Dominating.
What was wrong about Villa? It was a club with a decent foundation and an owner willing to spend money. You always have to be careful assuming that a club spending money is giving the manager what he wants, but certainly the players they brought in during his time appeared to be in line with what he wanted.
My impression at Villa was that the willingness of the owner to spend money became a perverse part of the problem, because expectations moved with that. I don’t think the foundation was particularly good, not at least relative to the funds.
That in turn highlighted the existing weaknesses of Villa as a club/institution, and required Gerrard to succeed at something he had never really had to before - build a club as an organization. At Rangers, he was in an ideal set up for that stage, a club that had decent resources for the level, functioning as an organization, and he is inserted as the key decision-maker. It doesn’t sound like Villa was anything like that. So he was hit by the challenge of building a team at a new competitive level for him as a manager, while also building the required support organization for the first time in his career.
For Potter, I think Chelsea might have been somewhat analogous, though slightly different in nature. Potter has probably never really had to deal with an organization where the back office has its own agenda, the team is accustomed to turning on a manager, and the supporters have no patience.
In order to become a good football manager… Requires becoming a good man manager first.
There is no quick way of gaining experience. It comes along at a pace you yourself set, but the more of a foundation you prepare, the better the end result.
Think Stevie would have benefitted from the shadows of the side stage watching Jurgen doing his magic tricks in front of the fans for a few short years before heading north to Rangers.
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So if you believe the rumours that we are interested in Mason Mount…yet he can’t get into this absolute travesty of a Chelsea 11.
Was he not a favorite of Potter?
The Athletic reporting that Chelsea currently doesn’t have enough room in their training ground dressing room for all of their senior players. Some of them are changing on a sofa in corridors area. They had some sessions with a main 11v11 under the watch of Potter and his main staff and then another 9v9 on a different pitch, all made of full senior players. What a waste of players and people. And that’s Chelsea, a club that is actually used to having many players. But it seems like this is next level, even for them. Especially with so many new ones.
They’re up to 30-32 senior players, depending if we count the likes of Slonina and Hall, two 18-year olds. All other of the 30 are full seniors.
We’re not behind currently on 30 (they have 2 players there on loan, we have 1), so I can’t wait when we shrink that number this summer to about 22-23.
No way that is healthy numbers to work with, even with the 5 subs thing.
@Arminius Yeah, that’s a possibility, but I think the most fundamental issue is he failed to get any improvement out of the side despite getting the additions any manager at the bottom of the table would want. The spending since they returned to the Prem may have raised expectation for an unrealistic finish, but managers at Villa lost their jobs because they couldnt get themselves away from a relegation fight. I dont think those are unrealistic expectations.
Down the line, a lack of structure (I dont know if there was one, as to me at least their spending seemed quite good) might have limited his ability to sustain improvement, but I just dont think he got far enough down the line for that to be a consideration. Under Smith this Villa side finished a solid midtable, but Gerrard got his shot because the following year he found himself unable to get out of the relegation fight. A full year later, despite an immediate new manager bounce, Gerrard had them 1 spot closer to relegation. And frankly they looked like a lost side without an idea of what they were supposed to be doing. Compared to the way they are already playing under Emery, I think you can see the limitations of his performance.
Yeah I personally don’t know that Villa was the wrong club - I think it was a pretty sensible choice but he just didn’t perform very well there. That’s not to say he’s a failure of a manager or can never do a good job anywhere, it’s just part of the growing and learning experience.
Emery is certainly doing a lot better. He had his learning experiences too - fired at Spartak, jumped before he was pushed at PSG and basically laughed out of England when at Arsenal.
He’s clearly a good manager and has had great successes at Valencia, Sevilla and Villarreal but he still had hard times.
I just think we are too quick to label managers as bad or failures, when there is a lot more to it than just knowing a lot about tactics.
If I was Gerrard I’d be looking at clubs like Blackburn, Norwich, West Brom or Swansea and trying to get them promoted to the Premier League.
I just realised this is the Chelsea thread but fuck 'em who gives a shit about Chelsea.
No disagreement there. He underperformed expectations, and simply did not appear to get any benefit from the improved level of talent. The situation seems most comparable to Everton, though not quite as dire. At the time I was wondering how those players would knit together into a coherent side, and they just didn’t.
Sort of a discussion about Potter though, so not adjacent to the topic for now anyway.
I just think Villa was the wrong kind of situation for Gerrard. Half the budget and twice the time probably would have been better for him.
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If a player wants to challenge Jurgen for whatever reason, he needs to remind himself Jurgen stands on the shoulders of literally millions of devoted Kloppites… Any Aston Villa player wanting to challenge Stevie over any issue, can feel re-assured the AV fanbase was stoically behind the player.
This is a hurdle SG needs to monitor with any future club because of his close ties back to LFC… There are still some clubs out there lying dormant, AKA Sunderland, that would welcome the fresh hope he would bring to them though… Picking the right one will be crucial me thinks
Apparently Chelsea are talking to Lampard about coming back on an interim basis. That seems bizarre.
His win percentage is above 50% at Chelsea. I looked it up and found it weird.
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They are 12points ahead of the Blueshite… Frankie boy would still have time to make a dogfight of it for one of the 3 relegation places :0)
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Nah, Frank would take them from 11th to 11th. Possibly 12th, but that’s about it.
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Not only they’re the champions of changing managers, but they’re the champions or changing interim managers.
What a mad place. I’m waiting for the day when Jason Cundy gets a go as their interim manager.
Noting wrong with appointing Lampard for the rest of the seasons they can look for the right manager. They will not win anything or get relegate.
I understand that money talks, that football agents are greedy cunts and that London is a greatly admired city but I wonder if all these young players, at least the highly rated ones like Enzo or Mudryk give their respective heads a wobble and ask themselves if moving to such club is a good idea for their careers.
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You don’t back Frank to win the CL?
