Wembley play off final. An exprienced, mature England international goalkeeper gives away a needless penalty in front of the Holte in the first minute. Suddenly the old, insecure, inferiority riddled Villa were back. This has been the season from hell. I have done several relegations, including down to the third division but the sheer endless agony of uncertainty makes this the worst.
I'd forgotten about all the excitement at the start of the season. Seems a long time ago now.
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Didn't Luiz do a stepover for the second that just went to a Bournemouth player who fired it in from 20 yards? He obviously didn't know what "man on" meant back then.
We threw away so many points in August and September with sloppy errors and that is looking very costly now.
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Agree SHQ but it looked very costly when it happened. One thing Villa fans know is what happens next.
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The one that broke my heart was the stupid defeat by Bournemouth at home. Full house, VP rocking, back in the Premiership still euphoric from the Wembley play off final. An exprienced, mature England international goalkeeper gives away a needless penalty in front of the Holte in the first minute. Suddenly the old, insecure, inferiority riddled Villa were back. This has been the season from hell. I have done several relegations, including down to the third division but the sheer endless agony of uncertainty makes this the worst.
I'd forgotten about all the excitement at the start of the season. Seems a long time ago now.
Everton at home was epic.
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January transfer window. Linked with names and ended up with shite. If we'd signed no one then we would be no worse off. Opportunity lost in what has turned out to be a shit division that we could've easily stayed up in.
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We still easily could. We still might just miss out, we still might just squeeze by.
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Something else that makes this season even harder to bear is all the smoke and mirrors of responsibility around its awfulness. Back in the day our pain could be eased a little by having bogeymen we could blame for us being so shit. Doug Ellis, Tommy Docherty, Vic Crowe, Bingo Billy, O'Leary, Graham Turner, Eric Black, Kevin McDonald, Lambert's brother in law. We knew they were not individually and personally responsible but they acted as lightning conductors for our pain and anger.
Fast forward to the present day. Who is to blame for all this? Who actually said Wesley Moraes was worth £22.5 million? Who actually decided that Danny Drinkwater should be shoehorned into a failing side? Who actially thought we could survive in the Premiership without a proven goal scorer? Who failed to pick up on Nyland's neurosis? Who actually decided that RHM, Green and O'Hare should be got rid of while equally bad players on massive wages keep getting get out of jail cards? We shall never know and that is the way those responsible like it to be.
I think Dean Smith will carry the can and get the bullet. I think Pitarch and Purslow will remain in place. They will stick with the 'business model' under a new head coach.
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we got January wrong. Again.
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amongst other things...
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We did not get January simply wrong, we messed up so badly we would have been better off doing nothing.
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Pitarch can't remain after the success rate of last summer's dealings.
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The one that broke my heart was the stupid defeat by Bournemouth at home. Full house, VP rocking, back in the Premiership still euphoric from the Wembley play off final. An exprienced, mature England international goalkeeper gives away a needless penalty in front of the Holte in the first minute. Suddenly the old, insecure, inferiority riddled Villa were back.
This, this and thrice this.
After a promising performance at Spurs, a win against Bournemouth would have been a massive boost and given us the momentum a promoted side needs, boosting the confidence of players in their ability to play at this level. That stupid error by Heaton, compounded by Luiz’s mad dummy had me despairing after the vibrant build up.
That game, followed by a ridiculous refereeing decision at Palace and shite decision making at Arsenal meant we were 3-5 points down on where we could have been, with a completely different platform for the season. Since then I have been nervous for every Villa match as they have all been so crucial.
The Everton home game on a sunny Friday night in August though gave me one of my favourite nights at Villa Park. The atmosphere was spine tingling.
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The one that broke my heart was the stupid defeat by Bournemouth at home. Full house, VP rocking, back in the Premiership still euphoric from the Wembley play off final. An exprienced, mature England international goalkeeper gives away a needless penalty in front of the Holte in the first minute. Suddenly the old, insecure, inferiority riddled Villa were back.
This, this and thrice this.
After a promising performance at Spurs, a win against Bournemouth would have been a massive boost and given us the momentum a promoted side needs, boosting the confidence of players in their ability to play at this level. That stupid error by Heaton, compounded by Luiz’s mad dummy had me despairing after the vibrant build up.
