The legacy of Martin O'Neill

[Dave]

[

If the previous manager had made good use of the funds available chances are 'arry wouldn't have taken over a side scraping about at the arse end of the table. Or taken over at all.

Whilst the above makes logical sense, Ramos (and Jol before him) didn't have anything to do with player transfers which were in the hands of Comolli (and Arnesen before him).

True to an extent.

Comoli organised the transfers, but there was input from the manager of the time.

How much input exactly is open to question.

This model worked so well that when 'arry took over they ditched it and gave him sole control over transfers. Which would again perhaps indicate that the club wasn't in such great shape at the time and needed a change of direction.

Jol has since said that he had no input on which players were brought in - to the extent that he suggested positions on the pitch that he thought needed strengthening and was outright ignored. Ramos came from a culture at Sevilla where Ramon Rodriguez oversaw pretty much everything from the youth system to player transfers. The Jol thing could easily be put down to "sacked manager makes excuses for being sacked", but it was pretty well established that Comolli and Arnesen did pretty much everything transfer related prior to Redknapp coming in.

As for the whole approach not working and it being sensibly scrapped - I think that's quite obvious.

What you have there then if true (and I have no reason to doubt you) is a scenario whereby players were signed by first Arnesen (before he went to Chelsea) and then Comoli and then played (or not) by Jol and shifted around by Ramos.

This does not sound like some dream scenario to walk into, a club in such good shape that all any half decent manager has to do is turn up for training and cruise on autopilot.

There would have been a whole host of dissatisfied players, players gambled on who had perhaps not turned out to be that good, players who were the choice of the DM but for which the coach/manager had absolutely no use for, and good players suffering a crisis of confidence.

Yet within the space of 18 months 'arry had moulded that lot into an effective CL challenging unit, shipping out those not fit for purpose and acquiring players to improve the side. And all within the financial constraints imposed by ENIC, and with a lower wage bill than that at the Villa.  I think it does him a disservice to suggest this was only 'tweaking' too. That might be valid if he had just signed one or two key individuals to complement an already outstanding side. But the volume in both the players in and players out column since he's been in the role isn't consistent with that train of thought.

No disagreement with any of that (apart from maybe "financial constraints imposed by ENIC" - he has spent about £55m [net] in the last two years).

I think he's done a depressingly good job there - just wanted to clarify a couple of inaccuracies in some of the earlier posts.

[KevinGage]

Depressingly good is exactly right.

I hate giving the defective Toby Jug any credit at all.  There is probably nobody in football I'd like to see fail more, truth be told.

[barrysleftfoot]

   Risso.....how much did HR pay for Kaboul last time, £8-10m if my memory serves me well.

  And you was never a fan of him, thats fine, and always highlighted his failures, and never praised his successes.Thats fine, but don't try to make out you are impartial in this discussion.

  Curtis Davies was always going to be the next Rio Ferdinand, or the next Titus Bramble.Unfortunately, it appears that he is going to be the next Bramble, but i think buying the Davies/Delphs/Milners/Ayoungs/Downings of this world is the direction we have to go in.

[Dave]

   Risso.....how much did HR pay for Kaboul last time, £8-10m if my memory serves me well.

£6m when he went to Portsmouth and £5m when he re-joined Spurs if newspaper reports are to be believed.

[Risso]

   Risso.....how much did HR pay for Kaboul last time, £8-10m if my memory serves me well.

  And you was never a fan of him, thats fine, and always highlighted his failures, and never praised his successes.Thats fine, but don't try to make out you are impartial in this discussion.

Reading your posts almost makes me wish Coopers Injury was still here, by comparison tp the hogwash ypu serve up he was the very epitome of a well reasoned, factually accurate poster.

[KevinGage]

This will be the Kaboul that MON also tried to sign in 2008 I take it?

So as well as Davies, Sidwell, Beye, Heskey and co on the books we'd have also had that heap of shite to offload.

[Somniloquism]

   Risso.....how much did HR pay for Kaboul last time, £8-10m if my memory serves me well.

£6m when he went to Portsmouth and £5m when he re-joined Spurs if newspaper reports are to be believed.

£6 mil return plus waving £3.5 mil owed from the Pompey original purchase. So 9-10 mil overall when he went back to spurs. Or so I believe from the time.

[pauliewalnuts]

   Risso.....how much did HR pay for Kaboul last time, £8-10m if my memory serves me well.

  And you was never a fan of him, thats fine, and always highlighted his failures, and never praised his successes.Thats fine, but don't try to make out you are impartial in this discussion.

  Curtis Davies was always going to be the next Rio Ferdinand, or the next Titus Bramble.Unfortunately, it appears that he is going to be the next Bramble, but i think buying the Davies/Delphs/Milners/Ayoungs/Downings of this world is the direction we have to go in.

