Albrighton Going to Leicester

[KevinGage]

For me the Houllier era was an example of how impatient and spoilt the fanbase can be.

Going over old ground - but Houllier lost us the day he arrived. He gave the impression he thought we should be honoured that he'd stooped so low to take the job. He be-littled us from the off.

FFS we know are place in the footballing scheme of things. But we don't need anyone, least of all the manager, ramming it home continually in the press just how insignificant we are.
 

We're never insignificant and we weren't insignificant back then, coming off three top 6 finishes and two genuine attempts to crack the top 4. Which made his 7-12th comments even more baffling.

Insignificant sides generally don't spend £18-24 million on an England centre forward either.

[olaftab]

Rolta you are doing an excellent job as Paul Faulkner's paid/unpaid PR man however please remember villa fan base is not "spoiled". We pay our hard earned money and we expect something in return. So far we have had 4 seasons of misery. Enough is enough. We have hope and we would like a bit of it to be delivered.
If you are a fan than get real from our point of view.

[PaulWinch again]

I can't stand the 'blame the fans' stuff, I think any fan would be pretty disappointed after 4 dreadful years in succession.

[cheltenhamlion]

I don't think there is any rose tinted review of Houllier's time here.

He had a plan that involved us playing like a modern football club, actually doing some training and on the right disciplines etc. And whilst he was a walking PR gaffe, a lot gets dismissed about just what a shitty hand he had in respect of injuries.

The issue with his appointment was his health and not following through with the changes he was making.

He was tactically far more astute than the blokes that followed him and my only criticism on that front would be that Ashley Young seemed to be allowed to dictate where he should be playing.

I do take offence at the suggestion we hounded Houllier out or that the fanbase is being somehow all Veruca Salt when they question Lambert's ability to do the job.

He has had a shitty hand as well, I get that. I just don't see any evidence that after 2 years of struggle we have much to show for it in terms of a defined playing style on the pitch or to feel like any corner has been turned.

I disagree with those are screaming for him to be sacked this second. That would be daft in the current situation and leave us with no bugger at the club with a clue about football and not much chance of a decent interim with the takeover dangling over their head like the Sword of Damocles.

I would hope however that we get our new owners soon and there is a clean sweep of the management team at Villa to allow us to start from scratch but all pulling in the same direction.

Because if we go into next season no further forward on the takeover front it will be a very long one indeed.

[Toronto Villa]

There is no revisionism on my part on Houllier. Had he remained at the club, he would have had the ability to bring in the types of players a top 6 side needs in the PL. They were not only high potential players e.g Fofana at Lyon who came close to joining, but also those that had experience and international standing. We were playing better football at the time of his illness and that wasn't because he was away. If it was then we are saying Gary McAllister was behind it and should have been given the job. Houllier played his part and laid some of the groundwork which McAllister executed.

The whole post MON situation was a gong show at the club. It was a mess so there was no way Houllier was ever going clean it up that quickly. If he hadn't become ill, and if he had received the right level of financial backing which I think he'd have got or else he wouldn't have joined, I firmly believe that within the space of 18-24 months we'd have every bit as solid a squad as Everton have today.

Houllier might not have been our cup of tea in the media and I didn't like the comments he made at Liverpool, but really, given what had happened he was always going to have an emotional attachment to them. But in my opinion, he came with an established record in domestic and european football with significant contacts within the game, and would have had us operating at the upper end of the table within a reasonable amount of time.

[silhillvilla]

I remember walk  out of the Reebok having just watched Houllier surrender a 2-1 lead and lose 3-2 . I thought as I walked out, bollocks to this Houllier shit I'm done with this bullshit football. Luckily he was gone soon after

[Chris Smith]

Whatever ambitions Houlllier might have had would have floundered on the spending restrictions that have since become the norm.

[Toronto Villa]

I remember walk  out of the Reebok having just watched Houllier surrender a 2-1 lead and lose 3-2 . I thought as I walked out, bollocks to this Houllier shit I'm done with this bullshit football. Luckily he was gone soon after

You watched Aston Villa surrender the lead, not Houllier. Do you think he wanted to lose?

I think he had quickly identified at the club a number of rotten apples, and a mental weakness that needed to be addressed. I didn't like how, for example after we drew against Man U when we played brilliantly and should have won, how he said he knew they would come back. I don't think that is exactly what he meant, more that I think he wanted that same kind of never give up mentality at the club which for a number of years we have not had. We've become soft, and too polite. We'll never know but in my opinion is he would have changed that.

[Rolta]

I can't stand the 'blame the fans' stuff, I think any fan would be pretty disappointed after 4 dreadful years in succession.

That's not really where I'm going with it, and tbh I have massive sympathy if people don't want to renew season tickets or go to as many games. As fans we do put a lot of money into the club, and the club is in a bit of a state, and we do seem quite far away from a return to any kind of good times. I think for the cost of tickets no Villa fan can be told they've had their money's worth since MON left. But all that is just one side of things.

I believe there is another reality going on at the club, which is pretty much disconnected from the fans – and that is what has happened in the post-MON era of cost cutting which has turned us into a budget team. How unhappy/happy we are is not really going to affect that side of things. Each of us paying rediculous amounts for tickets doesn't magically make our team full of Messis and Ronaldos. We could have filled Villa park all season and we'd still have had a pretty ropey, young, under-funded team – but clearly with the finances, the idea behind forming a young team (cheap but with potential – potential which still exists no matter how we did this season, something we will hopefully slowly see the benefit of once we have all our players fit and with a couple of good signings) – that idea was basically the only way to fix our finances.