That game, followed by a ridiculous refereeing decision at Palace and shite decision making at Arsenal meant we were 3-5 points down on where we could have been, with a completely different platform for the season. Since then I have been nervous for every Villa match as they have all been so crucial.
The Everton home game on a sunny Friday night in August though gave me one of my favourite nights at Villa Park. The atmosphere was spine tingling.
The Leicester game at home in the league was the first time I came away thinking we could be in trouble. We had been pretty competitive in most games up until then, but we capitulated in the second half and it looked a bit ominous.
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January transfer window. Only Villa could end January with a worse squad than they had on New Year's Day.
Terrible business that ultimately cost us.
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The injuries to Heaton and Wes. Smith persisting in what was patently not working. The lack of opportunities for the better academy players such as Archer, Ramsey and Vassilev to be given a chance to show that they are better than Davis etc.
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Jack Woodward being re-employed to commentate.
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How true that last comment was! He is truly awful.
Though at least he's not Jonathan Moss...
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Said earlier, we've never recovered from not holding on at home to Liverpool.
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As for this season, there’s quite a few games we could point to.
It’s still Southampton away for me, but here’s another - Man City at home.
A game everyone expected us to lose, which we duly did, but the manner of it really worried me. A side that gave up and literally hid. The sixth goal displayed everything you needed to see to understand the mess we were getting into. There were no leaders out there and that carried on, well, Up until last night I suppose.
When we played City up there, we did really well. We’d held them quite easily up until half time and had some chances of our own. They upped a gear second half but 3-0 flattered them and we’d done alright.
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Said earlier, we've never recovered from not holding on at home to Liverpool.
We comfortably beat Newcastle and got a 2-2 at Old Trafford a few weeks later.
That said the extra point would be useful currently.
Leicester at home was a worse defeat for many reasons and we had a really poor xmas period.
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Said earlier, we've never recovered from not holding on at home to Liverpool.
We comfortably beat Newcastle and got a 2-2 at Old Trafford a few weeks later.
That said the extra point would be useful currently.
Leicester at home was a worse defeat for many reasons and we had a really poor xmas period.
Southampton at home was worse than the Leicester drubbing, it was pitiful against what was then a team that looked to be headed down.
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The Arsenal game was a shocker.
We were winning, they were down to 10 men and we still lost. And they scored a goal that shouldn't have stood and we were denied a clear penalty.
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Not learning anything from the last 15+ years. We always end up with resources yet don't appear to have the basic structures/teams in place to maximise effective use of them. We must be one of the biggest spending clubs in the world over the last 15 years yet it has got us nowhere.
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Jack Woodward being re-employed to commentate.
LOL. I'm sure he's a lovely bloke but I can't stand listening to him. His voice fills me with dread. Probably linked to him commentating on a significant portion of our recent shitness.
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Any team starting the season with a strikeforce of Wesley, El Ghazi and Trez plus a part time Assistant Coach with responsibilities for the defence should expect to seriously struggle. Add to that a squad that seem just happy to be PL players and living the PL lifestyle, new pad, couple of cars and an Instagram account, it's little surprise we are where we are. No hunger, no desire to improve, no team collective, poor leadership on and off the pitch, the 'lets rely on Jack, he's ace and we'll easily stay up' mentality lasted longer than it should.
Now we see the result of close to £150m thrown down the drain, the financial impact of a return to the Championship having already spent our PL season's reward, no doubt losing our best players for half the values they had at Christmas, stuck with a bunch of expensively bought crap on long contracts and a Coach and staff that need to be paid off their long contracts and replaced.
As things stand, we couldn't have made a worse job of it if we'd tried. It's been a disaster.The only positive from the season has been our fans. Everything else has been crap and Purslow has to take full responsibility. This shit happened on his watch.
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To me, the key thing with the Leicester game was that it was the last time we started a game with Heaton, Mings, McGinn, Grealish and Wesley. We’ve been without at least two of them for every game bar one since then (which we won).
They all have their faults, but make a reasonable spine to our team so to be without that for so long is not ideal.
