How would you feel....

[Mister E]

I think we have an owner that will contribute some funding each year, although not a great deal.  The reality, therefore, is to combine this with TV money and other commercial income and that is all we have to work with.  I do believe that the club are working very hard to increase the commercial income and trying to promote the name of the club around the world e.g. I caught a little bit of a club produced weekly program me on Eurosport Asia.  This all takes time unless you are winning trophies.

It will help when we have cleared the decks of non-playing high earners so that this money can be spent raising the quality of the squad.  In the meantime we have to struggle on the best we can by whatever means possible.  Clearly, there are a number of the young players that are struggling for form, partly due to the whole team struggling, which is partly down to loss of key players to injury.  I firmly believe that the club have to bring some experienced players in in January.  As we do not want to spend a great deal of money on a short term quick fix, we should use the loan system.  Investing GBP 5 million  in loan salaries will buy us far more now and for the future than spending on buying players.

Earlier somebody said that it all started going wrong in Moscow. I would say it all started going wrong when we signed Heskey.  He did not fit in with the way we played and we changed to accommodate him. Managers used to like him because of his work rate but we could not afford to have a center forward that did not score goals due to lack of goals from midfield.  We are in a similar position now in that we rely on the front three for goals.  AW and GA without goals are a luxury we cannot afford, however much we like them as players.  Similarly with somebody like Albrighton, it is of no use him looking busy, running down the wing and crossing if he is not looking where his players are before he crosses.

I am all for steadying the ship until we can sail on full steam ahead.  What we cannot afford is to ruin the good work to date by changing direction completely.  However, I would not say no to a money-no-object Arab turning up at B6.

Well said.
I think the Moscow debacle is a bit of a sideshow; the club took a view on what to prioritise and got it wrong (and, anyway, MON screwed that campaign earlier by getting team selections wrong in the group stage).
We are now in a consolidation phase, where the manager is no longer "new" and needs to move on from exiting unwanted players to building a squad that can compete. The owner also has to move into new phase, from being tentative about his new manager to being wholeheartedly supportive.
I don't believe that PL is acting independently of RL and PF: there will be a clear plan of approach, based on a slow-build, low-risk strategy. The trigger for a more expansive approach is the removal of the high-earning relics from previous eras.

The biggest issue is straightforward: has PL got the right footballing philosophy? - the general consensus here seems to be either "not sure" or "no" ... And after the last few weeks, with key players being out of contention, I am similarly pessimistic.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS, ALL.

[brian green]

I do not want to have a pop at anybody least of all at Christmas but the proposition that Lerner, Faulkner and Lambert are more honest, are more hard working and have greater integrity than their predecessors cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.

Paulie sums it up for me.   Ask yourself is Randy Lerner working harder for the club than Doug Ellis did?   Even in advancing age and struck by cancer Doug Ellis followed his team home and away.   Do we see that level of work by Lerner?   Do we see anything remotely like that level of work by Lerner?   Does Paul Faulkner have greater integrity than Steve Stride? And as for honesty the most honest man at Villa Park in recent years has been the man we love to hate - Alex McLeish.   He was a terrible manager and should never have been our manager but he was and remains, a decent, honest man who took the sack which was inevitable from the day he came, without bitterness or rancour and most importantly without ever slagging off the Villa.   Is Lambert a more honest man than McLeish?   In my book no.

Some say Villa changed on the way to Moscow, others say the day we signed Heskey and others say it was when we signed Marlon The Magnificent.   I think it was when Lerner took it upon himself to fly to Corsica and appoint TSM.   That was the point in our history when balancing the books became our number one priority.

Having an old and glorious football club in your ownership and prioritizing getting value for money out of it is like marrying a woman because she will cook you nice dinners and keep the house clean.   It is an arrangement totally devoid of love and passion.

[olaftab]

Having an old and glorious football club in your ownership and prioritizing getting value for money out of it is like marrying a woman because she will cook you nice dinners and keep the house clean.   It is an arrangement totally devoid of love and passion.

