'Waste of a Club'

[Concrete John]

Houghton took The Toon up at first ask. What he is doing at The Bloose is even more miraculous. He showed an aptitude for working with little money at The Barcodes, and is doing it again under even more difficult circumstances. . He also took The Barcodes to a very respectable place in the PL with practically the same squad, then was sacked for his trouble by an idiot owner. Taking this into account... he'd have been ideal for our situation.

Houghton took Newcastle up with largely the same squad they went down with, who had underachieved in the PL the previous year.  All bought for PL money and on PL wages.  So although he didn't have any money to spend, he did have far greater resources as his disposal than any other club in the Championship that season.

As it goes, I do think he's a good manager and is proving it at Blues right now.

[LeeB]

That's true. For all the crap managers, we still managed to poach Little from Leicester, Taylor from Watford and Big Fat Ron from Sheff Wed. We also managed to bring O'Neil out of retirement. Perhaps Lerner should sack Faulkner and employ Deadly as chief exec? Or better still employ someone who actually knows something about football.

Two out of those three would have walked here to get the job and the third was the luckiest example of right place, right time we have ever known.

Lucky?!?

Lucky would have been Guus Hiddink looking to relocate to the English midlands just as Lerner took over, not Scroty McBoogerballs.

[LeeB]

Houghton took The Toon up at first ask. What he is doing at The Bloose is even more miraculous. He showed an aptitude for working with little money at The Barcodes, and is doing it again under even more difficult circumstances. . He also took The Barcodes to a very respectable place in the PL with practically the same squad, then was sacked for his trouble by an idiot owner. Taking this into account... he'd have been ideal for our situation.

Houghton took Newcastle up with largely the same squad they went down with, who had underachieved in the PL the previous year.  All bought for PL money and on PL wages.  So although he didn't have any money to spend, he did have far greater resources as his disposal than any other club in the Championship that season.

As it goes, I do think he's a good manager and is proving it at Blues right now.

For all their problems, they've still got the financial clout to outbid almost all of their competitors in that division. The way some are going on you'd think he'd fashioned a team from an assortment of one-legged, blind war veterans.

[Billy Walker]

Just going back to a discussion earlier about Villa and the club's attendances, I saw these stats on a Newcastle site showing the amount of times various clubs have ended a season with the highest average attendances:

Man Utd 34;
Everton 13;
Arsenal 12;
Newcastle/Chelsea 10;
Aston Villa/Liverpool 7;
Spurs 6;
Man City 3.

What does this tell us?  I'm not too sure.  Certainly Man Utd's stats would reflect their successes of the latter part of the twentieth century whereas ours would highlight our successes in the earlier part of that century, but that's by the by.  I think every club on that list, with the right investment and so on, could dominate  English football. 

[PeterWithe]

I'm just amazed that anyone thinks The Old Joint Stock represents 'good value'.

Didn't we have the 'Bhams a shit hole who's inhabitants talk all funny' spiel last week?

[Simon Ward]

I have always been very pro Lerner and to a very large degree I still am.   However, I think Villa's drift and Randy Lerner's drift further and further into the background are the same thing.

The one thing Lerner has not done which was very much in his power to do is give us a board with football balls.   The recent landscape of the club is dominated by bad board decisions.

If I had it in my power to change just one thing which has happened at Villa Park since O'Neill walked out it would be to have the board stand up to O'Neill and tell the club's side of the story.

It makes me curl up with anger, with disgust, with shame, and with embarassment on days like yesterday when Martin O'Neill is able to strut the stage of British football as a superhero endowed with divine talents somewhere between a latter day Joan of Arc and Galahad whose heart was pure.

I accept that a defeat at a tribunal may well have been on the cards but some fights you have to fight regardless of the odds.   You have to tell it how it is, not shuffle off down Spin Alley.

The sun went behind a cloud over Villa Park not the day that O'Neill walked or the day that Stoke equalized or the day Houllier's heart missed a beat or the day Randy Lerner flew to Corsica.   It was the day we decided that O'Neill's claims for wrongful dismissal should not be contested.   From that day onwards the legend that without Messiah Martin we are nothing has spread like a malignant fungus.

Any chance of a rebirth for the club was stillborn with the appointment of a manager who preferred to be linked with Liverpool followed by a manager who came with more baggage than Ryanair.

I hope that the the rediscovery of ourselves is not in the Championship but I cannot see any other wake up call being loud enough to wake the sleepwalker.

Top post!

[dave.woodhall]

That's true. For all the crap managers, we still managed to poach Little from Leicester, Taylor from Watford and Big Fat Ron from Sheff Wed. We also managed to bring O'Neil out of retirement. Perhaps Lerner should sack Faulkner and employ Deadly as chief exec? Or better still employ someone who actually knows something about football.

Two out of those three would have walked here to get the job and the third was the luckiest example of right place, right time we have ever known.

Lucky?!?

Lucky would have been Guus Hiddink looking to relocate to the English midlands just as Lerner took over, not Scroty McBoogerballs.

