Mons tribunal hearing?

[Whiney MacWhineface]

Hope he got custody of Heskey.

Snigger

[KevinGage]

So you expected to see Villa bankrupt themselves trying to spend as much as Man City? I'm glad you're not Chairman.

If Randy Lerner (personal fortune $1.5bn, family trust $5bn according to Forbes 2010) can't afford it that's fair enough. The owners of those other clubs clearly can.

In that case. what he should do is try to set supporters expectations accordingly. I believed them when they said they were going to invest enough to make us competitive in the PL and Europe

Didn't he say right from the outset that it wouldn't be a Chelsea scenario ( ie him throwing money at the thing with a load of vanity buys)?

I think being the third highest spenders in the league during MON's time here and backing his replacement with an £18 rising to £24 million investment on one player -just a few months after he arrived- might be viewed in most reasonable circles as investing enough to make us competitive in the PL and Europe.

That two managers in a row haven't maximised that advantage is a separate argument altogether.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Speaking of Chelsea, I wonder if MON is sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring?

[pauliewalnuts]

Speaking of Chelsea, I wonder if MON is sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring?

*chuckle*

obviously, the Chelsea job wouldn't be a patch on the Liverpool one.

[Eigentor]

MON's a good manager. He has always done well wherever he has been. He just isn't as good as we hoped he would be.

MON has his ideas, knows how to build a good competitive team and has a good understanding of the game, especially British football (not every PL manager would have thought of moving Milner inside). What he doesn't have is the tactical nous, the attention to details and the patience that most great managers have. When he has built a good competitive team, his next move is to improve it by signing (hopefully) ever better players. The ability to work with the players on the training ground, improving them on tactics, skills and the details that may be decisive in close matches, that he lacks. And that's why he was found out. When told to slow down the spending, he had no idea of how to improve the team. It turned out that he was simply a decent manager, but not what we needed to take the next step.

[pauliewalnuts]

MON's a good manager. He has always done well wherever he has been. He just isn't as good as we hoped he would be.

MON has his ideas, knows how to build a good competitive team and has a good understanding of the game, especially British football (not every PL manager would have thought of moving Milner inside). What he doesn't have is the tactical nous, the attention to details and the patience that most great managers have. When he has built a good competitive team, his next move is to improve it by signing (hopefully) ever better players. The ability to work with the players on the training ground, improving them on tactics, skills and the details that may be decisive in close matches, that he lacks. And that's why he was found out. When told to slow down the spending, he had no idea of how to improve the team. It turned out that he was simply a decent manager, but not what we needed to take the next step.

While I agree with what you say, Keegan thought of moving Milner inside at Newcastle - that's where he played his last few games for them.

A couple of Newcastle acquaintances of mine used to tell me that their fans always wanted to see him used inside more often.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

MON's a good manager. He has always done well wherever he has been. He just isn't as good as we hoped he would be.

MON has his ideas, knows how to build a good competitive team and has a good understanding of the game, especially British football (not every PL manager would have thought of moving Milner inside). What he doesn't have is the tactical nous, the attention to details and the patience that most great managers have. When he has built a good competitive team, his next move is to improve it by signing (hopefully) ever better players. The ability to work with the players on the training ground, improving them on tactics, skills and the details that may be decisive in close matches, that he lacks. And that's why he was found out. When told to slow down the spending, he had no idea of how to improve the team. It turned out that he was simply a decent manager, but not what we needed to take the next step.

While I agree with what you say, Keegan thought of moving Milner inside at Newcastle - that's where he played his last few games for them.

A couple of Newcastle acquaintances of mine used to tell me that their fans always wanted to see him used inside more often.

Milner really impressed me at Newcastle when he played inside, he's never a winger, can't cross for a start.

Agree with Eig. MON's idea of tactically improving the team is restricted to buying better players. It's no wonder he ran away.

[Villa'Zawg]

So you expected to see Villa bankrupt themselves trying to spend as much as Man City? I'm glad you're not Chairman.