Nothing wrong with that as long she understands that I also have to follows he Villa home and away!

[olaftab]

Good balanced post Brian particularly your description of McLeish appointment. However it must be recognised that Doug always balanced the books first.

[brontebilly]

I think Lambert should stay. Here's why;

1. The squad we have today is IMO both better, younger, hungrier, and most importantly, isn't draining money out of the club in wages, as the one he inherited in June 2012.

I think he should stay, too, but really, if that's the first line of the first reason, you've got to wonder how much our priorities have changed.

I don't want to clap my hands and shout because we've got a team of eager, young players who don't cost much. I want a squad of good players. Ideally they'll not cost too much.

I also am not a fan of the money-sapping wages MON saddled us with, but I don't think there's a single shred of evidence that this current squad is anywhere near better than any squad MON had - and I am including the 2006-7 one he inherited and couldn't really add to very much. That had a spine of a team already, including the likes of Gabby, Barry, Angel, Mellberg, Laursen, Bouma - decent players.

You'd have to be on some sort of mind-bending narcotics to really think that the current squad is collectively anywhere near as good as that handful of players alone, let alone their squad mates.

I don't mean this to sound like having a pop at you, because I am not, but if I wanted to cheer fiscal prudence and financial performance, I'd start watching share prices every Saturday afternoon instead.

I say all this as a Lambert supporter, but I genuinely can not believe the level of delusion amongst some of our fans re our current squad. It's a squad of players who'd - with two or three exceptions at most - would be of interest to almost nobody else in the PL. Massively mediocre stuff, lots of players with a huge amount to prove.

I hope they do and will continue to give them a chance, but I genuinely couldn't give a toss if they're young and hungry, I want them to be good.

agreed, far too much focus is put on players ages these days. It's all about the balance of the squad. quality is the most important attribute.

MON also inherited players from the academy of much superior quality than Lambert imo.

I was encouraged towards the end of last season with Lambert but he and the side have regressed since. We really look a very poor side right now. For all the hype of the EPL, the quality of the bottom ten sides is atrocious this term. To say we are 2 or 3 places higher than last season is saying very little in terms of progress imo

[Matt Collins]

Again, I know some people hate stats. But they can tell a story:

According to Opta, Villa's average possession this season stands at 42.18%, which is lower than last season (44.23%) and less than every Premier League club with the exception of Crystal Palace. They have made 6,013 passes and their passing accuracy is 73.92% – lower than last season in both cases (6,141 and 76.08% respectively) – and in both categories only Palace have a worse record.

From open play Villa have delivered 200 crosses, which is 12 fewer than in 2012-13 and the joint lowest in the league along with Palace. As for the number of long balls, Villa have played a higher percentage (16.38%) than they did last season and more than any other team in the league. For those fans searching for some positives in all of this number-crunching Villa have registered five more shots on target this term.

[old man villa fan]

Good balanced post Brian particularly your description of McLeish appointment. However it must be recognised that Doug always balanced the books first.

Not wanting to go over old ground in detail, Doug was a paid employee of the club, a position he created for himself.  It was his job to be actively involved with the club. Lerner is the owner and does not have to have the same involvement as Doug. It does appear as though he has lost a lot of interest after finding out it was not so simple as throwing a lot of money at it.

The PL has moved on since Doug's days and now you need megga bucks to be successful.  We missed the opportunity in the mid 90s when a fair amount of investment could have seen us as one of the 'Big 4'. The problem was, Doug only ever wanted to balance the books. Doug never had any money to give the club. Even when he made his millions when we were listed, he still did not want to invest any of his own money.

[mike]

I used to buy a turkey from my butcher for Christmas and get some local veg from the farmers market then cook it all using recipes from my favourite tv chefs. Last year I decided to save money and buy a turkey style roast from Iceland and some frozen veg. In order to save time on Christmas Day, I just chucked it in the oven and took it out a bit early. My guests pulled a face because it didn't taste very nice then spent a week puking and shitting.

