It's not Sherwood!

[pauliewalnuts]

Lerner couldn't make it any clearer he doesn't really care massively anymore.

He's demonstrated that over a long period of time now. That's what worries me, not him refusing to speak to the press.

We are just drifting aimlessly, becoming more and more pointless as time goes by, left to just bob along until someone gives him some money to take us off his hands.

It is really pretty grim stuff.

[footyskillz]

Crap appointment and til 2018 ! Do the club ever bloody learn

You weren't always so wanting

[kippaxvilla2]

It's just a theory but I reckon some of the lesser light teams will be spending a lot more than usual this summer as they will want to make sure they are in this league next season when the new deal starts.  Lets see how we match up by comparison bearing in mind our net spend was less than £7m this time last year.

[brontebilly]

The difference with Liverpool is we clearly felt our midfield could out work and it play them, which we did. Yesterday I looked at the 5 in for Arsenal and just thought oh crap before a ball was kicked. They have a stunningly good midfield, and should be up there with Chelsea but Wenger refuses to buy basics to get them there.

Wenger has spent huge money on that side, that they were 12 points behind Chelsea and lost out in Europe to Monaco is a disgrace for the resources at his disposal.

for all the money he has spent, they were four points worse off in the league than last term.

70m on Ozil and Sanchez alone. Id argue they have a stronger squad than Chelsea to be honest with the exception of in nets and up front.

you could make a strong case that Arsenal have players who didnt get on the pitch yesterday that are better than ours - Ospina, Debuchy, Chambers, Gabriel, Gibbs, Rosicky, Arteta, Flamini, Welbeck, Podolski, Campbell. Jenkinson had a very good season at West Ham too.

[OzVilla]

Lerner couldn't make it any clearer he doesn't really care massively anymore.

He's demonstrated that over a long period of time now. That's what worries me, not him refusing to speak to the press.

We are just drifting aimlessly, becoming more and more pointless as time goes by, left to just bob along until someone gives him some money to take us off his hands.

It is really pretty grim stuff.

The way I see it, nothing has really changed from where we were 12 months ago.  Lerner has expressed his desire to sell, Villa need in injection of quality into the squad which will mean spending money.  On last Summers evidence, Lerner is reluctant to do this. 

Unless Lerner gets a sale done quickly I really don't see any policy changes regarding transfers from what we've already seen from last Summer.

At best TS might be given transfer funds that we can bring in, meaning the Benteke money and other outgoings.  That's say 40 mill tops if you add it all up. Spending 40 mill on the squad minus Benteke just means more struggle next season I'm afraid.

We are being quietly strangled into the Championship.

[KRS]

Unless Randy a) sells the club or b) invests significantly in the team then I'm afraid you may well be right OzVilla...however we may not be quite so lucky next season.

If Benteke stays then we need to spend at least £20-30m just to remain above the relegation zone; if he goes, then you can add any proceeds from his fee into the pot in an attempt to find a 15+ goals per season striker(s).

TS may be able to extract extra value out of youth, loans and free transfers but it will be a high risk strategy not to invest in key positions in the summer particularly if his hand is forced to sell Benteke to raise funds.

[alftitimus]

 

Another rare post.Re - Lerner & Tim

 

The second best excuse for failure to invest, after FFP ~ is the "seeking a sale" gambit.imo.

How many years has Kenwright at Goodison been trying to sell the Toffees?
Ashley at the Toon? {Whilst being afloat with £38 million in  unused investment cash  }

Both were traditional 'benefactor' models of ownership, like Hayward/Walker/Abramovich etc. Now they aren't, and invest the equivalent of their final league position.

That is Lerner's stance I feel. With FFP changing it's rules, we have greater emphasis on the "seeking a sale" ploy, to explain weak investment.

So, Tim is shielded and protected in that respect from future criticism on recruitment.

BUT ~ not from his abysmal management.
A workman that blames his tools is not a person I respect.

Post match, a big cull?

It's-all-about-me said he's given a heads-up to the pro's who would be leaving , or out of the picture.

Pre-match? And did he play all 14 of them ?

The link posted earlier by ' footyskillz ' showed an excellent analysis from a Spurs' fan during Tim's stewardship.
Inabilty to change, insistence on power-play and suicidal high line defence to support the midfield, subs being like-for-like and not altering the formula. Tactics ? Pfffhhht 

I've since read through the match thread, and seen it go from hyper-optimism to fear within the first 10 minutes.

This isn't being "fickle villa" ~ it's about recognising something in Tim's gameplan.
Recognising !

Something naive and stubborn.

Many posters recognised it, but didn't want to speak the words.imo.
Many posters were isolating players for abuse, at Wembley many an expletive was uttered. But failure to alter the shape or responsibilties is a hallmark of Tim.

