Rod Liddle in The Times

[Chris Smith]

Spurs if you include the wage bill as well.

Their squad cost about twice as much as ours.

[Clark W Griswold]

"When he bought the club, you knew you were going to have to pay the price to buy it and then spend on players initially over a number of years.

"We've spent £140m on players and - net - it's still nearly £100m. 22/12/10 Paul Faulkner

Even if you allow him to stretch the boundaries of acceptable use of the word "nearly" in that way, our entire squad was built on that amount plus Agbonlahor.

 I'd be delighted to hear an objective and sensible argument for how one of the other top 6 squads having been built on less resources but I don't think there is one.

It's actually about £70m. And it's been over 4 years. And we had a small squad of mediocre/poor players to start with, and were relegation fodder. Not scant by any means, but not a major fortune either. We could have done slightly better, we could have done quite a bit worse, and we definately could have played better football. MON bought some shit along the way, the club overall have agreed to pay stupid wages. Overall, everyone in important positions in the club must be held part responsible for us acheiving nothing to date and now being in the position we are in. I'm sure they all did their bedt but it hasn't been quite good enough so far to fulfill the dreams we all had when Randy took over. Whether those dreams can be realised are now down to Randy's will and bankbook. I reckon he's got the will but not the bankbook.

[Dribbler]

The guy is a complete and utter twat, used to quite like him when he was on Call My Bluff, but then read some of his articles and saw him on some anti Dawkins program sticking up for the invisible man upstairs, which is surely the absurdist 'sense of expectation' there is, and realised what a completely illogical and annoying fool he is.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

'It seemed to me a matter of great wonder that Aston Villa finished as high as they did last season, even more so the season before.  Villa prospered under O'Neill because they ground out results with great consistancy, despite not - to my mind - having very much in the way of flair to distinguish themselves from the also-rans.'

Can't argue with that.

[lordmcgrath5]

Don't agree with what Rod Liddle says about the Villa in this article, but he's right on the whole about apportioning blame to players and their sense of entitlement. We deserved to finish sixth last season - final league positions tend not to lie. You can have a good cup run and still play very poorly but a 38 game season is a different matter.

On the other hand, I'm not going to get too upset because Rod Liddle's great and I really enjoy his columns. He can write, he's got a brain and a wicked sense of humour and has little respect for those who don't deserve it. Almost always worth reading.

(EDITED: I'd put "A good man" in before but - having read a couple of articles about his extra-curricular activities - I'm not sure his ex-wife for one would agree with that statement).

[Macho Man Randy Savage]

Regardless of whether we spent more than the rest of the top 6, we did spend more than the teams below us, and therefore it is nonsense to talk of MON finishing 6th on scant resources. 6th place is what you would expect to achieve if you are the 6th highest spenders.

[Chris Smith]

Regardless of whether we spent more than the rest of the top 6, we did spend more than the teams below us, and therefore it is nonsense to talk of MON finishing 6th on scant resources. 6th place is what you would expect to achieve if you are the 6th highest spenders.

Sixth was about right for the investment but to push on from that would have taken more than it appeared we were willing to spend.

[Macho Man Randy Savage]

Regardless of whether we spent more than the rest of the top 6, we did spend more than the teams below us, and therefore it is nonsense to talk of MON finishing 6th on scant resources. 6th place is what you would expect to achieve if you are the 6th highest spenders.

Sixth was about right for the investment but to push on from that would have taken more than it appeared we were willing to spend.

I would agree with that yes.

[eamonn]

"When he bought the club, you knew you were going to have to pay the price to buy it and then spend on players initially over a number of years.

"We've spent £140m on players and - net - it's still nearly £100m. 22/12/10 Paul Faulkner

Even if you allow him to stretch the boundaries of acceptable use of the word "nearly" in that way, our entire squad was built on that amount plus Agbonlahor.

 I'd be delighted to hear an objective and sensible argument for how one of the other top 6 squads having been built on less resources but I don't think there is one.

