Ray Wilkins on Talk Sport

[Monty]

The first person in the UK to start looking at this seriously and doing something with the numbers was that utter dinosaur and last bastion of "pwoppa Inglisch football" Sam Allardyce when he took over at Bolton in '99

Certainly was. His football might be boring, but it is thought-out.

[Risso]

The first person in the UK to start looking at this seriously and doing something with the numbers was that utter dinosaur and last bastion of "pwoppa Inglisch football" Sam Allardyce when he took over at Bolton in '99

Funnily enough though, his Bolton side at theor best played some extremely good football, such as the time Jay Jay Okocha tore us a new one.

[brontebilly]

Correct Monty but they also need to do some homework on the characters of the players they are looking to purchase, stats are fine but crosschecks need also to be carried out.

This is true - but then we haven't had problems with the characters of any of the foreign players bought last season. It's the British based ones who've been involved in all the problems.

Think the character of the imports is certainly open to question. Saw a report a couple of weeks ago saying Gueye had the most interceptions of any player across Europe's major leagues this term, more than Kante. However those stats don't excuse his complete lack of character as a man. That was evident early in the season, walking back after players, throwing in towel when we went behind etc.

veretout didn't try a leg in his more recent appearances. Traore didn't track back once, laughable professional. Amavi's jumping out of tackles cost us a number of critical goals early in the season. Ayew's red card at West Ham was a disgrace.

The imports should not be spared in any character assessments of the charlatan crew that represented AVFC this season.

My own take on it is that the culture at AVFC need a complete root and branch review as there is something fundementally wrong. The club is void of ambition and bare minimum seems the acceptable standard for years now. New players, academy players and management will continue to struggle without culture change.

Small steps but there should be a new written code of conduct that all players and management sign up to next season re fitness levels, social media, off field activities, alcohol bans, media leaks and a series of new off field initiatives that all players must sign up to re charity and supporter events.

[KevinGage]

The Moneyball tag is balls, quite frankly.

But sinking so much of the available resources on French players last summer was risky at the time and has contributed to us going down.  Not because they are poor players, but because -for reasons others are probably better placed than me to explain- French players seem to take a while to adapt to English football. Certainly compared to Scandinavian, Dutch and -weirdly- Belgian players.

Maybe it is down to the language barrier - Veretout barely had a word of it when he came over, for example.  Whereas it would be odd to think of that applying to players from those other regions. Or it could purely be the pace of the league.

Ayew (who is Ghanaian, but brought up in France) really only got going from Oct/Nov onwards.  Aside from a few flashes here and there, Vertout has never got going at all. Amavi looked the best of the bunch and Gueye has been a letdown. We needed the bulk of them to hit the ground running, and that didn't happen. Ayew and Veretout would have been the kind of players who could have been eased in gradually to a settled side but we didn't have that luxury.

It would be human nature for a group of ex pats to congregate together so they can't be blamed for that. But signing just two of that lot might have been easier, as far as integration is concerned.  If the French players have been disappointing, the Ing-er-lund lot have been diabolical. If we ever get back to the topflight, I'd be reticent to sign any recent cast offs from Citeh (unless they are offering Aguero or De Bruyne plus cash for Gestede).  They've usually done their chips as far as their career is concerned. And think they are doing us a favour just by turning up. (See also Richard Dunne).

Th focus needs to be on players on the way up who want to make their name at Aston Villa.  The Paul Lambert approach in the early part of his time with us had merit- the execution was just poor.

 

[Villa in Denmark]

I'd go along with KG.

Others have also said it, recently and some much further back the statistics analysis can only be either a first filter to whittle 50 potential players down to 4 or 5, or to help inform a decisiion if you're stuck picking between 2.

The one thing that's been obvious from the start is that the players as individuals are OK, but there's no way on earth that anyone, at any point in time sat down and thought about how they'd fit together, not just on the pitch, but also as team mates off it.

I don't know what Richard's reputation within the game was before he signed, but it appears that a dressing room with him and Agbonlahor can only survive if it's made up of people who either go all in for, or are prepared to accept some kind of mid 80's to early 90's bullshit machismo, laced with a touch of xenophobia if you can't join in.  With that background signing our Ligue 1 contingent was like throwing caged puppies in front of a train and seeing how many survived.

Agree about Man City cast off type signings as well. I'd add all of the current top 5/6 usual suspects to that. Look at Townsend at Newcastle.  From the bits I've seen the most effort he's put in has been running to warm up before being subbed in with 20 minutes to go.

