Terry Jones submitted this last week, but there was lots of other news and opinions, so it got sidelined.
We’re happy to put it up now though;
Now last friday in the Birmingham Mail, Rodney Marsh, a well known and respected footballer now turned pundit commented that Villa are now in the Hangers-On-League. Now for me and I don’t know about the rest of you, that is an insult too far when an ex-footballer makes comments in the local press of this kind.
Is this is what we have become because of one man and his ideas and tactics and also his inability in the transfer market to attract above average players to the club?
Now we all know the owner wanted to cut costs but at the same time he has backed this (may I say “so-called” manager?) with some forty odd million pounds over two transfer windows and yet the money seems to be wasted on players apart from the odd one or two that are below average and may or may not make it in this league.
Yes, I will admit we do find ourselves in a better position than last season. But have we moved forward?
The answer to that remains to be seen as although we had a good start by beating the Gunners, things since have seemed to go in the opposite direction with dire performances and tactics and yet again we find ourselves dumped out of the cup by lower league opposition.
Now we are in January and another transfer window is upon us and speculation is rife as to players we are linked to.
But are they going to come to a club whose manager’s tactics are inept and dire and a club with the stigma in the media of being in the Hangers-On-League?
Somehow I don’t think so if they have any sense or unless they are wannabes like the rest of the dross we have at the moment.
You can see I have not mentioned any names in this post as I cannot bring myself to do so as my blood is still boiling at the thought of being in the Hangers-On-League.
What are your thoughts on what Rodney Marsh had to say?
If you are like me you will be incensed.
who is rodney marsh?
i never heard of him .. he might be a pundit all well and good he might have been an ex footballer all well and good.
I think you give him way too much respect.
and put far too much stock in his apparently irrefutable certified footballing diagnosis, forumalated after years of study and graduation from the royal college of football punditry.
lol
if you we are going to start creating imaginary leagues and sub divisions i propose a different one!
The also ran league!
the only real criteria is that if the club lacks the ability to spend 50- 100m every transfer window then there you are..
you can finish anywhere from from probably 18th to 6th
Everton are vying for promotion this season from this league into what is probably a new league .. a league unto their own almost!
I would argue that in order for them to have gotten there they used the concept of continuity and long term approach!
you are welcome to dismiss these leagues and come up with your own
in the end .. they are all imaginary
and should be probably treated as such
I don’t know if that was a rhetorical question, Colonius, but he was class mate.
A modern day Rooney, Giggs, Walcott etc, but with the skill to back up the hype.
Way better than many of the supposed top stars we have now.
And he loved the birds and a pint, or twenty :-).
It’s interesting that all the modern top players that supposedly abstain from everything that’s bad for you, are really not as good as the smoking, drinking, womanising top players we had 40 years ago, imo.
A different suject, I suppose.
I know it’s personal opinion but i wouldn’t make marsh out to be world class so in his day you could compare him to a best or pele sorry marsh wouldn’t spring to my mind.he loved the attention aswell as the obvious.when he fucked off over the pond to play for the rowdies at last i could of a newspaper with his fucking ugly mug in it.soz i do beg to differ mate.
* i could open a newspaper without* soz ad a few.
Ok. maybe I over-egged it a bit, but there’s no denying he could back it up, imo.
A very, very good player mate, who’s technical skills would embarrass 99% of those in the game today, imo.
Don’t like him the fucking drunk.
Yes…Rondey Marsh is correct. Randy and his penny pinching has left us firmly in the ‘hangers on league’. Too many cuts too fast IMO. There must have been a slower, steadier way of dealing with the finances of the club without it be so detrimental to the playing side. ………so,
Fuck off Lerner, the Villa is OURS!
We’re not the only hangers on we’ve been in the prem since it began which alot of teams can’t boast.peaks & troughs recently the latter.what rodney spouts goes in one ear out the other.now wigan were what you call hangers on.i take it with a pinch of salt.
