Empty Seats Lerners Fault?

Spurs fan

I think it a bit unfair to blame Randy. The season when you should have finished 4th, he didnt buy Heskey, O neill did. Then O neill left him in the mire a couple of weeks before the start of the new season, effectively ensuring Villa would be nothing but mediocre that year.

He has dropped a b*ll@ck with dog leash though, a bizzarre appointment. Your team is too good to go down even with AM in charge, so maybe its best to ride this season out and bring in Hughes/Benitez/Ancelotti next summer.

striketeam07....i remember people saying the same thing about forest (too good to go down )
"WE HAVE MCLEISH REMEMBER"

You are too good im sure of that. Given is still class, Bent will score around 20 goals regardless of the supply, the defence on its day is average by prem standards, and your midfield is competitive against teams in the bottom 10. It might be awful to watch, but your in no real danger of relegation.

specsavers striketeam..specsavers

Ha fair enough, but your definitely better than Wigan and Blackburn so it is gonna take an almighty effort by Mc Leish to get you relegated

i repeat striketeam SPECSAVERS

We can all point the blame for Villa's demise somewhere. Some will blame Lerner, some will blame O'Neill, of course many will blame McCeish. Others point to City's unbelievable spending blowing us out of the water. All of these things of course have played some role.

City's spending for me could not be anticipated, but equally I don't think that they have necessarily contributed to Lerner's lack of investment or our current situation. City have spent big but they were out to compete with United and Chelsea, not with us. It would be more logical to point to Tottenham and Harry's prudence in the transfer window, because we were ahead of Tottenham for two years, although this was arguably due to their failures than our success. O'Neill, though he did very very well in getting us top six every season, must take a fair bit of the blame for wasting Lerner's good hard earned money on mediocre players like Harewood, Knight, Reo Coker, Davies, Dunne, Sidwell... Whilst at the same time Tottenham were investing in players like Modric, Bale, Pav. Of course O'Neill did buy Young, Downing and Milner but these sort of signings were few and far between and I still cannot fathom why he didn't sign any players in Europe. This is the stance Dalglish has taken, to a lesser extent, at Liverpool and I think it could be a problem for them because buying players just on the basis that they're English makes no sense in terms of success and long term competitiveness. Look at City and the players they;ve bought: their most consistent and key players were signed from Europe.

Lerner's lack of investment has bemused me. The fact that O'Neill left as a result of this was originally, in my eyes, a good thing because as I've stated above I thought O'Neill could no longer take us forward and his football was becoming more and more predictable and boring. But having now seen where we are, I now know that Lerner was cutting costs to a dangerous extent and this is why O'Neill walked. If Lerner can no longer invest in the club, I don't know why he cannot sell up. Attendances have fallen significantly and there is absolutely no excitement or even vocal support from Villa fans any more. Just look at how few fans frequent ja606 as an example. Our only good players are sold every summer and are not adequately replaced. Defence has needed an overhaul for ages yet the same old faces continue to play every week because of no investment. I just cannot understand why Lerner can't find a suitable buyer who can get us spending heavily before the rules come in, because we are miles behind the top six and also from the likes of Newcastle, Everton and Sunderland.

Appointing McCleish was the final straw. The guy was clearly not good enough and the fans showed this, yet Lerner ignored the fans. We would have been reasonably happy with Hughes, Rijkaard, Jol or Flores. Instead, Jol is snapped up by Fulham when we could have got him, Rijkaard and Flores aren't even interviewed, and Hughes is blanked all because Lerner is supposedly friends with Al Fayed.

I can only hope that the Villa fans campaign for things to change at Villa. The rubbish that is going on at the club right now can onlly be stopped if fans are vocal and ensure that the message gets through. If it doesn't I fear we will go right downhill before it's too late. Dramatic thing to say yes, but not at all unrealistic.

Your not behind, nor miles behind Sunderland, they are woeful.

There is such a simple remedy for your club, get a decent young manager you wants to play attacking football, the players are decent enough and you have some good youngsters.

Would a reasonable person pay £30+ to watch dull footy & feel miserable afterwards if the result is a loss!?!

Re. the likes of Man City, all the rest of us can hope for is for Democracy to spread to the UAE, so that the reckless spending at Man City stops and Sheik Mansour goes into excile.

That is unless China buys the Villa!

There were a lot of good things in the MON era. He and Lerner aimed to challenge the top clubs, if not replace them. After a year which was survival more than anything else, things started to click, and we had those three 6th place finishes. Looking back, mistakes were made; MON's choices of players (often the better players from relegated clubs, or redundant players from top clubs) were very mixed, Young was a great buy, Sidwell not. And MON payed them too much; maybe he thought that was the going rate (wages were rocketing remember), but still too much. And maybe Lerner wasn't too worried financially.

Things came unstuck in the final year. A counter-attacking side can only go so far, and other sides were beginning to see our weaknesses. While there was some excitment in MON's approach (hugely better than Eck's), it was becoming too predictable. And MON's refusal to use his squad only made things worse, hence our pretty dire end to his last season, in spite of ending in a good position.

Something else happened. The financial markets went bottoms up, rich owners disappeared (mainly), and Randy probably took a double hit, both with divorce and the market. Reckon he is still a rich man (where are these richer men he's supposed to sell out to?), but he now needs to watch the margins very closely. All this must have been known at the start of MON's last season. The real problem here is I think MON and Lerner rarely communicated directly; one major annual talk-through, and odd side chat. That's where the breakdown occured; Lerner's not unreasonable need to reign in finances getting up MON's nose, due to inadequate communication. The signs were there for a lot of the season.

Now Lerner still has money (more than most PL club owners), and may be prepared to use some of it, very carefully, but there has to be a plan. He was obviously still ambitious when he appointed Houllier, and did shell out for Bent and Makoun. There was still a plan when Houllier fell ill. In fact Lerner, Faulkner and Houllier seemed to work far closer together than happened with MON, a very good thing. Pity about Houllier.

So what happened next? Maybe he'd got a bit nervous about the reaction to Houllier and decided to go for somebody "safe" if dull. And with it maybe he decided that he wouldn't spend much, just in case, so as a bonus he'd go for someone who wouldn't demand a £30m transfer kitty as of right. And so he got Eck, which means I think he was very badly advised on his shortlist and his final choice; in fact the whole process seemed unplanned and a shambles, whereas the need to replace Houllier could have been predicted earlier. A big mistake; Eck's going to cost him money, one way or another. And for the moment it's cost Lerner his previously very good relations with the fans.

For what it's worth, I don't think (or at least hope not) that Lerner's given up on Villa; he's put a lot in and is still a good owner. I can stick with a sensible financial plan, because splashing large chunks of money around is a costly way of doing things. I just hope he sees the light and gets a better manager. Hughes on the touchline would haul us back from the brink, keep the fans happy, and restore Lerner's reputation. And that only one possibility.