Lambert in or out? Poll reset with majority 'in', 7th May

[Whiney MacWhineface]

I voted out for the first time. He's doing something badly wrong now that must be eroding the confidence of the players in him. A huge part of being a successful manager at any trade is for your people to believe in your plans, other wise at best you get mediocrity and at worst failure.

I don't care much who they bring in, as long as they bring belief with them.

[mrfuse]

If we look at the first XI that played quite regularly in MON's season:
Friedel
Young/Cuellar - Dunne - Collins - Warnock
Downing - Milner - Petrov - Young
Carew Gabby

Only Gabby and Dunne remain. Of course Warnock is there but deemed surplus to requirements.

Of the players that have been sold/released/ lost for other reasons, how many have been replaced with players approaching anything close to their calibre?

Bent is the obvious one (although it does beg the question why MON wasn't given that money in the summer he left, might have saved us a whole lot of trouble).
Vlaar on paper as a Dutch international should be up to it, but...
I had hopes N'Zogbia would push on to be our next Ashley Young, hasn't happened. Friedel for Given, would have been ok if it wasn't for Given's injury problems and loss of form since.

Essentially, we (Randy) have let the guts of a team go and aside from a one off splurge on Bent (which after the Milner, Young and Downing money, still left him with a nice little profit) he has instructed managers to make do with youngsters playing in the reserves.

That's not even getting into all the squad players that are gone, who may not have been world beaters, but could do a job when needed.

I'm afraid this is bullshit, the players have been replaced in a perfectly reasonable fashion, the problem is that the people making the replacements have all had different ideas on how they want to play the game.

Lets include Barry as well:

Friedel - replaced by Given, no one complained at the time.
Young - replaced by Hutton, agreed he's a crap replacement but that's a TSM decision, from a lerner point of view we replaced an international full back with an international full back.
Collins - replaced by Vlaar, no one complained at the time.
Barry - replaced in the squad with Downing allowing Milner to move infield.
Petrov - Harsh to include him but was replaced by KEA who many on here thought was going to be fantastic.
Downing - not replaced initially but Holman came in to fill the gap after a year, lots of people liked Holman early on.
Milner - replaced by Ireland, many thought we got the better of the deal at the time.
Young - replaced by Nzogbia, many people thought we'd got an upgrade.
Carew - replaced by Bent, unquestionably an upgrade

Squad filler has left and been replaced from the reserves I agree but that's just common sense, players like Beye, sidwell, etc being paid 40-50k to barely play doesn't make any sense, the academy players are perfectly capable of providing the 20minute cameos from the bench and having an impact.  The problems have come about because those academy players aren't being asked to do that, they're being asked to form the spine of the team because the senior players listed above have, pretty much, all failed to deliver as expected.

Lerner is guilty of not having a consistent plan for recruitment of managers, he is not guilty of allowing players to leave and go unreplaced as so many people suggest.  Every single one of the players marked in bold came to the club as an experienced international footballer.

All of your comments are "people thought" I don't care what people thought, its what is actually happening that im concerned about!

[rob_bridge]

I voted out for the first time. He's doing something badly wrong now that must be eroding the confidence of the players in him. A huge part of being a successful manager at any trade is for your people to believe in your plans, other wise at best you get mediocrity and at worst failure.

I don't care much who they bring in, as long as they bring belief with them.

If they do replace him I very much care who they bring in.

[Risso]

It's a catch 22 again.

There's no point in sacking him because there's nobody better (Ole Gunnar Solskjær FFS) and it would put us back to square one again.

Not convinced that Lerner would be prepared to do that again

Nobody better, how on earth do you come to that conclusion?  He's been beyond abysmal, I'd take just about any out-of-work manager ahead of Lambert.

Quite.  There's mountains of evidence to indicate that almost anybody would be better.

Whilst I agree, I think that only applies to the short term.  We clearly need someone big/good enough to build something long term, or in 12 months time we'll be in exactly the same position

I quite agree Mac, but getting things right in the long term will be monumentally buggered if we go down, and for that we reason we need a short term emergency appoinment to keep us up, then we can hold the post-mortem in the summer.

[N'ZMAV]

Let's bring Houllier back.

[jembob]

I voted out for the first time. He's doing something badly wrong now that must be eroding the confidence of the players in him. A huge part of being a successful manager at any trade is for your people to believe in your plans, other wise at best you get mediocrity and at worst failure.

I don't care much who they bring in, as long as they bring belief with them.

I agree with this. The players either don't know what to do or they don't want to do what they are being told. We need some way to get this team organised and to do basic things and this will bring confidence. It's desperately sad to see it going wrong for Lambert as he has bought in some good players on a budget and we have shown hints of how good we could be.
Overall though, we are a shambles and the buck must stop with him. If he's lost the dressing room then he has to go sooner rather than later.

