Can we have our club back please

[MonsXI]

My 14 year old lad summed Villa up. 'We are the new Stoke'.

14 was the age started I messing about with hallucinogenics too.

[JUAN PABLO]

Just been driving home , my mate had TS on .   The amount of people saying that is the worse Villa side they have ever seen .     thank you Randy   

[saunders_heroes]

The thing is, as soon as the owners knew the extent of Houllier's desire to rebuild and how much it would cost them he was never going to be able to stay.

Moving on, one of the great disappointments of this season has been the lack of chances given to our young players, something the club keep on telling us is an important part of their vision. Well aside from Bannan pre-drink driving incident and Herd none of them have been given a shot. Albrighton and Clark have fallen well down the pecking order, Weimann and Delfouneso have barely got a game, Hogg sold off cheaply, Baker loaned out and we're yet to see the supposedly super-talented Gardner play for the first team. It would not be as hurtful if the players getting a game were good but they are not.

excellent point well made - especially the last line - what can we really lose by playing them and letting them express themselves

I would never thought i would say this but i would even accept relegation if it meant a team of

Bannan
Albrighton
Fonz
Clark
Herd
Weinmann
Baker
Gardener
Johnson
Grealish
Lichaj

were given a decent chance - actually the more i think about it i would really love to see that team evn if it was in the chanpionship and allowed to gel

Play that team and you'd get your wish because we would be relegated.
Our kids aren't as good as the hype continues to tell us.

[cheltenhamlion]

Gardner is that good and should get a go

[Billy Walker]

It comes from the top down.  I'm astonished at Randy Lerner's complete about turn in stewardship, to be honest.  From being the model of how to run a club he has become the very model of how not to run a club, in my view.  (I'm wondering if Doug gave him some words of advice about how to run Villa on a budget and he has taken it up.)

The whole lack of ambition last night was galling and it has genuinely got to me today.  There's no excuses - it was embarrassing.  It genuinely beggars belief.  You look at some of the characters and winners that have represented the club over the years, you think about the fans that have flocked to the club over the years and that "performance" from the team yesterday was absolutely not on.

The thing is, I don't necessarily blame the players for it.  I blame Mr. Lerner.  He has set the whole tone for the club now.  His managerial appointment, his habit of communicating once a year with supporters, the official website with its turgid "fab" this and "fab" that.  There is absolutely no dynamism or energy at the club - no impetus to compete or be the best.  The only shining light is, of course, our youth set-up...but how long will it be until the rot sets in there, too?

The manager referring to the clubs above us as "superclubs" and our own official website trumpeting "Man Utd, Liverpool and Arsenal" fixtures as if were a non-league outfit with some plum ties against giants coming up is a slap in the face, too.  These are clubs we can more than compete with with ambition and investment.  When our own official channels are telling us we are not part of the "elite" I hear alarm bells ringing and I'm brought right back to the mid-eighties, Billy McNeill and Graham Turner.  This is not how to run Birmingham's major club, surely?

[Chipsticks]

I'm more worried about Albrighton than anything else, he's completely killing his career.

[Billy Walker]

My 14 year old lad summed Villa up. 'We are the new Stoke'.

My 14 year old lad summed Villa up. 'We are the new Stoke'.

Your son is an optimist - we're not that good.

I watched us last night and simply thought: "Birmingham City".

[pauliewalnuts]

My 14 year old lad summed Villa up. 'We are the new Stoke'.

My 14 year old lad summed Villa up. 'We are the new Stoke'.

Your son is an optimist - we're not that good.

I watched us last night and simply thought: "Birmingham City".

Yes. That's precisely how Blues would have played that fixture.

In fact, it's precisely how Blues did play that fixture on the last day of the season last year, despite their survival depending on it.

[TheSandman]

The thing is, as soon as the owners knew the extent of Houllier's desire to rebuild and how much it would cost them he was never going to be able to stay.

