It's not Sherwood!

[Clampy]

I think Sherwood's doing great as it happens. Let's get this season out of the way before we start fussing about the future.

[Chris Smith]

It's weird that Lambert arrived with a reputation as being tactically astute and able to adapt game by game, whereas Sherwood was unfairly maligned as "Tactics Tim".  Rarely can two reputations have been so poorly deserved.

It also shows how important the personality of the manager is when it comes to actually implementing tactics. Lambert could have been Guardiola on the touchlines, but he's not going to inspire anyone to run through walls for him. You can tell Sherwood really has all the players completely buying in to what he wants them to do.

Agree with that. The confidence of manager and players was totally shot. You often saw us start brightly but then freeze at the first setback. We are now playing without fear and an attitude of 'we are going to score more than you'. It's making going to the game the focal point of the day again rather than an interruption to the time in the pub.

[Monty]

It is amazing how much fun it is watching us now. I watched the highlights from the Man City game over and over again, even though we lost. The strength in face of setbacks you talk about, Chris, is such a noticeable difference from Lambert's time: the comeback against Liverpool, scoring the third after Lukaku's penalty yesterday, these are things we just did not do previously. It's hard to be cautious, when the football is that good!

[Matt Collins]

Good point about the full backs. We've still played a narrow midfield but it makes a massive difference if you've got pacy full backs who can cross

[passport1]

I don't subscribe to the criticism of Lambert for all of Villas failings.He was handed a poisoned challace in terms of budget,then his coaching staff let him down and finally the appointment of Keane was an accident waiting to happen. He was clearly ground down by events which any objective outsider could see. Despite all of this the disconnected management at the club only acted when we were tettering on the brink.

Lambert brought decent players to the club and we as supporters should have the class to acknowledge that.

We have an excellent manager now but given the quality of the club ownership/management I suspect that is more by accident than design.

[SoccerHQ]

Agreed. It shows that Sherwood is a lot better than many of us feared, and also that Lambert was somehow worse than many of us thought.

As much as the results, it's the performance levels that are amazing, and especially how he's taken on some of the "big boys". Maybe the months out gave him some time to reflect on the hammerings he got on occasions.

When we gifted that first goal last week, I'm pretty sure we'd have got hammered under Lambert, mainly due to lack of belief, but Sherwood's Spurs side last season would have also been in danger of a 4 or 5 goal drubbing due to a very open all or nothing style.

What we've seen the last fee weeks is a balanced approach that makes use of the player's strengths, but also has hard work and defensive discipline at it's core.

He does seem to have learned an awful lot. His Spurs team were so predictable and awkward, Eriksen always out of position and those bizarre experiments attempting to play Kyle Walker in every position except right back. Now, he looks like Jurgen bloody Klopp - the plans are very clear, there's a bit of variation and mixing it up but without muddling up the general style, all the players are in the best roles for them.

And - and this needs to be said - he does seem to be a little bit mental, which makes him so much more of a wildcard than XYZ British plodder you might care to mention. I hope he keeps it up - it still seems unsustainable somehow, somehow too good to be true, but I hope he keeps it up - and it should be enough to keep us up. And then there's the final...

Christian Eriksen did nothing at Spurs under AVB and finished the season in very good form under Sherwood.

I honestly believe Sherwood used Spurs as a testing board given his outbursts and interesting team selections, he knew deep down Daniel Levy wouldn't give him the job full time so it was a free hit.

[ktvillan]

It's an amazing turnaround, but it also makes you wonder what the fuck Lambert was doing.

He wasn't just failing to get the best out of this squad, he wasn't even getting a middling return for the resources he had.

It just shows what an idiot Lambert was. The most idiotic of all his daft 'ideas' was his 'new style' of having us knock the ball around our own half in the misguided belief that it would make our possession stats look more impressive, despite the fact that we couldn't get anywhere near the goal. As if we - and everybody else in football - wouldn't notice that.

And it bears repeating, as if his 'ideas' weren't fuzzy enough, the way he spoke did neither him nor us any favours at all. It wasn't just his accent, but the stream of garbled rubbish he came out with. When I speak to people of other nationalities in my work, I tone down my Birmingham accent and I don't use colloquialisms and quirks of speech that I know they won't understand. Lambert didn't modify the way he spoke at all, which was discourteous and very, very stupid. I think I dislike him a lot more than TSM1, who at least knew his limitations.

Sherwood is such a breath of fresh air: confident, comprehensible, astute, charismatic; the complete antithesis of his dimwitted predecessor.

