Jonathan Kodjia - SOLD

[tomd2103]

I'm not sure that Bruce really likes Kodjia, perhaps thinks he's a show pony and isn't really a team player.  I think he's great but a decent offer and he's gone I reckon.  £10mill?

I thought when Bruce came in he was looking to get rid of Kodjia at the end of the season, being one player he thought he could get money for to fund his next batch of buys. As it turned out he got injured.

What on earth made you think that when Bruce had got Kodjia playing brilliantly ?

Only one person got Kodjia playing brilliantly and that was Kodjia himself. He played as an individual, so why you think it was down to Bruce is hard to comprehend.

Also, if you read my post, I said "when Bruce came in ...". As Kodjia got better and better, he became almost unsalable due to the flack that would come from the fans ( a bit like Adomah last season - another one that I do not think was in Bruce's plans at the start of last season).

When he first arrived, he looked like he couldn't play up front on his own, but he really improved in that position during his first season.  I still think his best position is playing as a wide forward on the left and if he did get a move into the top flight, I think that is where he would have to play.

[sirlordbaltimore]

Only one person got Kodjia playing brilliantly and that was Kodjia himself. He played as an individual, so why you think it was down to Bruce is hard to comprehend.

Simple. Because whenever any player plays shit it's apparently Bruce's fault. So logic tells me when a player plays well it must be Bruce's fault as well

If not, then consider me confused.

[paul_e]

Only one person got Kodjia playing brilliantly and that was Kodjia himself. He played as an individual, so why you think it was down to Bruce is hard to comprehend.

Simple. Because whenever any player plays shit it's apparently Bruce's fault. So logic tells me when a player plays well it must be Bruce's fault as well

If not, then consider me confused.

Your confused.

Each player is responsible for playing to a decent standard on their own, last season most of our squad did that. A managers job is to put a team together in a way to enhances strengths and diminishes weakness to make it better than the sum of it's parts.  The criticism Bruce gets isn't for players being poor, it's for not addressing the reasons why they've been poor.  Too often we were reliant on individual quality to get into a game, that's why Snodgrass and Jack in particular were so important to us because they made chances from nothing.


EDIT to add an example.


Hogan being shit when the ball is being pinged at his head from 50 yards and he hasn't got a player within 30m of him - Bruce is to blame.
Hogan being shit because he looked like he couldn't be arsed running anymore (as happened once or twice) - Hogan's fault.

[john e]

I don’t think Hogan has been any good so far but I can’t remember any games when he’s stopped running to be honest

[Chris Smith]

Only one person got Kodjia playing brilliantly and that was Kodjia himself. He played as an individual, so why you think it was down to Bruce is hard to comprehend.

Simple. Because whenever any player plays shit it's apparently Bruce's fault. So logic tells me when a player plays well it must be Bruce's fault as well


If not, then consider me confused.

You haven’t got the hang of this board at all. Other than a 6 month honeymoon period managers are to blame for everything and anything positive is in spite of them. The only exceptions being those who are not here long enough to qualify for the post honeymoon treatment. The other factor to consider as that all those running the club are incompetent buffoons but we still expect them to make a success of picking the next manager.

We still agitate for change as the theory is that eventually it will work by the same theory that an infinite number of monkeys hitting typewriter keys at random will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare.

[old man villa fan]

Only one person got Kodjia playing brilliantly and that was Kodjia himself. He played as an individual, so why you think it was down to Bruce is hard to comprehend.

Simple. Because whenever any player plays shit it's apparently Bruce's fault. So logic tells me when a player plays well it must be Bruce's fault as well


If not, then consider me confused.

You haven’t got the hang of this board at all. Other than a 6 month honeymoon period managers are to blame for everything and anything positive is in spite of them. The only exceptions being those who are not here long enough to qualify for the post honeymoon treatment. The other factor to consider as that all those running the club are incompetent buffoons but we still expect them to make a success of picking the next manager.

We still agitate for change as the theory is that eventually it will work by the same theory that an infinite number of monkeys hitting typewriter keys at random will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare.

