Randys biggest mistake

im very dissapointed in last nights result, for me i thought cups were villas only chance of giving villa fans any kind of hope this season as we aint gona have any championship challenge to look forward to.
im so glad i didnt get me season ticket as there's no entertainment in watching the beautiful game at villa park these days.
roll on tomorrow so i can watch some cricket, atleast there i get value for money.

My really hope is that you sack him. That way he will have cost you £10million for 3 months work.

Thanks for the £3.5 Million Compensation.

bcfc3
dontcha have bigger concern's to deal with?... like you're own club. villa park is a bed of roses compare to youre club at the moment dude.

Fair play Templar.

We may have a crooked owner but least we don't have to put up with the ginger one anymore.

It does amaze me how he has turned Darren Bent from a 20 goal a season man into Hesky!

Only thing I'd disagree with in the above is that I think that Lerner, in spite of his (or Faulkner's?) poor decisions of late, is one of the better club owners. I'm in no hurry at all to see him leave. In fact, it would be dangerous for Villa if he did.

Other than that, yes, McLeish is nowhere near being a PL manager. Lerner will give him more time, but I hope Lerner also starts to develop a Plan B. The obvious things in this are:-
a) budget for sacking McLeish
b) identify a successor
Lerner needs to realise that the "qualities" he identified in McLeish were way short of the mark. They were the minimum you'd expect of any PL manager, and you need a whole lot more.

In the current situation I'd go for Hughes. I'm not sure he's the right manager for Villa in the long term, but he's streets ahead of McLeish. In view of Villa's current financial squeeze he might not accept a long term contract. But a contract to the end of the year, as he had with Fulham, could suit both parties. Villa could see how he works out; Hughes could see if Villa offers the opportunities he wants for the future.

mcparland

what nigs me is why hasnt lerner backed the eck?
what lerner has given him is no where near enough to make any impact at the club, im at the stage of feeling sorry for eck i really am, the man has been set up to fail if you ask me. its about time randy lerner came out and told the people who care for the club what direrection its headin in.

^ Templar,

Very good thinking. Sorry for being an intrusive Bluenose, but i'd not thought of this.

If you were Randy Lerner and you planned on taking money out of the club knowing that you'd severely impact the team, what sort of manager do you appoint?

Answer: A manager who will take the heat away from him.

If you were Randy Lerner and you planned on taking money out of the club knowing that you'd severely impact the team, what sort of manager do you appoint?

Answer: A manager who will take the heat away from him.

...................................................

But this is the point and why I no longer like or trust Lerner: if you're cutting costs, at least appoint a manager who can do well on a budget, like Mark Hughes for example who was ready and available. Instead, he goes and appoints a man who had spent a fair bit at Birmingham yet still got them relegated playing the most dire football known to man.

I don't know whether my sudden hatred for Lerner is excessive or unfair, because from what I'm led to believe Faulkner has a big say on what goes on at Villa and he was the man behind the McCleish appointment. However, I really don't know what went on. All I know is that Lerner is officially in charge of our club and therefore had the power to appoint who he wanted. He also gave the funds to the new manager, and what he gave McCleish fell way short of what was needed to make the squad competitive. Compared to last season we are actually weaker in terms of quality and depth whereas most other sides in the league have got stronger.

I actually believe McParland is right when he says it's dangerous if Lerner was to leave, but only because I don't trust him to appoint an ambitious new owner with money to spend. Of course no one knows if there is such a man out there who would come to Villa and make us strong, but what I know now is that Lerner is making us weaker every year. Last summer we had Milner leaving with no replacement and this summer we had numerous players leave including Young and Downing and only four new players in, one of whom is on loan and never fit. I believe the January spending was only due to fear of relegation. In fact we only spent about £25 million in January whereas Chelsea and Liverpool spent significantly more. If Lerner had it in him for the good of the club he'd look to sell up because Villa fans are not happy with a mediocre squad going nowhere and it's not going to be of benefit to him cutting losses all the time. At the very least he could appoint someone like Hughes or Rijkaard who would at the very least get the best out of our key players and get us playing attacking football. Let's hope he sees some sense and does this for the sake of this club.

Why hasn't Lerner "backed" Eck? I wonder if Lerner is (sensibly) being cautious. He has in fact backed two good signings in Given and N'Zogbia (OK, he's not yet produced, but the talent is undoubtably there), and there's Hutton. Maybe he reckons there's enough decent talent in the team to get decent results, so is waiting to see if McLeish can cut it. This might prove to be a very good move.

It means that if, for example, McLeish went and Hughes came, it would cost just the McLeish pay off. And any kitty there might have been is still there unspent. Now nobody knows what there is in the way of a kitty. But at the moment I'm pretty glad that McLeish hasn't been able to get his hands on it. Would we be playing better if he had? NO!

What really gets me is that Houllier was widely critised, even though he came in well after the start of the season, with the team already cracking up and a mountain of injuries, and yet managed to get us a top half position. McLeish has had a full pre-season, a good selection of players (OK two stars have gone, but Houllier didn't have Bent at the start), and it's beginning to look really dire.

villa1987
We agree that McLeish was a huge mistake. But I'm less sure about Lerner's motives. My guess is that Lerner took a fairly hefty hit with the world crisis, and also that he realised Villa's high wage, and high debt, couldn't continue. So he's cut back considerably on the finances of the club. Unfortunate, but not unreasonable. On the plus side, and this is a guess, he's still relatively rich, and if he's still interested in the club, and I've no reason to suppose he's not, that still makes him one of the better owners around in the PL. After all, he's put a lot into the infrastructure of the club, which is a major investment for the future, and I can't see why he'd want to walk away from it. The other thing is that there are very, very, very few people out there who he could sell to, and very, very few of those have the real financial clout to do a better job.

So, to McLeish. Lerner decided he needed a manager with PL experience; maybe he thought they'd be a safer bet with existing resources. There were some available, but not many. An ambitious one like Hughes would probably want to see a decent kitty on the table to agree a 3 or 4 year contract. Lerner reckons that, at the moment, he can't put in that sort of financial commitment. Or maybe, if there is money there, he wants to see the manager's performance first before producing it, as he doesn't want more money to just disappear. So he focuses on managers who are willing to work within existing limits, to start with anyway. Martinez begins to look like an inspired gamble, but it was handled appallingly, so that fails. McLeish then rises to the top of the very limited pile. He could have gone for Curbishley, who's streets ahead of McLeish, but maybe he didn't realise that.

Where he's gone wrong is, of course, that McLeish isn't good enough for the PL, not by a mile. Maybe Lerner thought it worth giving him a go. Others may not have written Eck off either; I was prepared to see if there was a nugget of gold hidden in there. But there ain't.

The up side of this is that, provided Lerner's prepared to act sooner rather than later, there are possibilities in rectifying this relatively cheaply. Would Hughes accept a contract to the end of the season, when both sides can then talk about the future? My guess is that he would. Don't expect miracles, but my guess is that Hughes would get us to a reasonable position playing decent football and a confident team, although initially things might be bumpy. And the fans would be a lot happier with Sparky in charge. Who knows, maybe at the end of the season Villa and Hughes have a future.

There are problems though. Would Lerner be prepared to admit he'd made a mistake? Or would he give Eck to the end of the season, or at least until relegation was probable, before acting? If the next few matches are dire Lerner might just be prepared to act. He's nothing to lose, and a lot to lose if he doesn't. Seems to me the other big problem is Faulkner. He's supposed to be running the club. The shambles last summer, the approach to Eck, and, going back further, the breakdown of communications with MON, are almost certainly down to him. What else might he do?