SA Footy

Whilst my club, Aston Villa, hasn't been an on-field powerhouse for nearly 20 years we are a 'big' club and the almost inevitable relegation we face this season will be a humbling, though not undeserved, experience. There's no such concept as 'we're too big for it to happen to us'. If you continually make poor decisions off the field and play bad football you will get what's coming to you.

The crucial mistake made in the offseason was recruiting too many players. The guiding principle for transfers should have been 'quality over quantity'. We lost a good striker (Christian Benteke) an influential midfielder (Fabian Delph) and a solid centre back (Ron Vlaar) and should have directed our transfer kitty towards suitable replacements for them. Instead we rolled the dice on a troupe of young, unproven players and the numbers didn't come up. The £52m outlay should have gone on 2-3 players rather than 10.

We've won one game from 20 and would need to win 9-10 of the last 18 to stand any chance of survival. If you had some dollars riding on our survival you'd be clamouring for the 'cash out' option.

Can happen to any club . Wrong decisions any players bought can send them floundering .

Loved seeing leeds go down and crumble was great.

Not had anything against Villa so hope for your sake it doesnt take you long to return to the top league

westozfalcon wrote:The £52m outlay should have gone on 2-3 players rather than 10.

My mob always make that mistake too

FFS I wish we'd just get 2-3 stars/high quality players in, then add the same again next off-season

Even though we beat you on the weekend, I don't see the Black Cats finding a miracle last-minute relegation evasion again this season. We'll be joining ya.

Dogwatcher wrote:Even though we beat you on the weekend, I don't see the Black Cats finding a miracle last-minute relegation evasion again this season. We'll be joining ya.

You need to have more Faith in Big Sam
If anyone can save you, he can

Actually, to be fair, we haven't had any problems finding someone to save us in the past five seasons - it's finding someone who can get us to a position where we don't have to be saved that's the problem.

Dogwatcher wrote:Actually, to be fair, we haven't had any problems finding someone to save us in the past five seasons - it's finding someone who can get us to a position where we don't have to be saved that's the problem.

Stop hiring narcissistic nut jobs to manage you then!

Di Canio, Poyet and Allardici (at WHU) all look to someone else to blame when SH!T hits the fan!

Bully wrote:Can happen to any club . Wrong decisions any players bought can send them floundering .

Loved seeing leeds go down and crumble was great.

Not had anything against Villa so hope for your sake it doesnt take you long to return to the top league

Bradford City was another club that really fell away.

stan wrote:

Bully wrote:Can happen to any club . Wrong decisions any players bought can send them floundering .

Loved seeing leeds go down and crumble was great.

Not had anything against Villa so hope for your sake it doesnt take you long to return to the top league

Bradford City was another club that really fell away.

[emoji35] so very very true...

[emoji31]

Dogwatcher wrote:Even though we beat you on the weekend, I don't see the Black Cats finding a miracle last-minute relegation evasion again this season. We'll be joining ya.

Not done with yet mate

Glad my M Sc supervisor Prof RT Withers from Flinders has gone to the big Exercise Physiology lab in the sky

Birmingham native, who immigrated to Adelaide in the mid 70s to take up a tenured Academic position in the school of Education at Flinders Uni. Big Bad Bobby's rooms in Social Science South were known by all as he had the clippings of Villa's 79-80 Division 1 title win posted above his door for well over 30 years.

Gave him a block mounted poster of Villa's greatest players (up to 2000) as a thank you gift when I graduated and he recited all the details of all named players and stated who should've been on it and who was lucky to be on it.

He used to have an over head projector sheet with "Aston Villa 1994 League Cup Champions" on it which he used to focus the projector for his lectures - in the pre powerpoint days.

He would be gutted seeing this.

Villa have always reminded me as a bigger, more supported version of the old VFL Fitzroy. Until the 1940s, Fitzroy were the most successful VFL club up to that stage, who by the 1960s couldn't win a game, up until the 1950s Villa were the most successful English Football team, who by 1970 had plummeted to the third division.
Does anyone else remember the old corny, schoolboy joke of the late 1960s when Tommy Docherty managed them. The joke went "What do you get when you cross Tommy Docherty with an ice cream". Answer "Aston Vanilla - everyone licks them!". I did say it was corny.
They then had a resurgence but generally have only flirted with success in the decades since.
Given their huge supporter base they should be doing better, but I guess that goes for many of the clubs based around Birmingham

am Bays wrote:Glad my M Sc supervisor Prof RT Withers from Flinders has gone to the big Exercise Physiology lab in the sky

Bermingham native, who immigrated to Adelaide in the mid 70s to take up a tenured Academic position in the school of Education at Flinders Uni. Big Bad Bobby's rooms in Social Science South were known by all as he had the clippings of Villa's 79-80 Division 1 title win posted above his door for well over 30 years.

Gave him a block mounted poster of Villa's greatest players (up to 2000) as a thank you gift when I graduated and he recited all the details of all named players and stated who should've been on it and who was lucky to be on it.

He used to have an over head projector sheet with "Aston Villa 1994 League Cup Champions" on it which he used to focus the projector for his lectures - in the pre powerpoint days.

He would be gutted seeing this.

Small correction - it was 1980/81 I was a kid in a country town up north in WA which had only just gained access to television a few months earlier. My parents hadn't yet bought a TV set so I had to rely on ABC regional radio for news of our title. Back then I got all my soccer news from the BBC World Service on radio, the Monday newspaper and Shoot magazine. Treasured memories

And we win again. Man City in the fourth round, Might be tougher than Wycombe.

I don't believe Remi Garde intends to manage us in the Championship and if that is the case he should go now.

Whilst the late signing of a new striker and keeper in the January window would have been a boost, I can fully understand the club not wanting to commit cash at this time. When he was first appointed, Garde may have been promised signings but I'm sure the board would have anticipated a couple more wins before the window opened so we were at least knocking on the door of survival. A good manager will derive improvement from any squad and sadly Garde hasn't been able to do that.

westozfalcon wrote:I don't believe Remi Garde intends to manage us in the Championship and if that is the case he should go now.

Whilst the late signing of a new striker and keeper in the January window would have been a boost, I can fully understand the club not wanting to commit cash at this time. When he was first appointed, Garde may have been promised signings but I'm sure the board would have anticipated a couple more wins before the window opened so we were at least knocking on the door of survival. A good manager will derive improvement from any squad and sadly Garde hasn't been able to do that.

don't think any manager would have been able to help Vila, they are tripe this season.

Remi Garde leaves by mutual consent after just 147 days as manager. It's sad because Garde conducted himself in a professional and dignified manner while a massive fiasco unfolded. He inherited a problem side but went in eyes wide open. He never got a chance to bring players in of his choice but must accept some responsibilty for that because he failed to extract any improvement from the team in the lead-up to the January transfer window. Another 6 -7 points on the board and he'd have got funds to sign reinforcements. All that was needed was a glimmer of hope but he wasn't resonating with the players and I don't blame the club for not wanting to finance a lost cause.

So Bruce or Pearson next season?

Jim05 wrote:So Bruce or Pearson next season?

For mine, Pearson probably the favourite followed by Brendan Rodgers, David Moyes, Bruce, and Garry Monk.

Rodgers back to Swansea seems to be the talk