Who is to blame?

[pauliewalnuts]

He becomes more like O'Leary every day.

[Legion]

He's not THAT bad. Yet.

[PaulWinch again]

He's getting there on a personal level. On a performance level he's worse.

[glasses]

What a fucking idiot McLeish is. Does he actually hear the bollocks that comes out of his mouth?

As for who I blame. Paul Faulkner. He agreed the inflated contracts. He is the man who went after McLeish. He is the poison in the club, and unfortunately is one of Randys closest mates, so wont go until Randy goes. He is taking the club for a ride.

[N'ZMAV]

He knows things aren't working, yet he seems so reluctant to change things. I really don't get it.
He comes out with some absolute toss in the press, too. Sighting Jenas' Injury as a massive downer, and last week saying we need to lighten the goal scoring load on Gabby. FFS: Gabby? He's done fuck all for months. Time to get the likes of Clark, Gardner and Weimann in from the start and drop some of these old MON favourites off to the reserves, and yes, that includes Gabby who isn't pulling his weight (of which is increasing by the week) too.

[Lee]

He becomes more like O'Leary every day.

Looks like we never learn our lessons. The mismanagement from top to bottom is alarming. We won't go down this season, but I am very, very worried about next year. 

I wasn't sure about the apocryphal comments after he joined us last Summer, but he is living up to them.
 

[N'ZMAV]

I was prepared to give McLeish a chance when he came in, I thoguht the reaction was a bit OTT. But, I'm starting to look the fool now. He's doing his best to turn us into a laughing stock.

[CT]

He becomes more like O'Leary every day.

He becomes more like Billy McNeill every day!

apocryphal

What a fantastic word Lee! Still don't know exactly what it means even after looking it up!

[Lee]

He becomes more like O'Leary every day.

He becomes more like Billy McNeill every day!

apocryphal

What a fantastic word Lee! Still don't know exactly what it means even after looking it up!

Don't think that it's in the Country Bumpkin Dictionary mate ;¬)

[andyh]

Based on this comment, previous comments and his general demeanour, he is clearly a man that knows his job is safe as houses. He could frankly stroll out onto VP against Chelsea and plant a Bluenose flag on the centre circle and still he'd know that Faulkner and Lerner would continue to back him.
It is both depressing and worrying in equal measure.

Agrred, and this is the most worrying aspect.

[not3bad]

I voted for a mixture but I believe the buck has to stop with Lerner.  He gave O'Neill the money to spend, allowed him to give these stupid contracts, and then made poor managerial appointments following MON's departure.  When you are paying milllions in compensation out in order to poach a manager like Mcleish then there's something a bit mental going on.  All, or at least some of this may have been avoided if we had someone with a bit of footballing nous on the board, but we don't.

[paul_e]

What a fucking idiot McLeish is. Does he actually hear the bollocks that comes out of his mouth?

As for who I blame. Paul Faulkner. He agreed the inflated contracts. He is the man who went after McLeish. He is the poison in the club, and unfortunately is one of Randys closest mates, so wont go until Randy goes. He is taking the club for a ride.

Ni he didn't.  Faulkner joining prompted the questioning of the stupid contracts and led to MoN throwing the toys out of the pram.

I actually think Faulkner is doing his main job very well, which is to manage the business side of things.  The lack of football knowledge on the board is the problem but that doesn't mean that Faulkner is to blame, it means we need to add a director of football to oversee the footballing philosophy and instill a 'villa way' at the club (whatever that may be).  Once that person is in place and a style of play is defined we then recruit to fit that model, be that coaching/management or players.  You need that vision of how to become a successful football club at board level before we can get sustained success.  Without it the only hope is to get in a manager who wants to be totally in control of everything and risk another MoN like situation where the wheels fall off when he leaves.

The blame for our current situation lies between Lerner and McLeish, Lerner for giving the guy a job and McLeish for completely failing to have any kind of plan in place to move us forward.  I don't buy the 'give him time to build his squad' argument, we have a squad full of internationals and youth internationals, they've clearly been good enough at some point but many of them are far below their best currently.  I can forgive him for Heskey and Petrov who are both clearly on the downward spiral of their careers and probably aren't any longer premiership quality (if heskey ever was) but people like Dunne and Warnock have just been really badly managed as much as anything.  Houllier I can forgive because they're not his style of defenders but McLeish has no excuses.

[glasses]

What a fucking idiot McLeish is. Does he actually hear the bollocks that comes out of his mouth?

As for who I blame. Paul Faulkner. He agreed the inflated contracts. He is the man who went after McLeish. He is the poison in the club, and unfortunately is one of Randys closest mates, so wont go until Randy goes. He is taking the club for a ride.

Ni he didn't.  Faulkner joining prompted the questioning of the stupid contracts and led to MoN throwing the toys out of the pram.

I actually think Faulkner is doing his main job very well, which is to manage the business side of things.  The lack of football knowledge on the board is the problem but that doesn't mean that Faulkner is to blame, it means we need to add a director of football to oversee the footballing philosophy and instill a 'villa way' at the club (whatever that may be).  Once that person is in place and a style of play is defined we then recruit to fit that model, be that coaching/management or players.  You need that vision of how to become a successful football club at board level before we can get sustained success.  Without it the only hope is to get in a manager who wants to be totally in control of everything and risk another MoN like situation where the wheels fall off when he leaves.

The blame for our current situation lies between Lerner and McLeish, Lerner for giving the guy a job and McLeish for completely failing to have any kind of plan in place to move us forward.  I don't buy the 'give him time to build his squad' argument, we have a squad full of internationals and youth internationals, they've clearly been good enough at some point but many of them are far below their best currently.  I can forgive him for Heskey and Petrov who are both clearly on the downward spiral of their careers and probably aren't any longer premiership quality (if heskey ever was) but people like Dunne and Warnock have just been really badly managed as much as anything.  Houllier I can forgive because they're not his style of defenders but McLeish has no excuses.

So Emile Heskey, Habib Beye and Nicky SHorey were all signed when Faulkner was questioning the contracts? What the fuck would we have paid them if he hadn't questioned them?

[N'ZMAV]

Thw whole thing is a right fuck up. Needs a rebuild from the start.

[Rip Van We Go Again]

He becomes more like O'Leary every day.

He becomes more like Billy McNeill every day!

More like Glenn Roeder.

Wonder where he is now?