How would you feel....

[eastie]

Lose the next two games and he wil go. 

I can't see him going if we lost the next 5 to be honest , I would dispense with his services if we did lose the next 2 home games but I really can't see randy lerner sacking him 

[supertom]

Other than Gabby, Benteke, when he can be bothered, I look at the current squad and wonder how many of these players would get in to any of the sides that Little, Atkinson, Taylor, Gregory or O'Neill had.  In truth, this current Villa side is very, very poor.  One or two have potential, granted, but we are where we are because the players we have, in the main, are lower Premier League or even upper Championship players.  We are desperate for some experience.  It's not as if Lambert has not had money to spend either.  Whilst I applaud Lambert for sticking to his guns and trying to go with youth, I really DO think that it will cost us at some point and we may end up in a relegation scrap that we don't win. I am not saying that we sack him, I just want him to change his tact and go for some experience.

Yep it's too extreme. Just like we couldn't exist under the blueprint O Neill laid out, which while it had us top 6, we were ruining our finances, you cannot compete in this league by buying so many cheap lower league domestic and foreign youngsters. It's too much of a gamble, short of having God as your chief scout, it's not going to have you pushing the top half.
If you're talking odds too, we've had our Benteke master stroke. To do that again is highly unlikely. If he comes good again this season, he won't be here next.

[supertom]

Lose the next two games and he wil go. 

I can't see him going if we lost the next 5 to be honest , I would dispense with his services if we did lose the next 2 home games but I really can't see randy lerner sacking him 

No he'll be given the season. At this stage as bad as it's been I'd rather we saw it through to the end this season. Trying to appoint someone decent mid season is a huge ask. Not only because we need pay the better managers the sort of money Randy probably wouldn't, but also because the better managers will look at our squad and not want to come in without the benefit of a summer to work on the side.

I still think we could be terrible for the rest of the season and still finish 10th. I don't see any of the bottom 3 being able to catch up either. We'll finish somewhere between 10th-16th. But next season? If we're missing Benteke and don't get a reasonable start we could find ourselves in trouble, and it's hard to dig yourself out.

[aj2k77]

See now we've got to this point of the season where we are struggling to get anything out of games against the crap sides I hope people can see why there were some complaints about the side when we were getting a few results.

These kind of performances will not get results over a sustained period. You wiil not do well with 40% of the ball and you will not do well with 70% pass accuracy. We are being found out now.

I hope to god that Lambert swallows his pride and Lerner loosens his wallet one last time and we get the at least 1 of the 2 central midfielders we've needed since before last January and the dominant centre back.


Between the Givens and Warnocks and the Tonevs and El Ahamadi's there has to be a centre ground we find. We can't sustain either, 1 leads to financial ruin and the other footballing ruin.

[ROBBO]

As if we have any influence anyway, while Lerner believes he can keep us up he will stay no matter how dire the football.

[Clampy]

I personally think he's found a potential gem in Kozak and by and large the players he's brought in are reasonable enough although Tonev looks like he's struggling to adapt. Attempting to prise Lescott away from Man City would be my priority in January.

[Pete3206]

Lose the next two games and he wil go. 

That absolutely won't happen.

[supertom]

I personally think he's found a potential gem in Kozak and by and large the players he's brought in are reasonable enough although Tonev looks like he's struggling to adapt. Attempting to prise Lescott away from Man City would be my priority in January.

Maybe we can kidnap Messi and superglue a one of those comedy nose and tache glasses to his face, and hope no one recognises him. Then we'll force him to play for us.

[Steve67]

As if we have any influence anyway, while Lerner believes he can keep us up he will stay no matter how dire the football.

I think you're right ROBBO.  Whilst we retain our premier league status, even if it is by the hair of our teeth, Lerner won't see what the problem is.  Wow!!  We are soooo far away from the euphoria that we had when he told he wouldn't stop until Villa were competing to be the champions of europe again, the five year plan etc etc etc.

[supertom]

As if we have any influence anyway, while Lerner believes he can keep us up he will stay no matter how dire the football.

He probably has little idea of how dire the football is. I doubt he even watches the games.

[SoccerHQ]

Spot on Drum.   However, the prospect of giving Lambert another season and a half before deciding whether he has any kind of working plan fills me with dread.   The prospect of another year and a half of the shit which we serve up and by and large have served up more often than not over the last four years including the time Lambert has been in charge is more than flesh and blood can stand.

So what do we do? Go back to the shit that McLeish served up? Or that Houllier served up? If the last few years have taught as anything it is that constant change doesn't work. At some point you have to have a the courage to stick with a man and allow him to see a plan through, not bail out half way through.

Whatever we do it'll continue to be shit until Lerner decides to invest again.

I tend to be of his viewpoint aswell.

There's only so far you can go with 1-2m punts, Lambert has got us to mid table but the reality is even getting back in the top 8 will be beyond him unless we start signing better players.