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I have spent some of the the day thinking about how stressful following Villa is. I have worked out that in 40 years of following the club I have witnessed twenty five years in the top ten of the table mainly striving for Europe but also three attempts at promotion, two successful and one ending in play off defeat. Add to that two relegations and thirteen successful relegation battles. I reckon in forty years we have only had seven or eight seasons without anything riding on it regarding points towards the end of the league season and in two of those seasons we were concentrating on the European Cup in 1982 and the Coca Cola cup in 1994. Never a dull moment being a Villa fan.
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I have spent some of the the day thinking about how stressful following Villa is. I have worked out that in 40 years of following the club I have witnessed twenty five years in the top ten of the table mainly striving for Europe but also three attempts at promotion, two successful and one ending in play off defeat. Add to that two relegations and thirteen successful relegation battles. I reckon in forty years we have only had seven or eight seasons without anything riding on it regarding points towards the end of the league season and in two of those seasons we were concentrating on the European Cup in 1982 and the Coca Cola cup in 1994. Never a dull moment being a Villa fan.
I have often thought this myself. We very rarely have just a mid table, run of the mill season. That was what I was hoping for this year. Oh Well !
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I was sure we would finish about 14th with no serious worries. I thought we had so much momentum that we would keep grinding out the key results to avoid getting sucked into the dogfight.
I think we are all upset at how quickly it all turned to shit.
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I was sure we would finish about 14th with no serious worries. I thought we had so much momentum that we would keep grinding out the key results to avoid getting sucked into the dogfight.
I think we are all upset at how quickly it all turned to shit.
I thought this, on about 45/46 points maybe. I thought some more about what went right in the last few months of last season. Grealish was the catalyst but it wasn’t just that. In that dire run without many wins post Xmas 2018 into new year 2019, we actually drew games we could of lost largely down to the goals of Tammy (QPR, Hull at home), without snatching those draws from the brink of defeat, even with the 10 game run we would of struggled to make the play offs. It was actually the combination of Grealish coming back, the form of McGinn, the marshalling of the defence from Mings and the goal threat of Tammy combined at just the right time that got us on that run.
I don’t think we’ve ever recovered from Tammy not being signed in the summer (I know it was out of our hands). I think with him some of those early season draws are wins (West Ham, Burnley) and defeats are draws (Palace, Arsenal) just those games alone would yield another 6 points and there are probably others and we’d be virtually safe, if not on the beach. Add to that just as our early season okish form started dipping we lose the second of the 4 in McGinn and we’ve never really recovered.
No disrespect to Wesley who may come good in time, but that four combined with the heartbeat of that team, and looking back not replacing Tammy adequately has killed us.
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I was sure we would finish about 14th with no serious worries. I thought we had so much momentum that we would keep grinding out the key results to avoid getting sucked into the dogfight.
I think we are all upset at how quickly it all turned to shit.
I thought this, on about 45/46 points maybe. I thought some more about what went right in the last few months of last season. Grealish was the catalyst but it wasn’t just that. In that dire run without many wins post Xmas 2018 into new year 2019, we actually drew games we could of lost largely down to the goals of Tammy (QPR, Hull at home), without snatching those draws from the brink of defeat, even with the 10 game run we would of struggled to make the play offs. It was actually the combination of Grealish coming back, the form of McGinn, the marshalling of the defence from Mings and the goal threat of Tammy combined at just the right time that got us on that run.
I don’t think we’ve ever recovered from Tammy not being signed in the summer (I know it was out of our hands). I think with him some of those early season draws are wins (West Ham, Burnley) and defeats are draws (Palace, Arsenal) just those games alone would yield another 6 points and there are probably others and we’d be virtually safe, if not on the beach. Add to that just as our early season okish form started dipping we lose the second of the 4 in McGinn and we’ve never really recovered.
No disrespect to Wesley who may come good in time, but that four combined with the heartbeat of that team, and looking back not replacing Tammy adequately has killed us.
yep, losing a (now) proven premiership goalscorer was what did for us, but we were really painted into a corner by circumstances. The obvious thing is to buy a proven premiership/top foreign striker but you cant get them to come when you've just come up even if you can afford them. So you either have a punt on someone from a lesser foreign league or championship side and hope they adapt quickly or you try and buy some proven guy in his last years on 100k a week. I think Wesley will come good, certainly in the championship and really people like Maupay, well their record is no better than his in the premier. If i had to point to a mistake it was probably buying Samatta when maybe that was the point he tried to get an old warhorse in with experience.