Strangely enough, in the last few weeks I've seen and read of Van Gaal, Mourhino even Pardew and Pullis, making changes from the touchline {i.e. having a Plan B} ~ without subbing ...in the first 15 minutes....when they saw the situation.

Tim doesn't. He didn't at Spurs apparently.
According to the gooner journo - John Cross - Tim claims to have built the stadium, wrote the songs and won the cups at WHL 

As we enter the second year of Lerner trying to sell the club, Tim, unfortunately imo, is a permanent incumbant. Until new owners.

If you love, you musn't keep quiet when you are worried. You may be wrong, but critical debate defeats silence and sycophancy.

 

[OzVilla]

Are you suggesting that we should sack TS for achieving PL safety, a pretty good effort considering the utter shambles he inherited and getting us to our second FA Cup Final appearance in 58 years?

I'm as critical as anyone but at worst the jury is still out, at best he's done enough to have a full pre-season plus two transfer windows imo.

And just who are the alternatives?

[Kevin_Brum12]

In the dark days of Mr. "We Go Again" in December, if you'd have said to me by May that we would have stayed up and got to an FA Cup Final I would have laughed my head off.  Under Lambert we were going down.  Way on down.

At least with Sherwood there is some hope and he realises what needs to be done, plus he is honest and does not try to gloss over a pile of turd like TSM2 or that other pillock DOL.

The players at the end of the day have underperformed.  If Reading had beat Arsenal in their semi and we played liked we did on Saturday we would have been tonked by Reading.  There has to be huge changes and the deadwood needs to be purged out of the Villa.  The jury is still out on Sherwood, but we need to see his transfer dealings and how a squad of his performs over a season.  Plus Lerner needs to sort his intentions out once and for all.  If he wants Villa, he needs to put the money in because frankly we will never compete with Arsenal, Chelsea or Man Utd in the top portion of the PL without massive investment.  If Lerner wants to sell, he should get on with it as the longer it drags on, the more unstable we are and the more we drift.

[supertom]

Crap appointment and til 2018 ! Do the club ever bloody learn

You weren't always so wanting

Things change in football. Sherwood was not by any stretch a popular appointment. What he delivered exceeded what most expected which is why he is pretty popular among the fans now.

[Malandro]

Crap appointment and til 2018 ! Do the club ever bloody learn

You weren't always so wanting

Things change in football. Sherwood was not by any stretch a popular appointment. What he delivered exceeded what most expected which is why he is pretty popular among the fans now.

Exactly. We've also experienced some very bad appointments so perhaps it was easy to think this would go the same way.

[supertom]

Timmy took over a side second from bottom on 22 points from 25 games. That hadn't won in the league in something ridiculous like 10 games and that look utterly, totally abominable. Literally another win under Lambert looked nigh on impossible.
In 13 games he managed 16 points and more than doubled our pathetic goal tally.

So any suggestions he's not been a positive for us are way wide of the mark. We were done for. No question. Given what he's had to work with and the general ailing fitness of the side (we've seriously ran out of steam in the last three weeks, which has shown in results and performances) it's miraculous.

[supertom]

Crap appointment and til 2018 ! Do the club ever bloody learn

You weren't always so wanting

Things change in football. Sherwood was not by any stretch a popular appointment. What he delivered exceeded what most expected which is why he is pretty popular among the fans now.

Exactly. We've also experienced some very bad appointments so perhaps it was easy to think this would go the same way.

Thing got so bad some of us (holds hand up shamefully) were bemoaning the club not trying to get Tiny Penis. You know it's bad when you want Tiny Penis at your club.

[john e]

That blog the non entity Spurs fan wrote seems to carry far to much weight for a lot of posters

Of all the Spurs fans I have spoken to down here in the London overflow town, there are far more that rated him than didn't

When a team loses it's always the managers tactics that gets the blame
Rogers against us in the semi, Wenger against Monaco, Morinho against PSG

More often than not the better team wins the match regardless of tactics, if the lesser side also decides to have a day off you get a tonking like we did

The bigest problem on Saturday was not tactics it was Belief,
something Sherwood up till now had been very good at instilling, I don't know why he couldn't do it in the Final, but that's the area where he failed to get us going

[Villafirst]

I think there was an element of running out of steam; it took a monumental effort to stay up on the back of  Lambert's pathetic tenure especially this season. May be the cup run fatigued the team more coupled with the threat of relegation. I can't believe some of the negative comments towards TS. He turned round a nigh on impossible situation with no transfer window and players very low on confidence. Lerner is the main problem as has been the case since 2010. He needs to state his intentions to the fans instead of hiding in the shadows while the club sinks.