January Transfer Thread: Speculation, Lies, Absolute Cr*p and Bosman Rumours

[brian green]

It sounds perverse but this puzzle based on the examination of the personalities at the heart of the problems our club faces is in its own way challenging and I shall miss it when it has gone.   It is like an infernally difficult cryptic crossword puzzle.

We have an owner who is fabulously wealthy but has seemingly gone from generosity to parsimony in a very short space of time.   Why?   Banking crash? The global economy? His divorce?   Far sighted prudence and forward planning?   We have a chief executive who appears to be devoid of any grasp of football.   Is this a fair judgement of him?   Does it matter?   Is benign absence of day to day involvement in football matters to be applauded or corrected?

Then we have a manager who until our stepping off the cliff at Chelsea was regarded as young rising star of management with a new style of finding and moulding cheap young players into competent attractive footballing units.   The results since Liverpool have had him looking like a man in a dream, out of his depth and floundering.   He could not or would not bind the wounds of the Chelsea massacre of the innocents and sent them out like the remnants of the Light Brigade to charge the Russian guns again getting successively more humiliatingly smashed in every game.   He has been put to the test and found very seriously wanting.

The final dimension of this brain teaser is that we now have less than two weeks in which the deployment of money could yield the priceless dividend of saving our place in the Premiership but none of the three main players - the owner, the CEO or the Manager seems able to take a lead and say we need this many players in these positions let's get them and at least stand a chance of staying up so that in the summer we can go back to the drawing board and produce a long term plan.

It's like three lodgers in the same house which is on fire refusing to call the fire brigade because it was not them who started the fire.

[PaulWinch again]

Dale Stephens has scored.

[brian green]

I have only two words to say to those foolish enough to think that getting back into the Premiership would be a formality.   Bradford City.

[OCD]

With the chances we had, we could have easily battered Bradford on another day.

[Dante Lavelli]

...none of the three main players - the owner, the CEO or the Manager seems able to take a lead

This is the nail on the head - It is difficult to know who is running the club.  I suggest it is a reason that MON did quite well as his megalomanic personality would have thrived in such a vacuum of authority.

[Drummond]

While we're waiting, Staunton's, Ugo's and Taylor's view on our problems

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2264164/Aston-Villa-problems-Ugo-Ehiogu-Steve-Staunton-Garry-Thompson-Ian-Taylor-opinions.html

I like Bruno's comments the best.

'Playing at it.'

Quite.

[UK Redsox]

With the chances we had, we could have easily battered Bradford on another day.

maybe Brian meant what happened to Bradford City in general, ie their fall to Div 3, rather than the cup tie

[OCD]

With the chances we had, we could have easily battered Bradford on another day.

maybe Brian meant what happened to Bradford City in general, ie their fall to Div 3, rather than the cup tie

I took it to mean going away to lower opposition who are the clear underdog,treating it as their cup final and lifting themselves to new levels.

[bob]

You are on fire with the metaphors lately, Brian.

[brian green]

I am aren't I bob.   I compare myself to Hedley Lamar in Blazing Saddles.   My head is seething and teeming and exploding with thoughts of all kinds.   

[old man villa fan]

Not having anybody other than the manager to talk to the media is hurting us badly.  Lambert is having to face up on his own and sometimes to questions that he should not be answering.  The media know this and he is being entrapped with their line of questioning.  You have to feel for him in the difficult situation as it looks to the world that he is carrying the burden of the whole club.

We need a respected football person at the club, whether it be at board level or not, that can be the PR face of Aston Villa.  This person would need to be a good speaker and have the ear of key people in the media.  Somebody to put over what the club are trying to achieve.  Take the transfer situation as it is now, the supporters are currently merely guessing at the strategy.  We do not know and it is counter-productive.  We want to hear about what is happening at the club so that we can feel part of it, rather than outsiders as it is now.  The media need news all of the time and with a bit of spin, we could make things sound far more positive and keep the club in the news for the right reasons.  Take the penalty incident last week for instance.  Lambert could not come out and be too critical of the referee as he risked a fine.  SAF gets away with it all of the time by talking about things like this before the next match all of the time and you cannot tell me that the refs don't think on these things before they go out to ref their games.  Having somebody like SGT, for example, on the board and talking about things like this in a general sort of way would, I'm sure, be productive for us.

I am sure this would take a lot of the pressure off the manager so that he could just concentrate on talking about playing matters.

[KevinGage]

There really is no secret to football, the best teams have the best players.

True.

But what do you then say of clubs who have spent far less than us, when they too have better players and better squads?

Finance dictates a hell of a lot, but -despite spending far more than Everton and Newcastle (not to mention those powerhouses of the game WBA, Norwich and Swansea) under Lerner's tenure, we have very little to show for it. 

There is no divine right in football, and shoddy play or management (of playing personnel or finances) will eventually catch you out.   But you'd have got long odds on the likes of the Olbiyun, Norwich and Swansea eclipsing a club of our size -even as recently as 2010.  Our decline has been so rapid as to almost be impressive. 

[PeterWithe]

It's an apt description. Now i admit i'm not an expert on the financial side, but surely if you're a member of some organisation which you know is about to recieve a massive injection of money, you'd try to ensure that short-term you stayed in that organisation to reap the benefits? Borrowing a 100 pounds now, so you're guaranteed to get 10,000 in May seems prudent to me.

Now even if you suffered from a lack of interest in the thing, didn't understand it or any other reason, you'd still see the sense of putting in more money till May surely? Maybe it's us who don't get it and it will in fact be cheaper for Lerner if we're in the Championship. If anyone has a theory on that one then i'm all ears.....

Indeed, the only explanation is that he see's the extra money just disappearing into the pockets of agents and players rather than his own so he's not arsed about going down.

[Doorbell]

I am aren't I bob.   I compare myself to Hedley Lamar in Blazing Saddles.   My head is seething and teeming and exploding with thoughts of all kinds.

The only one I'd say you got wrong Brian was where you'd compared the potential appointment of OGS to an ugly flat chested wife that could cook and was a slut...personally I would've gone with an arranged marriage where it was possible the wife would've turned out to be a stunner, could cook, and would suck you off upon your return from work, only to cook you the best meal ever and then shag your brains out....I know it's tomatoes tomatos, but hey!

[PeterWithesShin]

I guess a CB is near the top of the list again.