The Owners

[Luke8]

The mistakes made for me are as follows:

1. Failure to bring in PL quality/experience in the summer.
2. Refusal to bring in loan players in the Summer, thus freeing up funds to purchase better "permanents".

This is of course with the benefit of hindsight but there are glaring similarities with the 2015-2016 relegation season. We bought some good players then but none had PL experience. Most have gone on to better things.

It is noteworthy that now, out of desperation, we have done a U-turn.

Regarding the loanees, there are 2 types of player: The young up and coming striker (Abraham) or the experienced player who is not getting a game at his parent club (Drinkwater).  Whilst it is bold to claim that we are not going to enhance other teams players, we could still have considered a couple of older loanees given the amount of squad places required to be filled in one window.  The signing of Mooy on loan by Brighton from Huddersfield was a masterstroke and freed up money for them to buy Maupay and Webster.

If and it's a big if, we refused to pay for our number one targets such as Webster, Philips and Benrahma and opted for cheaper versions in Engles, Nakamba & Trez then this was also a mistake.

Regarding the first mistake, it obviously was a bit of a gamble, but it was also somewhat of a necessity given that we have so many squad places to fill. Players with PL experience/quality cost big money and we were in a situation where we simply had to spread ours around the squad. The hope was obviously that the players would develop/improve as the season goes on and that unfortunately hasn’t happened to the level that everyone was hoping.

With the loan signings issue, first off they do also cost money. Many consist of a loan fee and then you are usually required to pay a decent portion or all of a players wages - so while it does technically leave you with some additional ‘transfer fee’ money, it doesn’t exactly free up loads of funds. Secondly, as you state, the reason for players being available for loan mean that they are not always of the highest quality. I think Mooy is about the only example of a successful loan this season. Even the players that wouldn’t have even come to use (Lo Celso/Ceballos etc) haven’t exactly been great.

I’m sure they could have perhaps utilised the loan market better in the summer, but I can understand why they we perhaps reluctant to given it contributed to the state we where in and the end of last season and the increase in the price of Mings.


Regarding Webster/Phillips/Benrahma, even on the presumption that they were our number one targets, it clearly wasn’t the case that we just decided to buy ‘cheaper versions’. More that we had so much of a squad to acquire that paying the required £70m or so for them would have left us even thinner in terms of numbers. Those three signings would almost certainly have meant no Engles, Konsa, Nakamba, Luiz, El Ghazi and Trezeguet which would have left us very short.

[dave.woodhall]

A couple of months ago we were saying we'd done well buying Nakamba instead of Phillips and how good Engels was looking. In March we could easily be saying the same.

[Hookeysmith]

A couple of months ago we were saying we'd done well buying Nakamba instead of Phillips and how good Engels was looking. In March we could easily be saying the same.

Nakamba is badly missing the energy next to him that is SJM

Engels - im not sure why he suddenly went to pieces unless is was losing Mings by his side.

As for Phillips - I did not see then what folk raved about and watching him a few times this season I have not still not seen how they justified a £30mil price tag - or even a £10m one to be honest. I think Nakamba in the right mix in Midfield will be fine going forward

[Damo70]

With the amount of money you have to spend to get a good player from another Premier League club we had to look abroad for value to bring in the amount of players we needed. Although maybe we could and should have brought in one or two more domestic signings.

[Footy-Vill]

Villa spent £132million in fees on 13 new players, of which only three had previously played in the Premier League.

But when asked if that policy was something of a risk, Smith said there was very little choice.

He said: “It was not a risk because it is what we had to do. People can talk about risk because we brought in a number of players but we had to, otherwise we wouldn’t have had a squad.

“We would have had to pay £30m-plus for Premier League experience and it is a vicious circle.

“If you want to go and get Premier League experience as a newly-promoted team, with a short period in which to get these players in which we had after winning the play-offs, you just get priced out of the game.

“We did what we had to do. We knew we were signing a lot of players with potential. There was no other way to do it.”

[Three Spires Villa]

Gary Cahill was on a free transfer.

[Damo70]

Gary Cahill was on a free transfer.

I was all for signing him on a one or two year deal but you can understand why the club didn't go for someone who was going to turn 34 during the season.

[cdbearsfan]

We might not have got him anyway, he could well be settled in London.

[SheffieldVillain]

Gary Cahill was on a free transfer.

I was all for signing him on a one or two year deal but you can understand why the club didn't go for someone who was going to turn 34 during the season.

On £70k per week and a massive signing on fee.

[hilts_coolerking]

I'm always a bit suspicious when someone says 'the way we chose to do it was the only way it could be done'.

[Jon Crofts]

I’d like to be the first to say have they actually got a fucking clue what they’re doing?

[Villan82]

I’d like to be the first to say have they actually got a fucking clue what they’re doing?

This season has been an embarrassment. We have endured so much bullshit- not loaning players; not buying experienced players; a new contract for a manager that had been under performing.

This season is one of our worst in over 30 years.

[SoccerHQ]

Somewhere else there's been a hint that Wes Edens was a big advocate of our strategy in transfer market last summer with his years in US sport and generally their stats based systems to make signings.

Dean Smith and Suso will get the blame being more visual but ultimately they're only implementing the strategy the owners want.

If last summer Wes and Nas had decided the better way of staying up was to have more short term outlook and sign 3-4 experienced players over 30 like Cahill then I'm sure Suso would've located targets to fit that range.

They are only implementing the vision at the top.

Hopefully this season has been a wake up call. I realise we'd be properly in the s*** if they hadn't come in but ultimately we've seen before just throwing endless money at signings dosen't make great owners.

You need to be more pragmatic in decisions sometimes and not just have one rigid plan as things can always go wrong in stages and key players can also leave and we'll see that in next few months.

Next few months I think we'll see if this board is as good as we think it is as we'll more than likely have the setback of instant relegation and also losing an iconic player and really the face of our club.

It's not impossible to become stronger from that though. All the clubs we want to get up and compete with one day all have to sell their key players every few years.