Fans Worried Over Villa Future

[PaulTheVillan]

1st time post.... here goes

Been a Villa fan since my first game v Blackpool in 1973 aged 7. Been some huge magnificent high points since then as well as some plunging the depths low spots....... This feels bad!!
There is no life at Villa Park at the moment, no joy and very little hope. We're playing monochrome football under a monochrome ginger top manager.
We've a chairman who perhaps reasonably, is looking in his wallet wondering where all the millions he's pumped in has gone. We've a squad many of whom are not sufficient quality and some youngsters on whom the jury is out
The cup draw has got disaster written all over it and the whole club feels like its under a black cloud.
I dont think that the present management team can create any excitement or any hope. Crowds are going to tumble like the end of a Heskey run and we will be down among the dead men at the end of the season.
We need a change of direction and an increase of positivity. The feeling around the club when BFR arrived, Sir Brian and the start of MON's flawed stewardship. This comes from the top......
Has Randy got the inclination and the bottle to act now???

I bloody hope so

Hello.

I don't think he has.

[Monty]

The problem is the club is in active retreat. In the Premier League you have to move forward to stand still, and if you stand still you go backwards, so if you actively retreat and go backwards you absolutely plummet.

Randy just thought he'd play it safe, get in a 'safe pair of hands' (when has that strategy actually worked?) and basically have the club keep a low profile for a year or two. The trouble is, the Premier League is Darwinian: everyone is out to kill each other, and every year the three worst performing clubs get culled. If you're trying to keep a low profile, not bother anyone, not cause a fuss, well, everyone's going to come after you anyway and you're screwed.

Damage limitation is no option, and yet the club, from the boardroom to the pitch, has that written all over them at the moment. If we can't afford the top individual stars at the moment, we needed to take a chance on something innovative at club level and someone progressive in the dugout. McLeish in football terms is as stale as his football (in no other industry would being behind the curve be described as being "good old-fashioned" - indeed, in no other industry is the phrase "old-fashioned" a compliment), and everyone is driving forward ahead of us. This needs to change as soon as possible.

[Concrete John]

I'm asking if you consider it to be midtable form Chris. Without looking at a league table, if someone said they supported a club that had won 2 of the last 12 would you say, sounds like a mid table club?

From 14 games it is 3 wins, 4 losses and 7 draws. Seems fairly middling to to me.

The current top 3 have only lost 3 games between them this season so it's not just us that they are brushing aside.

Here's an attempt at a prediction:

• Against the teams in the top half we've won 2 points in 5 matches.
• Against the teams in the bottom half we've won 14 points in 9 matches.
• The 3 matches lost against teams in the top half are against the teams currently in the top three, but two of the matches won are against the bottom two, and all matches won are home matches
• So a match against a top 10 side we will on average win 0.4 points per game
• Against a bottom 10 side we will on average win 1.6 points per game
• In the matches against Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and Stoke, we can expect 1.6 points
• In the match against Bolton we can expect 1.6 points
• Which means that we can expect 3.2 points ~ 3 points in the next six matches.
• After half a season, we'll have 19 points in 19 matches.
• That's not mid-table form

Note: This prediction does not take into account that we appear to be getting steadingly worse.

Those are interesting figures - and a little worrying!

However, at this stage it's hard to draw conclusions on limited data as one result that bucks the trend then has a dramatic impact.  For instance, and I'm not saying we will, should we beat Liverpool at the home it becomes 5 points from 6 games against top half teams, so over a season of 18 games against them it's 15 points.  Added to the 32 against the bottom half, based on your 1.6 points per game, would put us on a very healthy 47 points at the end of the season.

As I said, I do find your figures worrying, but we need to be careful and understand that things can change dramatically.  The more games we play the more validity projections like this have, so I say keep an eye on it, but don't reach for the cyanide just yet!       

[SoccerHQ]

I'm asking if you consider it to be midtable form Chris. Without looking at a league table, if someone said they supported a club that had won 2 of the last 12 would you say, sounds like a mid table club?

There's so many clubs like that though. Stoke for example had lost 5 games on the bounce, they've won their last two and are now 8th!

QPR are level on points with us and they've only won one home game.

The thing that will save McLeish this season imo is remember he did get relegated last year on 39 points which was the highest in the league for 10 seasons.

This season and luckilly for us teams will stay up on 34 or 35 points I reckon as Wigan, Blackburn and Bolton are that bad I think.

[charlie]

Manager stays=Villa relegated. No doubts. No plan, no idea, no fire, and Randy.. not much value in club if not in Prem. For Gods sake Eck...resign please.

