The Paul Lambert thread - poll reset after our capitulation to Hull

[Witton Warrior]

Randy is simply taking the "safe" option - our owner has finally realised he hasn't got a clue how football works so is sticking with what seems to be working at the moment. Last season he said that even if we had gone down Lambert would still be Villa manager so how is this unexpected behaviour?

[Witton Warrior]

Good. Lambert is tactically smart and has an eye for a good transfer.

He's just joshin' ;-)

Tactically smart ? Really ?

[eastie]

Another 3 years of lambert & lerner  - how exciting

[MoetVillan]

I think its good news.  Just me then

[N'ZMAV]

Let's see how the rest of the season pans out before we offer him a new deal.

[Clampy]

I'm all for stability but I think 18 months is long enough to see how things pan out first.

[Fergal]

Forget a better manager, it's now obvious Lerner hasn't a clue and to think he could find one is now beyond a joke.

Lerner and Lambert (like MON) deserve each other.

What do we deserve?

[Legion]

Let's see how the rest of the season pans out before we offer him a new deal.

Agreed.

[Dante Lavelli]

Further evidence that we really don't know what we're doing.  Why offer this now?  There is no sound reason whatsoever, ridiculous.

The sound reason I can think of is that it is a cheap way of showing he does not want to sell.  Any new guy is likely to want to bring in their own man so adding x years to Lambert's contract could deter any bidder.

Like most on here I think this can wait until the summer where I think Lambert has earnt the right to have one transfer window where he doesn't need to wheel and deal on just youngsters and can therefore sign a couple of players in the £5-10m category.

[Ads]

I think he is doing a good job, but always think these things should be left to the summer.

[Damo70]

Strangely enough I was only thinking about his contract last night. We really didn't want to go into next season with his future up in the air. Most of us said we would be happy  with an improved middle of the table season this year and we are on course for that at the moment.

[fredm]

It says "the club are confident of reaching an agreement before the end of the season".  Surely we do not want to go into the summer break not knowing whether PL is going to stay on or not?  His future needs to be determined so that on June 1st he can start negotiating with the players that need to be brought in over the summer, not be in discussions about his own future so that player discussions start about August 15th.

[Ron Manager]

Correct assumption on stability but there is no need to agree an extension just now. Wait till December and than make a decision. He will still have more than nine months left.

and that would be the sensible option. Absolutely no need to deal with it at this moment in time.

[Chico Hamilton III]

Lambert must be the luckiest bloke in football. He's enjoyed the longest honeymoon period of any Villa manager I can think of and now this. If I were Lerner I'd be telling Lambert that he's got until May to demonstrate some tactical knowledge.

Mind you, if I were Lerner I'd have sacked him after Millwall.                                   

[Monty]

Let's not act like he's the worst manager in the world. Indeed, one of the more frustrating things about him is that he's too good to be sackable, but not good enough to really make anybody that happy to watch his Villa team.

Firstly, the good things. He actually has done fairly well in the transfer market considering he had to construct almost a whole squad with whatever money we could find lying around, down the backs of sofas, behind Randy's grandson's ear etc (and I'm not blaming Lerner for this necessarily - it's obvious we couldn't continue spending what we were). Especially in that £4-7m bracket he seems to have done rather well, with Benteke and Vlaar our most important players along with Gabby, and with both Okore and Kozak looking quite good before really unlucky injuries.

However, the last name - Kozak - is part of the big problem with our Paul. Not that Kozak's a bad player, far from it - I actually warmed to him more and more before the injury - but that Lambert fetishises the Big Man as the 'aerial option', and the fact that he sees that as a perfectly valid option will always, always, always hold him back, and us with him. His style is babyishly impatient, ordering the ball to be rushed to our Big Man as quickly as possible, and if there's no room in the midfield then we'll lob the ball over it, and lose possession.

This isn't to say that Lambert is bad tactically - far from it - it's just what he is good at isn't what we need at the moment. What he's good at is reactionary tactics, counterrattacking, finding ways to win games he shouldn't by planning for the opposition's best players, finding ways to hold teams at arm's length despite conceding 60%+ of the ball to them. He'd probably be good at the moment going in to a club like Swansea, who have a real stylistic identity but lack variation in their play - but he's never going to be the man to impose that identity, a vision of a style of play. That is what we need, and that's what real 'stability' would mean, but Lambert's football is not stable - it lurches, bumbles, hastily improvises, fannies along with no distinct plan and always with the very real possibility that it might all go tits up hanging around just out of sight.