The underlying problem...

[Richard E]

Starting to think the only people who give a shit are us mugs, the fans

I think you may be right, and a lot of us are past caring or trying not to let it get to us so much.

[LTA]

Put simply, we have had an investment of over 200 million since Lerner arrived in 2006, yet nearly a decade on, we've ended in a significantly worse position than when we entered it.

A damning indictment of how the club has been run.

Clueless management , no long-term plan, stumbling along from season to season making decisions on a whim...

Need I go on?

As far as im concerned,  Lerner and the selfish bunch of imbeciles he surrounds himself with (yes i know the personnel has changed over this period) has blood on its hands and owes each and every Aston Villa supporter an apology for the shambolic and ineffective way the club has been governed over this period. 

[Rudy65]

How about keeping it simple? We had 3 attacking ball players up front at any one time in the second half. We had no one to hold the ball up with feeti in the penalty area for them to finish off their attacking play. Gestede should be an impact player and Kozak should be holding that ball up. But... oh no... Tim doesn't like him. He's rotting in the stiffs.  Well fuck you Tim... it's your funeral.

Its not Tims funeral. He will fuck off with his big pay day and be bigging it up quicker than you can say Chris Ramsay at QPR. We, the fans, will be left with playing Blose in the local derby as our big game of the season in rhe championshop. Blose will not be in the prem next season.  Not a f in chance

[Ads]

We keep hiring shit managers. That's something of a problem.

[ez]

We keep hiring shit managers. That's something of a problem.

This.

[OzVilla]

is Lerner. Thanks to this dumbass we're lost as a club.

We have no soul anymore, no direction, no purpose for being other than to try and survive, no expectations of quality or professionalism. We just hope we can fluke enough points to keep us safe for another year.

Never has a clubs motto been so far removed from the truth. 

It's pathetic.

[pbavfckuwait]

It has always been only the supporters that give a toss, but at the moment the club has no identity, no style of play, a manager that has limited if any tactical ability to influence that style, players that have not got the ability to think for themselves and a core support that is now accepting of the shit delivered up every week and has been for the last 5 years, because the club insist on telling anyone that will listen, this is where we are now guys, so please don't rock the boat, 17th is acceptable and you know that is correct because we Aston Villa told you so.

[brian green]

Yes that truly is the underlying problem. We have bought into the lowering of expectations philosophy.

[pbavfckuwait]

Not only brought into it Brian, but we are also too well aware that what ever we do, moan, demonstrate, stay away, it does not matter one flying f..., because the owner does not care about us, about the club and looking more and more he could not care about his investment, we are something on his portfolio that he just cant shift, so he will give it less and less time and attention.

A fool and his money are easily parted and we have the Norman Wisdom of fools.

[aj2k77]

Yes that truly is the underlying problem. We have bought into the lowering of expectations philosophy.

We have, hook, line and sinker.

We talk of sacking a manager, the first response is ''yeah but who would come?''. Then a list of the same old failures are drawn up and critiqued.
We talk of buying players and if they aren't Harewood and Heskey style comedy characters we immediately question why they would join us and say we aren't being realistic.
We lose to Crystal Palace, Stoke, Leicester etc and the excuses come out that we should be losing these games because so and so are on a good run, spent some money, don't have injuries, we haven't gelled.
We can't put a single 90 minute game together, for almost 5 years we've stunk the league out and the support as a whole have got angry a couple of times if that.
We've bought players from Crewe and Chesterfield and made excuse after excuse for them and why they were bought. Hell I'm no fan of Darren Bent but the boy was not given a run out whilst we persisted with that fucking donkey we bought for £500,000 from the fourth Division, ridiculous.

We are on another one of our runs, 8 defeats in 10 and the only name we can come up with is Fat Wank Allardyce, we already know just how limited he is, ask West Ham fans if you don't. It would be another short term appointment but we don't think we can do any better than stumbling from one disaster in to another.

[brian green]

Agree completely aj2. Incidentally I have a very good and truthful nephew who follows lower league Northwest clubs who told me that  Chesterfield's asking price for Bowery was £250,000 but we made an offer without asking how much they wanted for him.

My main point however is one I made a year ago about replacing Lambert.   We could get whoever we wanted to manage the club.  They are all mercenaries to a man. Just decide who you want and make him an offer he can't refuse.  How much have we spent on Gestede and Ayew?  Half of that amount as a signing on bonus would get whoever you wanted.  We just don't get the importance of a proven too quality man in charge.  We shop in Argos and get inferior merchandise. We are too mean to walk through the doors of Harrods.

[silhillvilla]

Where's Benitez these days

[saunders_heroes]

Where's Benitez these days

Not a hope in hell of a manager of his quality (or anyone like him) working for Randy Lerner. We're in the bottom of the barrel market when it comes to hiring managers.

[aj2k77]

Brian, they wouldn't even know who to approach if they wanted to sack thicko Tim. The Aston Villa brain trust have no knowledge of football beyond what they see day to day. It would be another proven, failed/limited British manger or someone who has been tried and failed in the Premier League.

The outside world, German, Italian, French and Spanish football is an alien concept to them. Tom Fox appointed his chancer mate, he has no idea who up and coming managers from the continent are, he's a money man thrown in the deep end, a slight upgrade on credit card guy who was nice but dim.

We need a coach, hmm who's about? Don't know but I've heard of Roy Keane, he's in the paper all the time, employ him.
We need a manager, hmmm who's about? Don't know but I've heard of Tim Sherwood, he's in the paper all the time, employ him.

Absolutely agree that there are hundreds of managers all around the world that would shit the bed and walk barefoot to Villa Park for the huge pay packet and the exposure the Premier League will give them but we've bought the line that we are doing the best we realistically can and to ask for anything more than winning the odd game every couple of months is us living on our history.

[VillaAlways]

Where's Benitez these days

He was interviewed after Houllier( I think) but then he heard what his budget was and ran a mile. We ended up with McCleish