This year, I've decided to do the same.

And your point is?

1. You get what you pay for
2. Serve up shite and you disappoint people
3. When you try something once and it's a disaster, give serious thought to doing exactly the and again.

[brian green]

I am not in any way opposed to the balancing of the books.   Doug did it and it needed doing.   My point about Doug is that he loves football.  The current owner is at best lukewarm about the game these days and it shows.

My anguish about the balancing of the books is TO WHAT END?   What is to be achieved at Villa Park in the future years of financial stability?   Balancing the books has become the ultimate and only ambition of the club in my opinion.   Why we should want to balance the books is the question which is never addressed.

[pooligan]

Good post Brian i agree

[Jimbo]

When we're using Doug Ellis as some kind of benchmark for stewardship, then you really know we've got problems.

[paul_e]

I am not in any way opposed to the balancing of the books.   Doug did it and it needed doing.   My point about Doug is that he loves football.  The current owner is at best lukewarm about the game these days and it shows.

My anguish about the balancing of the books is TO WHAT END?   What is to be achieved at Villa Park in the future years of financial stability?   Balancing the books has become the ultimate and only ambition of the club in my opinion.   Why we should want to balance the books is the question which is never addressed.

Why we should want to balance the books and get the house in order is that, if we want to 'go again' we need to have a suitable base to do that from.  The squad left by mon needed to be ripped up and rebuilt, they were aging, overpaid players who had little interest in the club beyond the payroll system.

The current plan should be to get a young squad of players who want to be at the club (which seems to have happened) and then develop the ones who show promise and replace the others with better quality.  As I've said before, our biggest problem right now is that we do't have the right balance in midfield, if we can fix that we have goals in our forwards and with Vlaar fit we have a solidity in defence that was missing before, and Okore looks like he'd be a great option as well.

A playmaker in midfield who wants to get the ball and get the team moving around him is the key player we need, then loan in a defender as cover and I'd like to see a wide forward with a bit of skill (I'm thinking someone like Ashley Young when he was at his best for us) who can beat is man and drag defenders out of position.

[JUAN PABLO]

Until our transfer policy changes do people honestly believe we can make significant progress and play exciting football just by sacking another manager? What will any new manager be able to do?

he might have some sort of  clue  . Lambert frustrated me last season and I was embarrassed with some of the results but I could kind of see what he was kind of doing , he had my full support.    I cant see what he is doing at the moment .

People keep going on about not having a lot of money to spend but we have to remember we still had some players already here Gabby ,  Delph , probably been the years best player , Weimann , Guzan , yes resigned free of course , Albrighton and he is even embarrassing a lot of players at the moment , Clark , Baker , Herd and a great academy of young players to come through . Most the better players this season Lambert did not sign .

I think with £42 million roughly , it was not £42 million on a complete new first team, half a team already here playing Lambert didnt sign and with the young ones coming through , I would expect the team to be better than what it is . At least be able to pass the ball .

we need quality now not more Lidl signings

[MarkM]

Again, I know some people hate stats. But they can tell a story:

According to Opta, Villa's average possession this season stands at 42.18%, which is lower than last season (44.23%) and less than every Premier League club with the exception of Crystal Palace. They have made 6,013 passes and their passing accuracy is 73.92% – lower than last season in both cases (6,141 and 76.08% respectively) – and in both categories only Palace have a worse record.

From open play Villa have delivered 200 crosses, which is 12 fewer than in 2012-13 and the joint lowest in the league along with Palace. As for the number of long balls, Villa have played a higher percentage (16.38%) than they did last season and more than any other team in the league. For those fans searching for some positives in all of this number-crunching Villa have registered five more shots on target this term.

Are we the new Stoke?

[Monty]

Lambert said about stats that they can 'fry your brain'. He sounds like Harry Redknapp. I am starting to worry that our progressive young manager is turning into a boggy Britisher manager.