Moving on, one of the great disappointments of this season has been the lack of chances given to our young players, something the club keep on telling us is an important part of their vision. Well aside from Bannan pre-drink driving incident and Herd none of them have been given a shot. Albrighton and Clark have fallen well down the pecking order, Weimann and Delfouneso have barely got a game, Hogg sold off cheaply, Baker loaned out and we're yet to see the supposedly super-talented Gardner play for the first team. It would not be as hurtful if the players getting a game were good but they are not.

excellent point well made - especially the last line - what can we really lose by playing them and letting them express themselves

I would never thought i would say this but i would even accept relegation if it meant a team of

Bannan
Albrighton
Fonz
Clark
Herd
Weinmann
Baker
Gardener
Johnson
Grealish
Lichaj

were given a decent chance - actually the more i think about it i would really love to see that team evn if it was in the chanpionship and allowed to gel

Play that team and you'd get your wish because we would be relegated.
Our kids aren't as good as the hype continues to tell us.

We nearly got relegated with our bunch of senior players last season. If last night is a portent of what is to come this season I am not sure how will they will cope having lost their two most talented team mates.

[Irish villain]

RL underwent a personality change at some point during the past 18 months. I'm all for running a club properly and not letting spending get out of hand (as we probably did for a couple of years) but the pendulum has swung so far the other way that we will lose on gate receipts, merhcandise, financial rewards of cup runs and a high leage placing/European qualification.

When you cut back as much as we are you are making your business model very unattractive.

As for his managerial appointments, the less said the better. McLeish is the fall guy for Faulkner and RL's glaring inability to run a big football club.

[Shrek]

We were playing some good stuff towards the end of last season, we then lost Young and Downing.

We've replaced them with N'Zogbia and Gabby.

It's an absolute disgrace that he can say afyer the game that players need to play and cherish their careers and not be afraid..

How the fuck can he say don't be afraid, when his very team selection was a big neon light saying 'IM AFRAID'.

I want my club back, I can honestly say I'd rather be relegated, play decent football in front of a decent crowd, rather than watch this clown's negative football in front of sub 30k crowds(which is where we are headed).

So Randy use your business brain and realise that you've gone to far with the cut backs and they are becoming counter productive and will be more costly in the long run.

[KevinGage]

Didn't Faulkner mention something about trying to implement an Ajax style approach last year?   Hence Houllier and more of an emphasis on technical ability, training and intergrating the successful youth sides.

Houllier goes -and he had to go-   and we opt for McLeish. Where is the continuity, the strategy?   RL talks about being impressed with Big Ecks passion for the game, how engaging he is and how he buys into the importance of making the most of our youth team. I can well believe McLeish is engaging. I can well believe McLeish also told him what he wanted to hear.  But a quick glance at the clubs he's managed previously doesn't mark him out as a boss who likes to give youth (or flair)  it's chance.

Some of the best football we played this season was the second half against QPR, with slick interchanging from Bannan and Ireland. Yet we seem to have jettisoned that in favour of dire, safety first football-  the type we all feared when the appointment was made.

[pauliewalnuts]

Didn't Faulkner mention something about trying to implement an Ajax style approach last year?   Hence Houllier and more of an emphasis on technical ability, training and intergrating the successful youth sides.

The Ajax approach is admirable, but there's a big difference in that Ajax are the biggest club in their league and therefore less vulnerable to other clubs coming in and swiping their talented kids away. They can also offer Champions League football on a constant basis.

They also operate in a country where the average footballer is far more well-rounded and likely to see the benefit of the long term game.

We, on the other hand, have clubs currently bigger than us - quite a few of them - and will find it infinitely harder to maintain the kind of longevity that an Ajax approach absolutely must have it is to have any hope of succeeding.

I'm afraid for us the "Ajax approach" is not going to be anything like as easy to pull off.

[TheSandman]

It's better than the Birmingham City approach though, isn't it?

[Risso]

Houllier goes -and he had to go-   and we opt for McLeish. Where is the continuity, the strategy?   RL talks about being impressed with Big Ecks passion for the game, how engaging he is and how he buys into the importance of making the most of our youth team. I can well believe McLeish is engaging. I can well believe McLeish also told him what he wanted to hear.  But a quick glance at the clubs he's managed previously doesn't mark him out as a boss who likes to give youth (or flair)  it's chance.

The fact that they were interested in Martinez also speaks volumes about the lack of direction.  I'm not buying the lie about McLeish being identified early on as the sort of manager Lerner had set his stall out for, when Martinez, a completely different sort of manager altogether, would almost certainly have been our manager if he'd decided to speak to us.  Or before that, if Benitez had said that he'd be content with little money to spend, he'd have probably been offered the job as well.