RAL Takeover 5 Years In

[garyshawsknee]

He has pumped a shit load of cash into the club,a lot on players,its a shame that quite a lot of it was wasted on average players. Maybe his biggest mistake was letting M'ON have too much power but at the time it did seem right,even if the 10 million spent on like of Harewood and Knight did seem odd.

 I may be old fashioned,but id prefer a Randy to an arab who can bankroll us,and spend money at will,pushing transfer fees and wages sky high,and little by little selling the soul of the club,breeding a new type of fan who wants it all now,at all costs.

[Eigentor]

I don't think the right question is whether Randy has invested enough, but why the club doesn't seem to be particularly well-run. Maybe the problem isn't that MON had too much power, but that we were overly reliant on him. His leaving seems to have exposed a few flaws in how the club works.

[TelfordVilla]

Randy has undoubtedly spent a lot of his own money on Villa and it was close to being enough to get us into the champions league, but if we had, the level of investment would never have been enough to make it anymore than a one season wonder.

That however was then and things have moved on to the extent that even if Randy had been prepared to sustain his spending it would never be enough now.

For example if you compare our spending from 07 to 09 it's nothing to what Liverpool are spending now in there attempt to get back to the promised land.

Accordingly you can hardly blame Randy for giving up in light of the huge spending power of the competion.

However understandable or not, the fact remains that we aren't going to see any significant success under the current  regime.   

When bemoaning the lack of spending of the last couple of years and assuming Mr Learner has run out of funds or lost the will to spend, it may be worth remembering that we had no manager last 'close season' so couldn't buy anyone. The best bit of business was done in the January window with the 'amazing' big spend on Bent and another £6m on Makoun. So far we havn't had a manager this close season. ( McLeish has had what, a week to sign how many players exactly ? ) I think the owners have done everything they could to run Villa properly. The funds will be provided to get a new keeper and one or two other players but times are a changing. It is now more than ever about bringing through youth players rather than buying superstars. Villa lose their best player each year because we are not in the Champions League. Downing will go next year and Bent will go the year after that. Villa have to produce young players to take their places and hopefully have them on long contracts for lower wages than the current 'stars' are on.

[AV82EC]

I don't think the right question is whether Randy has invested enough, but why the club doesn't seem to be particularly well-run. Maybe the problem isn't that MON had too much power, but that we were overly reliant on him. His leaving seems to have exposed a few flaws in how the club works.

Spot on and is my biggest concern moving forwards.  I actually think Houllier, in the longer term would have been a superb appointment as he completely restructured the football side of the club after dinosaur O'Neill, and why I've a few concerns with McLeish.  Randy's biggest issue for me moving forwads is gettinga  better performance from Faulkner on the commercial and matchday income side.  Its improved over the last 5 years but not half as rapidly as our competition and thats whats going to start holding us back as we go through the next few years.  The Genting deal, if it is £8m a year is a good start, but we need more lucrative commercial sponsorships to progress further.

[charlie659]

One thing's for sure, if HDE was still here we'd probably be floundering around in the champioship now with 'Ex-Villan' Simon Stainrod as manager and signing players from Preston.

[Toronto Villa]

They haven't realised their ambitions, the Premier League has moved on and Lerner doesn't have the money or the nous to keep up with the pace.

I assume you've told him that to his face, Risso?

I'm sure he hasn't Rog. In my opinion Risso's position on the board is as misplaced as those who insist they're not to be questioned or that they've done nothing wrong. They are both extremes and neither tell the full story. The truth is somewhere in the middle, and my take is that they've done far more good than bad.

[Nigel Macdougall]

One thing's for sure, if HDE was still here we'd probably be floundering around in the champioship now with 'Ex-Villan' Simon Stainrod as manager and signing players from Preston.

Would we ? Another case of let's knock Doug.

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

Lerners crap and has been from day one. So was Doug and for that matter Bendalls, Dugdale, Mackay, Kartz, Jim Hartley, Alan Smith, Norman Smith, Normansells, and every bloody shareholder even if you bought just one lets face it you only got it for the season ticket discount and so you could frame the certificate put it on your wall and once a year go to an AGM and spout some crap at the directors through a microphome while Doug laughed and sneered at you. Well if you had just one share your culpable for all the mess we are all in, yes you! being part of the rotten bloody system! Rinder and Mcgregor were the thin end of the wedge, I said it would all end in tears.

We demand a socialist fans collective, the club run by the fans for the fans with all decisons reached by committees democratically elected by the fans with a full and equal distribution of tickets, merchandise according to each fans need.

FREEDOM FOR ASTON ! POWER TO THE PEOPLE !



 

[TelfordVilla]

Lerners crap and has been from day one. So was Doug and for that matter Bendalls, Dugdale, Mackay, Kartz, Jim Hartley, Alan Smith, Norman Smith, Normansells, and every bloody shareholder even if you bought just one lets face it you only got it for the season ticket discount and so you could frame the certificate put it on your wall and once a year go to an AGM and spout some crap at the directors through a microphome while Doug laughed and sneered at you. Well if you had just one share your culpable for all the mess we are all in, yes you! being part of the rotten bloody system! Rinder and Mcgregor were the thin end of the wedge, I said it would all end in tears.

