Who Do You Blame/Who Are You Angry With?

[KevinGage]

Faulkner is just an overpromoted idiot with his dreams of a Villa side winning titles/making money on the back of a youth squad who clearly aren't good enough.

I don't even credit him with that sort of naivety.

He's just doing his masters bidding.  Lerner might have dreams of replicating Ajax's approach.  Or Everton's. 

Faulkner probably doesn't give a fcuk.  A few soundbites here and there, but ultimately out of his depth.  There probably is logic to the decision to give a rookie Personnel Manager at MBNA the responsibility of running one of the country's biggest clubs.  Fcuked if I know what it is though.

[TheSandman]

I think you answered your own question. The logic being that he is someone who Lerner trusts to do his bidding.

[old man villa fan]

Villa's losses could make Lerner cut his

At what stage does Randy Lerner decide that he has had enough of life as Aston Villa's owner? The American made a rare visit to Villa Park on Saturday and must have departed wishing he had stayed away. Villa are heading for a relegation battle for the third successive season, which must be particularly galling when Lerner looks at a balance sheet that shows he has pumped upwards of £200m into the club since he took over in 2006. The club's net spend over the last five years is just under £70m, which is the fourth highest in the Premier League. Tottenham's net spend over that period is just over £3m. Everton's figures show a profit. Yet while those two clubs are pursuing Champions League qualification, Villa are trying to avoid slipping into the Championship, which means Lerner may have to dip into his pocket once more. There must come a point when he becomes fed up with running up huge losses and seeing little reward on the pitch and decides it is time to sell up and get out. Stuart James

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/dec/31/premier-league-10-talking-points

Can't fault the amount of money Lerners put in. Its shocking we are spending so much and fighting relegation battles. It makes me imagine an aerial view of villa park with one of those black holes and money disappearing into it.

Pity he let the Poison Dwarf squander so much of it. Every manager since has had to suffer for that twat.

Bit harsh, Mcleish spent about £20m on nzogbia, Hutton and given and Hutton and nzogbia have both proved poor value , as did makoun and Ireland who both arrived after mon , so there's the best part of £40m spent .

O Neill wasted a fortune I agree, but he's not the only one .

Amazing to see where Everton are and the squad they have on far far less money than we spent on recent years , they rarely make bad signings where we have made loads in recent years.

MON spent a lot of money on assembling a very average squad with a few quality players.  Take away those quality players and the squad was shown to be what it was, very average.

Successive managers have inheritted this legacy and convinced Lerner that they could buy a few players to get the team back to where it was.  Add to this, the injury situation that the current and previous two managers have had to put up with and you can see why we are where we are.  Some said at the time that MON was lucky in that final season with injuries and lucky 1-0 wins.  It seems as though we are now paying for it.

[richsvilla]

I blame the MON era. Spent alot of money on some average players. At the time I wasnt to bothered as we was doing ok but looking back at it now there was some real money wasted and bad decisions. Also lerner has to be blamed for draining any positive feeling from the fans with two dire managerial appointments.

[ozzjim]

Martin O'Neill and Paul Faulkner, one for identifying and buying such a load of shit, and one for agreeing it.

[LeeB]

Don't think it matters anymore. Threads like this or similar have been on here for the last 3 years with all of us (me in particular) dishing out the blame. Bottom line is only 3 of those names on the list still have an input on how aston villa are run.

Lambert seems to have been dealt the same shoddy hand as the last two encumbents - that doesn't excuse his piss poor organisation and tactics - he needs to get a grip - fast.

Faulkner is just an overpromoted idiot with his dreams of a Villa side winning titles/making money on the back of a youth squad who clearly aren't good enough. If it was possible Paul, don't you think the likes of Man U, Chelsea, and Citeh would be doing it? Or do you think they like spending billions on other club's players? Lerner's new years resolution should be to get someone living on planet earth in and jettison the prat.

Lerner. Well where do you start? I can't work out if he's stupid, just knows nothing about football, or he's got some sort of Brewster's millions thing going on.  Taking advice from Ferguson hints at a combination of the first two options. God help us.

Well said Greg.

I have to agree.

Yes,you can always rely on Greg to appear to tell us how shit things are whenever we hit a bad run

What has he said that isn't true?  And we've been shite for most of the season, if you hadn't realised.

There's nothing there that's 'true', it's just the usual miserablist subjective garbage.

You favour it because you're in full sacrifice mode.

There ARE facts there LeeB you daft old headinthesandanista you, such as Lerner and Faulkner running the club, and Lerner taking advice from Ferguson (I wonder if that letter is still safely tucked up in his safe?).  The rest, if not exactly "facts", are at least hard to argue with, unless you actually believe that Faulkner is doing a good job or that Lerner knows how to run a football club.  But nobody's that dim, surely?

I'm having 'headinthesandinista', that's superb.

The truth is, I don't know exactly what Faulkner's remit is for his job, and with whom to apportion blame for the things that have gone wrong.

But I also know there is no hard and fast rules about how to run a football club, and in most cases success will be stumbled upon, or accrued by throwing vast sums of money at it until it works.

You know, maybe the chairman and CEO have learned quite a bit about how to run the club in the past couple of years, and maybe we'll be better off for it going forward.

[supertom]

All of the above to various degrees. I think O Neill's outdated methods, tunnel vision, combined with Randy's naivity are most to blame with our current plight. I don't blame the last two managers as much. McLeish was horrendous granted, but he was an appointment that promised little more. We knew it, Randy didn't. Lamberts made a lot of errors and seems in many ways over his head, but I can appreciate his vision, even if he's yet to find the right formula to make that vision happen.

