Doug or Randy?

[Dave Clark Five]

Shame we can't combined the best of both into one. I hope Randy Lerner keep in touch with Doug Ellis to see what is happening with the club.

He must get sick of hearing Doug's favourite saying: 'this would never have happened in my day.'
Comes with the territory, I'm afraid!

[seanthevillan]

Ok its my turn to stick my head above the parapet and put up a piece that I wrote, for the same site which curiousorange writes on. I've pasted the start on here, feel free to read the rest here or not, I promise its not all full of victorian literature references.

"Even as an eternal footballing optimist the situation Villa find themselves in grows seemingly more ominous day on day, with every rival transfer and rumour of internal trouble further twisting the knife.
Us early disciples of Lambert's project are beginning to resemble a Haversham-esque caricature, wailing 'Anfield, Anfield' with crazed eyes fixed on clocks stopped at around 4.06, when Benteke got the third. Unfortunately those great expectations are a distant fragile memory, long forgotten to be replaced by hard times.


Read more: on the site .

I know some people see it as a bit of an affront that we try to link to our own site, but neither of us profit in any way and if you like reading (on the whole) quality football writing from a host of different clubs, from people far better at it than me, then its worth a browse.

[sonlyme]

Cheers Sean - I enjoyed that - it's a legitimate question.

The answer will come in the next two weeks.

[Lee]

Says it all really and quite damming of the current Chairman

[VinnieChase84]

Says it all really and quite damming of the current Chairman

I'm surprised Lerner had not had any vocal fan abuse during matches yet!
How long until chants of 'we want Lerner out' start?
The lack of leadership is astounding. No communication with us at all and just seems distant, not interested in everything he does. He needs to shit or get off the pot. If he won't/can't finance us so were not relegation fodder then put the club up for sale!!
For someone that is meant to 'care' about the club, he surely has a funny way of showing it. Currently sitting in the background 3 thousand miles away and watching us plummet closer and closer to the championship.

[CBAV06]

Hard to balance the calls to spend more money with the idea of running Villa responsibly. I watch the transfer list every day as well, and wait for the signing that makes me happy...but a lot of you speak too much from the heart and not the head.

A year old http://swissramble.blogspot.ca/2012/03/aston-villa-prophets-and-losses.html but you dont recover all that in one year.

[Zakk Fatt]

Randy has spent £200M which is to be commended, but...he did not spend it wisely.  MON walked out on us when he spat his dummy out at having to trim our over inflated wage bill because we didnt get into the Champions League this left us in the dilema of needing a big name manager to continue the journey, we got Houllier who's health was in question from day one, he got sick (and my best wishes remain with him) and we were leaderless, we had to let him go, it cost us big money (bad decision to appoint in the first place Randy).

In the meantime MON sued Lerner for constructive dismissal and got a fortune off us, talk about kicking us when we were down Martin!!!

We got McLiesh (no one knows why) he nearly got us relegated (we all know why) and we had to sack him and then pay him big money for the priveledge (second bad mistake Randy).

Steve Stride out - Faulkener in (third big nistake Randy)

Managers want the players they want, boards then have to manage the finances and say yes or no to planned signings.

This board are inept at managing the club and thier appointed managers,  Lambert has one hell of a job on his hands (if he was McLiesh then we would have sacked him by now and Nigel Adkins would be Villa's new manager come Newcastle at home)  we need to keep Paul Lambert whatever happens and we need to rebuild the whole team over the next 5 years under a more modest wage structure but I wonder if Nigel will be in the dugout before February is over (Randy's fourth big mistake???).

£54 Million loss for Villa! What are we wasting our money on?  Randy - I thought you were good at business - My A*se!!!

