All about ambition Supers, Villa underachievement this season is a good season for Wigan, same as with you guys.
sorry guru, never replied to your previous post about ambition i think what you have to remember about our situation is that norwich genuinely have the ambition to become a top 8 club. that has been the plan all along, to build the club at a steady rate (thats gone out the window already!) and improve year on year, increasing capacity, increasing the wage levels and decreasing the debt to nothing. so far, everything has gone (quickly) to plan and lambert has bought into that. of course, our prime objective will be to stay in the league first and foremost, but then thats the ambition of every single club below the top 6 or so, including villa nowadays! its basically the minimum requirement and then push on form there. what lambert has done at norwich is built the youngest squad in the premier league, who are almost entirely british. our spine of our team contains potentially about 5 future england internationals in it (ruddy, r bennett, e bennett, howson, pilkington). these are all players signed by lambert and the whole club is built in his own mould. now i ask you, why would you leave that to go and start from scratch at a bigger club where you'd have very little money to spend and a wafer-thin squad? would you do it for the sake of money? would you do it for the sake of an extra 6k on the gate? would you do it cos they have won a european cup thirty years ago? or would you continue the job you're enjoying and getting great results from for a bit longer and see where it takes you? as a club its norwich who have been showing the ambition these past couple of years and its clubs like villa who are not. norwich have, until now, matched lambert's ambitions and i see no reason why they won't continue to do so. he'll know when he's reached both his and norwich's ceiling. we haven't yet
BUt surly, if villa did appoint Lambert, they would be showing the ambition by appointing a young, very savvy british manager. You say about enjoying his job, how do you know this? perhaps he has asked mcnally for stuff that hasn't been followed through? he may well have wanted to get Rhodes in january but the board blocked it? The only people that fully know this are inside the corridors of Norwich City FC.
i think they'll come in for him too carra. doesn't mean they'll get him though. i simply cannot fathom how so many people are getting so wound up by this! if, like us, you have a brilliant young manager, other clubs will want him too!! it comes with the territory. you just have to trust the club that they do everything they can for the manager. he has no reason at all to leave our club - villa is not a dream job for crying out loud!! if barcelona were coming in for him i'd probably be feeling a little nervous right now...
A friend of a friend works in the accounts and apparently no one says no to Lambert or McNally. Lambo gets what he wants in the pitch and McNally gets what he want off it.
lambert has always stated that the club have done everything they possibly can for him and that he can't ask for anything more. i doubt very much he's lying! if villa appoint lambert it will be because they have shown lambert the ambition that he will require. we know this isn't going to happen because lerner has stated where the club stands financially, so unless they are about to be taken over (which is possible) then it is incredibly unlikely that lambert will be interested.
this i bet there is only one other club in the country where a manager has such a free reign over a club. manchester united.
couldn't say for sure mate. certainly he said it after the january deals when we were the 5th biggest spenders in january behind everton (bizarrely), newcastle, qpr and chelsea. thats called backing your manager - and got to tell you, those two players are worth about five times what we paid for them!
True, but perhaps the biggest factor for being a manager is getting the very most out of the players you already have. Lambert does that at Norwich, perhaps he looks at the Villa squad and says 'you know what, with that squad and a bit of tinkering i could get them to top ten' and i think he can.
having watched villa yesterday guru, i doubt there has ever been a manager alive who could make that lot of no-hopers into a decent team. i'm being 100% honest when i say this, but ipswich would have beaten villa yesterday. they were that bad. it should have finished about 7-0 such was our dominance - and we played much of the game in 2nd gear. they are in big, big, big trouble next season and i'd happily predict them to finish bottom of the table next year. they are awful. except for shay given. he's top notch
In case it escaped your attention, we finished 12th in our first season in this league. All of this without a settled defence ALL SEASON. If we bring in some quality and get a bit of luck next season, I see no reason why we can't get a top ten finish.
with a bit of luck and a few canny signings, i'd say we'd be able to match or better teams like fulham - they finished 9th. we were only a few goals away from finishing in the top half and as you say, we never once were able to pick our first choice defence this season. in fact, we spent most of the season with three of the four missing and a right back at centre half.
Very much this. I'm just not seeing the Villa attraction... Undoubtedly a bigger club than us, but whether or not they are a step up from where Lambert currently is, is a different matter entirely. Little money to spend, with a fan base that's going to be on him straight away. I can't help thinking that the way the Villa fans behaved towards McLeish yesterday will have a small amount to play in Lambert's decision as well. He can't not of noticed some of the chants emanating from there direction towards McLeish. Added to the fact the MON was hardly a massive success there and it just doesn't make much logical sense to me for him to leave at the moment. We'll wait and see...
thing is, leeds are a bigger club than us, but he wouldn't go there. its all about context and at this stage in both lambert's career and the mess villa are in, they are not an exciting proposition. they could be, but they just aren't. the work required to turn them around is mammoth. if we were just relegated i'd expect him to be very, very tempted, but not now.
