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

[Monty]

It's all very well to talk about ball retention, but it's not the only way of staying in the league and, right now, that's all we have to do. It's not inspiring, but we are just holding on until someone with more money than sense takes pity on us. Lambert has, this season, hit upon a consistent style which is capable of getting points (we weren't fluking those early wins - we got our goal and then the defence was like a wall of flint for the rest of the match), and we needn't disrupt that.

[silhillvilla]

One of the big issues for me is the air of malaise and stagnancy and a lack of va va vroom for want of a better word.
Compare what Steve Bruce has done with a small time no mark club such as Hull. Then again he probably had a bigger budget than lambert in the summer .

[supertom]

One of the big issues for me is the air of malaise and stagnancy and a lack of va va vroom for want of a better word.
Compare what Steve Bruce has done with a small time no mark club such as Hull. Then again he probably had a bigger budget than lambert in the summer .

He had a bigger budget but they came up from the championship a couple of years ago and had to spend that to build a premiership squad. What he did in the summer was pretty impressive in fairness.
We of course haven't spent much but Lambert inherited some big players, and he's also added Benteke to the mix, so our foundations are better than some of the clubs who may have spent a little more than us. I think Leicester spent fairly big for them in the summer.

That's not to say we don't need to spend more of course. We absolutely do. First and foremost we need to make the best of our squad, which particularly in attack, we're not doing.

[supertom]

It's all very well to talk about ball retention, but it's not the only way of staying in the league and, right now, that's all we have to do. It's not inspiring, but we are just holding on until someone with more money than sense takes pity on us. Lambert has, this season, hit upon a consistent style which is capable of getting points (we weren't fluking those early wins - we got our goal and then the defence was like a wall of flint for the rest of the match), and we needn't disrupt that.

I don't think this style will consistently get us points. Stoke gave one of the worst performances they have under Hughes (in his view) and Hull were similarly awful. Had we caught them on other days it may not have worked out the same.
We can carry on as we are but results, even against the bottom half sides will be very mixed. I don't think we'll be much different than last season, which wasn't good enough.

Sooner, rather than later we've got to improve our attacking potency. We can't hope to win every game 1-0. Some of the shitter sides have a few gems here and there who could hurt you, even if we sit back. I think you play to your strengths really and we have better attacking players than defensive. Vlaars our best defender (when he's fit), the rest are bang average at best. 9-10 men behind the ball might keep half the sides in the Prem limited to 0-1 goals, but that will only get us so far (about 15th again probably).

We need to be getting more out of our midfielders and attackers. Our only defensive minded midfielders are Sanchez and probably Richardson (given he has played defensive positions). Obviously some of these attackers really need to step up, like Zog, Cole, Gabby, Weimann, and hopefully we'll see Grealish soon.

[RussellC]

In my experience of life which is extensive, you get what you are prepared to put up with. You put up with a man drinking, you get a falling down drunk for a husband. You let a woman be lazy and slatternly you get a slut for a wife. You allow a manager - of anything - continually make mistakes and you continually make excuses for him, you will get an incompetent manager.
I don't think there is even the basis of a debate about Lambert. His record is there in black and white. He is only there because his employers have not had the guts to do anything about it when they should have. We are now in the worst if all situations of being stuck with him.

So, by that reasoning we have an owner who we are prepared to put up with and who consistently backs the wrong horse when choosing a manager.

How would sacking Lambert at any point in the past 12 months have helped?

I don't really think that sacking Lambert in the past 12 months would have changed anything, nor do I think it would if we were to sack him during the course of this season. I find the decision to give him a 4 year contract extension, however, utterly baffling. I can only assume that it was done in order to make Hutton's contract extension seem like a sensible move in comparison.

[PaulWinch again]

It's all very well to talk about ball retention, but it's not the only way of staying in the league and, right now, that's all we have to do. It's not inspiring, but we are just holding on until someone with more money than sense takes pity on us. Lambert has, this season, hit upon a consistent style which is capable of getting points (we weren't fluking those early wins - we got our goal and then the defence was like a wall of flint for the rest of the match), and we needn't disrupt that.

Thing is that's not really acceptable. Firstly we don't know when someone with money will come along, it could be years. Secondly we don't need bucket loads of money to play better football than we're playing. I agree that results are obviously vital, but you don't have to abandon all attacking intent to be defensively sound. At the end of the day the fans want and deserved to be entertained and our current style does not do that. I'm not expecting us to finish in the top 8, but we can at least try to play better football.

[dekko]

The frustrating thing is that I don't think Lambert is inherently a negative or defensive manager (because his previous teams had a reputation for being quite attacking) nor is he tactically inflexible (at Norwich he'd change the formation frequently, and sometimes several times during the match).

Yet despite having the best squad at his disposal of his entire career, he's been guilty of both of those things during his time at Villa.  Maybe the Christmas Massacres broke him.

