Randy Lerner

[Michel Sibble]

Dave might have a point- if you take Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea and West Ham (at a stretch) as the top teams in the capital, then Greater Birmingham does compare well with our three.
 
The Blose would have a bigger fan base had they not changed their name from Small Heath.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

My own view is that the club failed to properly monitor and assess what was actually going on in terms of contracts / players wages etc [I mean come on, had any of them asked one of us if we would agree to sign Heskey and pay him 80K a week we would have laughed them out of the room!] you dont have to be a footballing genious to see that MoN was signing some real crap

This is one of the key points for me. We really needed somebody at the club with a football background to work with the board. It would have saved a lot of heartache, not to mention millions and avoided the mess we are now in. Whether MON would have accepted it though is another matter.

Which brings me on to the biggest problem, in MON we backed the wrong horse. Ideally we would have replaced him after a season or two and brought in somebody that could have used the money to actually build something sustainable. The House of MON was built on quicksand and it didn't take long before it started to sink.

The problem was it was Catch 22 for Randy. Can you imagine the reaction if he'd replaced MON after finishing 6th? Fans would have thought him crazy but in reality MON was never going to be the man to take the club forward even with investment. Neither he or his coaching staff were up to the job and as Paulie mentioned earlier, even if we had qualified for the Champions League, we'd have been  knocked out faster than you can say "hoof".

One thing I'm sure Randy never thought, even to this day, was just how worthless most of MON's squad were in terms of resale. The fact we're still trying to shift some of them whilst still paying them stupid wages must make him wonder what the hell he was thinking. We can only hope he's learned from the experience whilst realising getting into the top six is now a hell of a lot harder than it was four or five years ago.

[caster troy]

They started building it and we didn't come, so they stopped building it.

I think the killer blow was the Man City takeover. If that hadn't happened we may not have lost Barry and Milner, and would have had a better chance of getting that all important Champions League place. That would have been the catalyst for bigger attendances and revenue.

In the summer of 2009 City spent £100 million, including buying our captain. Randy et al then realised that United, City and Chelsea were in a different league, and that realistically even if we kept spending there was no guarantee we'd ever finish above Spurs, Arsenal, Liverpool and Everton all in one season so they had to assess the potential ramifications of continuing to spend and not actually improving revenue. Hence they pulled the plug.

[N'ZMAV]

The objective may still be the same, we just have a cheaper and lengthier approach to acheive it.

[paul_e]

I'm glad other people are viewing it the same way as me, Dave's 'they built it and we didn't come' sums up a big part of it.

Look at the financial growth we had after Lerner arrived, there was a big increase in the first couple of years before it levelled out, which ties in perfectly with the results on the pitch.

We needed to break the big 4.  Forget the comparison to Everton, they don't have the capital to back that achievement, if we'd got there in mons 3rd or 4th season things would be very different.

The bums on seats comment is important too, that falls under backing the wrong horse, mon just wasn't the manager the vast majority of people thought.

As for Risso's "how would we know" comment, how about because his friends in the press would start spouting sell-to-buy nonsense and he would strop off 5 days before the season started, you know, exactly how we knew when Lerner did put those restrictions in place.

[Risso]

At the end of the day, the Lerner era has been a massive failure because over £200m has been spent, and yet we are fighting relegation for the third year in a row.  I doubt he could sell the club if he wanted to too because the finances are so bad, and it's only the huge new TV deal which might go some way to rectifying the state of affairs.  And even then we seem to be doing our best to go down so that we can't take full advantage of it.

[Risso]

As for Risso's "how would we know" comment, how about because his friends in the press would start spouting sell-to-buy nonsense and he would strop off 5 days before the season started, you know, exactly how we knew when Lerner did put those restrictions in place.

He stropped off when he was told that he couldn't spend any more money at all (including the Milner cash) before moving on players, after years of being given an open cheque book.  That is an entirely different scenario to being asked to stay within a reasonable and mutually agreed budget in the early years.

[Duncan Shaw]

The bums on seats comment is important too, that falls under backing the wrong horse, mon just wasn't the manager the vast majority of people thought.

just imagine what a BFR in his pomp would have done with the Randy takeover.  We'd have put bums on seats then!!

[dave.woodhall]

The bums on seats comment is important too, that falls under backing the wrong horse, mon just wasn't the manager the vast majority of people thought.

just imagine what a BFR in his pomp would have done with the Randy takeover.  We'd have put bums on seats then!!

Don't.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

They started building it and we didn't come, so they stopped building it.

I think the killer blow was the Man City takeover. If that hadn't happened we may not have lost Barry and Milner, and would have had a better chance of getting that all important Champions League place. That would have been the catalyst for bigger attendances and revenue.

