Randy Lerner

[dave.woodhall]

If you're spending megamoney on a football club you don't really care about the manager or his style of play.

[Monty]

If you're spending megamoney on a football club you don't really care about the manager or his style of play.

Exactly - you could just sack him and get your own team.

[villadelph]

2 posts above this (from villadelph and Salsa Party Animal) highlight my ongoing concern with how people view both football and specifically Villa in this country:

He had no concept of the annual investment it would take to improve and stabilize the club. He had no idea which combination of directors and managers would create a good on-field product.

He's done nothing but conduct underfunded, unsupervised failures in his tenure as a sports franchise owner.

This is nonsense, there is no annual investment required to improve and stabilise the club, at least not until you're challenging for the title. You then follow it up with a correct assertion that he couldn't put together a proper management structure before once again going back to moaning at the lack of investment.  As fans we all want to be competing to buy the very best players in the world but we don't have the right to demand that an owner either spend a fortune of his own money or fuck off and we shouldn't need that anyway. If a business needs constant outside investment to stay valid then it's a failure, for a sports club success is in the results not in the profits but even still losing money every year can in no way be considered desirable.

What?!

When your best player(s) hands in a transfer request EVERY year, reinvestment is necessary. It's football, constant investment is necessary. With the turnover we have and the instability that has strangled us for the last 5 years we are stuck in a revolving door. If you re-read what you wrote, by your definition we are a failure.

Without wanting to speak for Paul, this does nothing to refute his point.

When Bony left for Man City, Swansea didn't go out and spend £28m on a new striker. They had the processes in place to deal with the situation.

When Joe Allen left the board didn't have to fund an expensive replacement. When Ben Davies left they didn't need a new £10m left-back.

They've reinvested, but the money comes from sensible management of the club, not crying that the chairman isn't spending loads of his own money.

And I'm pretty certain that he's in no way claiming that we're NOT a failure.

I'm not going to refute any of that, but it feeds right into my expectation of an owner appointing the right people. Whether they are scouting, recruiting or training new additions. In previous threads I've said that the "net spend" idea should not be set in stone as a gauge for success. The physical value of a player and the monetary value of the same player are much different. As the players value can rise or fall based on many factors. Who's buying, contracted years left, transfer requests, etc.. It's not a matter of replacing Benteke with a striker of the same monetary value.

However, had Benteke not signed agreed to a release clause and left for Delph money than how would we have improved enough to compete in this league? We are all aware that an owner's cash is necessary to a degree. In my opinion, it damages the brand when the custodian of the club is unwilling to properly invest and hires a CEO to create unique ways to fund his club. I just don't feel Lerner takes enough responsibility. He offers no transparency, no clarification. He's the guy who turns his lights out on Halloween because he's just not interested in handing out candy to the neighborhood kids.

We have a poor infrastructure and it's by Randy's design, no matter how many people stand in front of him taking the bullets.

[aj2k77]

If you're spending megamoney on a football club you don't really care about the manager or his style of play.

Good point. I don't think anyone buying us will be spending mega money though.

[oldhill_avfc]

You could argue that the damage was done when Lerner was more hands on, who along with his other cronies had no idea of how to invest wisely in the club.

Paradoxically since he got bored/found it difficult to sell up, putting aside debates about the individuals involved, he's put a good structure in place.

[villadelph]

You could argue that the damage was done when Lerner was more hands on, who along with his other cronies had no idea of how to invest wisely in the club.

Paradoxically since he got bored/found it difficult to sell up, putting aside debates about the individuals involved, he's put a good structure in place.

Some say it's better to be lucky than good, but time will tell. We could've gone down on multiple occasions which goes to prove that Lerner had little to no idea on what it takes to run a football club. It was novel of him to come in and do his best, but he was very ignorant on even the basics, from the boardroom to match day. And, when the going got tough he completely vanished behind an array of excuses and generally condoned silence.

That, I have a problem with.

[aj2k77]

You could argue that the damage was done when Lerner was more hands on, who along with his other cronies had no idea of how to invest wisely in the club.

Paradoxically since he got bored/found it difficult to sell up, putting aside debates about the individuals involved, he's put a good structure in place.

Has he? Where?

