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

[Malandro]

If there's one thing Lerner certainly hasn't done, and that's made any money out of Villa at all.  Quite the opposite in fact, and he'd probably have had more fun just tipping loads of used tenners onto a bonfire.  Come to think of it, so would we.

Not yet. But this season he may be up and any sale may ultimately turn a profit

The only people who are up out of football are the players and their agents. When Randy is long gone he'll have a great big hole in his bank account to show for his time owning the Villa.

I'd imagine the Glazers at man utd will eventually be a big exception

[Matt Collins]

Lerner is absolutely not going to turn a profit

[dave.woodhall]

Lerner is absolutely not going to turn a profit

I hope he makes a massive profit, because the only way he'll do that will be by selling a successful club.

[Risso]

To be honest the book keeping figs have made little sense to me . Who knows . Private company and all that.

Whereas Adam and I have spent hours, if not days looking at them (well, I know I have, I assume Adam is the same!)

[footyskillz]

The main reason Lerner has made an operating profit us down to players wages.

[Pat McMahon]

To be fair after all the pelters Lambert and the team are getting about lack of goals, we currently have the 5th best defense in the league just after the halfway stage which is a massive improvement on recent seasons.

Just think how good we'd be if he could get the team to be good at more than one thing at a time.

We need more women in the team. Our players are shit at multi tasking.

[Ad@m]

To be honest the book keeping figs have made little sense to me . Who knows . Private company and all that.

Whereas Adam and I have spent hours, if not days looking at them (well, I know I have, I assume Adam is the same!)

I'd hope it's not days but over the years I've spent a fair amount of time looking at them.

[ChicagoLion]

If there's one thing Lerner certainly hasn't done, and that's made any money out of Villa at all.  Quite the opposite in fact, and he'd probably have had more fun just tipping loads of used tenners onto a bonfire.  Come to think of it, so would we.

Not yet. But this season he may be up and any sale may ultimately turn a profit

The only people who are up out of football are the players and their agents. When Randy is long gone he'll have a great big hole in his bank account to show for his time owning the Villa.

I'd imagine the Glazers at man utd will eventually be a big exception

The Glazers have made money from Yanited, they did the big other peoples money trick before the crisis and have been taking a fair amount out. They would probably make a turn on the sale as well.

[Sexual Ealing]

Is anyone using it for an excuse, though?

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't think it is an excuse, in no way does it excuse the mess we are in today.

It does strike me as a pretty big contributing factor, though.

There are lots of others, the chairman, his appointments, his disengagement etc etc.

My main problem with Lambert is that, even if you accept he's working with less money than other Villa managers have, he still repeatedly fails to get the best out of what he has - he gets nothing near it, in fact - and keeps making the same mistakes.

That, isolated from other factors, is purely the fault of Paul Lambert.

Other problems, some of which go back several years, can be traced either to the MON flounce or to the fallout of his reign (particularly the financial one).

Maybe 'excuse' is the wrong word possibly but his name does seem to crop up whenever we go through a bad patch. If in two years time we're still going through the same problems, will his name crop up then? You know what, I think it will.

We'e been on a near continual bad patch for four years now, though. I certainly can't remember anything in that period suggestive of a good patch - maybe, at a push, the end of the Houllier year, but that's about it.

If we were still (emphasis on still) going through the same problems we have now in two years, then yes, MON would still crop up, and rightly so.

It is a contributing factor to why we are struggling now, and if we struggled for another two years, it'd almost certainly be for the same reasons.

On a massively simplified level, our major problem now (in my opinion) is the lack of interest of the chairman. That lack of interest, I believe is a direct result of his experiences with MON. If he then continues to remain hugely uninterested for another two or ten years, it will almost certainly still be for the same reasons.

Are you really suggesting, if for the sake of argument we were on manager no 4 in two years time, 6 years down the line, we should still be pointing the finger at MON if we were still not progressing?

If in four years we are still here with a chairman who has had his fingers burned and doesn't give a shit, then, yes, of course MON will have contributed to that. His departure left us with a chairman who quite clearly had lost his love for it - and that is something he admitted in his weird "shummanite" press release.

There is no statute of limitations when you're talking about something like that.

We won't be able to point at the players on the pitch and say "that front line is shit and it's because of the shit players MON bought to play there", because those players won't be there anymore, of course it would be absurd to blame MON for that.

If we're still suffering under a couldn't-give-a-shit-any-more chairman who has decided to just park us and hope we don't go down because he's lost the love of the club after all the grief of the hangover of the MON era, then yes, of course MON will still be a factor.

I don't see how he can't be in circumstances like that.

Al Sharpton (I think) said 'if I push you over, that's my fault. If I come back the next week and you're still on the floor, that's your fault."

If we accept your take on the situation, Randy's like somebody whose wife left him four years ago and who's hit the bottle since. Relationships end all the time, it's the nature of them. If your solution is to withdraw from the real world out of a fear of engaging, you have nobody to blame but yourself. And it might just be the reason she left you in the first place.

[rob_bridge]

The main reason Lerner has made an operating profit us down to players wages.

Please elaborate on this operating profit and hiw the main cost driver has contrbuted to it.

[Matt Collins]

The main reason Lerner has made an operating profit us down to players wages.

Please elaborate on this operating profit and hiw the main cost driver has contrbuted to it.

Let's not embarass him

[caster troy]

Regarding finances, what is done is done, it's a moot point now. The only relevant question is whether or not another manager could do better with the squad we have.

[footyskillz]

The main reason Lerner has made an operating profit us down to players wages.

Please elaborate on this operating profit and hiw the main cost driver has contrbuted to it.

Let's not embarass him

Apologies the text was and is to read The main reason Lerner has nt made an operating profit is due to players wages

[Axl Rose]

To be fair after all the pelters Lambert and the team are getting about lack of goals, we currently have the 5th best defense in the league just after the halfway stage which is a massive improvement on recent seasons.

Just think how good we'd be if he could get the team to be good at more than one thing at a time.

We need more women in the team. Our players are shit at multi tasking.

Haha. Good point, Paul!

Happy new year to you, by the way mate. All is well? Are you still back in Blighty? I'm still out here in Tokyo. I look forward to catching up with you if you ever come back to this neck of the woods. Prediction for today?

[olaftab]

The main reason Lerner has made an operating profit us down to players wages.

Please elaborate on this operating profit and hiw the main cost driver has contrbuted to it.

Let's not embarass him

Apologies the text was and is to read The main reason Lerner has nt made an operating profit is due to players wages

Again how? Please explain?