LANGFORD GIDDY May i ask a question why i posted this was in one respect was to find out from my fellow and loyal Villa fans if they do not think that remarks of this nature are dettrimental to the club and it;s fans whom some have been loyal for many years.What i really want to know is your thoughts on wether or not these type of remarks being printed in the press and may i state the local press humiliate you and the club.I know it did me when i read them and thought why is a ex-player like Rodney Marsh and a darn good player in his day making such comments.As a great club like ours and it;s fans not being humiliated enough.
Terry..to me, he is simply saying it the way it is. And yes, I do feel humiliated by the remarks. But we all know that the truth hurts. There is only one person that can change it…and that is Randy. Why he never took a more conservative approach to the cost cutting is beyond me. And we all know what happens to clubs who are continually flirting with relegation dont we. We are the new Wigan, except Wigan, at least played decent football!
Telj im sure he’s not the first & won’t be the last mate,even you say we’ve been shite for ages.he obviously thinks the same about everton aswell they’ve been in the prem just aslong & achieved less.chill tel
if you look at it objectively and take off ones villa glasses for a minute we are a team who have been finishing mid to lower each season and more recently involved in relgation battles under McLeish and last season and maybe this one too so therefore seeing us a club who are hanging on is understandable, putting us with the fulhams, Norwich, west ham type teams and these teams have been our nearest competitors the last few seasons, we are well in danger of playing the wigan Russian roulette along with these teams and being the type of team who is tipped for the drop(after the 3 promoted teams) at the start of the season and to be fair there’s isn’t much to argue against someone having that view.
we would of course argue that we are in transition and making difficult descisions in order to come back stronger and more competitive and our seeming decline is merely a temporary effect of the bigger picture.
of course we’ve been hearing this for a long time now and I struggle to keep the faith that it’ll come good eventually.
by the way lambert had to buy a shit load of players with that forty mill not just 3 or 4, they must average about 4mil each.
LANGDORDVILLA mate agree the truth does hurt but does Randy or Lambert care about the fans are they worried about us older fans feel.Have we not suffered enough now is it not time the fans were put at the front of their thoughts and they give something to smile about.No matter where i have been or traveled in the world i have always been proud to talk about the VILLA.but now where ever i go i hope that the conversation does not turn to football as i can only talk about our great history as i have no answers to people when they ask if why we are such a big club why are we not up with the so-called top 4 or not challenging them.Very sad time my friend very sad indeed.
What if rodney marsh said that sunderland will win the title or arsenal will finish 6th?
what if said that the queen was really a man.
my point is anyone can say anything.
rodney marsh doesn’t carry enough weight as a figure in the game to humiliate me as a villan.
I am not saying all is rosey down at VP.
but i see us taking a particular course of action. starting a year and half ago.
We have been in decline since before that but the current approach is still only a year and half into their approach.
Furthermore .. its a different approach.
it may fail
its not looking great at the moment but neither is it dire.
fulhams, sunderlands, wigans, west broms, southamptons west hams have all tried the spending patterns and tried and trusted routes that a lot of our fans are calling for..
and honestly its really been a mixed bag of results.
we have chopped and changed for probably 20 years now.
so we cut back on wages, on transfers
we shift the legacy high earners.
we take risks on youth and on a young manager. and hopefully we add continuity and long term focus to it.
its not foolproof
it may not work but it has not failed yet. its very early on into it.
and what is the alternative?
these are the things that i base my hope on as a villa Fan
Rodney marsh is a “pundit”
A good player in his day i hear people say.
maybe.
It doesn’t make his opinion any more accurate than mine or yours at the end of the day
You also need to take into consideration his agenda.
he gets paid for his opinion.. the more controversial the better as far his bank balance is concerned.
We just care about Villa.
I don’t think he does have an agenda (to be honest never been his biggest fan, all this not as good as in my day thing gets right on my tits) but he does speak his mind and is not prone to say things simply to court controversy, more likely he’s just telling it how he sees it.
