?% Villa. Martinez, MON and the pie eaters

[Ad@m]

Surely with the stated ambition of the board that the club must be financially self-sufficient and the fact that we couldn't maintain the level of spend under MON with 6th place finishes (ie without the Champions League money) proves we underachieved?

[Greg N'Ash]

Surely with the stated ambition of the board that the club must be financially self-sufficient and the fact that we couldn't maintain the level of spend under MON with 6th place finishes (ie without the Champions League money) proves we underachieved?

Well quite. Apparently some think MON only promised to get into the Europa league with all that expenditure

[Percy McCarthy]

Right, so you've changed your mind about him selling Milner then?

no i think its obvious he wanted to sell him the way he let the cat out the bag without telling Milner but he never had to cope without him - he fucked off. I don't see why this is so confusing for you. He had his team, the finished product, built at huge expense and it failed. Whether he sold Milner or not after the failure doesn't really matter does it?

What's confusing is your assertion that the net spend was £80m, when if he sold Milner it was £54m. I don't see why this is so confusing for you.

[Greg N'Ash]

Right, so you've changed your mind about him selling Milner then?

no i think its obvious he wanted to sell him the way he let the cat out the bag without telling Milner but he never had to cope without him - he fucked off. I don't see why this is so confusing for you. He had his team, the finished product, built at huge expense and it failed. Whether he sold Milner or not after the failure doesn't really matter does it?

What's confusing is your assertion that the net spend was £80m, when if he sold Milner it was £54m. I don't see why this is so confusing for you.

I am confused what point your trying to make or why you think its so important, i must admit. If you want to say "MON was a failure who wasted 52m and nearly bankrupted the club before leaving us unprepared on the eve of the season" in preference to "MON was a failure who wasted 80m and nearly bankrupted the club before leaving us unprepared on the eve of the season" then thats fine with me Percy. Either will do.

[TheSandman]

For me- and this isn't a departure from what I've said previously- the money we spent during the MON era gave us no divine right to top 4.  Not that you have that even if you spend Citeh -style digits.

What it did  do is give us a window of opportunity to take advantage of some of the established sides who faltered - Arsenal in 08/09 and Liverpool in 09/10.   

Even genuine miracle workers like the oft mentioned Cloughie at Forest and maybe to a degree Lambert at Norwich did actually need some level of financial backing to deliver the success they managed. They couldn't operate with the well completely dry. They just massively overachieved vis a vis the expendature > success ratio.

O'Neill didn't.  He delivered parity. When factoring in the state of the club when he arrived, against the money he was given to spend (more than the likes of Man U, Liverpool and Arsenal during his time with us). And generously (a little too generously in my opinion) being given the freedom pay his players far more than Tottenham and Everton did. Despite Tottenham generating far more income than we do. Everton, of course  finished above his side three times in his four years at the club.

Despite all that, I struggle to view him as a bad manager. A bad manager would have made a complete hames of the thing, wouldn't have got anywhere near top 4 or secured European qualification.

I just genuinely struggle with the concept that we overachieved on his watch.  All the evidence points to the contrary (except odd stats citing player utilisation measured against made up transfer fees, players girth when taken as a whole et.c). But those who wish to believe it will not be swayed by logic, common sense and so forth. So good luck to 'em.

I agree with pretty much all of that. He wasn't bad, he was fairly decent but he was not as brilliant as his biggest supporters make out. At the end of the day when we look back on him I think we won't look at his time as an exciting chapter, more a decently sized footnote. A bit like John Gregory. To be honest I'm quiet bored of discussing him.

[KevinGage]

Agreed.

Though I do think -when the sting from the manner of his departure has subsided- he'll be viewed more favourably.

The period he was in charge was one of the exciting chapters of our history post WWII. That owed as much to the departure of Herbert and the arrival of RL, of course. But it did feel good to be a Villa fan for the vast majority of his tenure. And maybe that will endure better than technical discussions about style of play, wage bills and so forth.

