Was it a good thing that Lerner took over the club in the first place?

When we first heard a BILLIONAIRE was taking over at VP, I'd say 90% of us (including myself) were excited at "the new dawn" that was coming to our beloved club. Thinking Chelskiesque success was on its way?

And it all started off very well. MON as manager and great players and league positions plus Wembley trips to follow.Lets face it,we were living the dream! Then MON walks out and it all went pear shaped. But why? Many blame MON for overspending and giving the club a huge wage bill. Well i dont believe that at all. MON was given the nod from the owner to spend that money in the first place.

Due to Lerners ignorance of the premier league,he thought he could come in, throw his money around and expect financial rewards. Remember the free coaches etc for away fans? That shows his naivety towards his premiership knowledge. And to be fair,towards American knowledge of anything outside of America. Lets face it,most Americans think London is the capital of Europe?

So then Lerner fell out with MON who left and the club has been on a downward spiral since.And to me, the reason why is obvious. MON knew how to take the club forward,and Lerner had found out he was way out of his league and couldnt deliver what we all thought he could. So eventually,Lambert takes the helm. And to be honest,as much as some of his tactical decisions have been beyond belief, I DO feel sorry for him,as he hasnt had much money(compared to MON days) to play with (and i think the cap on wages has paid a massive part in who we have had to bring in).

If theres gonna be any plus point to come out of the new ownership,(as it looks likely its going to be Americans) Is that Lerner will pass his knowledge of owning a premier league club,onto the new owners,so they dont make the same mistakes. hoping the good times are coming back to VP!!

VTID

Great topic.
I think the new owners will have more football knowledge than Lerner had.
We will be fine and good times will come back, i am sure.

It's a damned good question.

I'd err towards yes. I think nobody could question that Lerner lacked acumen or nous in how he has dealt with things (at first I suspect he saw his role as writing the cheques and failed to appoint a lasting CEO to keep tabs on O'Neill until bringing in an over-promoted Faulkner) but he did sink a lot of money into the club and he did a lot of things that demonstrated his heart was in the right place.

I can't remember all the other runners and riders but remember a few of them looked a bit dubious. There was a Ray Ransom fronted consortium (he went onto front the SISU takeover at Coventry which is hardly a ringing endorsement) and a few other dodgy characters expressing interest. Up against them Lerner was probably the best of the bunch and by a long way.

Yes. Randy saved the club, and took the club to challenging for a Champions League spot two seasons running and also to a cup final, which we lost due to a bad call from the ref. Man City fell into their mega money and changed the game forever. Combine that with Randy's divorce, and he realized that he couldn't take us further, so started planning an exit strategy. It's been a tough 4 seasons, but it seems he's finally ready to hand us off to another owner who can get us challenging for trophies again.

Compare Randy's actions as owner to those of Carson Yeung, Vincent Tan, Sullivan & Gold, Hicks & Gillette, Venkys, or Thaksin Shinawatra, and yes. Without a doubt, unequivocally, Randy was the right choice 8 years ago.

Could've had a lot worse owners, that is for sure. Ultimately his era will neither be remembered as golden (we didn't win anything) nor disastrous (we stayed in the top flight, improved for a few years then declined back to roughly where we started). Did some good things for the club off the pitch.

The one remaining thing that will define how his spell is remembered is who he sells the club to. Hopefully we are not looking back to Lerner era with nostalgia in a few years time!

I think we would have been properly stuffed if Randy had not come along when he did. What let him and the club down was the way he spent the money he had available. Properly invested in a squad we would still be up near the top six. We paid stupid money for stupid players on stupid contracts, if only we had a football man to keep an eye on things.
In hindsight MoN was the wrong man for the job, he had me fooled.

I say yes, just that he has been very ill advised and the lack of football people around him has ultimately played a massive part in his failings at the club. Maybe under different circumstances he would have been quite successful.

Yes, I think it was good for us.

Hope the new owners learn from his biggest mistake. You need footballing heads at board level to run a football team.

