Lambert's Vision for Villa

[Ad@m]

I would actually say however that what we're doing isn't running the club in a 'responsible way', to have a 'vision' implies some sort of long term foresight, yet as a club we've lurched from MoN to Houllier, to McLeish to Lambert, a yo yoing of footballing 'styles' and 'visions' if ever you could find them, now we've lurched between one extreme of overspending to another of extreme of underspending. That's a very dangerous game to play. What we need at the club is a long term vision that involves smooth transition (as talked about in another thread), but the club seems incapable of doing so. This is the reason why we are were we are, when other clubs seem to have developed over the last few years.

Where's this lurching between one extreme of overspending to another extreme of underspending?

From the final year of MON's reign (2009/10) our annual net transfer spend has been £3m, (£11m), (£7m), £23m, £17m.  The net incomes from player trading in the GH and TSM years were due to the silly amounts we got for Milner, Young, and Downing.  I don't think that's the pattern of a club 'lurching' from extreme overspending to extreme underspending.

The issue has been the wages.  MON was signing shit players like Habib Beye and giving them 4 year contracts at £40k per week and then not playing them.  When the going rate for a reserve is £40k per week, any player of any calibre you sign is going to take that as his starting point and work upwards from there.  To sort that problem out, you have to get rid of those on the silly contracts and bring in players who don't have such expectations in terms of their own salaries - ie ones from the lower leagues or from overseas.

When the going rate for a reserve at the club is more manageable, then you can start bringing in better quality players on more sensible salaries.  This isn't preparing for the Championship - it's running our football club in such a way that if Randy walked away tomorrow we wouldn't be totally fcuked!

[KevinGage]

I agree with all of that, Dribbler. 

As for Sheikh Mansoor's arrival at Citeh in 2009 being a game changer, I think that get's overplayed. 

Undoubtedly it had an impact, but did RL and co really expect that no other big English club might be taken over by wealthy foreign owners?   If so, that's an incredible lack of foresight.

[Ads]

Had an impact? It was the biggest change in football since Abramovich rocked up at Chelsea. The number of clubs on a financial planet so seperate from everybody else increased.

There are now three teams in this league who nobody else can compete with financially. How on Earth can you underplay a mid-table side suddenly becoming the richest in the world?

[adrenachrome]

Yes, it was a seismic event and MoN was not slow in publicly saying it changed everything.

[Dribbler]

I would actually say however that what we're doing isn't running the club in a 'responsible way', to have a 'vision' implies some sort of long term foresight, yet as a club we've lurched from MoN to Houllier, to McLeish to Lambert, a yo yoing of footballing 'styles' and 'visions' if ever you could find them, now we've lurched between one extreme of overspending to another of extreme of underspending. That's a very dangerous game to play. What we need at the club is a long term vision that involves smooth transition (as talked about in another thread), but the club seems incapable of doing so. This is the reason why we are were we are, when other clubs seem to have developed over the last few years.

Where's this lurching between one extreme of overspending to another extreme of underspending?

From the final year of MON's reign (2009/10) our annual net transfer spend has been £3m, (£11m), (£7m), £23m, £17m.  The net incomes from player trading in the GH and TSM years were due to the silly amounts we got for Milner, Young, and Downing.  I don't think that's the pattern of a club 'lurching' from extreme overspending to extreme underspending.

The issue has been the wages.  MON was signing shit players like Habib Beye and giving them 4 year contracts at £40k per week and then not playing them.  When the going rate for a reserve is £40k per week, any player of any calibre you sign is going to take that as his starting point and work upwards from there.  To sort that problem out, you have to get rid of those on the silly contracts and bring in players who don't have such expectations in terms of their own salaries - ie ones from the lower leagues or from overseas.

When the going rate for a reserve at the club is more manageable, then you can start bringing in better quality players on more sensible salaries.  This isn't preparing for the Championship - it's running our football club in such a way that if Randy walked away tomorrow we wouldn't be totally fcuked!

You ask me 'Where's this lurching between one extreme of overspending to another extreme of underspending?' but then go on to answer the question yourself. Spending includes wages (among other things), not just transfers!

You're right to point out the silly wages and contracts we've handed out over the years, especially under MoN, but we've now gone too far in the other extreme. That's why i call it call lurching. We shouldn't have found ourselves in that position in the first place, but once we did we should have tried to transition ourselves into a position of greater financial sustainability a little more organically in a way that wouldn't have had such potentially perilous consequences on the pitch.

