Turning points ?

[itbrvilla]

Stoke's equaliser.

No doubt whatsoever.

Me too.  Especially as we were cruising most the game untill they pulled one back.  Knew it would happen as well.  We're so predicatble.

Yes, I remember walking away from the ground and hearing so many snatches of conversations like 'I knew it would happen' and 'we always throw it away'.

Number of points lost from a winning position up to that point that season? None.

Never said anything about the rest of the season.  Everyone knew we were going to come undone once they got one back especially as the pressure was very high being ~9 points ahead of Arsenal at the time.

[olaftab]

Well we are in CL qualification position going into the game with Wolves on Saturday. I hope we don't blow it again!!

[ktvillan]

McLeish's appointment is fraught with danger but he has three things going for him 1.  We have got rid of Houllier  2. He is not Gerard Houllier and 3.   He seems to be lucky.   He has had the gentlest of baptisms against two crap teams and does not have to really watch his arse until December by which time his feet will be well and truly under the table at VP.

I've just seen an article on Yahoo about a journalist who analysed several hundred contentious decisions last  season that could have, or did, lead to a goal.  He then recalculated the PL table based on the "correct" decision having been given if technology had been used.  Blues would have had 5 extra points and finished on 44, well clear of relegation. Perhaps AM isn't that lucky after all.

[Concrete John]

He'd have had to step in shit every day of his life and find a 7 leaf clover to be able to break their gypsy's curse!

[sg]

Another vote for stoke here.

I've seen plenty of late equalisers or opposition winners scored against us, but for some reason that goal seemed to hurt alot more, maybe deep-down i knew what was about to happen - and it did.

Despite having 52 points on Sat 28th Feb, in our final 11 league games, we lost 5, drew 4 and won 2... awful form for a team aspiring for champions league.

But other factors also helped like losing Laursen / Bouma to injury, poor signings (harewood, beye etc) and not signing Bent off Spurs, Man.C new owners etc... could go on but im depressed enough now.

[not3bad]

I must admit I have sympathy with the Marlon Harewood viewpoint, though I don't think it was a real turning point.  Up until then the signings that had been made since the RL takeover (not counting a couple of stop gap signings like Chris Sutton and that winger guy) had really pushed the club forward.  I remember speculating upon who Villa would go for when it came to signing a forward that summer.  Jermain Defoe?  Darren Bent?  A big signing from the continent?

Then the news came through - we were in for Marlon Harewood.

[SoccerHQ]

The Abu Dhabi takeover over of Man City knocked the stuffing out of Randy's plans. It came at just the wrong time for us, not only because they lured two of our best players away and the message that sent to their team-mates and our supporters, but the realisation that with their limitless amount of money it was another club we realistically had no chance of competing with. Losing to them at the end of 09/10 was the day we stopped being Champions League dreamers for a long time to come.

Yeah I'd agree with that.

We took the lead in that game aswell. Infact we were leading with a minute to go to half time before Warnock and Downing turned into brain dead footballers.

[Marlon From Bearwood]

I must admit I have sympathy with the Marlon Harewood viewpoint, though I don't think it was a real turning point.  Up until then the signings that had been made since the RL takeover (not counting a couple of stop gap signings like Chris Sutton and that winger guy) had really pushed the club forward.  I remember speculating upon who Villa would go for when it came to signing a forward that summer.  Jermain Defoe?  Darren Bent?  A big signing from the continent?

Then the news came through - we were in for Marlon Harewood.

That same summer that we signed Harewood, Blackburn signed Santa Cruz for about the same price, c.£4m. They went on to sell him for silly money, whereas we got no return on Harewood. That sums up O'Neill in the transfer market for me; ignoring proven quality on the continent in favour of home grown mediocrity.

I'd agree on Stoke being the real turning point though, I still remembering driving home in shock, as the realisation dawned that we'd blown such as massive chance. As I recall Arsenal had been held at home against someone crap so beating Stoke would have seen us open up a real gap.

[IFWaters]

I didnt mean to depress anyone btw, just interested.

I agree with the concensus - to a point - in terms of results / trajectory of the team, the Stoke result was a massive blow to confidence from which we never recovered.

Re the playing staff the Heskey / Bent thing is complex. If I recall correctly Bent wasnt available at the time that Heskey was signed. I think in Jan he was still 'in the frame' at Spurs but a short while later Redknapp made the infamous 'My Mrs could have done better' comment which sealed his fate.

I dont think Spurs would have sold him us at the time. Or am I mixing my years up?

[TopDeck113]

I'll go for the Stoke game, too.

The resulting loss of confidence from failing to hold on to a 2-0 lead against arguably the worst team that visited Villa Park that season, coupled with the Moscow debacle, created a perfect storm. The fall-out from which, with hindsight, MON never really recovered from.

[ez]

Stoke hit a post shortly before they got their first goal. I remember thinking, 'thats a warning sign'.

[TonyD]

Moscow

[Somniloquism]

That same summer that we signed Harewood, Blackburn signed Santa Cruz for about the same price, c.£4m. They went on to sell him for silly money, whereas we got no return on Harewood. That sums up O'Neill in the transfer market for me; ignoring proven quality on the continent in favour of home grown mediocrity.

Whilst the Harewood signing was not the best, Santa Cruz who has only scored double figures in one season (also the only one he was injury free) which is the first season at Blackburn seems a strange example to say proven quality from the continent. They got silly money in the same way we did for Milner, Man Citeh. I don't disagree with the main point on transfers, just that Santa Cruz was as much as a gamble as Harewood at the time.

[Somniloquism]

Stoke hit a post shortly before they got their first goal. I remember thinking, 'thats a warning sign'.

From a 30 yarder wasn't it. And didn't they hit it twice?

I agree a lot of people about Stoke, although the next four matches were Citeh, Liverpool and Manure away and Spurs at home, none of them easy matches to get any points from.

But I agree more with another poster that the loss of Laursen was the bigger turning point. We lost a leader on the pitch, a goal getter at corners and Davies started to lose his confidence which meant we had to spend on two extra defenders which wouldn't have been needed and could have been used to bolster the attack.

[Marlon From Bearwood]

That same summer that we signed Harewood, Blackburn signed Santa Cruz for about the same price, c.£4m. They went on to sell him for silly money, whereas we got no return on Harewood. That sums up O'Neill in the transfer market for me; ignoring proven quality on the continent in favour of home grown mediocrity.

Whilst the Harewood signing was not the best, Santa Cruz who has only scored double figures in one season (also the only one he was injury free) which is the first season at Blackburn seems a strange example to say proven quality from the continent. They got silly money in the same way we did for Milner, Man Citeh. I don't disagree with the main point on transfers, just that Santa Cruz was as much as a gamble as Harewood at the time.

I'd say a Bayern Munich striker who was a regular in the Paraguay national team would be a better bet than a striker in a piss poor West Ham team whose own fans didn't even rate. I'm not a huge fan of Santa Cruz anyway, but my point being that he's far better than Harewood, and always has been.