Fergal wrote:I think we would have been properly stuffed if Randy had not come along when he did.  What let him and the club down was the way he spent the money he had available.  Properly invested in a squad we would still be up near the top six.  We paid stupid money for stupid players on stupid contracts, if only we had a football man to keep an eye on things.
In hindsight MoN was the wrong man for the job, he had me fooled.

i have to disagree with that. i think that MON was given an open cheque book to spend whatever he wanted to? and you cant blame that on the manager surely?that was down to the chairman thinking he could splash the cash and thinking being successful in the premier league was gonna be easy? lets face it, if MON was still in charge, and we had the financial backing we was under the influance we thought we was gonna get, we wouldnt be where we are now?

I have said it before but for me I was very disappointed when Barry first intimated that he wanted out. That for me told me that we'd just never progress any further than sixth. When Lerner took over we all thought we'd be competing regularly in the top four, winning the odd trophy, keeping our best players and buying really good ones.

Barry putting in a transfer request two years later was a right kick in the nuts. That he felt he had to move to achieve his ambitions showed me it was just like it had been c. 2000 when the likes of Southgate and Ehiogu questioned our ambition under Doug. Then Man City emerged and the goal-posts moved again. I think we all knew we had to do it in 2009/10 or we'd never achieve top four with Lerner. Since then we have been either a selling cub, a club in crisis or a club shopping in the bargain basement.

On balance, yes. I am glad Randy owned us and everything he did off the pitch was top class. However, he really messed up. He should have done so much better. At a minimum, we should, after all that was spent and all the potential in his original investment, be an established top eight side that had never been out of the top half in all the seasons since 2006.

Bad footballing decisions and failing to change the model by which he runs Aston Villa has damn near taken this club into the Championship. That's why I don't mind if the new owner is filthy rich, so long as they are more hands on and appoint better people to key positions. Some clubs do well without spending a fortune because their structures are sound: Everton and Swansea springing to mind.

History's assessment of Randy won't be all a garden of roses.

Yes for me when you compare us to say Everton now. Ok so our football sucks ass now compares to theirs but when you look at our infrastructure it is non comparable. Bodymoor Heath is world class, corporate wise is world class too and our academy is classed as one of the best in Europe apparently (though Lambert never used any unlike Everton   ). They only rent their training ground, Goodison will fall apart soon and well we are a lot more saleable asset wise under his 'custodianship'?

Much like football is a game of two halves, so is Randy's tenure. It's obvious that 2008, financial meltdown and divorce, certainly curtailed his investment in the playing side of things. Couple that with City doing what we were, but on a massively ridiculous scale, then I reckon he knew he'd never succeed.

Once he's gone and the dust has settled then I'll look back on the things which excited me... signing Young and Carew, Wembley, some epic games against Chelsea and Spurs, MONs nuttiness, Jimmy Milner etc. and hopefully forget about the years after MON dumped us.

I think it was a good thing that Lerner took over when he did. If the club were at a state where the signing of Petrov (which if I remember correctly) during the period of due diligence could have made the club insolvent had the takeover not happened then it was clear that we were in trouble and Mr Ellis needed to move on.

I'm in the camp that believes Lerner had good intentions but the developments at Man City changed everything. I also think there is a slightly pig-headed side to Lerner - the appointment of the guy before Lambert despite the obvious and very vocal concerns of the support is evidence of this, in my opinion.

He came - he failed - he's gone.

Dek of Villa wrote:He came - he failed -  he's gone.

I son't think you can sum it up so quickly. He came, he saved us. He had a go at building us, he was badly advised. He got lucky keeping us up, he sold us.
In the meantime he did a lot of good for the infrastructure of the club and for a time gave us hope then despair. I trust Randy to do the right thing by us and find an owner who can do the job right.

On balance it was still a good thing.

Anyone who watched the way the 2005-2006 team limped over the line to safety could be in little doubt that what Ellis and O'Leary had in place was going down. In fact I'd put it near the top of MoN's achievements that he and his coaches got Liam Ridgewell looking like a reasonable Premier League defender in a couple of weeks.

