Hampy, that is a pretty fair comment. Lambert is clearly ambitious but if the budgie board had been a bit more forthcoming I do think he would have hung around for another season.............
Lambert has been backed. He has never been told he can't buy a player - NEVER. Can I just point out that we haven't been relegated yet, because by the sounds of it, you are taking it as gospel that we will, just like before the start of last season.
Ipswich always been backed - so what is this fuss about you not getting a top grade academy or something like that?
yorkie, we have a pretty equal budget for transfers as villa. the problem is that the board cannot afford to increase the wage budget and that was always going to be an issue with lambert. the board are NOT being tightfisted - they are making sure the club doesn't go bust! if they increase the wage bill when they cannot afford to and we go down then the whole club ends up doing a pompey - nobody wants that, least of all me and i think the vast majority of fans understand the reasoning behind the wage cap being low. check out bolton - just gone down, players on £30k a week, £110m in debt... that's crazy - destined for administration at the very least, and they aren't exactly massive spenders! the wage budget is set at that level for a very good reason!! its hardly a shambles - £20k a week (or thereabouts) is not peanuts and when you look at the younger players outside the premier league and target them, that is more often than not a big increase in wages. if some players get too big for their boots (mentioning no names) then tough - they can be sold for profit and we'll find the next kid who wants a crack at the big time. our manager had been backed massively - we were the fifth biggest spending club in january! it has nothing to do with being backed at all - it is the wage budget causing problems but they will not and more importantly MUST NOT change it for anyone. we don't want to be begging the banks for money to stay alive ever again, even if it means losing our manager or star player and maybe if more clubs were more responsible and didn't cave in to players and managers ludicrous demands, the game would not be facing cash crisis after cash crisis, and the threat of clubs going to the wall would be far less likely.
I don't really understand why you think I've misjudged why he has left. I think he has left because he thinks he can acheive greater things at Villa than he can at Norwich and that is what you have said.
Supers - that's all very true, I'm not saying its not right or wrong, I'm naturally a risk taker so I would prefer to risk some debt (it doesn't have to be careless) to try to take it up a level. The point is Lambert was never going to stay with a club who don't want to fork out for a contract for the man who got them out of the ****. On the academy, yeah we're not happy about that or with a lot of other things but Marcus Evans has pumped millions in that has been spunked away so it's not a case of budget it's just about poor decision making.
you said that he left because he felt we'd struggle next year which was surprising when you consider how bad villa were. he's not left for that reason - he left cos he felt it the right move for his career - which in fairness, you also put forward as a concept. we are probably arguing for arguments sake!
agree yorkie that he was never going to stay with a club who didn't fork out the wages - i think we all knew that deep down, we were a tad surprised that he's been tempted this summer and not next and that it was villa not liverpool, or maybe that's just my view. i think his accent may have stifled his liverpool job chances if you get my drift! the point is, the club cannot adjust the wage structure and pay the bank debt in total, which they have to do as part of the agreement to bail the club out three years ago. the club literally have no choice but to keep things as they are so they can't gamble even if they wanted to - they are obliged to pay it off by april, then we will be debt free. as for your academy, i'm not sure your club have made a balls up of that. we shall wait and see but you can still move up to grade one if you go up. its a lot of money to throw at it but the advantages are clearly enormous. norwich are committed to sticking with it regardless of division - another reason why the wage cap needs to remain low, to pay for that - so we should, in theory get all the best youngsters from east anglia, along with others thanks to our excellent scouting system. indeed, we've already pinched one kid from under your noses just this week.
I have to agree with you on those 2 points. Football has to be able to control their wages. I think over the next few years Arsenal may imerge as the strongest club in the country because they've been sensible with wages etc. It may not be good for the short term but definitely for the long term!!
its impossible to know if we'd struggle next year or not - the bottom 12 teams in the division were quite closely matched so we could be 9th or 20th. same applies to villa though. he's definitely moved there because he'll get more noticed if he does a good job. the fact rodgers, an infinitely lower-quality manager in my opinion, got the liverpool post must have had him spitting canary feathers. i think he has gone under the radar all season and that must have been a little annoying to him. i think he felt it was going to be difficult to better what we did last season though i'm sure with him in charge it was on the cards, but at villa should he do pretty well his stock will rise immeasurably. taking a few steps backwards and looking at it a bit clearer than before it all kicked off, i actually think he's made a brave but in the end correct decision to go to villa. i may be proved right, i may be proved wrong. time will tell. as for us, i'm happy as long as we make the right appointment and continue to carry on in the same format as before. young and hungry
i think you're bang on the money there ptc, bang on the money arsenal pay a lot in wages though, just not as much as other top clubs, but the difference is they can afford it through revenue streams created by the club, not some sheik.
I have to say obviously it depends on who you appoint as your next manager but for the first time in along time(3 years) I don't see you progressing as a club!! For the first time I don't think I'll be saying through gritted teeth that you will do well next year, if you recall I predicted you would do well last season and I also predicted that you were going to stay up this year. I also agree about Rodgers. Good manager but only really successful at one club and arguably the grounding for that success came by the 2 previous managers before him. It is refreshing however to see liverpool give someone like that a chance. For me though, although I like his style of play, he is a bit 1 dimensional and you need to mix it up abit, especially if you are at a big club who want to win things(although the exception is Arsenal) something Lambert is very good at. I have to say him going under the radar didn't only annoy him, it has annoyed me for the past 3 years, I was just thinking we can't have you lot getting too good!! I have say i found 'young and hungry' pretty funny, I just thought of Grant Holt who is apparently too old but clearly infinitely hungry!!
i laughed when i heard the liverpool chief executive say "we were impressed with the way rodgers teams play swift, attacking, dynamic football". i think he may get a shock! they are like watching paint dry half the time. pass it across the back four, back to the keeper etc etc etc for ten minutes. can't remember which match it was last season but in one half, may have been against villa bizarrely, they'd had nearly 80% possession but only something like 3% in the opponents half. staggering!
With regard to what you say about the academy. Although I am dissapointed we didn't go for a grade 1, I can understand why, I doubt many clubs at this level will go for grade 1, alot I don't think are even going for a grade 2. We need to invest to get it up to a grade 2, so maybe this might be a good thing eventually, staggering the grades rather than going for the full out changes if you get what I mean. I still think we might have a feather in our cap, especially if rumours are correct and Klug is on his way back, add to that the reputation we have(possibly a had now) got for developing youngsters.
It's nice to see the highlight of the binners dreary lives is our manager leaving? But topping that, someone posted about "buying a certain young player from Huddersfield"..!!! Oh how I laughed. That made my weekend.. Nice to see you've still got a sense of humour, mind you, you need it supporting Ipshit... Carry on girls. Oh how I've missed 606. Ratty.