[itbrvilla]

You could argue that the damage was done when Lerner was more hands on, who along with his other cronies had no idea of how to invest wisely in the club.

Paradoxically since he got bored/found it difficult to sell up, putting aside debates about the individuals involved, he's put a good structure in place.

Has he? Where?

I agree.  I see no structure anywhere. Even hearing things about the academy going down hill recently.  What a fucking shambles.

[saunders_heroes]

You could argue that the damage was done when Lerner was more hands on, who along with his other cronies had no idea of how to invest wisely in the club.

Paradoxically since he got bored/found it difficult to sell up, putting aside debates about the individuals involved, he's put a good structure in place.

Where is this good structure and how do you define a good structure? As far as I can see the team on the pitch has been a shambles for over 5 years now, but you claim that in fact we have a good structure in place. I'm staggered to know how you came to this conclusion.

[pauliewalnuts]

You could argue that the damage was done when Lerner was more hands on, who along with his other cronies had no idea of how to invest wisely in the club.

Paradoxically since he got bored/found it difficult to sell up, putting aside debates about the individuals involved, he's put a good structure in place.

Where is this good structure and how do you define a good structure? As far as I can see the team on the pitch has been a shambles for over 5 years now, but you claim that in fact we have a good structure in place. I'm staggered to know how you came to this conclusion.

It's not really that hard to believe, surely?

Previously there was Lerner, Faulkner, manager.

If the manager went, there was nobody connected with the football side of things left. What's more, Faulkner was the one most of us complained about because he didn't have a convincing enough background in the game

Now there is Lerner, Fox (who was running Arsenal's money side of things, so hardly a newcomer to the game), then there is Reilly on recruitment and Almstadt as technical director.

If the manager goes - as he will soon - we'll still have people left on the football side of things. What's more, if what Sherwood says is true and these signings weren't the ones he wanted, then we've got the people who signed them still at the club, rather than having the likes of Andros Townsend on 80k a week, or Adebayor moping around the place on even more money, wondering when God was going to send him a sign to start performing.

They've made a shit appointment. if he goes - and he clearly is going to, soon - then we've got people in position to move the club forward.

Before when that happened, we had Paul Faulkner on the phone to Randy every other day.

I know which set up I prefer.

[saunders_heroes]

It's only a good structure if it works. If it doesn't work it isn't. Nothing Lerner has come up with over the last 5 years has worked therefore it is not a good structure.

[aj2k77]

Exactly, it's ok saying Oh so and so is the new Director of this and that but if he isn't any good at what he's doing then it's built on nothing.

[pauliewalnuts]

It's only a good structure if it works. If it doesn't work it isn't. Nothing Lerner has come up with over the last 5 years has worked therefore it is not a good structure.

That's twisted logic.

How do you know it doesn't work?

Not that long ago, we were enthusing about the signings. They've got a manager who isn't performing. Why not wait and see what they do to rectify that situation before deciding they're just as bad as everything prior to their arrival.

By that logic we could appoint Man City's structure tomorrow and it'd be shit, because everything else Lerner had done had been.

We wanted him to appoint a grown-up structure for absolutely ages. Now he has, but that's shit too because they've appointed a shit manager?

[pauliewalnuts]

Exactly, it's ok saying Oh so and so is the new Director of this and that but if he isn't any good at what he's doing then it's built on nothing.

Quite right.

The only issue here is that we don't know if he's no good at what he's doing, do we?

This is their first big challenge of their own making. Let's see how they respond to it.

Ideally it wouldn't make shit appointments in the first place, but that happens - to every club - what is important is how they now react to it. Before we'd bob along cluelessly because nobody had a clue and then make a truly absurd appointment like McLeish. Or we'd give Lambert too long.

Now we have got a structure beyond the manager in place which should theoretically make transitions between managers much easier to accept than they used to be. Let's see if that actually happens.

[Villafirst]

You could argue that the damage was done when Lerner was more hands on, who along with his other cronies had no idea of how to invest wisely in the club.

Paradoxically since he got bored/found it difficult to sell up, putting aside debates about the individuals involved, he's put a good structure in place.

Has he? Where?

What a brainless comment; a structure that sees us with 4 points from 27 and staring relegation in the face !