Who Do You Blame/Who Are You Angry With?

[Somniloquism]

http://www.avfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10265~3035187,00.html
You can't defend like that at corners.How long have we heard that for?

yep. its not rocket science and yet he can't seem to grasp the idea of marking at corners, or the players can't. Not too happy about him wanting us to "fly out the blocks" in the 2nd leg either. With our defence we could be 2-2 by half time.

 I might be wrong, but this season I was under the impression we had been a hell of a lot better at defending against corners compared to the last two. We just can't seem to stop teams waltzing through the middle instead.

[KRS]

The failings of the last few years lay firmly with Lerner and Faulkner. You could also argue a case for MON for his part in the transfer dealings and TSM for just being generally shite and bringing a dark cloud of negativity over the club. The problems on the pitch right now are Lamberts doing...his transfers, his players and his tactics. The only one I wouldnt portion any blame to over the last few years is Houllier.

[hilts_coolerking]

Lambert, for all his success at Norwich, has had one season of top flight management experience.  I'm not sure he's ever had experience of managing a team through a relegation battle.  Add to that he's having to clean up two years worth of mishaps and do it all on a budget - it's a lot to ask.  At the moment, like many of our youngsters, it doesn't look like he's ready for it.

In the summer, while I was very interested in Solksjaer I accepted that Lambert represented what I thought would be a safe pair of hands: not quite as exciting or exotic as OGS but someone a bit safer, a bit more reliable and someone more likely to deliver a nice boring mid-table finish, which is what we sorely need.

But some of our defeats have been alarming, not just in their frequency but in their scale.  We're not just losing, we're getting humiliated on a regular basis.

[ciggiesnbeer]

The failings of the last few years lay firmly with Lerner and Faulkner. You could also argue a case for MON for his part in the transfer dealings and TSM for just being generally shite and bringing a dark cloud of negativity over the club. The problems on the pitch right now are Lamberts doing...his transfers, his players and his tactics. The only one I wouldnt portion any blame to over the last few years is Houllier.

Top post. Houiller and Gary McAllister were in retrospect a brief interlude of professional competence. Not world beaters by any stretch and they were tone deaf when it cames to fans but they were Premier League quality who could be relied upon to get us back to mid table mediocrity. I never thought I would look back on those days with fondness but I do today.

[Drummond]

I was wondering if people's opinion had changed and that Lambert was now more to blame or whether we can still say that Lerner is the problem.

[Risso]

I was wondering if people's opinion had changed and that Lambert was now more to blame or whether we can still say that Lerner is the problem.

Lerner is the disease. Lambert just a very unpleasant symptom.

[mat1993]

Randy Lerner clearly is too blame. Firstly he let Mon spend money unchecked and most of the buys sat on the bench on big wages. The only buys which can be considered to be a success was Milner, Ashley Young, Downing. However, When Lerner sanctioned these players transfers out, we did not replace them with players on the same or better level. Look at Tottham they sold luka Modric and replaced him with Dembele, Dempsey, which is fair to say are near Modric's level. We got 60 million for the players sold, not much re-invested, some has but not to the quality or near it.

Now I do not believe Villa is in Major debt, lerner made big profits on the players mentioned above. Which you would hope have been re-invested in the club. Villa part itself has to be worth alot of money. I believe Lerner not being a football man and having Paul Faulkner who is not a football man has been influenced to run Villa like a business. But in the Premier league you have to keep spending 40 million plus to keep improving.

[pedro25]

We currently have on the books the following experienced players, Given, Marshall, Warnock, Hutton, Dunne, Petrov, Makoun, Ireland, N'Zogbia, Bent.  These 10 players are on combined more than the remaining 27 players on the books i would guess, and currently offer us the following, 1 first teamer who's playing ok but not ripping up any trees (N'Zog), and 3 reserves who play occasionally (Given, Bent, Ireland).  Most haven't kicked a ball in anger this season.  Ok some are unavailable due to work permit/illness/injury and it's debatable whether or not we would be better off with a few more of them available, or using those that are more frequently (Petrov being fit is a no brainer for starters).  Marshall wont be on much and we may not be paying Petrov and Makoun's wages this season, but I guess we may have to for the rest of Makoun's contract?  If you stripped these 10 players out of the club we would not be much worse off playing-wise, as I said there's only one or two from this list currently contributing and we could still field a reasonable 11 with subs and a few in reserve.  I think Lerner, Lambert and co will just be thinking if only we can get this list down to 4 or 3 or 2 and eventually 0 then we can go and sign 3/4/5 good players in key areas to add to our young squad and give us a chance of really kicking on.  If we signed 3 players now on big money and still went down, and still had these 10 players to shift on top in the summer the club could be screwed for may years (albeit I think 4 are out of contract in the summer anyway).  They are a combination of M'ON, GH and McLeish signings and our inability to ship them out is what's undoubtedly holding this club back.  If we stay up and slim this list down to 2 or 3 by the start of next season I can see us flourish under Lambert, if not they combined are a major factor in our demise, along with the managers who signed them, Lerner/Faulkner and the current manager who should be getting more out of the current squad.  Bad luck with injuries and so on hasn't helped either.

[Fernando Partridge]

Its always the parents

[jonzy85]

Blaming MO'N for the current plight is pretty pathetic. With the squad he left us with, having Bent added to it should have seen us still knocking on the door for Europe with the right management that year. Instead we got Houllier and the season was a farce.

The debacle that has happened since has nothing to do with MON.

[Legion]

He started it.

[not3bad]

I think with the current problems this is a good thread to discuss who is most to blame about Villa's current problems.

This article sums things up very well:

http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/astonvilla/id/1503?&cc=5739

[SoccerHQ]

It is always easier to sack a manager than get in new owners.

IMO unless our present financial circumstances change replacing lambert will just be cosmetic unless the board pull a mini Guardiola out from Europe....and nothing in the last 4 years suggests they will do that.

We need new ownership but that's not easy.

[Toronto Villa]

Depressingly ominous and accurate summary

[levico]

A good article. First time I've seen reference to a potential takeover outside of a fan site.