When he took over he had better players than most remember. The main reason for us being so bad in 05/06 was Doolally's failure to get the best of a squad containing Thomas Sorensen, Martin Laursen, Olof Mellberg, Wild Willy Bouma, Gareth Barry, Steve Davis, Milan Baros and Juan Pablo Angel. A talented spine.

Allied to talented players who had fallen away - Samuel, Hendrie, (who MON apparently had a knack of getting the best from), some very talented youngsters - Cahill, Moore, Agbonlahor, solid and steady players - McCann, Hughes and a bit of experienced flair on the bench - Berger and Phillips...to be honest not too far off the quality Houllier arrived to find. O'Neill had a bit more time at the start and the signing of Petrov to hit the ground running.

The argument that he had to rebuild from scratch doesn't ring true to me - he had a good mixture of experience and talent to work with. 

[SoccerHQ]

Last season we drew at Burnley and didn't even beat West Ham or Wolves.

So much for demolishing the relegation teams.

I do sort of agree on his football comment.

[Clark W Griswold]

"When he bought the club, you knew you were going to have to pay the price to buy it and then spend on players initially over a number of years.

"We've spent £140m on players and - net - it's still nearly £100m. 22/12/10 Paul Faulkner

Even if you allow him to stretch the boundaries of acceptable use of the word "nearly" in that way, our entire squad was built on that amount plus Agbonlahor.

 I'd be delighted to hear an objective and sensible argument for how one of the other top 6 squads having been built on less resources but I don't think there is one.

When he took over he had better players than most remember. The main reason for us being so bad in 05/06 was Doolally's failure to get the best of a squad containing Thomas Sorensen, Martin Laursen, Olof Mellberg, Wild Willy Bouma, Gareth Barry, Steve Davis, Milan Baros and Juan Pablo Angel. A talented spine.

Allied to talented players who had fallen away - Samuel, Hendrie, (who MON apparently had a knack of getting the best from), some very talented youngsters - Cahill, Moore, Agbonlahor, solid and steady players - McCann, Hughes and a bit of experienced flair on the bench - Berger and Phillips...to be honest not too far off the quality Houllier arrived to find. O'Neill had a bit more time at the start and the signing of Petrov to hit the ground running.

The argument that he had to rebuild from scratch doesn't ring true to me - he had a good mixture of experience and talent to work with.

I agree that we had a better side than 16th place suggested, but Laursen had been injured much of the time, Bouma, Mellberg and Angel had been under performing and Barry wanted out. What Mon and his team did well when they first came was persuade Barry to stay, and get much better out of Mellberg, Bouma, Laursen and a few others. This was always going to push us up the league in itself, but the signings he made helped push us further up still. I think if you take his record overall in the transfer market, he was mixed, although bought players that fitted his style. Thats part of the problem now. They are too workmanlike to play good football. I also agree with Chris that we havn't really spent enough overall to have given a really good chance of achieving something, i.e. Winning a couple of trophies and/or getting in the champions league.

[Holtenderinthesky]

Isn't he a Millwall fan?  With the exception of Danny Baker I am surprised there is someone that frequents that hell hole of a club that can even read never mind write for The Times.  I have always found him quite interesting to read but that article is off target to say the least.

[Villa'Zawg]

Regardless of whether we spent more than the rest of the top 6, we did spend more than the teams below us, and therefore it is nonsense to talk of MON finishing 6th on scant resources. 6th place is what you would expect to achieve if you are the 6th highest spenders.

Sixth was about right for the investment but to push on from that would have taken more than it appeared we were willing to spend.

That's about the gist of it.

[Mac]

Isn't he a Millwall fan?  With the exception of Danny Baker I am surprised there is someone that frequents that hell hole of a club that can even read never mind write for The Times.  I have always found him quite interesting to read but that article is off target to say the least.

We discuss him every 6 months when he produces an ill-informed article.  I'm getting fed up.  It's like MOTD and TalkSport.

[The Walshmeister]

Can someone stick this twats email address on here and we can ask him why he is so utterly fkin wrong!