[MoetVillan]

I dont think Randy and the board have deliberately gone out to pick bad managers.  Houllier had a plan, and the football was starting to alter from sit back and counter attack of MON to actually trying to play football.  Health finished it early, but where might we be now if he was still at the helm.  They saw something in McLeish.  I met him once and thought him a real gent.  He had delivered silverware to a pretty average club.  True he was relegated, but I can see some of the attraction, wanting to bring youth through, and you cannot doubt for one moment that he wanted success for us.  He didnt deliver, but he wanted it.  Lambert, a fans choice, a huge success in bringing through lower league, cheaper players.  Its not a quick fix, but in periods we have played some of our best football for four years.  We need it to maintain through a period of games, granted.  Look at the difference in investment in players we have seen since Lerner has taken over.  Its difficult to compare as the market is bloated, but dont forget we were odds on favourites to go down before Lerner took over, so we know what the "depth" of our squad truly was.  Have we blown money?  Good god yes.  Im not going to give you a list, because you all have your own favourites.  I think his fault has been too loose with the purse strings, especially on average players early doors.  We have bought most prudently this summer under him, and I think looking at the players we have brought in, have the best value for purchase/wages and if needed sell on price as we have done for well over four years.  I dont mind him being quiet.  If i was in charge I would be worried about the following.  a) finances. How do i make/keep my club substainable. b) My manager.  What does he need to make things happen. c)fans. How do I make the team play the football that will fill the stadiums (remember after the original MON love in, his last season in charge we saw gates fall, despite finishing 6th and a final and semi final, and there were plenty of complaints about the style of football we played then, something was wrong.  If I could get the abc right, I honestly couldnt give two shiny shits about what anyone else thought of me

[Lee]

Randy has spent £200M which is to be commended, but...he did not spend it wisely.

It's like that scene at the end of Indiana Jones and the last Crusade, except Randy just can't get the cup that belonged to the Carpenter's son.

[pauliewalnuts]

In the "making the money available" stakes, Randy has done pretty well.

In the "making sure it gets used properly", he has been a disaster.

Compare the way clubs like, say, Spurs and Everton invest their money and treat their squad as a valuable asset, which they manage from one year to the next, and we look an absolute fucking shambles by comparison. Those clubs also usually sell their best players, but they make sure they spend the money wisely. Their squads are assets which are managed over a longer period of time, added to as necessary, tweaked where needed, and they have some degree of stability (not to mention success).

Now look at how much money we wasted on players like Reo-Coker or Heskey, or Beye - players who were of highly dubious utility, and who walked away at the end of their contracts.

Heskey was said to be on 65k a week. We paid £3.5m for him. Rough calculation:

65,000 x 4 x 12 = £3,120,000

times 3.5 years = £10,920,000 - and that is an underestimate, as you'd need to add employers NI contribs, bonuses, and signing on fees to that.

Throw on the 3.5m fee, and Heskey cost us the best part of £15 million.

I appreciate that it is the manager who signs players like that, and O'Neill had a terribly myopic, short term, "throw enough money at it, enough of them will work out" approach to signing players, but ultimately it was Lerner's job to see the bigger picture.

He ignored it for far too long with O'Neill, realised he'd have to give Houllier even more money (and you have to ask how much will Jean Makoun cost by the end of his contract - how many of us actually remember he plays for us?), and then went totally the other way by reeling it in far, far too quickly.

I read a tweet from a journo last week saying that Villa's problem was that they'd gone from "A" (paying players 60k a week) to "C" (paying them 15k a week) without stopping off at "B". That struck me as spot on.

Lerner is far from the only one culpable here, but ultimately, he's the one running the business. If you look at either the accounts or the league table - or both - it's pretty hard to say he's been anything other than a disaster in that sense.

[Lee]

I've said it before, I'll say it again ..  bang on PW.

[Dave Clark Five]

Digging through some old papers last night, I came across the AGM notice that was issued after the Poison Dwarf was appointed. Very interesting document. What a pity we don't get them anymore.

[Lee]

Digging through some old papers last night, I came across the AGM notice that was issued after the Poison Dwarf was appointed. Very interesting document. What a pity we don't get them anymore.

Indeed. We might all have had a trip to Cleveland thrown in

[Dave Clark Five]

Those AGMs were like a night at the London Palladium.

[Risso]

Digging through some old papers last night, I came across the AGM notice that was issued after the Poison Dwarf was appointed. Very interesting document. What a pity we don't get them anymore.

Indeed. We might all have had a trip to Cleveland thrown in

Well, to the trustees' office in Delaware maybe!