Lucky was the best English manager of the time wanting to leave his club to take on a bigger one when we had a vacancy and one of his closest friends worked in Witton Road. 

[LeeB]

That's true. For all the crap managers, we still managed to poach Little from Leicester, Taylor from Watford and Big Fat Ron from Sheff Wed. We also managed to bring O'Neil out of retirement. Perhaps Lerner should sack Faulkner and employ Deadly as chief exec? Or better still employ someone who actually knows something about football.

Two out of those three would have walked here to get the job and the third was the luckiest example of right place, right time we have ever known.

Lucky?!?

Lucky would have been Guus Hiddink looking to relocate to the English midlands just as Lerner took over, not Scroty McBoogerballs.

Lucky was the best English manager of the time wanting to leave his club to take on a bigger one when we had a vacancy and one of his closest friends worked in Witton Road. 

Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups.

Yes, that indeed was very lucky, and thank the lord it was.

[dave.woodhall]

Assumption is the mother of all fuck ups.

Yes, that indeed was very lucky, and thank the lord it was.

And just about the last bit of good luck we had.

[Archbishop Herbert Cockthrottle]

HUGHTON.

The man's name is HUGHTON.

That's better.

[Pete3206]

I think its important to remember that MON is still in the honeymoon phase, and I it's inevitable that one day he will fcuk them over as he has done everyone else.

Who else did he 'fuck over'?

At Leicester he turned Leeds down mid-season. At Celtic he left to look after his very ill wife. At Norwich he was lied to by their crooked chairman and so walked when he realised this.

Contrary to what's said on here, Celtic fans don't hate him - many of them still call him 'St. Martin'.

Dave, what did Gregory ever do with any other club?

MON didn't turn Leeds down. In fact, he was very vocal about wanting to talk to Leeds. The Leicester chairman denied him permission to talk to them and that was that. Later on, he nearly joined Leeds from Celtic, but it fell through

[themossman]

This MON thing annoys me. I hate the stupid idea that every shit game/season we have discredits the people who said we needed a change before he left. When he fucked off we could have gone one of two ways - beyond where MON could get us or back a step. Simultaneously pulling the funding, selling the best players and hiring two unsuitable managers in quick succession all but guaranteed it weould be the latter. Doesn't mean people were wrong to want shot of MON, although hindsight's a wonderful thing.

[Concrete John]

This MON thing annoys me. I hate the stupid idea that every shit game/season we have discredits the people who said we needed a change before he left. When he fucked off we could have gone one of two ways - beyond where MON could get us or back a step. Simultaneously pulling the funding, selling the best players and hiring two unsuitable managers in quick succession all but guaranteed it weould be the latter. Doesn't mean people were wrong to want shot of MON, although hindsight's a wonderful thing.

I gte what you mean, but by another token people can't keep blaming MON for what has happened since he left, as some do.

He was our manager.  He isn't anymore.  Let's move on.

[Sexual Ealing]

I think its important to remember that MON is still in the honeymoon phase, and I it's inevitable that one day he will fcuk them over as he has done everyone else.

Who else did he 'fuck over'?

At Leicester he turned Leeds down mid-season. At Celtic he left to look after his very ill wife. At Norwich he was lied to by their crooked chairman and so walked when he realised this.

Contrary to what's said on here, Celtic fans don't hate him - many of them still call him 'St. Martin'.

Dave, what did Gregory ever do with any other club?

MON didn't turn Leeds down. In fact, he was very vocal about wanting to talk to Leeds. The Leicester chairman denied him permission to talk to them and that was that. Later on, he nearly joined Leeds from Celtic, but it fell through

Even if that's true (it's contrary to my memory, but that doesn't mean much), how did he 'fuck them over'?

[ktvillan]

Well said Billy Walker earlier in the thread.  For those pointing out that we've actually achieved very little in the last 90 odd years, doesn't that actually reinforce BW's point?  We've had some diabolical owners who have categorically failed to exploit even a fraction of the massive potential of the club and the area.  If Shankly, Revie or a young Clough had been offered to Normansell and Co. they'd no doubt have passed them over for some ropey ex-villa player on the cheap.  Indeed they dumped Joe Mercer who went on to win the league and cup with Man City just a few years later.  Bendall and Co. owned the club at the time of it's greatest achievements,  yet still managed to saw off the branch on which the club was sitting in the process.  And then, the return of Doug with his new found control-freakism and miserly ways, who managed to take the dawn of a new era and turn it into relegation, followed by two decades of almost but not quite committing to building success.

We've had glimpses of how massive the gates could be, but we've never maintained them because we've never managed to sustain any periods of success.  If only we could have built on the amazing upward trajectory of the late 60s to the early 80s.  Again the owners must take the blame for that failure.  The massive potential is still there, where it's been for the last 90 years, but it isn't going to be realised by yet another dimwit owner who barely goes to the club and whose idea of a Villa manager is Alex McLeish.