[Monty]

It changed everything, no doubt. However, the impact of their spending power was not felt for another year or so, and I really believe that if we had had a better manager than MON we could have established ourselves in that competitive top tier as perennial top four challengers, if not qualifying every year. It's the presence of MON's huge flaws which blight the recent hopes of the club.

[Dribbler]

Had an impact? It was the biggest change in football since Abramovich rocked up at Chelsea. The number of clubs on a financial planet so seperate from everybody else increased.

There are now three teams in this league who nobody else can compete with financially. How on Earth can you underplay a mid-table side suddenly becoming the richest in the world?

In the same way you can overplay it i suppose.

Maybe more of a topic for a different thread, but i would argue that the creation of the Champions League had a much bigger effect on the nature of football than Man City's newly acquired wealth.

[Ad@m]

You're right to point out the silly wages and contracts we've handed out over the years, especially under MoN, but we've now gone too far in the other extreme. That's why i call it call lurching. We shouldn't have found ourselves in that position in the first place, but once we did we should have tried to transition ourselves into a position of greater financial sustainability a little more organically in a way that wouldn't have had such potentially perilous consequences on the pitch.

'A little more organically'?  What does that mean? 

And how could we have transitioned better than we did?  We carried on with the same level of investment in transfer fees but no longer paid the silly wages of the past.  Randy could've employed managers on a more consistent basis instead of the brain melt that was the TSM appointment but I daresay he didn't expect GH to have another heart attack.  Beyond that, Lambert could've potentially made better use of the high earners before their contracts expired but that could've risked the morale of the new guys when they're playing alongside people earning 5 times what they were.

Our finances were screwed without Champions League football.  That's not a scenario where you just tinker at the edges.  It needed significant and wholesale change to put the club back on the straight and narrow.

[dave.woodhall]

Surely nobody didn't think another money no object owner would arrive on the scene. Equally unlikely was that it would be at a club as far behind us as Manchester City.

[curiousorange]

Surely nobody didn't think another money no object owner would arrive on the scene. Equally unlikely was that it would be at a club as far behind us as Manchester City.

It's kind of annoying that they had two takeovers, one of which wasn't a complete pisstake.

[KevinGage]

Had an impact? It was the biggest change in football since Abramovich rocked up at Chelsea. The number of clubs on a financial planet so seperate from everybody else increased.

There are now three teams in this league who nobody else can compete with financially. How on Earth can you underplay a mid-table side suddenly becoming the richest in the world?

Citeh were one of a number of underperforming big clubs who were ripe for a takeover, Newcastle, Everton, Tottingham, ourselves and possibly even Sunderland and Leeds might still come into that bracket.

Are you seriously suggesting that Lerner thought he could act in splendid isolation? That nobody else from abroad would hit upon this maverick idea?  The TV deals, marketing and worldwide appeal of the topflight made it inevitable that more sharks would start to circle.

[KevinGage]

At the time (2009) there were cracks appearing at the traditional heavy hitters. Liverpool looked like a busted flush and Arsenal were still under financial constraints following the move to the Emirates.

So even with the emergence of one new club backed to ridiculous extremes (Citeh) there could still be at least one gap for a side to potentially exploit the vulnerability of the other established clubs.  Remember too that it took the Blue Mancs two years to qualify for the CL and three years to win the title, so it's not as if they swallowed up that other fourth spot overnight.

[brian green]

I wonder how much appeal was added to the acquisition of Citeh by the brand new tax payer funded stadium.   I wonder if the arabs would have been so quick to jump in if they had personally to fund the rebuilding of Maine Road.

The numbers swirling around the EU investigations into the building of new Spanish stadiums make you think.   I read that something like 70% of the cost of the new Bilbao stadium has come from EU, central government and local government sources.   This in a country with crippling levels of debt and unemployment.   Football really does live in a different world where money is concerned.

[dave.woodhall]

I wonder how much appeal was added to the acquisition of Citeh by the brand new tax payer funded stadium.   I wonder if the arabs would have been so quick to jump in if they had personally to fund the rebuilding of Maine Road.

Most of it, which is why Bill Kenwright has been touting Everton around for years.

[Jimbo]

 If you look at what they're building in Abu Dhabi, I doubt a piddling stadium in Manchester would have too much bearing on their decision. Money was no object. They wanted to go up against England's (the world's?) biggest club, they did, and won.