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For me, we didn’t put in a single bad performance until Wolves away. A few mediocre ones for sure, but not bad. We didn’t pick up enough points when playing competitively, simple as that. Up until the end of November I enjoyed watching us at least some of every match. Had we picked up the points our performances merited from a pure footballing sense (the game management, to coin an annoying trendy phrase, was diabolical), we’d still be struggling but at least on a par with West Ham and probably safe. That was where it went wrong for me, but with the benefit of hindsight.
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That's why a huge portion of the blame lies with the management team.
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It all went wrong when they didn't replace Smith at Xmas, we have gotten worse as the seasons got on. Owners must take some blame for this.
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It all went wrong when they didn't replace Smith at Xmas, we have gotten worse as the seasons got on. Owners must take some blame for this.
Yep, got to agree with this. Laudable but misplaced loyalty by the owners but I’m convinced we could have stayed up with the appointment of an experienced manager. Very disappointing.
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Thought last year was the start of a new chapter, I have Zero enthusiasm for another stint in the championship.
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When things go wrong in organisations, it’s usually not one thing but a series of bad decisions.
This process started at the end of last season and they just got too many decisions wrong.
Purslow could have done something about it, from December on he has allowed Smith-to continue his haveago management Regime. He has been pretty clueless since and the players know when the coach is floundering.
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Not learning anything from the last 15+ years. We always end up with resources yet don't appear to have the basic structures/teams in place to maximise effective use of them. We must be one of the biggest spending clubs in the world over the last 15 years yet it has got us nowhere.
Excellent point. For me the most important person at any club is the manager. Hopefully we'll finally learn something from the last 15+ years.
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I know these sound like minor gripes but they all add up: Having two more home games than away left to play post-Lockdown (more than anyone else except Citeh perhaps) as a team whose home form was vital for survival (can anyone find the home games only table at Lockdown?), the moving of the goalposts where teams can use two extra subs which favoured those with stronger squads - we have played most of the big teams since the return; the VAR calls which have possibly effected us negatively more than rivals and definitely having the least recovery time/turnaround in lockdown matches.
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For me, we didn’t put in a single bad performance until Wolves away. A few mediocre ones for sure, but not bad. We didn’t pick up enough points when playing competitively, simple as that. Up until the end of November I enjoyed watching us at least some of every match. Had we picked up the points our performances merited from a pure footballing sense (the game management, to coin an annoying trendy phrase, was diabolical), we’d still be struggling but at least on a par with West Ham and probably safe. That was where it wrong for me, but with the benefit of hindsight.
Yeah same for me. People are saying this season was a disaster from start to finish but we were competitive up to that Leicester game in early December. End of November we were comfortably beating Newcastle at VP and fully expecting to finish above them and then went and got a 2-2 at Old Trafford, a game we could've easily won. Then were outplayed but narrowly lost at Chelsea. We had spirit and crucially some goals in us.
Since then bar the odd game most of our performances have been bottom 3 standard even in games we've picked up points (Brighton away).
There's something I can't quite shake off about the Leicester game. Mings doing his hamstring early on yet the manager seeming to think he could run it off and just as he was about to be finally taken off Vardy ran away to score. Leicester could've scored 6 or 7 in the end and we've never looked good defensively since so huge loss of confidence.
The Son goal then pretty much relegated us two months later.
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I know these sound like minor gripes but they all add up: Having two more home games than away left to play post-Lockdown (more than anyone else except Citeh perhaps) as a team whose home form was vital for survival (can anyone find the home games only table at Lockdown?), the moving of the goalposts where teams can use two extra subs which favoured those with stronger squads - we have played most of the big teams since the return; the VAR calls which have possibly effected us negatively more than rivals and definitely having the least recovery time/turnaround in lockdown matches.
Those are just tame excuses in my view. We were crap pre Covid and have been since Man U away. After that game something changed and the diabolical surrenders at Sheffield U, Southampton home and away, Bournemouth, Watford and Leicester away plus Post Covid followed
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I know but I just don't want to believe we're this bad 😔
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Smith was a Purslow appontment, could be that Purslow didn't want to be proved wrong.