What's with the three lines of whitespace at the start of every post, BLF?

I always imagine it as you taking a deep breath before posting.

[Dave]

A cursory Google search keeps throwing up the figure of £5m. And whether that is including or excluding any monies owed I'm not sure I'd want to speak with any authority on that. Without seeing either club's accounts I'm not sure how anyone would really know.

However I would be very surprised if Redknapp mugged Portsmouth for Krancjar for £2.5m and was then ripped off for Kaboul considering what he knew about their finances.

[pauliewalnuts]

This will be the Kaboul that MON also tried to sign in 2008 I take it?

So as well as Davies, Sidwell, Beye, Heskey and co on the books we'd have also had that heap of shite to offload.

That's the thing I like most about MON going, not having to panic every time a patently-not-good-enough player came on the market.

I remember shuddering the day after MON left when hearing a report starting with "Kenwyne Jones is to seal a move to ... " and expecting to hear "Aston Villa" before remembering he'd gone, and thinking "well, at least we won't get linked with predictably, uninspiring players window after wndow, jsut because they fit in with the manager's 'can't be arsed to look elsewhere for value' ethos"

[Dave]

   Risso.....how much did HR pay for Kaboul last time, £8-10m if my memory serves me well.

  And you was never a fan of him, thats fine, and always highlighted his failures, and never praised his successes.Thats fine, but don't try to make out you are impartial in this discussion.

  Curtis Davies was always going to be the next Rio Ferdinand, or the next Titus Bramble.Unfortunately, it appears that he is going to be the next Bramble, but i think buying the Davies/Delphs/Milners/Ayoungs/Downings of this world is the direction we have to go in.

What's with the three lines of whitespace at the start of every post, BLF?

I always imagine it as you taking a deep breath before posting.

Remembering back to Primary School english lessons, you always start a new paragraph with a space - ideally using the width of your index finger as a gauge.

[pauliewalnuts]

   Risso.....how much did HR pay for Kaboul last time, £8-10m if my memory serves me well.

  And you was never a fan of him, thats fine, and always highlighted his failures, and never praised his successes.Thats fine, but don't try to make out you are impartial in this discussion.

  Curtis Davies was always going to be the next Rio Ferdinand, or the next Titus Bramble.Unfortunately, it appears that he is going to be the next Bramble, but i think buying the Davies/Delphs/Milners/Ayoungs/Downings of this world is the direction we have to go in.

What's with the three lines of whitespace at the start of every post, BLF?

I always imagine it as you taking a deep breath before posting.

Remembering back to Primary School english lessons, you always start a new paragraph with a space - ideally using the width of your index finger as a gauge.

Yup. Not three lines of it, though.

I was wondering whether BLF is using some weird mobile device browser that bollockses up the reply box. The browser on the HTC Desire is a bit iffy with them for me.

[Dave]

   Risso.....how much did HR pay for Kaboul last time, £8-10m if my memory serves me well.

  And you was never a fan of him, thats fine, and always highlighted his failures, and never praised his successes.Thats fine, but don't try to make out you are impartial in this discussion.

  Curtis Davies was always going to be the next Rio Ferdinand, or the next Titus Bramble.Unfortunately, it appears that he is going to be the next Bramble, but i think buying the Davies/Delphs/Milners/Ayoungs/Downings of this world is the direction we have to go in.

What's with the three lines of whitespace at the start of every post, BLF?

I always imagine it as you taking a deep breath before posting.

Remembering back to Primary School english lessons, you always start a new paragraph with a space - ideally using the width of your index finger as a gauge.

Yup. Not three lines of it, though

I reckon the space at the start of each of his paragraphs is about the width of a relatively slim finger placed against a computer monitor.

[KevinGage]

I'm glad of many things he did whilst he was here.

He was instrumental in our change of image nationwide. We had become a bit of a joke at the back end of the Ellis campaign and he made us newsworthy again. Usually for the right reasons, until the very end.

I was also quite happy with a British core to the side, particularly when you hear of the divide at other clubs where the foreigners and home based players remained in separate camps.

For all our tactical deficiency and some of the outright shite that was served up at home matches you would also vary rarely see any Villa side giving less than 100%, or not look interested. We've heard various reports of player unrest but they must have respected/ feared him enough to give their all, the limited chosen few anyway. The regular starting XI that he ran into the ground.

We won 17 league games last year and 17 the season before. Not easy in a league as competitive as the Premiership and any manager coming in will have a job to match that alone.

All good things.

But I must say I am relieved that we escaped without a McGeady or Kenwyne Jones on the books. Or worse, a Ricardo Fuller or Gary O'Neill. And the various debates that would have no doubt ensued trying to argue that actually they weren't that bad after all.

[Dave]

Even without him here I'd rather he had spent £3m on Ricardo Fuller than Heskey the other year.

A very underrated player in my opinion.