Turning Points

[Dave]

Yes, I agree MON had his limitations.

I'm just saying that the blame isn't on him. If he was such a bad manager, selling good young players etc, why didn't they sack him the May 2010 and bring in somebody decent when the market was better?

Because as you might have noticed, the people in charge are rubbish at running football clubs.

[West Derby Villan]

Moscow followed by Stoke the weekend after.

This

[john e]

This season- for me it was Watford at home,
we didn't play badly and probably were the better team on the day but we lost, and that's the day I thought for the first time that we would go down

Last few years - was when MON walked, didn't realise at the time but that was the day Randy through the towel in and we went on to make bad decision after bad decision

You're being kind to Lerner. I'd say the very reason O'Neill walked was because Randy informed him he'd had enough with the club and would reel in the spending.

Maybe I am, and you might be right
But either way that was the turning point of our decline into utter shitness

[olaftab]

This topic is too wide. For example turning points in over overall demise can be , Moscow/Stoke matches, sales of likes of Milner and Young, MON f ing off  followed by Lerner u turn and subsequent appointments etc etc.
This season Benteke and Delph going, Leicester away, appointment of a coach, Garde as wrong man at the wrong time, and no signings in January. It's and endless catalogue of disaster.

[Exeter 77]

I wrote something about this in H &V a couple of years ago. I think I pinpointed it to the game at Chelsea in 2010 when Lamoard scored in first half stoppage time to make it 2-1. We ended up losing 7-1 and it was the game when O'Neill allegedly insisted Milner played  even though he was injured. It has been pretty much all downhill from there.

[j66acd]

This topic is too wide. For example turning points in over overall demise can be , Moscow/Stoke matches, sales of likes of Milner and Young, MON f ing off  followed by Lerner u turn and subsequent appointments etc etc.
This season Benteke and Delph going, Leicester away, appointment of a coach, Garde as wrong man at the wrong time, and no signings in January. It's and endless catalogue of disaster.

You're right, it's just one big list of fuck ups, terrible decisions and lack of planning that has put us where we are now.

[ChicagoLion]

I think it went wrong when Houlier got ill and then demanded a settlement.
The Following RL fuck you appointment of TSM1 heralded Nzogbia and a continuing demise.

[Toronto Villa]

The draw against Stoke should never have had the impact that it did. We should have been much stronger mentally. And in a funny way had we been 2 down and come back to draw I think we'd have been much better off even if the result was the same. But in the end we folded like a cheap tent.

[ez]

At the end of the Houllier season is when i reckon Lerner lost interest. Previously we had finished 6th 3 times and when O'Neil walked he probably thought with a new manager and a bit of fine tuning we would push on. When we actually went backwards instead Lerner gave up.

[passport1]

MON

Bring back MON. Three top six finishes- European football  and a League Cup stolen from us by a dodgy ref. That sounds like a good option right now. Martin O'Neill was not responsible for the players contracts. That's down to the administration.

Yes, I agree with a lot of this. I am uncomfortable with the anti-MON line fans were sold in 2010 and which was accepted uncritically. Its only in the past 18 months I have begun to soften in my attitude to MON. It wasn't his responsibility to manage the finances. His failings were not scouting further afield etc. He obviously realised he was dealing with chancers in 2010 and the fact that they went ahead and signed that absolute fool Stephen Ireland after MON left shows you what calibre of people he was working for all along.

You have hit the nail firmly on the head. Experienced managers do not walk unless there is some serious fuckwitery going on behind the scenes.  In my years it has happened theee times Saunders,Little and O'Neil. It has always been the precursor for some pretty grim times.

[john2710]

I don't think there's been any turning points as such, more an accumulation of errors upon errors. Some too ridiculous to be true, but sadly they are.

Anyway, we can analyse for all we want, it won't change a thing. All we can hope is that finally the club have learned from those mistakes & that the road back has already started.

I think we all need to draw a line under what's gone and show the world, any future manager / players what a wonderful football club Aston Villa are, despite the shit we are in. The fight back starts today & there's no room for those who are not committed.

[PeterWithesShin]

08/09 was massive. Especially the January as others pointed out.

On the 8th Feb there were 13 games to go. We were 7 points clear of Arsenal, 11 ahead of Everton. However, we had issues. Only 5 home wins from 12, Laursen had recently played his last game, only 5 times in the league all season did we win by more than 1 goal. We needed more firepower but as Risso says, we signed Heskey. Our stock was really high at the time, we could have cherry picked any number of players but didn't.

We won 2 more games all season out of 13 league games and 3 cup games. During that run Gabby scored once, Heskey scored once. We finished 10 points behind Arsenal, a point behind Everton. And our chance had gone. Despite having a good 09/10 we were never in such a strong position again.

None of that is why we are now a division 2 side, but I think it was a massive turning point in our history. Had things been a bit different back then, we score one of the 100 chances at home to Wigan instead of a 0-0. Laursen doesn't get crocked, we sign Bent instead of Heskey, we don't blow it against Stoke etc who knows what might have happened.

[brian green]

I am not committed.  I am Prepared.  Prepared for whatever the future holds. I suspect that it is going to be no more pretty than what has gone before.  Bring it on.

[martin o`who??]

Appointing a Manager with a history of heart problems who then had the gall to claim off us when he inevitably fell ill again, did we actually take medical advice about his condition before we employed him, if so why did we not sue for bad advice?. From there cut to the foolish appointment of Mcleish and the rest is history - and so were we.

[old man villa fan]

There have been many things that have gone wrong and I don't think you can pin-point one thing and say it was the turning point.

For me, one of the most telling things has been our transfer policy when we have sold our better players.  As an example, take Benteke last year.  We received the best part of £30m for him and our survival the previous seasons was nearly entirely due to his goals.  It was clear that we could not replace his goals from one player unless we spent all the money on one player.  that was never going to happen, even if we could have persuaded someone to come.  So, the plan should have been to spread the goals around the forwards and midfield.  Our transfer policy did not match that though.

You can go back over the years and look at when we sold our better players and look how we wasted the money with no plan to deal with the loss, just spend the money - Ireland + £s for Milner, Young + £s for Bent (they knew Young was going to Utd.), N'Zogbia + £s for Downing (having already sold Young) etc. etc.

Our managers since MON's largesse on wages have lost sight of the fact that it is a team game and you have to be strong across that team.  We have bought too many 'icing on the cake' type players, without have the players around them to allow them to play their type of game, which then made them the weakest links in the team.  I think McLeish's, Lambert's and Sherwood's approach to buying was akin to a kid in a sweet shop, with no real plan.