Lambert's Vision for Villa

[eric woolban woolban]

If you could peer into the future, in ten years time, the same five teams - Man Utd, Chelsea, Man City Arsenal and Liverpool - will be competing at the top.

It's an unfair playing field which is unlikely to be changed.

[Smirker]

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?

Chelsea, Man. City and... ?

[LTA]

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!

Shows how how poorly the clubs been run in the last three seasons.  Lerner and Faulkner mean well, but they don't have the skills needed to run Premier League club (at leat if you want to run it properly), plus they don't come across as "leaders".  We all said a lot of things about Ellis, but at least he was always around the place.  I said a few days ago that letting Steve Stride leave without little opposition was a big mistake.  Yes, he may have wanted to go, but the fact he went without anyone replacing him was poor management.

[Toronto Villa]

What skills do you need to run a PL club?

[LTA]

Knowledge of the game and the right people to turn to and looking after the finances.  I doubt Doug Ellis would have asked the manager of Manchester United for advise over appointing a manager - nor would he lave allowed the manager to deal with all of the finances without keeping a check on what he was spending

[Toronto Villa]

Knowledge of the game and the right people to turn to and looking after the finances.  I doubt Doug Ellis would have asked the manager of Manchester United for advise over appointing a manager - nor would he lave allowed the manager to deal with all of the finances without keeping a check on what he was spending

No, but we did get relegated with him at the helm. He also hired two of the worst Villa managers ever in Graham Turner and Billy McNeill. You must have forgotten that

[Ad@m]

Knowledge of the game and the right people to turn to and looking after the finances.  I doubt Doug Ellis would have asked the manager of Manchester United for advise over appointing a manager - nor would he lave allowed the manager to deal with all of the finances without keeping a check on what he was spending

Absolutely because in Herbert's eyes, the club's money was his money. If the manager went and spent all the money the fans put in to the club there'd be none left for Herbert to take out.

[dave.woodhall]

Of course Ellis was always around the place. He was a paid employee of the club. A very well paid one.

[LTA]

Knowledge of the game and the right people to turn to and looking after the finances.  I doubt Doug Ellis would have asked the manager of Manchester United for advise over appointing a manager - nor would he lave allowed the manager to deal with all of the finances without keeping a check on what he was spending

No, but we did get relegated with him at the helm. He also hired two of the worst Villa managers ever in Graham Turner and Billy McNeill. You must have forgotten that

I don't remember either of them as manager (my first game was in 1989), but obviously they were poor appointments, and Ellis made a few of them afterwards, like Venglos and SGT mk 2.  My argument is that to be succesful at running a football club, you need to know a bit about the business, or a bottomless, bulging bag of cash - Randy Lerner appears to have neither of these.

[Toronto Villa]

Knowledge of the game and the right people to turn to and looking after the finances.  I doubt Doug Ellis would have asked the manager of Manchester United for advise over appointing a manager - nor would he lave allowed the manager to deal with all of the finances without keeping a check on what he was spending

No, but we did get relegated with him at the helm. He also hired two of the worst Villa managers ever in Graham Turner and Billy McNeill. You must have forgotten that

I don't remember either of them as manager (my first game was in 1989), but obviously they were poor appointments, and Ellis made a few of them afterwards, like Venglos and SGT mk 2.  My argument is that to be succesful at running a football club, you need to know a bit about the business, or a bottomless, bulging bag of cash - Randy Lerner appears to have neither of these.

I'm sorry but just because you started following us in 1989 doesn't allow you to ignore the years when we went down or some of his utterly shit managerial hires. And for such an astute businessman he sure dismantled a European Cup winning side with great skill, and the two times we came second in the league under Sir Graham and Big Ron he never built on either season to make us into a true force. But off course Lerner in his 7 years is way worse.

[LTA]

Knowledge of the game and the right people to turn to and looking after the finances.  I doubt Doug Ellis would have asked the manager of Manchester United for advise over appointing a manager - nor would he lave allowed the manager to deal with all of the finances without keeping a check on what he was spending

No, but we did get relegated with him at the helm. He also hired two of the worst Villa managers ever in Graham Turner and Billy McNeill. You must have forgotten that

I don't remember either of them as manager (my first game was in 1989), but obviously they were poor appointments, and Ellis made a few of them afterwards, like Venglos and SGT mk 2.  My argument is that to be succesful at running a football club, you need to know a bit about the business, or a bottomless, bulging bag of cash - Randy Lerner appears to have neither of these.

I'm sorry but just because you started following us in 1989 doesn't allow you to ignore the years when we went down or some of his utterly shit managerial hires. And for such an astute businessman he sure dismantled a European Cup winning side with great skill, and the two times we came second in the league under Sir Graham and Big Ron he never built on either season to make us into a true force. But off course Lerner in his 7 years is way worse.

I'm not ignoring Ellis' faults (lets face it there are too many to ignore), I'm simply saying they happened before my time so I don't have any memory of them.

[Toronto Villa]

That's fine but if you are going to evaluate Lerner and compare him to Doug, then you need to include what Doug did irrespective of whether you were following Villa at the time or not.

[paul_e]

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?

Chelsea, Man. City and... ?

Man Utd have an annual turnover of £700m (last time I looked at least), I guess that's who he meant and it would be totally correct to include them.  You could potentially shift it to 5 and include Arsenal and Liverpool who both also have huge annual turnover compared to the rest of the league, in financial terms those 5 have all the advantages to be clear away at the top of the league.

[Ad@m]

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?

Chelsea, Man. City and... ?

Man Utd have an annual turnover of £700m (last time I looked at least), I guess that's who he meant and it would be totally correct to include them.  You could potentially shift it to 5 and include Arsenal and Liverpool who both also have huge annual turnover compared to the rest of the league, in financial terms those 5 have all the advantages to be clear away at the top of the league.

Man Utd's turnover is nothing like that. For the 12/13 season it was £363m, however that still dwarfs our c.£90m turnover.

[paul_e]

That's gone down a lot then because it was up around 700m 4-5 years ago (which was the last time I looked as I'm really not that bothered about their finances).  I remember it because at the time there were people talking about them breaking $1bn which they were very close to.