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It all went wrong when they didn't replace Smith at Xmas, we have gotten worse as the seasons got on. Owners must take some blame for this.
We absolutely should have replaced Smith around the new year. The cup run maybe clouded the judgement of those running the club. I don't think we have ever looked comfortable in the Premier league this time around since day one.
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I agree, I think I predicted a finish of fourth from bottom and within 3/4 games I decided we’d really struggle, the teams we played just seemed so much better organised, quicker and stronger. The division has moved on massively in the years we were away and we were always going to struggle to integrate a big number of players new to the league. I guess that’s one of the reasons it doesn’t hurt so much, it’s been pretty much expected.
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Here’s a thought to leave you with.
The day FSG purchased Liverpool FC less than 10 years ago, they were 7th in League, Villa were 6th. We’ve been criminally managed and run, scandalous.
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Here’s a thought to leave you with.
The day FSG purchased Liverpool FC less than 10 years ago, they were 7th in League, Villa were 6th. We’ve been criminally managed and run, scandalous.
It's the biggest fuck up in football yet we tend to hear more about Sunderland's decline than ours.
It's a complete joke. We are like a different club.
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Here’s a thought to leave you with.
The day FSG purchased Liverpool FC less than 10 years ago, they were 7th in League, Villa were 6th. We’ve been criminally managed and run, scandalous.
:'(
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Here’s a thought to leave you with.
The day FSG purchased Liverpool FC less than 10 years ago, they were 7th in League, Villa were 6th. We’ve been criminally managed and run, scandalous.
This is the crux of it ...3 owners since Ellis, 100's of millions in wages and fees, Massive turn over of players and managers and we have gotten worse.
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In a world of ‘if onlys’ I always go back to if Lerner bought us a season or two before, we would have been richer than almost anyone and I think that would have made a hell of a difference. As it was there were other billionaires buying clubs with even deeper pockets.
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Seems like we can never get in that marquee player/manager who can change perceptions of the club.
You look at the 90s when Chelsea and Arsenal got in Gullit and Bergkamp. Man. City got in Robinho the day after their takeover. That didn't work out so well but it did show those owners would be prepared to break the bank for a regular starter at Real Madrid.
You go back to 2009 and we were apparently interested in Wesley Snejider. A year later he'd won the CL and was world cup runner up with Holland voted one of the best players in the world. I doubt he has sleepless nights about not wanting to join us. A year later though Spurs signed Van der Vaart and he helped push them miles ahead of us.
I get the London factor and all that but it's frustrating when you see other midlands based clubs sign good quality international players who are happy to live in this area.
Probably the last world renowned player we signed in his prime was Carew. We got him in January 2007. Every time we get new owners I keep thinking they'll go out and make a statement signing but it never happens and that is part of the reason we can never kick on in the modern era.
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Here’s a thought to leave you with.
The day FSG purchased Liverpool FC less than 10 years ago, they were 7th in League, Villa were 6th. We’ve been criminally managed and run, scandalous.
I'ts fucking awful but all goes to show how cyclical things are and that we can get there again.
Since then, Leicester (Last won, never), Liverpool (89/90) and Man City x4 (67/68) have won the league.
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In a world of ‘if onlys’ I always go back to if Lerner bought us a season or two before, we would have been richer than almost anyone and I think that would have made a hell of a difference. As it was there were other billionaires buying clubs with even deeper pockets.
If he'd bought us earlier we could have been up there before Manchester City got going. Even if he'd bought us a few years later we wouldn't have had so much expectation from a mere billionaire.
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Having a chairman who ostracised a whole squad of English and European Champions created a national media with no former players either then or since having a deep public affection for this football club.
There is no old boys network of Villa Men and it continues to hold us back in every respect in comparison to our peers.
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Very interesting point there Lucky Eddie. We do have Ian Taylor but I know exactly what you mean. Southgate is one obvious example of the kind of thing you are referring to.
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I've been saying it for years - there are no men in grey suits to advise behind the scenes, no Grand Old Man of Villa Park to reassure the common herd and there are no self-appointed PR men to push our case in the media.
