MO'N on Goals on Sunday

[OzVilla]

He has more financial backing that any other Villa manager in history, and yet he opted for the likes of Harewood, Heskey and co.  The unimaginative dullard.

Nowhere near as good a manager as Sir Brian was for us, or even JG, for that matter.

Or Saunders or Atkinson or Taylor.

[KevinGage]

Well, quite. 

But the suggestions was he was our best manager in the last 20 years. I think most of us would have at least two, if not three candidates ahead of him even just focussing on that era.

[Big Dick Edwards]

My issue with MON was the timing of his departure. If he had left at the end of the previous season most people would of held him in high esteem and wished him good luck. Whatever his disagreement with Lerner it's the fans that he let down by his walk out

This. He must have known Lerner was pulling the plug well before a couple of days before the season started. He hadn't bought a player all summer. If he'd resigned earlier and given a new manager time to bed in we'd have had a chance to settle. Instead he gave us no time to identify a replacement, and consequently no time to add to the squad. We've been in terminal decline since.

[pauliewalnuts]

The assumption is made that he left so close to the new season in order to maximize the damage to AVFC but that's not something I choose to believe. Why not entertain the opposite angle and consider he spent the summer arguing his corner with the chairman until having to concede the relationship was no longer tenable? Neither argument can be supported with any genuine proof and given Lerner doesn't have the common courtesy to ever speak with the club's supporters why on earth would you want to reject the suggestion that he was at fault rather than a man who'd taken 2 years out of football to support his cancer ridden wife? He concedes his timing was poor but the idea that it was deliberate sabotage I believe is a step too far.

What is the relevance of that to matters being discussed here?

[pauliewalnuts]

It's not necessarily the amounts spent it's the way it's been spent that's the issue.  It's been the issue to differing degrees since Randy first opened his chequebook.

That's it exactly.  With Randy Lerner came a glorious opportunity to embark on a long-term plan, to invest in the infrastructure of the club and build some solid foundations that would see us make steady progress.  That was the key to success.  Instead what we've had is a fatally short-sighted, short-termist approach to everything, beginning with Lerner handing great wodges of his fortune to completely the wrong man.  Two hundred and fifty million quid may not even have bought a title winning squad, but it should have been ample to buy the knowledge and expertise required to run a club capable of challenging for trophies for years.  Lerner didn't have to know anything about football, he just needed to employ people who did.  He failed to do that. 

I despair to think that after so many years of Ellis strangling us with his miserly approach we finally got what we wanted, what we needed, what any club needs to compete these days in the money-driven world of the Premier League: we got our sugar daddy: we got his millions: and then O'Neill wasted the lot on a glut of Sidwells and Shoreys.  And for what?  Sixth place finishes?  Even O'Leary managed that, with a fraction of O'Neills' funding.  And that was our chance, folks.  That was our future and O'Neill blew it.  Anyone who thinks he's is in no way culpable for this mess five years down the line is as short-sighted as he is.  His reckless spending crippled us, his behaviour clearly damaged Lerner, and our current predicament is the result. Lerner is to blame for trusting him, for not knowing that he was a very limited football manager, and for the car crash we've witnessed since, but it's not his fault that O'Neill is a spiteful, self-serving litigious bastard.   
       

100% agree

Me too.

Moving forward to where we are now, and I know events since doing this haven't really represented much of an argument in favour, but we now have a set up at the club - even if you don't much rate the people in the jobs - which Lerner should have set up on day one.

Instead he watched huge sums of money get pissed away for nothing.

The other thing - "yeah, but what about the sixth place finishes?" as if nobody recognises that was much more fun than our current position of being a more spangly Wigan - yes, that was fun, of course it was, but was it really a good enough return for the amounts of money we spent?

The profligacy is there in black and white. What sort of manager spunks 30m one summer on almost an entire defence, decides he doesn't rate some of them, and spends the same amount on another entire defence the next season.

Uncontrolled, ill-considered, scattergun wasting of transfer money. Lerner's fault was letting that go on for so long, and to the point at which we start to annually risk our top flight status as we're trying to recover.

And yes, MON left five years ago, but there's still an impact - that's why we're watching cheap dross like Westwood or Bacuna week in, week out.

[tomd2103]

My issue with MON was the timing of his departure. If he had left at the end of the previous season most people would of held him in high esteem and wished him good luck. Whatever his disagreement with Lerner it's the fans that he let down by his walk out

This. He must have known Lerner was pulling the plug well before a couple of days before the season started. He hadn't bought a player all summer. If he'd resigned earlier and given a new manager time to bed in we'd have had a chance to settle. Instead he gave us no time to identify a replacement, and consequently no time to add to the squad. We've been in terminal decline since.

I seem to remember it being reported that he was asked a question about his future at a meeting at the end of his last season and he replied something along the lines of "you better ask Mark Hughes about that".  It was pretty clear from his body language and general manner at the end of that season that all wasn't well.