“Furthermore .. its a different approach.
it may fail
its not looking great at the moment but neither is it dire.”
Oh, it is dire Colonius.
I think this is the part that some of us don’t understand.
We’re very close to being a club that WILL go down, imo.
And either the manager does something to change it in this window, or he simply has to go.
It’s not the solution, but what do you do? Just swallow it?.
I’m seeing nothing that suggests Lambert can wind the current squad up into a fightback, put it that way.
Rodney Marsh was picked by him for England and in the team talk before the game and Alf told him all had to work harder.
Sir Alf “Rodney you in particular, if you don’t work hard I’m going to pull you off at half time.”
Marsh “Christ, at Man City all we get is a cup of tea and an orange.”
Classic.
I would not say we are hangers on but we have had 3 relegation dog fights in a row ,but there are teams in the prem that have also been throw these patches in the time ,in the league, Spurs, Everton ,Westham ,all well known teams that have all been where we are now.
We are the new Wigan, the team whose only ambition is to scrape survival. Call it hangers on if you like.
And like Wigan eventually we’ll go down, might not be this season but sooner rather than later Aston Villa will be a struggling championship team at best thanks to the lack of ambition from board level and terrible management.
I don’t really care what Rodney Marsh has to say.Whoever fault it is it is shocking that we find ourselves buying shitty players from lower leagues.Lerner needs to put for a club of our size at least that 40 million each transfer window so he is a stingy Fucxxxr is Lerner.We cannot attract proper players anymore & are definately struggling t sign players.We are in a dire situation ATM even though we are 11…..UTV
Lack of ambition, awful manager, clueless CEO, absent owner & continuous relegation battles, this is not a blip, we are hangers on….. Wake up and smell the coffee !
‘I don’t care about Rodney,
he don’t care about me,
all I care about,
is AVFC!’ 🙂
He’s a washed up has been who was sacked from Sky for making inappropriate comments. I won’t be losing sleep over his thoughts.
Just the other day he was telling all and sundry that he knew that Yaya Toure wanted to leave Citeh in the transfer window. That forced the player to state that in fact, quite the opposite, he was happy at the title chasing club.
Take anything a Talkshyte presenter says with a bag of salt.
Villa don’t garner positive headlines when we’re fighting for fourth or in a cup final, so we’re hardly going to receive compliments in midtable.
As for all this constant Lamberk & Lerner out, the Villa is ours, what is the alternative ? I didn’t receive a reply last time I asked, I won’t hold my breath.
I think that we’re top six in terms of spending under Lerner, so it must be the managerial appointments. I, like many was reasonably happy to get Lambert in as he had such an excellent track record in building and improving teams.
I don’t have a solution myself, surely it has to be continuity at some stage. But I refrain from sheeplike baaing of ‘everyone out’.
Fantastic footballer but a nob as a pundit. Not interested in his opinion about Villa or anyone else. Have to agree with you Vaze. I don’t know whether we should stick or twist. Changing managers hasn’t done much for us the past few seasons. I suppose if we do it often enough we will get the right man in at some point. I’m not happy with things at Villa but it looks like Lambert is going to given time to turn things around so let’s hope he can.
I don’t think that anyone can be happy with the dross on display right now, but surely if this guy is bringing in the players he wants for the future, he is going to be the best bloke to manage them.
Just a thought. I don’t think that we’re serious under investors, we just dug a bloody deep financial hole under MON chasing the lure of CL football.
Can’t blame anyone for once bitten and all that.
Yep that’s my view too. My big worry is that Lerner has been put off to the point he has lost interest. I bought the family issues means having to be in America for a bit line, but this has gone on for so long now.
That is the concern.
It’s one thing for blokes to post on the internet that millions should be spent, but sat around a board room table, it’s probably harder to sanction another hundred million to try and make up three or four places in the league.
That is the reality, but the fan in me dreams we’ll be up there once again. Probably when the money runs out at Chelsea & Citeh.
That may be a while lol !