[curiousorange]

I find it hard to believe that any club which employs data analysis to dissect player performances in their own side wouldn't do the same before deciding to sign a player from another.

[old man villa fan]

Football these days seems to be all around buying players.  Whatever method you use and it is clearly not just relying on stats, whatever the media/pundits try telling us, there are risks of getting it wrong.  Football is a team game and generally a player has to compliment others in the team (unless the player is Messi or the like).  There is so much to consider when trying to assess whether a player will be a success.

With a high turnover of players, you are always running the risk of not knowing exactly what you are buying as things are happening so fast.  So, why have Villa consistently neglected their youth players over the last 5 or 6 seasons.  With a good youth policy you mould the player into what you want from a character point of view and you coach him to achieve his potential.

[The Edge]

The Benteke replacement was hardly Moneyball. He was replaced, by Sherwood, with Rudy Gestede. Perhaps we could have used more stats than 'he's scored some goals, bruv'.

Who scores headed goals? Looks at stats, Gestede, buy him.

Moneyball for morons, maybe.

The point is that everybody who's any good - EVERYBODY - uses 'stats' in the modern game now for scouting. Everybody. The way you dismiss them as some crazy wacky thing dreamed up in a lab by some fringe maniac scientist is so divorced from the real-world reality of the sport it's frightening. It's like you and The Edge have been cryogenically frozen since 1945.

My points aren't really aimed at the moneyball system. My point is about the club bringing in a bunch of players without proper involvement of the manager whilst ignoring players he had identified. Add to that a language barrier and the fact that Newcastle tried going for French replacements and look.how that turned out. Sherwood should have been trusted to build a team. Too much interference from people not qualified to do so has fucked us up.

[edgysatsuma89]

I wouldn't trust Sherwood to build a lego wall.

[The Edge]

I wouldn't trust Sherwood to build a lego wall.

we'll never know cos he wasn't given the chance

[edgysatsuma89]

I wouldn't trust Sherwood to build a lego wall.

we'll never know cos he wasn't given the chance

He'll get his chance to build his British or at least experienced, 110% in training, running around like headless chickens pwoper laaaaads team at some point and you'll find out the jingoistic prick hasn't got a clue.

#Bantz

[The Edge]

I wouldn't trust Sherwood to build a lego wall.

we'll never know cos he wasn't given the chance

He'll get his chance to build his British or at least experienced, 110% in training, running around like headless chickens pwoper laaaaads team at some point and you'll find out the jingoistic prick hasn't got a clue.

#Bantz

What are you basing your opinion on?

[Somniloquism]

I wouldn't trust Sherwood to build a lego wall.

we'll never know cos he wasn't given the chance

He was given half a chance. The ones he bought have been as bad, if not worse then the ones he supposedly had nothing to do with. Even though he bigged them up massively and was taking credit for them in all the media when bought. If Richards, Lescott and Gestade were the ones performing well each game, or if he had Grealish playing well or decided to actually get Gabby fit or decided to quell any dressing room troubles rather then fanning them, then your trust of him would have been justified.

There is also an argument that if Garde had been given the same chances Sherwood had to get the players in he wanted in January and maybe replace some of the dross we have left, then we might have strung results together and been safe. We were started to actually play like a team that cares again when we the board decided not to even try anything in the Jan transfer windows and the troublemakers decided they were safe to get another manager sacked who could do nothing about it but play them.

[KevinGage]

Lescott, Richards and Gestede were his picks. 

Andros Townsend and Adebayor aren't players I am distraught at missing out on either.

[The Edge]

I wouldn't trust Sherwood to build a lego wall.

we'll never know cos he wasn't given the chance

He was given half a chance. The ones he bought have been as bad, if not worse then the ones he supposedly had nothing to do with. Even though he bigged them up massively and was taking credit for them in all the media when bought. If Richards, Lescott and Gestade were the ones performing well each game, or if he had Grealish playing well or decided to actually get Gabby fit or decided to quell any dressing room troubles rather then fanning them, then your trust of him would have been justified.

There is also an argument that if Garde had been given the same chances Sherwood had to get the players in he wanted in January and maybe replace some of the dross we have left, then we might have strung results together and been safe. We were started to actually play like a team that cares again when we the board decided not to even try anything in the Jan transfer windows and the troublemakers decided they were safe to get another manager sacked who could do nothing about it but play them.

Well it's all water under the bridge now. Whoever comes in has got to be trusted to build a team of his if not we might as well just give up.