Spent 121.5m Recouped 39m

[PaulWinch again]

M'ON did a reasonable job with the money spent and that's it. I think other manager's could have done it without falling out with so many players.

[barrysleftfoot]

   Regardless of what your views on MON, i would say the 4 years he had here was one of the best periods of supporting Villa in the last 30 years.

  For me only the Saunders/Barton period, and BFRs first 2 years were better.

  What i would say about MON is that he has left us in a good state.A yardstick of a manager for me is how much would he get for the players he has bought, and i think MONs buys would if necessary leave us in positive territory.

  Its over now, hes gone, who was right or wrong i don't really care, its time to move on, and know that we have a good basis for a very good young team, and the next appointment will hopefully carry us on.

[Percy McCarthy]

   Regardless of what your views on MON, i would say the 4 years he had here was one of the best periods of supporting Villa in the last 30 years.

  For me only the Saunders/Barton period, and BFRs first 2 years were better.

  What i would say about MON is that he has left us in a good state.A yardstick of a manager for me is how much would he get for the players he has bought, and i think MONs buys would if necessary leave us in positive territory.

  Its over now, hes gone, who was right or wrong i don't really care, its time to move on, and know that we have a good basis for a very good young team, and the next appointment will hopefully carry us on.

What about Little? I liked Gregory for a while as well.

[barrysleftfoot]

  And me Percy.......whilst everyone else was having orgasms over Luke Moore, i always said Gabby would be better.

  And the Fonz will be better than Gabby, and don't start me off on how good Delph should be.

  We will look back in about 10 years time, and thank MON for buying Delph.

[barrysleftfoot]

  For me    1st...Saunders/Barton  75-82 period.
                 2nd...BFR...1st 2 years...1994 magnificent.
                 3rd..MON and BLs first 2 years.

[Dave Cooper please]

3 of them left for nothing and only me and O'Neill thought Gabby was any good at the time.

With all due respect Percy, that really is bollocks. I personally wasn't sure about him but I was in a very small minority amongst the masses that thought Gabby was going to be the next Gary Lineker.

[smudger]

Anyone who thinks spending £20m per season for 4 years is going to turn relegation fodder into champions league is deluded. MON did pretty well with this in mind. What i objected to was the shite football that was served up over the last 2 seasons at home. And i do agree that if the wages were out of hand they need sorting out, and i can understand the board being pissed off with MON bringing players in on these wages and not using them. I hope for the future that if we can get the wage bill to a more acceptable level, transfer funds will be available once again to any new manager. And hopefully this one will unearth some gems for decent fees and affordable wages, which was obviously something O'Neill was incapable of. It was like John Gregory all over again.

[supertom]

Was talking to a mate of mine who's seen plenty of O Neill in the Wycombe days, and knows a someone who knows Martin, and he probably hit the nail on the head, as he puts it: You can't call his bluff. He probably made his ultimatum, Randy calls his bluff, and Martin walks. He's stubborn as they come, for better or worse.

I don't particularly agree about the "too big for his boots" angle. I don't think Martin is like Mourinho, and incredibly arrogant. He's got a bit of that in him, but he's just pig headed. That's done us good at times, and not so in others.

Still, his timing was shitty, but that's O Neill for you. He decided to walk, and did so. He leaves us in decent nick. To have genuinely become a competitive top 4 side, which was the initial plan, we'd need to invest a lot more cash for more quality, which wasn't do-able sadly. No fault of Randy's. He's ploughed the cash in and Martin has misused a fair wedge. He evidently feels that Randy should risk a bit more in order to bridge the gap. Maybe he should, maybe he shouldn't. I think Randy's right though. We don't want the club to go down the pan by overextending ourselves, that's for sure. And Randy's no idiot. He's put his own wealth in, but he's not gonna piss his money away willy nilly. At some juncture he wants to turn a profit. Fair enough.

It's just one of those football things. A butting of heads, with one head housing one of the most stubborn brains in the game. 

Onwards and, at the very least I hope, sidewards.

[Villa'Zawg]

Anyone know Saggyface's net spend at Tottenham?

In the same 4 year period Spurs have roughly the same net spend as us but were clearly starting from a much higher base as they've been investing at that level for longer.

Just interested to see what it was if anyone has an idea

I make it just over £50m net since January last year.

Jan 2009
Jermain Defoe (£15m, Portsmouth), Wilson Palacios (£12m, Wigan), Pascal Chimbonda (£2.5m, Sunderland), Robbie Keane (£12m, Liverpool)
Total: £41.5m
Out: none
Total: £0
Net: £41.5

Summer 2009
In: Kyle Naughton (£8m, Sheffield United), Kyle Walker (£2m, Sheffield United), Peter Crouch (£9m, Portsmouth), Sebastian Bassong (£8m, Newcastle United), Niko Kranjcar (£2.5m, Portsmouth)
Total: £29.5m

Out: Didier Zokora (£7.75m, Sevilla),  Chris Gunter (£1.75m, Nottingham Forest), Darren Bent (£10m, Sunderland), Pascal Chimbonda (£2m, Blackburn Rovers), Kevin-Prince Boateng (£4m, Portsmouth
Total: £25.5m
Net: £4m

Jan 2010
In: Younes Kaboul (£5m, Portsmouth)
Total: £5

Out: None
Total: £0
Net £5m

[Arsey]

  For me    1st...Saunders/Barton  75-82 period.
                 2nd...BFR...1st 2 years...1994 magnificent.
                 3rd..MON and BLs first 2 years.

the start of Gregory's time in charge was pretty decent to say the least.