It's not like I want the days back of MON spending 40m each summer on a new defence and making 7-8 signings a summer.

We need 3 new signings, I liken it a bit to Southampton in the summer signing Lovren for 7m, Wanayama for 12m and Osvaldo for 15m.

One new central defence, a new powerhouse central midfielder and a striker who took a while to settle but is now firing and Saints have improved significantly.

These sort of signings of higher quality would I reckon improve underachieving existing squad players and the likes of Lowton, Westwood and Weimann might actually get back to last season's standard.

What killed us last time was signing too many players in or around close to 30 on high wages e.g Heskey and Beye and of course limited the search to british players.

Lambert has shown he isn't afraid to take a punt from abroad and generally these can come on lower wages to their british counterparts and you can sell them on if they don't work out. There were a few clubs in for Tonev remember.

 

[eastie]

Vital we get points on the board this week .

[SoccerHQ]

Spot on Drum.   However, the prospect of giving Lambert another season and a half before deciding whether he has any kind of working plan fills me with dread.   The prospect of another year and a half of the shit which we serve up and by and large have served up more often than not over the last four years including the time Lambert has been in charge is more than flesh and blood can stand.

So what do we do? Go back to the shit that McLeish served up? Or that Houllier served up? If the last few years have taught as anything it is that constant change doesn't work. At some point you have to have a the courage to stick with a man and allow him to see a plan through, not bail out half way through.

Whatever we do it'll continue to be shit until Lerner decides to invest again.

True. We're not expecting to be Man City by any means, but we should be competing financially with clubs like Southampton, even Everton too. Everton work on a budget, with the flexibility to spend good money when they have to. We've taken budget to the extreme. I don't see the point spending 15 or so million on 7 players. I'd rather spend 20 million on 3-4 decent ones.

Spot on. In terms of number wise in the squad we're fine, two left backs (is Bennett actually still alive?), a million defensive midfielders and 6 strikers although 3 of them are of questionable quality.

Again to repeat my long winded post above, Southampton spent 35m this summer, they could've gone down the route of spending 5m on 7 players but they signed 3 players who have improved their first 11.

That's the stage we are now at but doesn't look promising if the budget isn't improved.

[paul_e]

That article shows why I'm willing to give him more time, both he and Lerner seem to understand that we need to take our time over things and build carefully.

I've said this a few times but I'm going to put it a little clearer.  When he arrived we had a small squad built around 2 cores, the youngsters who had come through the ranks at the club and the older players on massive wages who had been going through the motions for a couple of seasons.  We needed to pick one of those and restructure the squad to fit that.  Lambert went for the youth option, getting rid of a bunch of the older players and then intending to use the rest whilst the youngsters got up to speed.  Unfortunately those senior players let us down again and it was the kids who kept us in the league.

Last summer, on the back of the kids keeping us up with little assistance from the older players he decided to move on most of the remaining older player as well as a few of the kids who were struggling.  All that meant we had to have a large number of players in and out (he's signed 15 players in 3 windows) so it's fairly reasonable that not all of those signings could be in the Benteke/Kozak range.

I believe there is no requirement for a big churn of the squad for the next few windows but rather we need to replace some squad players with first team players.  That in itself means that the signings going forward should be in the 5m+ region, to repeat my comments on those signings again, everytime Lambert has spent decent money we've got a good player.

So for me we need to see what happens in the next 2 windows.  If by next September we've seen another 5-6 1-2m gambles then I'll want him out, if he does the right thing and refocuses on quality now that he has a big squad of players he trusts, then we will start to see the value of the approach.

To add specifics, I'd be looking to replace KEA and Bowery (I don't think either will ever be effective in the premier league) in Jan and I'd try to loan in a central defender.  If said central defender looks well I'd look at making it permanent in the summer to replace Baker (who it's firmly in my not sure list right now).  Everyone else who's in my 'not sure' list deserves a bit more time but Tonev and Sylla are the others who i haven't formed an opinion on yet.

Aside from that we need to start doing more work on our movement off the ball, it's easy to slag our players off for no beign able to pass but I don't think that's true at all, I think the issue is that the options just aren't there so we pass into space hoping to create a run rather than passing into the path of a run.  there were 9-10 times yesterday where this happened, the ball was played into the space that we should've been moving into but the player was on his heels rather than anticipating the pass.  I think to a large extent it's a confidence issue, too many of our players are happy to hide behind a defender so they don't get the ball.

[BoskoDjembaSalifou]

Lambert went for the youth option, getting rid of a bunch of the older players and then intending to use the rest whilst the youngsters got up to speed.  Unfortunately those senior players let us down again and it was the kids who kept us in the league.

I think they went down that route as it's cheaper than buying proper first team players. This "young and hungry" thing is just a clever way of saying we're doing things on the cheap.