It makes me think that what little success we had in his first two years was more to do with  Karsa and Culverhouse, and then the good start to this season down to Keane.  Because once he was left on his own Lambert was fucking clueless.   A trip to Bayern Munich and somehow he comes back thinking that keeping possession in your own half and playing it sideways is the answer.  To what question it was the answer, I have no idea.  Saying things like "the goals will come".  No they won't , not if you don't play the ball forwards and commit some players into the box they won't you moron. I mean it was way beyond fuckwittedness.   I still can't forgive the twat for leaving us in such a mess that even now we look like a team way to good to be scrapping a the wrong end, we are still not safe.   IOn the positive side,  have to say I've been pleasantly surprised by Sherwood, I was quite disappointed when we hired him, but if nothing else he's made me want to watch us again.

[Monty]

It's amazing that he saw Bayern train under Guardiola and decided that the answer is slow, innocuous possession in your own half. The big thing about Pep this season is that he's moved away from the huge possession numbers to play a bit more directly, and even beforehand the hallmark of his Barca side was how quickly they passed it, one or two touches all the time. That Lambert took harmless rolling the ball around as 'the Pep way' is kind of amazing.

That move yesterday, after the first goal - what was it, 50 passes I think? That's more like Pep football.

[Steve67]

I don't subscribe to the criticism of Lambert for all of Villas failings.He was handed a poisoned challace in terms of budget,then his coaching staff let him down and finally the appointment of Keane was an accident waiting to happen. He was clearly ground down by events which any objective outsider could see. Despite all of this the disconnected management at the club only acted when we were tettering on the brink.

Lambert brought decent players to the club and we as supporters should have the class to acknowledge that.

We have an excellent manager now but given the quality of the club ownership/management I suspect that is more by accident than design.

Lambert was useless at coaching. Could spot a player, fair enough, but once he'd signed them, he couldn't organise them. Equally, Lambert chose the coaching staff too. I agree about the budget but Sherwood has those same players playing like they know what they are doing now.

[supertom]

I don't subscribe to the criticism of Lambert for all of Villas failings.He was handed a poisoned challace in terms of budget,then his coaching staff let him down and finally the appointment of Keane was an accident waiting to happen. He was clearly ground down by events which any objective outsider could see. Despite all of this the disconnected management at the club only acted when we were tettering on the brink.

Lambert brought decent players to the club and we as supporters should have the class to acknowledge that.

We have an excellent manager now but given the quality of the club ownership/management I suspect that is more by accident than design.

Lambert was useless at coaching. Could spot a player, fair enough, but once he'd signed them, he couldn't organise them. Equally, Lambert chose the coaching staff too. I agree about the budget but Sherwood has those same players playing like they know what they are doing now.

It was just a classic case of a manager who'd been here far too long. He tinkered, he tried different approaches but he should have gone at the very least, last season. His only achievement was to break records (in the worst kind of way). Not entirely Lamberts fault really. He was just in over his head.

[PeterWithesShin]

We are no longer the lowest scorers in the division. We were 10 goals behind anyone else when Sherwood arrived.

[Steve67]

No longer the side who has lost more games either. We were in the bottom two for that, statistically, not so long ago. Complete turnaround, but a way to go yet. Come on you Villa boys!!

[pbavfckuwait]

The chalice was poisoned by Lambert, this is the same chalice that Sherwood has turned round into a very sweet tasting wine goblet, so please not the poor man Lambert, he nearly killed this club and if he was still here we would be all moaning on the way to the Championship.

[supertom]

The chalice was poisoned by Lambert, this is the same chalice that Sherwood has turned round into a very sweet tasting wine goblet, so please not the poor man Lambert, he nearly killed this club and if he was still here we would be all moaning on the way to the Championship.

He'd been a dead man walking for well over a year. The job was grinding him down. As much as I hated having him continue week after week, you got the sense he was hoping for the bullet. He looked terrible toward the end. Then he gets interviewed a month or so later looking 10 years younger. Of course he could have walked, but if you're a manager these days you'd be crazy to with the sort of payoffs going.
I put the blame squarely on those running the club, for taking way too long. Lambert was just trying to do his job. He did it badly, and he couldn't hack it, but if you're running a company and someone's not cutting the mustard you have to let them go. That Lambert lasted well into his third year for us is astonishing. The four year deal in September was just the icing on a big turd cake.

[lovejoy]

I think Sherwood isn't the long term answer. We are riding the wave at the moment and clearly there has been massive positivity since Lambert left, however I am not sure Sherwood can carry it for a full season, and am not sure he has any track record in the transfer market. A lot of the resurgence has been down to Benteke, without him Sherwoods plan A (and probably B and C) are gone.