[Villafirst]

All of the above to various degrees. I think O Neill's outdated methods, tunnel vision, combined with Randy's naivity are most to blame with our current plight. I don't blame the last two managers as much. McLeish was horrendous granted, but he was an appointment that promised little more. We knew it, Randy didn't. Lamberts made a lot of errors and seems in many ways over his head, but I can appreciate his vision, even if he's yet to find the right formula to make that vision happen.

As I've said before, I knows it's easy with the benefit of hindsight, but MON's appointment was the wrong choice. He had been out of managing in the Premier League for some years and when he returned, his methods were basically outdated and limited. A top-class foreign manager would've been a much better choice, particularly with the big money available for transfers at the time.

[eastie]

All of the above to various degrees. I think O Neill's outdated methods, tunnel vision, combined with Randy's naivity are most to blame with our current plight. I don't blame the last two managers as much. McLeish was horrendous granted, but he was an appointment that promised little more. We knew it, Randy didn't. Lamberts made a lot of errors and seems in many ways over his head, but I can appreciate his vision, even if he's yet to find the right formula to make that vision happen.

As I've said before, I knows it's easy with the benefit of hindsight, but MON's appointment was the wrong choice. He had been out of managing in the Premier League for some years and when he returned, his methods were basically outdated and limited. A top-class foreign manager would've been a much better choice, particularly with the big money available for transfers at the time.

So we shouldn't have gone for o Neill because he had been away from the premier league too long , but we should have gone for a foreign manager who probably had never managed in the premier league?

[Villadroid]

.

[saunders_heroes]

Villa's losses could make Lerner cut his

At what stage does Randy Lerner decide that he has had enough of life as Aston Villa's owner? The American made a rare visit to Villa Park on Saturday and must have departed wishing he had stayed away. Villa are heading for a relegation battle for the third successive season, which must be particularly galling when Lerner looks at a balance sheet that shows he has pumped upwards of £200m into the club since he took over in 2006. The club's net spend over the last five years is just under £70m, which is the fourth highest in the Premier League. Tottenham's net spend over that period is just over £3m. Everton's figures show a profit. Yet while those two clubs are pursuing Champions League qualification, Villa are trying to avoid slipping into the Championship, which means Lerner may have to dip into his pocket once more. There must come a point when he becomes fed up with running up huge losses and seeing little reward on the pitch and decides it is time to sell up and get out. Stuart James

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2012/dec/31/premier-league-10-talking-points

Can't fault the amount of money Lerners put in. Its shocking we are spending so much and fighting relegation battles. It makes me imagine an aerial view of villa park with one of those black holes and money disappearing into it.

Pity he let the Poison Dwarf squander so much of it. Every manager since has had to suffer for that twat.

Bit harsh, Mcleish spent about £20m on nzogbia, Hutton and given and Hutton and nzogbia have both proved poor value , as did makoun and Ireland who both arrived after mon , so there's the best part of £40m spent .

O Neill wasted a fortune I agree, but he's not the only one .

Amazing to see where Everton are and the squad they have on far far less money than we spent on recent years , they rarely make bad signings where we have made loads in recent years.

MON spent a lot of money on assembling a very average squad with a few quality players.  Take away those quality players and the squad was shown to be what it was, very average.

Successive managers have inheritted this legacy and convinced Lerner that they could buy a few players to get the team back to where it was.  Add to this, the injury situation that the current and previous two managers have had to put up with and you can see why we are where we are.  Some said at the time that MON was lucky in that final season with injuries and lucky 1-0 wins.  It seems as though we are now paying for it.

If the squad that got us 3 consecutive top 6 finishes was "very average" I'd hate to think what you'd class our squad as of now.

[old man villa fan]

MON spent a lot of money on assembling a very average squad with a few quality players.  Take away those quality players and the squad was shown to be what it was, very average.

Successive managers have inheritted this legacy and convinced Lerner that they could buy a few players to get the team back to where it was.  Add to this, the injury situation that the current and previous two managers have had to put up with and you can see why we are where we are.  Some said at the time that MON was lucky in that final season with injuries and lucky 1-0 wins.  It seems as though we are now paying for it.

If the squad that got us 3 consecutive top 6 finishes was "very average" I'd hate to think what you'd class our squad as of now.

We had 3 top 6 finishes is because we had a spinkling of quality as I said.  We sold the quality and the remainder have been shown to be average.

As you raised something to perpetuate your continual dig at the club, rather than comment on the topic in question, I will at least show courtesy in answering.

Yes, the current squad is very average and weak in a number of areas but the young players will improve with experience.  Also, Lambert has only has one transfer window to transform a squad of underachievers.  The rebuilding of the club will take 3 or 4 years to put it on strong foundations for the future.

[sonlyme]

I blame the futile and unhelpful mentality of always seeking to find someone to blame.

No.

I do.

[hawkeye]

We are in a mess, we have just been easily beaten by a 4th Division team. This on the back of thrashings by Chelsea Spurs and the mighty Wigan.

It is pretty obvious that many of the players are not good enough to wear the shirt.

So is it Lerners penny pinching or Lamberts misguded faith in his ability to turn lower league kids into Premier League players?

[pauliewalnuts]

They're clearly both to blame to some extent.

Maybe you should be asking who is most to blame?