Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: dave.woodhall on August 11, 2022, 10:13:35 PM
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Robin Wilkes looks at what Steven Gerrard's got to do.
https://heroesandvillains.info/2022/08/11/continuous-improvement/
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Gerrad?
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Will FB on Sunday.
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Very interesting theme for an article on the Villa, had never thought about the season-on-season improvement being so difficult and rare after you've manage two decent years. I guess our sporadic success since the 1890s is testament to that.
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Some well tuned points. Great read.
By the way Gerrard at Rangers- he really started seeing a full consistent progress in his third season where he achieved his ultimate success. The whole season unbeaten and winning the league.
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A good read. Was thinking, as i really don’t know, over the last 50/60/70 years are there any clubs other then Man Utd, Liverpool and now Man City that have achieved year on year succes or improvement? Arsenal perhaps in the early 2000s with Wenger, but even then it seemed intermittent between them and and Man Utd?
Our seems a tale of several missed opportunities, or events out of our hands, allowing Saunders to resign rather than rebuild again, investing in the wrong players (Collymore, Curcic) after the really good 95-96 season under Little in particular and Doug not seizing the day, Taylor going to England in 90.
I suppose several bigger clubs, Spurs and Newcastle spring to mind, could point to their own nuanced missed opportunities for sustained improvement and success.
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I suppose several bigger clubs, Spurs and Newcastle spring to mind, could point to their own nuanced missed opportunities for sustained improvement and success.
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That was an accidental emoji, of which I disapprove. I meant ? ? ?.
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I suppose several bigger clubs, Spurs and Newcastle spring to mind, could point to their own nuanced missed opportunities for sustained improvement and success.
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I know i did wince when typing it, ive had a week off alcohol i blame that for my indiscretion!! I apologise to all for any offence caused!
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Really enjoyed reading it.
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Very interesting read and well researched
Thanks
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It's easier to provide "continuous improvement" when you take over a club in the lower half of the Championship. Even then, Smith was massively struggling with a team with Abraham, Mings, McGinn, Hourihane and El Ghazi in it. 1 win in 11 games and going nowhere, until Grealish came back to save the season. Then whatever you do in the Premier League, even if we'd finished 20th, it would still have automatically been an improvement on any place in the Premier League.
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Ah, the old Grealish 'one-man team' myth.
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It's easier to provide "continuous improvement" when you take over a club in the lower half of the Championship. Even then, Smith was massively struggling with a team with Abraham, Mings, McGinn, Hourihane and El Ghazi in it. 1 win in 11 games and going nowhere, until Grealish came back to save the season. Then whatever you do in the Premier League, even if we'd finished 20th, it would still have automatically been an improvement on any place in the Premier League.
I think you’re right Risso. A Di Matteo, Bruce, or anyone could have waltzed into the job, answered a couple of emails of a day, pop in for a chat with the players, let Abhram and Grealish sort out on pitch matters, have a few cups of tea and boom: continuous improvement achieved: new centre back pairing, 10 game winning streak, promotion without a pre-season, promotion at first attempt, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah. There’s been alot of talk about chancers recently but Smith blagged it for years until he finally got found out. I just don’t get why people on here keep banging on and on and on about him. I think it’s just because he supported the club. Thankfully our new ‘no excuses’ culture will mean that continuous improvement will now be ‘business as usual.’ Looking forward to us getting above 55 points this season.
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Actually, ANY centre-back pairing would have been nice.
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Ah, the old Grealish 'one-man team' myth.
Well, we were at nothing until he returned...but I thought Deano getting Steer back was critical. Wtf Bruce (and Gary Walsh) saw in Nyland I'll never know, a car crash in goal. Steer just brought that assurance that he wasn't going to throw one in any minute. Mings, rescued from Bournemouth reserves, was an inspired loan too.
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Kalinic or Nyland in goal, CB pairings for most of that crap run were Chester on one leg, and either Elphick or Bree, and even when Mings came in that was a player with only about 10 league starts in the previous 3+ years so took time to get up to speed. I'm amazed we weren't smashing the league with a defence that wasn't really worthy of the name.
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Agree with most of this.
Getting Jed back and finding he was better that the THREE 'keepers that Bruce had brought in shows the depths we had sunk to in failing to use our own resources.
By the end of Jan, we had two left-sided centre-backs. Before this we hadn't had any. Tuanzebee was out for more than three months with injury. Jack coming back undoubtedly was a big moment but, as Mr Saunders used to say, it's a team job and we'd improved everywhere on the pitch by the time the long winning run started.
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In the three years we were in the second division we used Gollini, Bunn, Johnstone, Steer, Nyland, Kalinic, plus Moreira in the LC. We really did piss away a small fortune as a second tier club.
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Ah, the old Grealish 'one-man team' myth.
Ah, the old "can't be bothered to actually look at the results with him and without him" routine.
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Ah, the old Grealish 'one-man team' myth.
Ah, the old "can't be bothered to actually look at the results with him and without him" routine.
That depends on which manager you’re looking at him under. There’s a sharp rise in the percentage relating to overall wins of the side in all competitions when he was involved (83% on average for 3 seasons) under one manager in particular, which drops to 60% under another and then to 50% under a further different manager. That’s just appearances, not direct goal contributions (goals or assists). But again, the numbers on those jump sharply under one manager more than others. This one manager found a way to improve Joe’s direct goal contributions and how he could help the team win more than others, even with accounting for the frequent injuries Joe would have in a season.
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Done.
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Going back to your list, PWS -of course, Steer was on the books for the whole time!
He's had his injury issues here but he's never let anyone down.
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Continuous improvement is a bit like continuous economic growth - a nonsense myth, not how life works - that said wouldn’t mind a decade of it at the Villa!
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Great read!
It maybe the romantic in me but I still think DS would have finished higher than SG did.
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Great read!
It maybe the romantic in me but I still think DS would have finished higher than SG did.
Not a chance, I think he'd lost it completely.