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It went wrong at Christmas, just before the transfer window opened, Smith should have gone and we should have found a manger with one task in mind, survival, in my opinion Purslow should have gone with Smith judging by his statement that he made live on TV regarding the restart of the season, the man is a fool.
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What statement was this?
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To me, the key thing with the Leicester game was that it was the last time we started a game with Heaton, Mings, McGinn, Grealish and Wesley. We’ve been without at least two of them for every game bar one since then (which we won).
They all have their faults, but make a reasonable spine to our team so to be without that for so long is not ideal.
If McGinn and Wesley had kept fit, we wouldn't be in this mess. McGinn still isn't fit and Davis hasn't been good enough.
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We bought a whole new team during last summer. Similar to what BFR did in 1991. But BFR bought the likes of Sealey, Regis, Ugo, Bosnich, Teale, Richardson, Parker, Staunton, Barrett and Dalian. This time around we seem to have bought a team of Paul Mortimer's and Dariusz Kubicki's.
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We bought a whole new team during last summer. Similar to what BFR did in 1991. But BFR bought the likes of Sealey, Regis, Ugo, Bosnich, Teale, Richardson, Parker, Staunton, Barrett and Dalian. This time around we seem to have bought a team of Paul Mortimer's and Dariusz Kubicki's.
Bit unfair really. I'm sure Smith would have liked to have bought the equivalent of those players, but 1st team players from Premiership teams were never going to come to us even if we could afford the transfers fees
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We bought a whole new team during last summer. Similar to what BFR did in 1991. But BFR bought the likes of Sealey, Regis, Ugo, Bosnich, Teale, Richardson, Parker, Staunton, Barrett and Dalian. This time around we seem to have bought a team of Paul Mortimer's and Dariusz Kubicki's.
Those players weren't all brought in during the summer, and only half of them went straight into the first team.
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3 things for me. Trying to bridge a huge gap between 5th in the Ch-ship and the PL...even just to stay up. Poor recruitment of players, not enougjbexperience and quality. 3rd, management not upto the task, yes he had shit players but he does look out his depth.
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I was thinking this morning about what an absolute joke it is that we have been through a whole season without a decent striker.
You look at the teams who have played their way out of danger and the fine margins all the way down from Burnley and a big difference has been having a decent striker hitting form. It’s not just the goals, it’s the mentality of knowing there’s actually some point to building attacks.
It must be soul sapping playing in a team where the strikers can’t get the goal in the net.
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Agree with the lack of striker(s) killed us. There was never enough goals in the front three to keep us up.
He (Smith) would have got some proper stick on here though if hed signed Long or Woods or Ings or someone like that in the pre season (though with hindsight we should)
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Agree with the lack of striker(s) killed us. There was never enough goals in the front three to keep us up.
He (Smith) would have got some proper stick on here though if hed signed Long or Woods or Ings or someone like that in the pre season (though with hindsight we should)
Would he? It was pretty much recognised by everyone on here at the time that the striker situation was a worry. With the options we had, someone like a Long or a Woods or an Ings would have most welcome.
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The fact that most of us fans knew the lack of proven striker would be our undoing before a ball was kicked, is a quite frankly unforgiveable error on the club's part.
..... And then to REPEAT that mistake in January is mindblowing!
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There is a lot of, if he had of done ...... he would get criticised.
It’s irrelevant, he is getting criticised because he is demonstrating he isn’t up to the job.
I couldn’t care if he signed Trevor Francis In a wheel chair if it got the job done.
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Yeah it’s not really meant a defence of smith. He’s made plenty of mistakes and failed to get the most out of what he’s got, both with his selection decisions and in game tactics.
But trying to survive In this league with one injury prone, non scoring striker and two huge gambles from a dodgy league is a weird combination of arrogance and ineptitude. Oh for a Gayle type to throw into these post lockdown games.
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Agree with the lack of striker(s) killed us. There was never enough goals in the front three to keep us up.
He (Smith) would have got some proper stick on here though if hed signed Long or Woods or Ings or someone like that in the pre season (though with hindsight we should)
Our main problems have been at the other end of the pitch.
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Very interesting point there Lucky Eddie. We do have Ian Taylor but I know exactly what you mean. Southgate is one obvious example of the kind of thing you are referring to.