For the first couple of years Lerner could do no wrong. Sadly in the last 4 years he hasn't done anything right, mainly due to his catastrophic managerial appointments. We've been very lucky to get away with it.

Would the team that finished the 2005/6 season beat the team that finished the 2013/14 season?

Fergal wrote:Would the team that finished the 2005/6 season beat the team that finished the 2013/14 season?

Easily.

Stronger in both defence and midfield. And DO'L to his credit had bought us Martin Laursen.

Who was the poorer manager? I'd go for O'Leary. Very few people who played for him have a good thing to say. Not only was the 05/06 side stronger but it was held back by an even poorer manager.

I think it was definitely a good thing that Lerner took over in 2006, as Ellis had all but run Villa into ground

I think you can class Lerners reign as the Good, Bad and the Ugly as the initial investment and first 3 years were largely good, the rest has been progressively bad and one managerial appointment was down right ugly.

I agree that where we are now is very similar to where we were when he took over in 2006 in that we have a poor squad and a manager that nobody really likes (at least Deadly had the decency to sack O'Dreary as a parting gift)

O Leary signed Laursen, Bouma, McCann, Sorenson and Baros. Not bad signings. He also finished sixth in his first season. I don't like O'Leary but I think he compares fairly ok with our last three managers to be honest. Did Houllier, Eck or Lambert get value for money or the most from their sides?

Farrell_10 wrote:O Leary signed Laursen, Bouma, McCann, Sorenson and Baros. Not bad signings. He also finished sixth in his first season. I don't like O'Leary but I think he compares fairly ok with our last three managers to be honest. Did Houllier, Eck or Lambert get value for money or the most from their sides?

I'll give O'Leary Laursen and Bouma, but i wouldn't say the others were that great

I haven't really liked a manager at Villa since BFR, Little and Gregory were ok but since then with the exception of O'Neill for the first season, i have pretty much disliked all of them for one reason or another

Farrell_10 wrote:O Leary signed Laursen, Bouma, McCann, Sorenson and Baros. Not bad signings. He also finished sixth in his first season. I don't like O'Leary but I think he compares fairly ok with our last three managers to be honest. Did Houllier, Eck or Lambert get value for money or the most from their sides?

O'Leary did very well in his first season, but the fall was alarming. But I take your general point.

Personally I think Houllier is a pivotal person in where we are now and if Lerner could have got that appointment right from what admittedly looked like a pretty second rate shortlist, we wouldn't be anywhere near this mess. I know some fans think Houllier was getting his methods across, but I'd argue our decent flattering late run of form came after McAllister took over. I won't forgive Houllier for using his job to settle old personal scores with Carew & Warnock to the detriment of the club, plus pocketing a payoff and then announcing the next day that he'd have had to give up because of his health anyway.

Mr Beast wrote:

Farrell_10 wrote:O Leary signed Laursen, Bouma, McCann, Sorenson and Baros. Not bad signings. He also finished sixth in his first season. I don't like O'Leary but I think he compares fairly ok with our last three managers to be honest. Did Houllier, Eck or Lambert get value for money or the most from their sides?

O'Leary did very well in his first season, but the fall was alarming. But I take your general point.

Personally I think Houllier is a pivotal person in where we are now and if Lerner could have got that appointment right from what admittedly looked like a pretty second rate shortlist, we wouldn't be anywhere near this mess. I know some fans think Houllier was getting his methods across, but I'd argue our decent flattering late run of form came after McAllister took over. I won't forgive Houllier for using his job to settle old personal scores with Carew & Warnock to the detriment of the club, plus pocketing a payoff and then announcing the next day that he'd have had to give up because of his health anyway.

I thought McAllister would have been a good shout for the job.

I agree Fergal. He was pretty unpopular with the players though, from what I remember. Even guys like Friedel who I associate with being a really good pro, said there were management issues which should never have happened.