[Percy McCarthy]

Right, so you've changed your mind about him selling Milner then?

no i think its obvious he wanted to sell him the way he let the cat out the bag without telling Milner but he never had to cope without him - he fucked off. I don't see why this is so confusing for you. He had his team, the finished product, built at huge expense and it failed. Whether he sold Milner or not after the failure doesn't really matter does it?

What's confusing is your assertion that the net spend was £80m, when if he sold Milner it was £54m. I don't see why this is so confusing for you.

I am confused what point your trying to make or why you think its so important, i must admit. If you want to say "MON was a failure who wasted 52m and nearly bankrupted the club before leaving us unprepared on the eve of the season" in preference to "MON was a failure who wasted 80m and nearly bankrupted the club before leaving us unprepared on the eve of the season" then thats fine with me Percy. Either will do.

I'm not making a point. As you keep saying you believe two different things about a factual matter, I'm just seeking clarity.

So, do you a) believe MON sold Milner, making his net spend £54m;

or b) believe the net spend was £80m, because he didn't sell Milner?

Because from your posts it seems you think both are true.

[Greg N'Ash]

A bit of both. i'm sure he'd given the go-ahead but as he was no longer manager when Milner left it can't be taken off his net spend.


*snigger*

[Somniloquism]

i don't think you can call 38 games a fluke - they took advantage of liverpool's problems. We had exactly the same chance with arsenal and we blew it big time.

Well, if you count the 72 points Arsenal finished on in 08/09 as the same as the 58 Liverpool finished on in 04/05 then yes, we had exactly the same chance, other than totally irrelevant 14 point difference.

Them getting to 61 points wasn't a fluke, but 61 points being enough for 4th was.

not sure what the points total prove apart from the league probably being weaker as a whole the season Arsenal were in trouble.

You do remember what Arsenal did when they were struggling Greg? They spent £22mil (a quarter of Mon's Net spend if you take the £80mil figure) on one player who in 12 league games, scored 6 and made another 7 goals. So one player was responsible for 13 goals in their run in and they went on to score 30 goals in 11 matches from the time they went above us at the end of Feb/Start of March 2009.

I'm not absolving MON of any blame as about the same time he signed Heskey (2 gls in 14 games and no assists) for £3.5mil. A lack of a quality squad was also his fault so when we had Carew with his mysterious back injury, Laursen about to retire through injury, Gabby out on his feet and Young's sending off against Sunderland, (where that or him being fined seems to be the start of his slow loss of form,) all conspired with the Arses incredible end form to mean we had no chance at 4th that year compared to the Everton/ Liverpool season.

[Villa'Zawg]

The statistics about our points in comparison to the average of the top six was relevant when you declared that in your opinion we were massively below that average, is no longer relevant now we have the facts to discuss rather than just your skewed opinion?

You'll have to forgive me if I don't take your concerns about your personal integrity seriously whilst you continually accuse me of duplicity and then change the subject when I challenge your accusations.

Feel free to now ignore the Villa points/avg top six points statistics that you raised and change the subject but you'll have to be more specific if you want me to understand the point you are now trying to make regarding the other 14 clubs.

The point I was making, which you misconstrued, and for some reason now accuse me of avoiding, is a simple one. Our points average, total, call it what you like, is below the rest of the top six. That's why we finished sixth. Were it higher than any of theirs we would have finished above them. When you say we spent less than them (according to your figures) you forget to mention this.

The reason to mention 14 other clubs is that you ignore them as though they don't exist. In your world we only compete with the clubs who finish above us, they are our only challengers and the only ones with which to compare our expenditure.

Your puerile and repetitive digs about me I find laughable. It says everything about you that you can abuse me, yet when asked a direct question you squeal "Ooooh, I can't answer that. I'll be banned." 

I didn’t misconstrue your point at all. You made it very clearly. In response to my post you made a specific point about the top six and you accused me of duplicity in having disregarded this point, even though it hadn’t been raised previously in the discussion.

“We were also massively below average in terms of points and league place in the top six. The credibility of your statistics, even dubious ones, would improve immeasurably if you didn't discard ones that don't fit into your argument.”