We demand a socialist fans collective, the club run by the fans for the fans with all decisons reached by committees democratically elected by the fans with a full and equal distribution of tickets, merchandise according to each fans need.

FREEDOM FOR ASTON ! POWER TO THE PEOPLE !



 

All those who agree say Fulham. (All) Fulham ? Carried unanimously.

[Risso]

They haven't realised their ambitions, the Premier League has moved on and Lerner doesn't have the money or the nous to keep up with the pace.

I assume you've told him that to his face, Risso?

I'm sure he hasn't Rog. In my opinion Risso's position on the board is as misplaced as those who insist they're not to be questioned or that they've done nothing wrong. They are both extremes and neither tell the full story. The truth is somewhere in the middle, and my take is that they've done far more good than bad.

"Told him that to his face"?  What on earth is that supposed to mean?

[ktvillan]

I'm not sure anyone is claiming Stride was an administrative genius.  He wouldn't have to be to be better than Faulkner and co. Mere competence, a basic knowledge of English football, an ability to learn from mistakes and knowing the difference between his arse and his elbow would have been enough for him to be missed.  As usual Paulie is on the money, for all RL's good intentions,  the club has been run appallingly badly for at least the last 12 months.  Brown's fans seem to have a similar, but longer, version of the same story.  Basically RL means well, but does not seem to be very good at running sporting institutions.

[Monty]

The real problem with the managerial process was this insistence on Premier League experience. This seems to have been a priority prized so highly it trumped things like style of football, a track record of bringing through youngsters, even success. It seems to me that Randy would have been getting advice from people who would feed him cliched non-information, perhaps saying things like 'safe pair of hands' and 'steady the ship' - forgetting that, in football, staying still is going backwards - and this PL experience card has landed us with a manager who, although he has no style of football to speak of and no track record with youngsters (surely crucial to our strategy), does have literal experience of managing - and getting relegated twice - from the Premier League. I desperately want him to succeed, but it's hard to see past the idea that Randy has done the manager equivalent of a MON signing - steady-eddy, unspectacular British bog-standard who has a definite limit on how far he can take us.

[Hopadop]

I remember in the early days of the takeover thinking the sky's the limit. There was talk of links with IMG. It was all a bit giddy and, truth be told, I felt a bit anxious about it.

But then I read, probably on here so it's probably bollocks, that Randy's wealth was less than that of Gold and Sullivan, which put things into perspective for me and I've lowered my expectations since then.

I like him, and on balance I'm still pleased we've got him, but he's not rich or stupid enough to fund / invest / whatever much more than he has.

I'd be surprised if he's here for another five years.

[NorthYvillan]

Is there anyone on earth that can meet and/or live up to the expectations of some of our number?

The manager has been backed – be it MON or GH. Is it the owner’s fault that a lot of money was wasted paying high salaries to players that, after an initial run in the 1st team, were rarely picked?
Was the board wrong to question MON about getting rid of some of these players before handing more cash to spend – if that indeed was the cause of him throwing his toys out of the pram?

The board have always tried to do things the right way – approaching players and managers through official channels rather than dropping loaded hints to the media a la Harry Redknap et al. How many people saw the Darren Bent deal coming until the day the deal was done?

Of course the media don’t like this, so when the search for a new manager began they speculate for all they’re worth, jumping from one managerial target to the next which makes it sound, if you choose to believe them, as if the board are indeed indecisive and/or clueless - which they may have been, but I doubt they were as much as some people here believe. For example, the only reason anyone knew about Martinez was because, for his own reasons, Wigan’s chairman made it public.

Whilst I’m not overly thrilled about our new manager, the board have obviously seen something they like. In his defence it was only the 2nd time this century that a club was relegated with 39 or more points and the injury disruption to SHA’s defence was a major contributory factor. Accepted that his team’s attacking style was limited – but was that the manager’s philosophy or doing the best with what the club could afford? As a Scot, I thought Scotland certainly played well when he was manager. [The domination of Rangers and Celtic in the SPL make it difficult to draw conclusions from his time there.] The attacking players here certainly give him many more options – lets see what he does with them. One thing is for sure, we certainly need to see a better defence next season if we are to avoid another struggle to keep away from the lower reaches of the table.

So, for me, RAL haven’t been perfect but still very good. I would rather have them than the Arab(s) at Man City or even interfering Abramovich at Chelsea – and if UEFA ever get serious about their Financial Fair Play policy then we are in a better position than both of them.

[rutski]

when barca wanted to sign cruyff in the 70's the had a vote whether to add 25% of their season ticket price and 90% of them voted yes!

We are about the 7th best attended club, pay about the 7th best amount in wages, 7th or less expensive club in the prem etc...

would we all put up with £800 or £900 per year to gain that chance of winning the prem.
economics tell me we bat at around the right position!