The alternative view Chris is that you should always be planning for the future. My view on managers is whether he is right for the next 3 years and where will he get us or what he will leave the next manager.

Managers go through poor spells but if you can see light at the end of the tunnel, you have to support them. My view on Houlier was different to most. I didn't turn on him for his comment at Liverpool because I could see what he was trying to do in difficult circumstances and he was succeeding until his health problems.

[Risso]

We were about to get relegated until his health problems.

[old man villa fan]

We were about to get relegated until his health problems.

If you couldn't see that we had turned a corner and were on an upward trajectory, you possibly didn't want to.

[Toronto Villa]

The types of players Houllier was targeting would have made us much better. Yes he was a bit of an arrogant cock but when was the last time we had a manager who wasn’t afraid to speak his mind and be bold about us? Far too long we’ve had apologists and managers like this current bloke who are just grateful to be manager and who think as a club we should be “there or thereabouts”. Fuck that. We’re Aston Villa and want us take it to teams.

[Rudy Can't Fail]

Only one person got Kodjia playing brilliantly and that was Kodjia himself. He played as an individual, so why you think it was down to Bruce is hard to comprehend.

Simple. Because whenever any player plays shit it's apparently Bruce's fault. So logic tells me when a player plays well it must be Bruce's fault as well


If not, then consider me confused.

You haven’t got the hang of this board at all. Other than a 6 month honeymoon period managers are to blame for everything and anything positive is in spite of them. The only exceptions being those who are not here long enough to qualify for the post honeymoon treatment. The other factor to consider as that all those running the club are incompetent buffoons but we still expect them to make a success of picking the next manager.

We still agitate for change as the theory is that eventually it will work by the same theory that an infinite number of monkeys hitting typewriter keys at random will eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare.

To break the cycle it may help if we stop hiring monkeys.

[KevinGage]

We came out of our penultimate home game against Wigan in May 2011 scanning the league tables and checking the permutations that could still take us down.

A bit different to the previous three seasons, despite having the majority of the same squad.

So it was a wee bit more than Houllier's ongoing obsession with Liverpool that made him unpopular (much as that didn't help either).  Our best form that year appeared with him out of the picture.

[mr underhill]

It was a concatenation of last day results that propelled us to a rather flattering ninth, if I remember correctly.

[paul_e]

The problem for him was that he tried to change too much too fast, towards the end of the season (even before his illness) it was starting to come together.  If we'd gone with a similar manager for the next season I suspect we'd have finished much higher than we did with TSM and be a better club now for it.  I firmly believe that the decision for Randy to fly out and convince McLeish to join us was the act that set us on the path to relegation and where we are now. That was the point where we, as a club, accepted mediocrity as an option and I don't think we've recovered. After finishing 6th 3 times in a row and then having a blip and dropping to 9th after a rough season if we'd gone back up to 6-7th we would, in my opinion, have established ourselves in the same group as Tottenham and Everton as being a few good signings away from breaking through to challenge for the Champions League. Instead we hired a loser who had just relegated a team and let him bring in a 35 year old on a 5 year deal and a pot plant as this main outlays.

[Ads]

I didn't see much coming together being beaten at home to the Dingles in March or beaten away at the Stripey Filth under his underling in April.

Houllier's time has a wistful meaning for some. It was poor in reality, just nowhere near as poor as it's been since.

[paul_e]

I didn't see much coming together being beaten at home to the Dingles in March or beaten away at the Stripey Filth under his underling in April.

Houllier's time has a wistful meaning for some. It was poor in reality, just nowhere near as poor as it's been since.

Good job, you've picked out the 2 defeats in the last 9 games to suggest the 4 wins and 3 draws weren't an improvement on what we'd seen and ignored the fact that we'd gone from struggling to score in the first half of the season to only having 2 games without scoring in the 2nd half of the season.  I'm not remotely wistful about it but I could see that what he was trying to do and I believe would've set us to be a better club in the long run, it would've been hard to fuck things up more completely than we did.