[OzVilla]

At the moment I really don't think we'll get relegated.  I honestly believe there are 5-6 worse sides than us.

However that could change if we lose say Gabby or Bent in January and it's not beyong the realms of possibility that one of them could leave.

So the fact that we are talking like this is more a damning verdict on RL more than anything.  That's the worry, we could be the next Sheffield Wednesday, suffering a slow decline before after 3-4 years of trying finally ending up relegated.

[JUAN PABLO]

I'm asking if you consider it to be midtable form Chris. Without looking at a league table, if someone said they supported a club that had won 2 of the last 12 would you say, sounds like a mid table club?

From 14 games it is 3 wins, 4 losses and 7 draws. Seems fairly middling to to me.

The current top 3 have only lost 3 games between them this season so it's not just us that they are brushing aside.

Here's an attempt at a prediction:

• Against the teams in the top half we've won 2 points in 5 matches.
• Against the teams in the bottom half we've won 14 points in 9 matches.
• The 3 matches lost against teams in the top half are against the teams currently in the top three, but two of the matches won are against the bottom two, and all matches won are home matches
• So a match against a top 10 side we will on average win 0.4 points per game
• Against a bottom 10 side we will on average win 1.6 points per game
• In the matches against Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and Stoke, we can expect 1.6 points
• In the match against Bolton we can expect 1.6 points
• Which means that we can expect 3.2 points ~ 3 points in the next six matches.
• After half a season, we'll have 19 points in 19 matches.
• That's not mid-table form

Note: This prediction does not take into account that we appear to be getting steadingly worse.

Those are interesting figures - and a little worrying!

However, at this stage it's hard to draw conclusions on limited data as one result that bucks the trend then has a dramatic impact.  For instance, and I'm not saying we will, should we beat Liverpool at the home it becomes 5 points from 6 games against top half teams, so over a season of 18 games against them it's 15 points.  Added to the 32 against the bottom half, based on your 1.6 points per game, would put us on a very healthy 47 points at the end of the season.

As I said, I do find your figures worrying, but we need to be careful and understand that things can change dramatically.  The more games we play the more validity projections like this have, so I say keep an eye on it, but don't reach for the cyanide just yet!       

very silimar to Blose 39 points in 38 games last season. In which we know what happened .

[JUAN PABLO]

I think Blose only won 2 games last season against  a Top 10 side , which was a complete fluke against Chelsea and Sunderland at home .   exactly how it is panning out for us this season . 

How Lerner and Faulkner did not notice simple statistics like this !!!!

[mr woo]

Its probably all bullshit of course, but I must admit I love a bit of gossip like this so I mention it for entertainment purposes only.

Someone has posted this on another forum. I wont link to it but the relevant parts are reproduced below.

 Its nice to dream.



"You boys have hit the jackpot.

Lerner has done a steady job, but you've struck oil

No wind ups. Its not my style.

Your being taken over by QIA (Qatar Investment Authority). The people that own Malaga and PSG, also tried to buy Everton (didn't want to buy a new stadium) and Blackburn (had their offered declined by Venkys, even though they offered to give them their money back for the club, remove all the debts they had accrued and also pay each family member £4.2million each).

It'll happen at the end of this season - You owe Lerner a fortune. He doesn't want to sell, and didn't want to sell, but accepted these people offer something he never will be able too, and accepted the bid on the basis that its what is best for the club.

To put it into perspective, QIA make City look like Derby.

How I know? I couldn't possibly tell you. But you'll see. The story will start breaking late Feb/early March.


Although born in England I'm a big fan of foreign football, i tend to think it's more entertaining. I don't "support" any one team, if I like the movement a club is going in I attend their matches. This has led me to follow a lot of Athletico Madrid and, more recently PSG.

I now currently live just south of Liverpool, as someone's already picked up on. I work independently as a sports and media advisor. It's basically my job to find information which clients ask for, then look at past examples and make predictions.

Living in Liverpool, and watching a lot of PSG, QIAs interest in Everton was very exciting for me. So i tracked the story of how they looked at Everton, then got advised on Blackburn, then back to Everton, then got offered the chance to visit Villa Park."

[Phil from the upper holte]

Bollocks. Can live in hope though

[Hillbilly]

Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit

[Simon Ward]

Hillbilly is worried I think. Should we all be?

[cdbearsfan]

Oh no it's back!

[Phil from the upper holte]

hello my old friend, Hello

Im worried so....

[N'ZMAV]

I might read this from the start...