How would you feel....

[supertom]

The table is very tight in the bottom half though paulie and a couple of defeats could easily see us in the bottom 6 - I think the next 4 games will tell is a lot about how the season will go.

Equally 3 wins from the next 4 games and we will be comfortably away from any trouble and able to look ahead with confidence.

That's a fair point.

I don't hold with the "yeah, but we're bound to get sucked into it" posse, but I equally don't hold with the "yeah, we're tenth" argument, either, because it strikes me as a bit risky to read too much into our position at any one point.

I am, in other words, quite firmly on the fence.

The only time our position will really matter is the moment the final whistle blows on our 38th game. Until then it'd be nice if we started playing better and improve our chances of maintaining where we are, or improving upon it. 2-3 decent jan signings would be nice too.

[Concrete John]

We did have something like 80% wanting him sacked though.

I think it peaked after the millwall game - and  to be honest can totally understand why at that point.

You are right, although I think the aftermath of the second leg with Bradford was pretty rough too.

If I remember rightly the poll got re-set two or three times until it finally tipped over into the majority wanting him gone.  Normally after a bad defeat, so I feel it was more a knee jerk reaction to results than a balanced view of the job he had on and how long we should be patient for. 

[ozzjim]

I enjoyed a re-set.

Good times.


Anyhow, 6 points from the next 4 would move us further away from trouble. 3 or under would be underwhelming to say the least, I fancy us to get 5 in total though. Libor to lead the way.

[Monty]

I remember I didn't exactly wanting him sacked, but I was leaning towards the opinion that it was a doomed experiment which was going horribly, horribly wrong and dragging him and his sanity down with it. The desperation towards the end of the Bradford match was pitiful to behold. However, like Delph (who reached his nadir in that Bradford match, a performance so bad it was kind of amazing), he really turned it around to the point where I became more optimistic about the Villa than I have been in years. Like many on here, I may have got over-optimistic and found the drudgery of this season quite disappointing, but there's no doubt in my mind that we have improved significantly on last year.

Anyway, I hope we pass as well as we did against United when we go to the Britannia, because that was a definite improvement on the previous few matches. It would be nice if my theory of him having enough after the Fulham match was to come true, and we begin to pass it at least as well as we did at the end of last season, but who knows - long road ahead.

[Damo70]

I'm pretty sure I never wanted him sacked. Unless I threw a paddy at some point which I have since forgotten about. Doubts obviously crept in, I don't think anybody avoided getting to that point at least. The end of the transfer window on top of the December and January results and performances was the lowest point. I'm going 7 points from the next four league games.

[PeterWithesShin]

I'm pretty sure the poll was set so as people could change their vote rather than it kept being set back to zero. I think for a week or so it hovered just above the 50% mark for wanting him gone.

And from what I remember it was only Risso and one or two others who were in favour of Sam. And amusingly, Roy Keane. Which still makes me loff.

[paul_e]

For about 2-3 days after the bradford game i didn't care what happened to him, I didn't think he could survive it after the way we finished that game (which was easily the worst we played last year, regardless of results, we just had a complete meltdown and went to the worst tactic possible in that situation, after looking like we were going to have enough going forward to win it even though we'd given them another cheap goal.

[bobdylan]

For about 2-3 days after the bradford game i didn't care what happened to him, I didn't think he could survive it after the way we finished that game (which was easily the worst we played last year, regardless of results, we just had a complete meltdown and went to the worst tactic possible in that situation, after looking like we were going to have enough going forward to win it even though we'd given them another cheap goal.

To be pedantic "The way we finished the game" was actually quite good as we scored a late winner, the 2nd half up to that point however was chronic.

[paul_e]

For about 2-3 days after the bradford game i didn't care what happened to him, I didn't think he could survive it after the way we finished that game (which was easily the worst we played last year, regardless of results, we just had a complete meltdown and went to the worst tactic possible in that situation, after looking like we were going to have enough going forward to win it even though we'd given them another cheap goal.

To be pedantic "The way we finished the game" was actually quite good as we scored a late winner, the 2nd half up to that point however was chronic.

fair point but I meant the half hour before that where we played the exact style a league 2 club would've prayed for.

[ozzjim]

I think if you read between the lines of his comments today about us being nowhere near where he wants us to be, and basically now being solid with character, we are not far down the road he wants to go down.

[Monty]

I think if you read between the lines of his comments today about us being nowhere near where he wants us to be, and basically now being solid with character, we are not far down the road he wants to go down.

It's definitely a long term project. Last season was just about severe austerity and then survival. This year, he clearly wanted us to toughen up a bit and at least have a solid base. Having achieved a good deal of success towards that aim, we can now try and play a bit more. I'm sure he wants us to - we've played like that often enough, as did Norwich, to reach that conclusion.

[paul_e]

As I said a few pages back, next summer (or maybe Jan) will be very interesting in that regard.  We have a big squad of his players now (15 signings) so he needs to change his approach now, there's no longer any reason or need to spread the finances thin so most of the signings from now should be with the intention of improving the side immediately.  I think he'll still want younger players but i think we'll be in the Benteke/Okore market more often than the Bowery market.

[ChicagoLion]

Many of his signings  have been awful.

[old man villa fan]

Many of his signings  have been awful.

Young players bought cheaply are generally a gamble, some come off, some don't.

[fredm]

When PL came we were short on numbers who he trusted.  He has rectified that now and has a squad of sufficient numbers to enable him to put out a reasonable team. From now on what he needs to do is upgrade the ability of the squad and any incoming bodies should be a step up in class to the one they replace.