If Randy Lerner (personal fortune $1.5bn, family trust $5bn according to Forbes 2010) can't afford it that's fair enough. The owners of those other clubs clearly can.

In that case. what he should do is try to set supporters expectations accordingly. I believed them when they said they were going to invest enough to make us competitive in the PL and Europe

Didn't he say right from the outset that it wouldn't be a Chelsea scenario ( ie him throwing money at the thing with a load of vanity buys)?

I think being the third highest spenders in the league during MON's time here and backing his replacement with an £18 rising to £24 million investment on one player -just a few months after he arrived- might be viewed in most reasonable circles as investing enough to make us competitive in the PL and Europe.

That two managers in a row haven't maximised that advantage is a separate argument altogether.

Our squad when he bought the club for £64m was worth £40m + Gabby. We know that because that is how much we raised by disposing of that squad.

During the first 4 years we invested £20m per season on improving the squad. That level of investment had been enough to keep steadily improving. I don't think it needed Chelsea or Man City type investment and there's been nothing to suggest the manager was asking for that type of investment.

It's great that we bought Bent but we did so with money raised from selling Milner, there hasn't been any significant investment in improving the squad since summer 2009.

I appreciate the job O'Neill did when he was here but I don't give a shit about him now. I'm concerned with how any manager can be expected to bridge the gap without even those modest (in PL terms) levels of investment.

[KevinGage]

MON's a good manager. He has always done well wherever he has been. He just isn't as good as we hoped he would be.

In a nutshell.

Nobody could reasonably describe his time with us as abject failure. But for a bloke whose modus operandi was -prior to the Villa job-  getting more from less and generally exceeding expectations, he fell a fair bit short of that with us.

[Clampy]

I can't remember the last time we missed a player as much as we do Milner. He should have given us another couple of seasons, he would have been a much better player for it.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Our squad when he bought the club for £64m was worth £40m + Gabby. We know that because that is how much we raised by disposing of that squad.

Using the same logic, Houllier must have inherited a squad only worth half that value.

[pauliewalnuts]

Our squad when he bought the club for £64m was worth £40m + Gabby. We know that because that is how much we raised by disposing of that squad.

Out of interest, why the need to remind us how much he paid for the club in that sentence?

What are you getting at? Would it be a "he paid fuck all for the club .. he's invested bollocks all .. he's a tight arse" style line, by any chance? Apologies if it isn't, but that's the way it looks.

It's a bit hard to believe your comment about not giving a shit about O'Neill any more, given that pretty much everything you post is in some way about him - Lerner is a tight arse, Faulkner forced MON out, even - when people praise the Bent signing - yeah, but John Carew (a MON signing, lest we forget) was just as prolific.

That doesn't sound like someone who no longer gives a shit about O'Neill.

Incidentally, net spend table 2006-11

[KevinGage]

Our squad when he bought the club for £64m was worth £40m + Gabby. We know that because that is how much we raised by disposing of that squad.

Out of interest, why the need to remind us how much he paid for the club in that sentence?

What are you getting at? Would it be a "he paid fuck all for the club .. he's invested bollocks all .. he's a tight arse" style line, by any chance? Apologies if it isn't, but that's the way it looks.

That part also assumes that the fee those players eventually went for (and some of them went for nowt remember) was the same as their market value in 2006. So it's flawed from the outset. Or the kind of selective figures one might use to prop up/ attempt to give credibility to an already weak argument. But VD wouldn't do that...

[RunRickyRun]

During the first 4 years we invested £20m per season on improving the squad. That level of investment had been enough to keep steadily improving. I don't think it needed Chelsea or Man City type investment and there's been nothing to suggest the manager was asking for that type of investment.

It's great that we bought Bent but we did so with money raised from selling Milner, there hasn't been any significant investment in improving the squad since summer 2009.

We lost almost £38 million last year with wages accounting for 88% of our turnover.

How much more investment do you think we could sustain?

[Chris Smith]

I really don't want this thread to go the way of so many others but we were paying catch up with squads who had far more invested in them over a much longer period and have a higher combined transfer vLue even now.