[Apyadg]

Milner - replaced by Ireland, many thought we got the better of the deal at the time.
Young - replaced by Nzogbia, many people thought we'd got an upgrade.

Who are these people, and why do their carers let them post on the internet?

[paul_e]

mrfuse, forget that then.  The reality is we replaced 9 full internationals with 9 other full internationals, pretty much of equal quality.  That the new ones have turned out to not be as good as they can be doesn't stop them from being effective replacements at the time they were signed.

Slagging Lerner for allowing players to leave without replacements is pure fabrication.  The only season we've made a profit since he took over was last year, he has made money available and he has signed the players the managers wanted.  His fault is in the choice of managers being far too diverse, but that isn't solved by demanding more money.

We've needed to have some direction from the board on how they want to play so they could hire managers to fit that model.  What we should be calling Lerner out on is to get an experienced Director of Football in so he can spent his money wisely, rather than just spending more of it.

To an extent Lambert is a victim of this as much as anything but he's shown himself up as incredibly naive with his tactical choices, since the Chelsea defeat he's stumbled from bad decision to bad decision and seems lost as to how to get out of that slump.  No two ways about it, a run of performances like we've seen should end in the sack, I've backed him until now but he got the tactics so wrong in the 2nd half last night that I can't see any way to defend him any more.

[django]

Spot on Paul-e.

He decision making has been reasoned but all our key signings until benteke have been flops. I wasn't in favour of signing Hutton, but I can see why Mcleish thought he could get the best out of a player who had performed well enough under him at rangers to move to spurs for 10mill. I can see why we took a gamble on Ireland as poor as he has been (wonder who it was who did sign him?)

And so on, throughout the list you gave. Every one has been a let down when we desperately needed them to work out.

Lamberts getting stick for his youth policy, but with the financial restraints what could he do? Older, experienced players cost more, players with premier league experience cost even more. His budget was stretched too thin as it was. With the number of flops we had we needed about 8 quality players in, we signed a number of players of whom a couple have looked good. Not sure what else he could have done really.

The main problem is above lambert, but with the ammont of money Lerner has spent for the return, both financial and on the field, I don't particularly blame him for trying another way either. We are in the middle of a perfect storm I think and can only see it ending with us going down at the moment.

[kiddylion]

I can't believe Houliier, McLeish and Lambert have done no training on set pieces but it's a consistent weakness. Easy to blame the managers/coaches. It it just seems like the players aren't any good to me.

Lambert said last night we practice set pieces everyday.
[/quote

We probably do practice them everyday but when they are practicing defending bannan's s##t outswinging floated corners in training it's no use.
His corners must be the worse ive ever seen at villa,the opposition look more dangerous from them than us when they break.

[paul_e]

Milner - replaced by Ireland, many thought we got the better of the deal at the time.
Young - replaced by Nzogbia, many people thought we'd got an upgrade.

Who are these people, and why do their carers let them post on the internet?

Check back on the post on here around the time, plenty of people thought Ireland would give us more cutting edge and provide more assists and Nzogbia would be a much bigger goal threat than Young, whilst still providing assists, etc.

Django - my point exactly, it's hard to point fingers and blame people when, for whatever reason, every major signing we made between Downing and Benteke has turned out to be a huge waste of money.

[Irish villain]

Milner - replaced by Ireland, many thought we got the better of the deal at the time.
Young - replaced by Nzogbia, many people thought we'd got an upgrade.

Who are these people, and why do their carers let them post on the internet?

Check back on the post on here around the time, plenty of people thought Ireland would give us more cutting edge and provide more assists and Nzogbia would be a much bigger goal threat than Young, whilst still providing assists, etc.

Django - my point exactly, it's hard to point fingers and blame people when, for whatever reason, every major signing we made between Downing and Benteke has turned out to be a huge waste of money.

For what it's worth I thought N'Zogbia for £10m was a great deal in the context of losing Downing for £20m.

[django]

I can't believe Houliier, McLeish and Lambert have done no training on set pieces but it's a consistent weakness. Easy to blame the managers/coaches. It it just seems like the players aren't any good to me.

Lambert said last night we practice set pieces everyday.
[/quote

We probably do practice them everyday but when they are practicing defending bannan's s##t outswinging floated corners in training it's no use.
His corners must be the worse ive ever seen at villa,the opposition look more dangerous from them than us when they break.

Yeah maybe that's the problem, our defenders never actually get to practice heading the ball as it floats aimlessly over their heads. Lamberts probably mystified, thinking "it's so strange we never concede from corners in training"

[villajk]

@JamesNursey: #AVFC as a club had so much upheaval since O'Neill quit, told no desire to sack Lambert

[Fin Feds Dad]

How can anyone still say he's a good coach ?

Tactically woeful .

It is good coach who can win back to back promotions and finish mid table in his first season in the Prem League.

He has been here 6 months - this team has gone backwards in that time - thats not a good coach in my opinion.