David Platt was always the best example of it when he used to turn up on Sky and big up Man. United at every opportunity (this was before he worked at Man. City under Mancini) and downgrade us. Pretty sure Petrov has done some Villa games in the past on Sky.
Wonder if likes of Barry and Milner will be used when they retire and decide to go into punditry?
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I was thinking this morning about what an absolute joke it is that we have been through a whole season without a decent striker.
You look at the teams who have played their way out of danger and the fine margins all the way down from Burnley and a big difference has been having a decent striker hitting form. It’s not just the goals, it’s the mentality of knowing there’s actually some point to building attacks.
It must be soul sapping playing in a team where the strikers can’t get the goal in the net.
Even though we'd had some terrible performances since xmas the general season standard hasn't been as bad as what we'd regularly churn out during Lambert. However back then you always knew Benteke and to a lesser degree Gabby would hit a good run of goalscoring form at some point, happened when Sherwood came in for last three months of 14/15.
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3 things for me. Trying to bridge a huge gap between 5th in the Ch-ship and the PL...even just to stay up. Poor recruitment of players, not enougjbexperience and quality. 3rd, management not upto the task, yes he had shit players but he does look out his depth.
Spot on DB, pretty much how I see it . What concerns me now is the opinions of some who state " at least we are not in a position as bad as 2016"
Potentially we could be - we will probably lose our " best" players and be left with another team recruitment exercise ahead of us
Plus a new manager/coach
Notwithstanding having to face more local rivals .....time for the CEO to step up to the plate and take big and bold decisions - starting with the appointment of a better manager
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The fact that most of us fans knew the lack of proven striker would be our undoing before a ball was kicked, is a quite frankly unforgiveable error on the club's part.
..... And then to REPEAT that mistake in January is mindblowing!
Yeah. Not buying anyone to even compete with Wesley was madness. Add that to not getting any pace to hurt teams on the break and you're just inviting teams to put you under pressure.
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I've been saying it for years - there are no men in grey suits to advise behind the scenes, no Grand Old Man of Villa Park to reassure the common herd and there are no self-appointed PR men to push our case in the media.
We seem to have more pundits with some degree of connection to the club kicking around than most.
McInally, Townsend, Dublin, Taylor and Hendrie don't try and disguise their affection for the club all that much. Merson you could use the f word (or both f words) about. Platt, Keown and Mouthgate seem to have genuine disdain for the club for reasons known only to themselves.
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The fact that most of us fans knew the lack of proven striker would be our undoing before a ball was kicked, is a quite frankly unforgiveable error on the club's part.
..... And then to REPEAT that mistake in January is mindblowing!
Yeah. Not buying anyone to even compete with Wesley was madness. Add that to not getting any pace to hurt teams on the break and you're just inviting teams to put you under pressure.
But then we had a second bite of the cherry in January. In desperate need of a Striker who could play the lone role, a defensive midfielder and a goalkeeper we picked up 2 semi retired footballers with a handful of games between them in the last 2 seasons and another Belgian league punt.
That tells me that the though process between our scouting and recruitment teams are way off kilter and haven't a clue what they're doing.
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Yeah. Having just Wesley was nowhere near enough. So replying just Wesley with just Samatta was never going to be enough, either.
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It wasn't a moment. For me, its been the fact that ever since O'Neil's departure, the club have made too many repetitive errors in management appointments, repeating the tactic of hiring young, inexperienced managers into a role way above their pay grade - Lambert, Sherwood, Garde, Matteo, and now Smith. None of them had any/anywhere near enough top flight experience. One or two as gambles, fair enough - 5 in 8 years is suicide.
Add to that the fact that even when the club veered away from that tactic, they appointed dull, uninspiring, experienced managers - Bruce and McLeish.
I keep saying it - for Villa to return to top flight stability (which one needs before looking to genuinely compete at the top level) we need to appoint a manager with top flight experience and success.
Is the money there - yes.
Is the brand there - yes.
Is the potential there - yes.
Do those managers exist and are they available - yes
Would they come if offered the role in the summer - maybe.
Is the ambition from the club there - yes.
Do we trust the people running the club to get this right - ???????
