Takeover rumours

[brian green]

I cannot think of any football manager past or present who has ever done anything as damaging to his club as walking out without warning five days before the start of a season.   That was pure unadulterated spite.

[Legion]

I cannot think of any football manager past or present who has ever done anything as damaging to his club as walking out without warning five days before the start of a season.   That was pure unadulterated spite.

Calculated and pre-meditated aswell.

[paul_e]

No, Moyes left his club in a stronger state than he found it. Our subsequent crises and stagnations following his departure suggests that MON left the club pretty much exactly as he found it.

Exactly, add in that he spent over £100m achieving that as well and you get a manager who failed to achieve what he should have given the resources and managed to salt the field on the way out.

[spangley1812]

I cannot think of any football manager past or present who has ever done anything as damaging to his club as walking out without warning five days before the start of a season.   That was pure unadulterated spite.

Calculated and pre-meditated aswell.

Dont forget Moscow

[MoetVillan]

I think Moyes needs to cash in on that right now, I dont think his credit is rising at the moment.  "Moyes...better than ONeill"

[Legion]

I cannot think of any football manager past or present who has ever done anything as damaging to his club as walking out without warning five days before the start of a season.   That was pure unadulterated spite.

Calculated and pre-meditated aswell.

Dont forget Moscow

That was the beginning of the end.

[ROBBO]

MON left us in a worse position, before he became manager our wages were under control Doug made sure of that, when he left our wages were unsustainable with several players on the books we couldn't get rid of because
no other club would be stupid enough to pay them what MON did. The guy is all about himself and he has been foud out at last, i doubt he will ever manage a premiership side again.

[brian green]

Moyes is on Mission Impossible.   When Busby retired it was just the same' he would not give his successor the privilege of the focus of attention.   He was always casting his shadow across the team.   Two things Yanited need to do which would take courage they don't have.   Tell Ferguson and Charlton to play golf on match days and get rid of Rooney.   Sorry, off thread.   It was the implication that Moyes is no better than MON.

[Villa in Denmark]

Well, we didn't have a bottomless pit of money and he spent it all on those players. And yes - Dunne and Collins physically threatened a Villa legend, for one thing, and they and Warnock spent a lot of the GH and Eck years mouthing off at the young players whenever he messed up. Those three were a poisonous influence, for which privilege, thanks to MON, we paid six figures a week. The current mob are just cheap and trying their best. That's not to mention the money spent on the likes of Sidwell, Heskey, Harewood, Shorey, Carson, Davies, Knight. Yes he also signed good players, but they were hardly amazing finds - everyone in the league knew about Milner and Young, and he inherited Stan Petrov at Celtic, he didn't go out to find him, as he inherited Henrik Larsson, Martin Laursen and Gareth Barry. His scouting was UKIP-esque and his spending was like Mike Tyson's circa 1995.

As for guesswork, well, look at Moyes and Pardew - hardly the game's greatest thinkers but they assembled teams more cheaply than MON which played better football, had better squad depth and finished higher.

Martin O'Neill wasted the best opportunity this club had had in years, and he did so in such a spectacularly obnoxious, gratingly dislikable and flouncingly prima-donna-ish way that I can't believe he still has even one defender among Villa fans.

Spot on Monty.

Yes,we finished 6th under MON.
Yes we spent like a big club in those first few years.
Yes it was exciting, even exhilarating at the time, but.......

As others have said, we could have achieved the same on far less money. Why the hell we needed so many expensive non playing squad members, when baring injury, if you were one of the favoured 11, your job was safer than a bank director in the early 2000s.

The one thing that's been missing from day 1, has been someone with oversight of the squad and managing the value of these assets, because that is precisely what a player registration is, an asset that is dropping in value from day 1of the contract. Unfortunately that's something that MONs ego would never have accepted.

With regards to the funding, I may be mistaken, but I'm sure I remember reading that funding wasn't from Randy's personal fortune, but from the Lerner family trust, in which case it's not solely Randy who's making the decisions.

I'm convinced that the plan (somewhat naively) was to qualify for the Champions League within 4 to 5 years by investing in the 1st team squad.
When it became apparent that this wasn't going to happen with MON they didn't know what to do.
That particular problem solved itself, but created a new one. I know he wasn't popular at the time, but I think that Houllier was a pretty good shout at the time. And although he never really "got us", he had the right idea and had identified the bad eggs in the squad pretty quickly.  The same bad eggs that we have spent 3 years cleaning out.

It's with the exit of Houllier, that I think it really went to ratshit, with the decision that will never be understood.

Again the lack of oversight of the management of the squad showed itself, with the drastic change of direction to a manager whose "style" was completely inappropriate for the squad that was in place.

The constant changes of managers and style have had the inevitable effect on performance, and with each fall in performance, came further retrenchment as the desire to get the wages down to a percentage of turnover, until you end where we are today.

I said under McLeish, that the problem was, that as performances fall, so does the income, which leads to further cuts in wages, which results in poorer performances etc. Repeat until relegated, unless you can find someone who can get a group of lower quality players to over perform,which is pretty much where we are now.

The truly interesting point will come if we do finish 10-12th, if that will induce an increase in spending again.

[bertlambshank]

I cannot think of any football manager past or present who has ever done anything as damaging to his club as walking out without warning five days before the start of a season.   That was pure unadulterated spite.

Calculated and pre-meditated aswell.

Dont forget Moscow

That was the beginning of the end.

The meal still makes me laugh though.

[London Villan]

I'm still amazed our income has dropped despite the massive increase in TV revenue.

[Ads]

The TV money won't appear on balance sheets until the April accounts.

[MoetVillan]

It is off the thread, but people judging how Everton was left by Moyes are seeing them as now.  And their two most influential players according to my ST holding mates are Barry and Lukaku.  I dont think Moyes's team with no changes would be anywhere near as high up the league as the Martinez version.  But Moyes is better than ONeill, granted.

[Dave Clark Five]

I cannot think of any football manager past or present who has ever done anything as damaging to his club as walking out without warning five days before the start of a season.   That was pure unadulterated spite.

Calculated and pre-meditated aswell.

Dont forget Moscow

That was the beginning of the end.

The meal still makes me laugh though.

O'Neill was a twat that night as well.

[Ads]

Told my mate Terry to shut up. Wanker.