Only if you ignore the elephant in the room.

[Risso]

The bums on seats comment is important too, that falls under backing the wrong horse, mon just wasn't the manager the vast majority of people thought.

just imagine what a BFR in his pomp would have done with the Randy takeover.  We'd have put bums on seats then!!

Don't.

God, if only.....even Brian Little.

[Villadroid]

The bums on seats comment is important too, that falls under backing the wrong horse, mon just wasn't the manager the vast majority of people thought.

just imagine what a BFR in his pomp would have done with the Randy takeover.  We'd have put bums on seats then!!

Unfortunately, the BFR era proves that even when the team is winning trophies and playing the best possible football, the crowds just don't turn up to watch Villa.

Check the stats, if you don't believe it.

[paul_e]

As for Risso's "how would we know" comment, how about because his friends in the press would start spouting sell-to-buy nonsense and he would strop off 5 days before the season started, you know, exactly how we knew when Lerner did put those restrictions in place.

He stropped off when he was told that he couldn't spend any more money at all (including the Milner cash) before moving on players, after years of being given an open cheque book.  That is an entirely different scenario to being asked to stay within a reasonable and mutually agreed budget in the early years.

Again, you have no knowledge that those limits weren't in place.  Look at the increase in turnover and improvement in results over his first 2 years, I think it's fairly clear that they planned for that increase to continue, not to plateau out so quickly.  In hindsight that was clearly the wrong decision and it now looks like a huge error but at the time he was doing exactly what the fans wanted.

As for spending the milner cash, we didn't need to as such, we got a direct replacement as part of the deal.  That's turned out to be an overrated pile of turd is again using hindsight to judge things.  At the time there were plenty of people who thought we'd got a player who was just as good and got a sack of money as well.  The rule was that we had a big enough squad but it wasn't being used correctly so he could only add bodies as replacements, not just keep stacking more on top.

From a pure player transaction point of view we've replaced the players we've sold, we've just not replaced them well, that's not lerners fault unless you want him dictating who the manager can sign.

Barry - replaced by Downing, allowing Milner to move central
Milner - replaced by Ireland
Young - replaced by Bent before he left allowing Gabby to move left
Downing - replaced by Nzogbia

As a fanbase the only 1 of those I can imagine wasn't seen as at least a reasonable replacement was Bent for Young, mainly because they played such different roles.

Where we haven't replaced at all was with the squad filler (like sidwell and NRC) who technically have been replaced from the reserves, but surely producing players to bulk out the squad is the purpose of the reserves.  They don't look good enough because the big profile replacements have turned out to be shit compared to what we had before.

If Ireland and Nzogbia were playing well and Bent was scoring we'd be fine and comfortably mid table, the first 2 being shit and as a consequence the 3rd offering nothing are main reasons for us failing.

Losing our captain, and main focal point in midfield to serious illness is the final piece in that unpleasant jigsaw, for which no one can be blamed, that is just a terrible thing to have happen that cannot be accounted for in any way.

Randy is far from perfect, but he's better than the vast majority of chairmen, he had the balls to gamble but, bad news for us, he lost.  He made some poor decisions whilst trying to recover but any gambler knows just after a big loss isn't the time for making important decisions.

[Risso]

I'm glad other people are viewing it the same way as me, Dave's 'they built it and we didn't come' sums up a big part of it.

They didn't really build anything new though did they?  We'd been well used to 6th placed finishes for a good portion of the Premier League, even including David O'Leary, so it was only probably seen as a return to that level.  A welcome return of course, but nothing over and above what was still reasonably fresh in people's memories.  And certainly nowhere near as good as or exciting as the Atkinson/Little years.

[Risso]

As for Risso's "how would we know" comment, how about because his friends in the press would start spouting sell-to-buy nonsense and he would strop off 5 days before the season started, you know, exactly how we knew when Lerner did put those restrictions in place.

He stropped off when he was told that he couldn't spend any more money at all (including the Milner cash) before moving on players, after years of being given an open cheque book.  That is an entirely different scenario to being asked to stay within a reasonable and mutually agreed budget in the early years.

Again, you have no knowledge that those limits weren't in place.  Look at the increase in turnover and improvement in results over his first 2 years, I think it's fairly clear that they planned for that increase to continue, not to plateau out so quickly.  In hindsight that was clearly the wrong decision and it now looks like a huge error but at the time he was doing exactly what the fans wanted.

Actually I was told by somebody very well connected to the club that that was indeed the problem.  And as you say further down, he gambled, which without wishing to turn this into a semantic argument is a different strategy to sensible and planned investment.