I specifically addressed your post by posting the relevant statistics, whereupon you suggested those stats weren’t relevant and that I was once again being duplicitous by virtue of the fact that I was conveniently ignoring the other 14 clubs - WTF, as the kids say. I don't ignore them, I'm happy to discuss them, I just don't understand what point you want me to respond to.

I think it is over-egging it a bit to say that I make puerile repetitive digs and abuse you. We had a heated discussion the other night where you gave at least as good as you took and you have now brought the subject up again today. I can’t remember the previous time that such a discussion took place. You on the other hand seem to think it is perfectly acceptable to continually and repeatedly post snide remarks and question my honesty.

And finally, I didn’t squeal “Ooooh, I can't answer that. I'll be banned”. I simply pointed out that when he questioned my support of the club a couple of months ago, I was actually banned for giving him the only straight answer that such a question deserves.

[Greg N'Ash]

i don't think you can call 38 games a fluke - they took advantage of liverpool's problems. We had exactly the same chance with arsenal and we blew it big time.

Well, if you count the 72 points Arsenal finished on in 08/09 as the same as the 58 Liverpool finished on in 04/05 then yes, we had exactly the same chance, other than totally irrelevant 14 point difference.

Them getting to 61 points wasn't a fluke, but 61 points being enough for 4th was.

not sure what the points total prove apart from the league probably being weaker as a whole the season Arsenal were in trouble.

You do remember what Arsenal did when they were struggling Greg? They spent £22mil (a quarter of Mon's Net spend if you take the £80mil figure) on one player who in 12 league games, scored 6 and made another 7 goals. So one player was responsible for 13 goals in their run in and they went on to score 30 goals in 11 matches from the time they went above us at the end of Feb/Start of March 2009.

I'm not absolving MON of any blame as about the same time he signed Heskey (2 gls in 14 games and no assists) for £3.5mil. A lack of a quality squad was also his fault so when we had Carew with his mysterious back injury, Laursen about to retire through injury, Gabby out on his feet and Young's sending off against Sunderland, (where that or him being fined seems to be the start of his slow loss of form,) all conspired with the Arses incredible end form to mean we had no chance at 4th that year compared to the Everton/ Liverpool season.

yeah i take your point but wasn't his spending the main reason why we bought Heskey?- ie that was all we could afford? If we'd hadn't spent 5m on Harwood we'd have 8.5m, kept cahil and not bought Davies probably 16m, more than enough to get a decent striker if not an Arshavin. You can quite easily argue a case that the above and the likes of Sidwell, Shorey etc.. should never have been bought in the first place.

[Dave]

If we'd hadn't spent 5m on Harwood we'd have 8.5m, kept cahil and not bought Davies probably 16m, more than enough to get a decent striker if not an Arshavin. You can quite easily argue a case that the above and the likes of Sidwell, Shorey etc.. should never have been bought in the first place.

So basically your whole points boils down to:

"If he'd not made a single mistake then we'd have done better than we did".

Fascinating insight.

[Greg N'Ash]

If we'd hadn't spent 5m on Harwood we'd have 8.5m, kept cahil and not bought Davies probably 16m, more than enough to get a decent striker if not an Arshavin. You can quite easily argue a case that the above and the likes of Sidwell, Shorey etc.. should never have been bought in the first place.

So basically your whole points boils down to:

"If he'd not made a single mistake then we'd have done better than we did".

Fascinating insight.

I don't call about 40m of reserves he never played a single mistake

[dave.woodhall]

I'm not questioning your honesty at all, I  - and others -saying the figures you use are spurious. I will also say that you are quick to claim we, allegedly, spend less than the clubs you consider to be our rivals. You never bring other, similar-sized clubs, into these equations. Why is this?

You accusing anyone else of snide remarks is rich, to put it mildly. Surely you remember a couple of days ago, when you said I should have told you about a meeting that hadn't then taken place and should behave differently in my work. This, from someone who has just admitted yet again that they are unable to answer a straight question without resorting to abuse.

[Percy McCarthy]

A bit of both. i'm sure he'd given the go-ahead but as he was no longer manager when Milner left it can't be taken off his net spend.


*snigger*

Is English your first language?