One of the things that I remember most from MON's tenure at VP was that there were many, many times where we won or drew games when we didn't deserve it. We all know that he's limited tactically & self opinionated but above all he's lucky. I just hope his luck runs out sometime soon.
I sort of get what you mean.
In the first season or two, it was perhaps asking for too much for us to control and boss games and see out victories against weaker sides with some kind of comfort.
The feeling was that the longer he was in the job and with a better calibre of player on the books, this would happen in time. But we were still holding on for dear life in his fourth year, hacking the ball away like some desperate FA Cup minnow in the last few minutes. I'm not sure that would have changed had he been 5/6 years in the job.
That said, we played with a tenacity and resolution which has often been lacking since. For an outdated manager (and his approach definitely was more 80's) he did well to oversee 16+ league victories for 3 seasons on the bounce. There was a fair degree of excitement in the way we played at times too (even if we did lack variation). That illustrates to me that he still had something about him. And I wouldn't put it purely down to luck. The money helped, sure. But many clubs have spent large sums at different times and got nowhere near that.
I don't delight in his current misfortune . His time with us was largely go-ahead and positive, though his leaving definitely soured that. Managers (like players) have a shelf life though. I think back to BFR's time at Coventry and -as much as most of us didn't want him potted in 1994- I'd have to concede Herbert probably got that one right.
There was a fair degree of excitement in the way we played, but the way we played at home versus away were like two totally different teams.
Away from home, with teams attacking us, we had the shed loads of pace needed to counter attack well, and that's why our away results were so decent. Playing a counter attacking game away from home is nothing to be ashamed of, and is decent to watch. How many years have Man United won the league with that being a big, big part of their success?
But then take a look at the home matches, where teams would often not come and attack us, and we'd have to find a way through. We'd be absolutely hopeless, by and large. Endlessly passing the ball out wide and whipping it in and hoping for something that way is not really much better than just lumping the ball long and hoping for the best - you did it so often that, ultimately, it becomes a numbers game, "something is likely to come from one of these", just like hitting it long is.
In fact, if you look at the final league tables under MON, they tell a story.
In 2008-9, away from home - W10 D2 L7 scored 27 goals, but at home - W7 D9 L3 - scored 27 goals
In 2009-10, away from home - W9 D5 L5 scored 23 goals, but at home - W8 D8 L8 - scored 29 goals]
Now, in both those seasons, we had two home games where we scored 5 goals. If I remember correctly, both those years, one of the teams was Bolton, who for some reason always used to come and play a high defensive line, which was just made for teams with pace up front like us to exploit.
So, if you ignore those two home games, that leaves across 17 home games, 17 goals one year and 19 the next, ie about a goal a game.
Then, look at the teams around us those seasons, and while our away form stands out as excellent, our home form sticks out like a sore thumb compared to our competitors.
In 2009-10, we won 8 home games. Man City, who finished one place above us, won 12, and Liverpool directly below, won 13. We won 8 home games, which is only one more than Burnley, who got relegated that year. In 2008-9, we won the same number of home games as Albion, who actually got relegated that year.
I know that at the time, a few of us would point out the crappy, shapeless football at home (which looks a lot like Sunderland this year) and got a hard time for it. That's fair enough, it is a matter of subjectivity, I thought the football was shite, but I am sure a lot of people thought it was ace, or that all that mattered were the results (although even those were nothing special).
If you look back at it now, though, with the benefit of hindsight, the stats do seem to stand out somewhat.
He never showed the slightest inclination to change the way we approached home games. How many times did we see the same starting XI, tired as fuck by March? Even his substitutions rarely changed - always at roughly 70-75 minutes, and pretty much always involving Sidwell or Heskey, or some random change at right back.
Towards the end, his methods were getting found out. They were somewhat old school when he started with us, by the time he left, they were more so. Sunderland this season seem to be doing exactly the same thing he did with us.
The problem is, there isn't 100+ million pounds to buy sufficient players to eventually get a decent enough group of them to win matches, and furthermore, his ways are even more outdated, but he's still doing exactly the same thing. I just took a look at Soccerbase's Sunderland page, and he's even still doing the 75th minute substitution thing.
I never thought he did enough to get sacked with us - finishing sixth is not going to get a Villa manager the bullet. However, I did think that every year he stayed, the marginal improvement we'd gain by throwing more money at him to recruit players with that same lazy, can't be arsed to scout, predictable approach of his, would become less and less.
In some ways, I actually think one of the most impressive things he did for us was getting us a mid table finish in 2006-7, with next to no time to buy in the summer, and just the players he had been left with. That front three he improvised with JPA and Gabby and Luke Moore on either side wasn't too shabby.
His second season was very good, but there was never really the idea in year three and four that things were going to continue to improve. Sure, we had Villadawg on here all the time telling us a 2 point improvement over a season meant we'd be intergalactic super champions soon enough, but the football got no better, nothing changed, it was the same way of playing week in, week out, and the only approach he ever knew to signing decent players was to throw huge sums of cash around.
Look at Sunderland now, they're truly horrendous to watch. He's thrown a decent sum of money at it and spent £30m on Adam Johnson, Steven Fletcher and Danny Graham. That is a spectacularly bad use of money by anyone's standards, but this week he's moaning again about not having had the chance to bring enough players in?
The best he'll ever do at Sunderland - who have lower aspirations than us, and are operating in a league post Man City, thus making it tougher - is a mid table finish. He's never going to have the ingenuity or desire to change the way he does things to eek out better things, he's just going to throw more money at the same old approach.
I know our aspirations are also lower than they used to be, but I for one would much prefer Lambert's approach of trying to spend the money wisely and bring in players on the up, of scouting them abroad, of appreciating that money actually has a value, and that it isn't an endless pool he can dip into when he needs to, than MON's ongoing attachment to methods which might have served him well 5 or 15 years ago, but don't cut it now.
He did some good things for us, he spent a lot of money, some well, some appallingly badly. The football was nice away from home, but dross at home.
Moan all you like about not going to Wembley any more or not finishing sixth, but football has moved on now. Martin hasn't moved anywhere though, and that's what Sunderland fans are starting to realise