[glasses]

We're where we are because we as a club bought Darren Bent, Jean II Makoun, Jermaine Jenas, Charles N'Zogbia, Stephen Ireland, Shay Given and paid them all silly money for no return. Players bought with money earnt from sales of the much better players we  bought during O'Neills tenure. He bought some players that didn't return much, but not huge sums individually were spent on them. Beye and Heskey were probably the worst.

(I'll add that I think had Fabian Delphs contract been handled better by the club, he'd have been another £20m sale. £8m for him was a steal.)

His impact was over after we'd struggled in the league the season after, then clambered up to 9th in the last few games.

At that point the club appointed Alex McLeish.

The lack of structure could have been looked at then, couldn't it?

We are where we are, because the owner hasn't put the right people in charge of his investment. He's a rich boy who inherited wealth and businesses, and has pretty much failed at all of them.

[PeterWithesShin]

Darren Bent paid for his transfer in spades by keeping us up twice. We didn't buy Jenas.

[glasses]

Darren Bent paid for his transfer in spades by keeping us up twice. We didn't buy Jenas.

He did. His goals were great, then he went for nothing. James Milner and co nearly got us into the top 4 and a trophy. We paid Jenas a fortune for nothing.

My only point being that we've done a decent enough job of wasting money without big bad MON

[ClaretAndBlueBlood]

My issue with MON was the timing of his departure. If he had left at the end of the previous season most people would of held him in high esteem and wished him good luck. Whatever his disagreement with Lerner it's the fans that he let down by his walk out

This. He must have known Lerner was pulling the plug well before a couple of days before the season started. He hadn't bought a player all summer. If he'd resigned earlier and given a new manager time to bed in we'd have had a chance to settle. Instead he gave us no time to identify a replacement, and consequently no time to add to the squad. We've been in terminal decline since.

I'm no MON fan, far from it but maybe he was given assurances that Milner wasn't going to be sold? Or maybe he was told that if Milner did go, he would be given all of the funds to spend how he liked but then had Ireland forced on him? None of us know  for definite what made him quit and when he decided to do it.

Personally I think he had taken us as far as he was going to anyway with his style of football and management, we should have been looking to replace him with someone able to take us to the next level

[Rigadon]

What did for Lerner and MON was man city.  Their wealth effectively ended our hopes of getting in the champions league.  Lerner knew it and pulled the plug on spending to get in it, and refocused the spending on staying in the premier league.  The shit managerial appointments since then have had an impact but in truth are a result of the limitations around budgets. 

[Brian Taylor]

MoN is conscientious in a scurrilous minefield of wntreneurial capitalism which has zero/zilch regard for club or supporters. Good luck with Irish endeavours Martin.

[Lastfootstamper]

Darren Bent paid for his transfer in spades by keeping us up twice. We didn't buy Jenas.

He did. His goals were great, then he went for nothing. James Milner and co nearly got us into the top 4 and a trophy. We paid Jenas a fortune for nothing.

My only point being that we've done a decent enough job of wasting money without big bad MON

True, we have. I'd say a lot/all of the spending in those two seasons after he went smacks, in hindsight, of us trying to dig ourselves out of a bit of a hole we'd already dug. One last desperate, futile attempt to cling onto the coattails of those then charging off into the distance.
But as for top 4 and a trophy, "nearly" might just as well be "miles away". Both count as fuck-all. DOL, JG, HWWOW, BFR, SGT, you have to go quite a way back to find a Villa manager who failed to make top six.

[David_Nab]

I'd look at it as Lerner would not have said ok Martin I'm gona have to cut the funding as over 3 years you have wiped me out but carry on and I expect another top 4 challenge.
No expectations would have been lowered and Martin like most over managers was going to have to spend what he brought in from sales.As a so called top manager he should of taken the challenge on to steady things instead he quit.

We had no manager for the first few games , lost Milner , had a crippling injury list and a manager whose health issues returned yet still scraped to 9th.There was enough left in that squad for him to achieve a sold league position and rebuild slowly.

I'd suggest he walked out knowing the endless cash was gone and he actually had to manage the budget and you know actually scout players and use the youth coming through.No he wonder off and resurfaced at Sunderland and made same mistakes.

He was lauded as a great man manager and certainly at times he could motivate some average players and Leicester but at Celtic ,Villa and Sunderland he was a short term ,cheque book manager not much better than Redknapp

[The Edge]

He has more financial backing that any other Villa manager in history, and yet he opted for the likes of Harewood, Heskey and co.  The unimaginative dullard.

Nowhere near as good a manager as Sir Brian was for us, or even JG, for that matter.

I think the O'Neill haters are behaving like a jilted boyfriend. He bought some rubbish and bought some quality.All managers do that. I genuinely believe that if we had backed him when he was asking we would of made champions league football with all the riches that brings. He just pulled off a miracle and will be at the next World Cup pitting his wits against the top coaches in the World. We are still fighting relegation 5 YEAR after he left. He can maybe blamed for 2010/11 season but all the utter shite we have endured since? I don't think so.