GT Mk1 too??

[Villa'Zawg]

A net spend of £80m over 4 years is not enough to turn a 16th placed team into one who should be assured of a CL place. A good return on that investment would be one that was able to challenge for 4th place and be in with a shout in the cups. Which would also give it a good foundation for pushing on with the right amount of further investment.

That's misleading though.

We still had players of the class of Barry, Mellberg, Gabby, Laursen, Bouma etc.  That team should never have been 16th in the first place.

As much as I share your admiration for some of  the players O'Neill inherited, the only reason we have a relatively high net spend is that the entire squad has brought in only £40m cash on the transfer market.

Of course, that low market value was fully reflected in the extremely low purchase price for the club of £64m. We still have Gabby, Carew and Petrov.

[pauliewalnuts]

Anyone who thinks spending £20m per season for 4 years is going to turn relegation fodder into champions league is deluded. MON did pretty well with this in mind. What i objected to was the shite football that was served up over the last 2 seasons at home. And i do agree that if the wages were out of hand they need sorting out, and i can understand the board being pissed off with MON bringing players in on these wages and not using them. I hope for the future that if we can get the wage bill to a more acceptable level, transfer funds will be available once again to any new manager. And hopefully this one will unearth some gems for decent fees and affordable wages, which was obviously something O'Neill was incapable of. It was like John Gregory all over again.

Spot on.

That's what gets on my tits, that whole "well, if you expected us to break the CL, you're deluded" thing.

I never thought he had what it takes to move us into the top four, but that wasn't the thing that made me lose it with him. Sixth is decent, after all.

It was precisely what you said, two entire years of absolutely shit football at home. Going to the match became predictable and boring. Maybe it was the euphoria of the preceeding two years, the first of the new regime, and that made it stand out more, but the best thing for me now is thinking that from Saturday, perhaps it won't be all quite so predictable.

As for signings, driving home tonight I heard Kenwynne Jones had signed for Stoke and found myself automatically start thinking "well, thank god for that, that means we won't be signing him" then had to remind myself that MON is gone, and so, hopefully, is the unimaginative, myopic transfer policy.

[Percy McCarthy]

3 of them left for nothing and only me and O'Neill thought Gabby was any good at the time.

With all due respect Percy, that really is bollocks. I personally wasn't sure about him but I was in a very small minority amongst the masses that thought Gabby was going to be the next Gary Lineker.

To be fair Dave, that wasn't the case when I said he'd better than Lennon when DOL was manager. Some said I was jumping the gun, and nearly everybody else took the piss. It was only after MON started picking him all the time that 'some'  other posters saw sense. Except you of course. *wink*

[pauliewalnuts]

A net spend of £80m over 4 years is not enough to turn a 16th placed team into one who should be assured of a CL place. A good return on that investment would be one that was able to challenge for 4th place and be in with a shout in the cups. Which would also give it a good foundation for pushing on with the right amount of further investment.

That's misleading though.

We still had players of the class of Barry, Mellberg, Gabby, Laursen, Bouma etc.  That team should never have been 16th in the first place.

As much as I share your admiration for some of  the players O'Neill inherited, the only reason we have a relatively high net spend is that the entire squad has brought in only £40m cash on the transfer market.

Of course, that low market value was fully reflected in the extremely low purchase price for the club of £64m. We still have Gabby, Carew and Petrov.

Two of the players he mentioned had to retire through injury, one left with a year to go on his contract (and we still got 12m for him), one ran his contract down, and the other is still playing for us.

How much more would he have had to spend, had he not had those players to start with?

[Dave Cooper please]

3 of them left for nothing and only me and O'Neill thought Gabby was any good at the time.

With all due respect Percy, that really is bollocks. I personally wasn't sure about him but I was in a very small minority amongst the masses that thought Gabby was going to be the next Gary Lineker.

To be fair Dave, that wasn't the case when I said he'd better than Lennon when DOL was manager. Some said I was jumping the gun, and nearly everybody else took the piss. It was only after MON started picking him all the time that 'some'  other posters saw sense. Except you of course. *wink*

I know you and a couple of others were bigging him up from reserve games (Mazrim was probably another), but I still seem to remember quite a buzz about him mainly from his goal scoring exploits in the Academy. Maybe I'm using a bit of hindsight, but from what I can remember he was picked as "the next big thing" by a lot of people.
I'll admit I was wrong though, I saw nothing to excite me that much. You'll be pleased to know that I have said the same about Delfouneso!