It's silly dismissing me (as someone said above) as Faulkner's PR man. You might not like what I'm saying, but I'm not an idiot – I can see what cost cutting has gone on, and I can see the reason for it. We were losing £50 MILLION a year at one point. I'm not foolish enough to think things were going to be rosy as a result – especially not in the short term. I'm not surprised what's happened. Therefore I can't scapegoat one man just for the sake of having someone to blame. I don't see the need to throw blame around. We have problems and a limited budget, which makes fixing those problems more difficult than say the problems MON had when he could go out and spend £12million on Milner or Downing, or £9million on Young. I don't think Lambert has been perfect, but I don't think "perfect" is possible. Bascially, he has reduced the wage bill while bringing in young players – the result of needing to reduce TENS OF MILLIONS in over expenditure – while keeping us steady or improving us if you consider that with him we have finished 5 points from relegation twice while with Mcleish we were just 2 points from relegation (with a team of highly paid experienced players).

I'm not happy, and I didn't enjoy watching us last year. I don't have the money to go to every game, and I don't blame anyone cutting back until we see some more promise. All that is fine. This doesn't make anyone a hippocrite, it is a financial reality. There never was a quick fix – not when Houllier, Mcleish or Lambert came in. We are a mess. We need stability. I respect the scale of the problems at the club and how difficult they are to fix – especially on a budget.

We've avereaged about £2million on every player – had half our summer spend pretty much wiped out last year with Okore and Kozak out injured, not to mention Benteke. We've averaged £2million on every player and formed a squad where the players we've bought have been on much lower wages than the ones they replaced (and this isn't a matter of thousands of pounds – again it's millions, huge and significant amounts), and we kept steady – all this speaks to me of some of the problems at the club slowly being sorted. Now, they must work on trying to get more out of our home games and our form in general and building on that small but real progress (even if it is only financial), and to get the fans back on side, including me, we need to see more often the intermittent promise we've shown over the last two years. Even this season there has been the odd moments of promise, a few actually – it's just hard to feel it when we finished the way we did. But that doesn't mean they didn't happen.

So, I don't expect anyone not to be disappointed.

[Meanwood Villa]

Houllier was too old and, as it turned out, too ill to do the job. His general attitude towards the club was condescending. Yes we finished the season relatively strongly and what's come since has been worse but for the majority of that season we were doing poorly. At that point we were used to winning more games than we lost so it's no wonder people were pissed off.

[PaulWinch again]

I remember walk  out of the Reebok having just watched Houllier surrender a 2-1 lead and lose 3-2 . I thought as I walked out, bollocks to this Houllier shit I'm done with this bullshit football. Luckily he was gone soon after

To be replaced by TSM.

[Jarpie]

There is no revisionism on my part on Houllier. Had he remained at the club, he would have had the ability to bring in the types of players a top 6 side needs in the PL. They were not only high potential players e.g Fofana at Lyon who came close to joining, but also those that had experience and international standing. We were playing better football at the time of his illness and that wasn't because he was away. If it was then we are saying Gary McAllister was behind it and should have been given the job. Houllier played his part and laid some of the groundwork which McAllister executed.

The whole post MON situation was a gong show at the club. It was a mess so there was no way Houllier was ever going clean it up that quickly. If he hadn't become ill, and if he had received the right level of financial backing which I think he'd have got or else he wouldn't have joined, I firmly believe that within the space of 18-24 months we'd have every bit as solid a squad as Everton have today.

Houllier might not have been our cup of tea in the media and I didn't like the comments he made at Liverpool, but really, given what had happened he was always going to have an emotional attachment to them. But in my opinion, he came with an established record in domestic and european football with significant contacts within the game, and would have had us operating at the upper end of the table within a reasonable amount of time.

I don't think his health was the only reason why Lerner decided to get rid of him, I think he got scared of what Houllier had planned for the summer because of what MON did with his money, and he decided that he's never gonna trust another manager to use big chunks of money.

Bent buy was pretty much financed with selling of Young, I'm pretty certain of this, and we've had very low net spend after that.

[Jimbo]

The results are there for all to see, as are the players at our disposal at the time, even taking injuries into account. What I don't understand is this "he got us playing better football" line. Did he really? To me, aimlessly squaring the football between the edge of your own penalty area and the halfway line before losing it isn't much better than hoofball.

[LeeB]

The results are there for all to see, as are the players at our disposal at the time, even taking injuries into account. What I don't understand is this "he got us playing better football" line. Did he really? To me, aimlessly squaring the football between the edge of your own penalty area and the halfway line before losing it isn't much better than hoofball.

My overriding memory of that time as dominating games whilst lacking cutting edge, and then gifting goals and points away through comedy defending.

[silhillvilla]

I remember walk  out of the Reebok having just watched Houllier surrender a 2-1 lead and lose 3-2 . I thought as I walked out, bollocks to this Houllier shit I'm done with this bullshit football. Luckily he was gone soon after

To be replaced by TSM.

Unfortunately you cannot re-write history.