[Monty]

It's all very well to talk about ball retention, but it's not the only way of staying in the league and, right now, that's all we have to do. It's not inspiring, but we are just holding on until someone with more money than sense takes pity on us. Lambert has, this season, hit upon a consistent style which is capable of getting points (we weren't fluking those early wins - we got our goal and then the defence was like a wall of flint for the rest of the match), and we needn't disrupt that.

Thing is that's not really acceptable. Firstly we don't know when someone with money will come along, it could be years. Secondly we don't need bucket loads of money to play better football than we're playing. I agree that results are obviously vital, but you don't have to abandon all attacking intent to be defensively sound. At the end of the day the fans want and deserved to be entertained and our current style does not do that. I'm not expecting us to finish in the top 8, but we can at least try to play better football.

I agree that it's pretty grim, but from the club's point of view doing anything else wouldn't make sense, and would be too risky.

Perhaps let him go in the summer, and plan for the succession, but if we don't look in real trouble then it doesn't make sense to sack him. Like it or not, the club is now in survival mode.

[paul_e]

I accept survival mode but you can only maintain that if you can keep the fans onside, 4 goals and 12 shots on target in 8 games won't do that.  I just want to see us looking like we can score goals, by the time we play qpr it'll be over 6 weeks since the last aston villa goal and we've made 4 keepers make 6 saves in that time, that's not good enough.  Right now I'd take some pot shots from 35yards so long as the keeper had to move for them.

[pauliewalnuts]

I accept survival mode but you can only maintain that if you can keep the fans onside, 4 goals and 12 shots on target in 8 games won't do that.  I just want to see us looking like we can score goals, by the time we play qpr it'll be over 6 weeks since the last aston villa goal and we've made 4 keepers make 6 saves in that time, that's not good enough.  Right now I'd take some pot shots from 35yards so long as the keeper had to move for them.

Couldn't agree more.

I can accept the "but they finished in the top five last year" argument in the sense of "this is why we lost to them" (although I'm not sure that works so well when you're talking about losing four matches, but hey ho), but not as a reason for not scoring or barely making goalkeepers work.

There are a whole bunch of statistics at the moment that reflect on us really, really badly, and like you said, survival mode will be more accepted if we at least started to get shots on target.

Our performance in that sense this season has been shocking.

[pauliewalnuts]

It's all very well to talk about ball retention, but it's not the only way of staying in the league and, right now, that's all we have to do. It's not inspiring, but we are just holding on until someone with more money than sense takes pity on us. Lambert has, this season, hit upon a consistent style which is capable of getting points (we weren't fluking those early wins - we got our goal and then the defence was like a wall of flint for the rest of the match), and we needn't disrupt that.

Thing is that's not really acceptable. Firstly we don't know when someone with money will come along, it could be years. Secondly we don't need bucket loads of money to play better football than we're playing. I agree that results are obviously vital, but you don't have to abandon all attacking intent to be defensively sound. At the end of the day the fans want and deserved to be entertained and our current style does not do that. I'm not expecting us to finish in the top 8, but we can at least try to play better football.

I agree that it's pretty grim, but from the club's point of view doing anything else wouldn't make sense, and would be too risky.

Perhaps let him go in the summer, and plan for the succession, but if we don't look in real trouble then it doesn't make sense to sack him. Like it or not, the club is now in survival mode.

I think the argument "he hasn't got much to work with" is true enough, he hasn't.

My problem is that he sends out what we have got, week after week, and the team more often than not looks like less than the sum of the constituent parts.

[ez]

We'll limp along, just existing, until relegated in one of the coming seasons. Then something will have to change.

That is what I think, too. Sadly.

If something is going to happen before we get into that mess, then ideally it'll happen soon, because looking at the shit crowds, people are quite clearly starting to vote with their feet.

Yes, i think in previous seasons the crowds have remained good because the fans expected we would be improving. Now i think they are realising that this is how it's going to be probably until the club is sold. Lambert's four year contract won't help either.

[Damo70]

Given that he was going into his last year I think we either had to replace him or offer him a new contract. I just wonder why it had to be four years. Based on his time with us he wasn't in a great bargaining position regarding the length of a new contract.

[London Villan]

We'll limp along, just existing, until relegated in one of the coming seasons. Then something will have to change.

That is what I think, too. Sadly.

If something is going to happen before we get into that mess, then ideally it'll happen soon, because looking at the shit crowds, people are quite clearly starting to vote with their feet.

Yes, i think in previous seasons the crowds have remained good because the fans expected we would be improving. Now i think they are realising that this is how it's going to be probably until the club is sold. Lambert's four year contract won't help either.

We've lost over 10,000 season ticket holder since MONs last season, that's some achievement.

[WestleyArmsAV]

I wonder how many of those 10,000 were Johnny Come Lately.

We were consistently 6th and chasing the top four, having had a manager who spent more on one player than Lambert has had as a entire seasons budget.

I seem to notice that our away support has not lowered, strange that.

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