How Will We Do In The Championship?

[Mister E]

yes but if randy is still the owner, we will be buying from poundland. the only brightness about our future, is us villa fans that actually care.

Lerner's record is not as a Poundland buyer. He's stumped up the cash, but it's been spent by poor managers on mediocre players (by and large).

[dave shelley]

If Lerner is in charge, we'll be bottom half and might go down. There will be no money to add players, the few decent ones will leave and the remainder will still be shite.

If a new owner is in charge I've no idea how we'd do, would depend on who the manager was and who we buy/retain.

Saved me a lot of finger prodding on the iPad.  It's irrelevant until we see who the new owners (hopefully) are.

[brian green]

Mid table clutching at the play offs next season.  Second with automatic promotion the season after ( Newcastle will pip us for the wonderful trophy).

[Witton Warrior]

Too many variables at this point to have any idea really.
If we are sold to someone intelligent with some money, a decent manager comes in, we shift the dross and buy well we will come up.
If any one of those are not in place we may struggle.
If more than one is not in place it could be ugly.

[ozzjim]

It depends on the manager.  Even Blues in meltdown made the play offs with Hughton.

[SoccerHQ]

Too many variables at this point to have any idea really.
If we are sold to someone intelligent with some money, a decent manager comes in, we shift the dross and buy well we will come up.
If any one of those are not in place we may struggle.
If more than one is not in place it could be ugly.

I would say this but too early to tell, let's see what sort of squad we assemble.

I did naively think with the two month head start we had on the other relegated teams we might be pro active and make some big decisions but clearly not.

[kippaxvilla2]

I see Hughton mentioned again in the above post.  He has now gone into three basket case situations and turned them all to promotion winners or candidates - Blues, Newcastle and now Brighton.  I read somewhere that Brighton was in a parlous state when he took over last year.  I honestly think he would be great for us.

[tomd2103]

Lerner stays and we manage to strip away all the wasters (Guzan, Richards, Lescott, Bacuna, Agbonlahor).  We also sell the players we are likely to get some money for (Ayew, Gana, Traore, Amavi, Sanchez) and we would be left with:

                       Steer

Hutton       Okore      Clark    Cissokho

             Westwood     Gardner

Green              Grealish           Sinclair

                       Gestede

To be totally honest, a few additions using the money generated from sales with a couple
of decent loans and I think the right manager could get us competitive next season.

[brian green]

Brighton were probably in parlours state because they have so many armchair supporters.

[Marlon From Bearwood]

If you want a straw to clutch at....

The Sunderland team of 10 years ago was even worse than us this season; they went down with just 15 points.

The following season they lost their first 4 games in the Championship, changed their manager at this stage (Roy Keane!), went on an incredible run and finished top of the Championship!

So as gloomy as it all looks right now, it CAN be done.

[aj2k77]

Shit.

The club is completely rudderless.

[olaftab]

Win the League with this lot:

                       Steer

A rightback        Okore      Clark    Amavi

             Westwood     Gana

Traore           Grealish           Ayew

                       Gestede

[aj2k77]

That team is mentally and physically as weak as a child.

[Steve R]

Most likely scenario at the moment is that Lerner will still be here, the imports from the last summer window - Ayew, Ganna, Veretout, Traore and even Amavi - will be off like a shot, and a few others will have found moves, notably Cissokho and Okore. Only those who could only move for less money or are just plain unsellable will be here. We will have at best a c-list manager with only a portion of money from sales at his disposal.

Set against that, the standard in the Championship is fairly shite, although a lot of teams will see us as their game of the season/away trip of the season.

Provided we can find a decent if cheap centre back, a couple of midfielders and an effective forward then we may challenge for the playoffs. Probably without success. Which will leave us going into season 2 still with a rump of high earners/low returners which really will make life difficult. Great.

[OzVilla]

2 months ago I thought we'd be challenging for automatic promotion with a nucleus of 7-8 from this squad plus additions making us easily good enough.

2 months, 11 games and McGrath knows how many unbelievably unprofessional acts later I think a season of mid table Championship grind awaits. If we're flirting with any division it's Div 1 not the PL as it stands.

From top to bottom, this club has totally fallen apart.