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It wasn't a moment. For me, its been the fact that ever since O'Neil's departure, the club have made too many repetitive errors in management appointments, repeating the tactic of hiring young, inexperienced managers into a role way above their pay grade - Lambert, Sherwood, Garde, Matteo, and now Smith. None of them had any/anywhere near enough top flight experience. One or two as gambles, fair enough - 5 in 8 years is suicide.
Add to that the fact that even when the club veered away from that tactic, they appointed dull, uninspiring, experienced managers - Bruce and McLeish.
I keep saying it - for Villa to return to top flight stability (which one needs before looking to genuinely compete at the top level) we need to appoint a manager with top flight experience and success.
Is the money there - yes.
Is the brand there - yes.
Is the potential there - yes.
Do those managers exist and are they available - yes
Would they come if offered the role in the summer - maybe.
Is the ambition from the club there - yes.
Who are tha managers you believe exist and are available?
Do we trust the people running the club to get this right - ???????
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Schmidt, Setien, Marcelino - to name just 3.
This question (who?) is often asked and when people suggest names the same people usually come out with the “they won’t come” nonsense.
Hasenhüttl is a really good example of a promising manager who came to Saints (surely no more attractive that Villa) with top flight experience and the ambition to coach in the best league in the world.
Bielsa at Leeds. Was he too big for a Championship club.
We have just done a very poor job appointing managers, it’s really that simple. And sadly, when I look at the setup of the club today, I fear we won’t fix it anytime soon despite the fact we could. And the longer we go on in this state, the harder it will be to make the turn.
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We should have signed players that were less of a gamble. 2016 all over again
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We should have signed players that were less of a gamble. 2016 all over again
Fair comment but 2016 is as much about poor leadership and management as the recruitment side.The 2 full time managers we had ,Sherwood and Garde have done nothing since leaving us and frankly were less up to the job than the players like Ayew , Traore who have gone on the better things.
I can't imagine another club in the last 10-15 years have employed so many managers who have gone on to do absolutely nothing since being sacked.Of course then you look at the CEO's in that time and they have proven to be a poor bunch as well.
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Schmidt, Setien, Marcelino - to name just 3.
This question (who?) is often asked and when people suggest names the same people usually come out with the “they won’t come” nonsense.
Hasenhüttl is a really good example of a promising manager who came to Saints (surely no more attractive that Villa) with top flight experience and the ambition to coach in the best league in the world.
Bielsa at Leeds. Was he too big for a Championship club.
We have just done a very poor job appointing managers, it’s really that simple. And sadly, when I look at the setup of the club today, I fear we won’t fix it anytime soon despite the fact we could. And the longer we go on in this state, the harder it will be to make the turn.
i admire your optimism with the first two and nobody has snapped up Marcelino since he left Valencia. I'm all for being ambitious and I think if there is a proven better manager/coach than DS then the owners will pull the trigger if we go down. I always thought it was Rodgers who was their first choice but we didn't have the pulling power at the time. The timeline for the start of a new season is so tight I think they will go for continuity. We will soon know.
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I don’t the question now is where did all go wrong? So much as why does it continue to go wrong? We have all mentioned historical events but right up until our last match, with a minute to go we could have put ourselves just a point behind Watford and failed to do so. We keep receiving chances by our rivals and refuse to take them.
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maybe it all goes wrong because our 11 players on the pitch fail to defend or attack properly?
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Schmidt, Setien, Marcelino - to name just 3.
This question (who?) is often asked and when people suggest names the same people usually come out with the “they won’t come” nonsense.
Hasenhüttl is a really good example of a promising manager who came to Saints (surely no more attractive that Villa) with top flight experience and the ambition to coach in the best league in the world.
Bielsa at Leeds. Was he too big for a Championship club.
We have just done a very poor job appointing managers, it’s really that simple. And sadly, when I look at the setup of the club today, I fear we won’t fix it anytime soon despite the fact we could. And the longer we go on in this state, the harder it will be to make the turn.
Great post, spot on. I fear though we’ll go for Dyche Allardyce or Pearson. Same old manager same old style
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It went wrong at Villa Park, Bodymoor Heath and other locations yet to be determined.
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Stephen Ireland