Christian Purslow

[wishywashy]

The footballing decisions are clearly made by a collective: Purslow, Lange, the manager, and NSWE. They all are highly-paid professionals with great track records of keeping their mouth shut when it comes to leaks. Any speculation onto who exactly pushed for this, that and the other is nonsensical. It's bad faith to give merits to individuals in this group for the good decisions (ala NSWE) while scapegoating individuals in the group for the bad (ala Purslow). They all play a part in everything.

Regardless, many of these opinions are made with a huge amount of hindsight. I maintain that Gerrard was a doomed appointment from the start, but everyone in that group agreed to it, the club line was that everyone agreed to it, and any other 'fact' is football insider tier conjecture. Bad managerial appointments happen to every club in football: it makes no sense to scapegoat a single individual for it when the decision was made by 5/6+ highly-qualified people. Mistakes were made, we moved on, and seemingly got the next one right. As for the players, Digne was one of the best left backs outside of the Sky 6, and Coutinho had proved he could still do it at Bayern just months before we signed him. There were excellent reasons to sign both, and fans were largely in agreement that they would be good signings: ultimately, they just didn't work out. Once again, it happens to every club. You can't pin the blame for any of these so-called 'sackable offences' (they are not) on a single individual without it being very reductive, especially as we fully well know what the big decision-making structure looks like at the club!

There are things that Purslow can be rightfully criticised for where he clearly has far more responsibility: overseeing the transition of our current commercial strategy into one that makes ethical errors every few months is one valid criticism. To scapegoat him because we made a few signings and appointments that haven't worked out (and doing so in spite of our long-term upwards trend), despite reasonable justification at the time, is just odd.

Edited April 14, 2023 by wishywashy

[sidcow]

5 minutes ago, wishywashy said:

The footballing decisions are clearly made by a collective: Purslow, Lange, the manager, and NSWE. They all are highly-paid professionals with great track records of keeping their mouth shut when it comes to leaks. Any speculation onto who exactly pushed for this, that and the other is nonsensical. It's bad faith to give merits to individuals in this group for the good decisions (ala NSWE) while scapegoating individuals in the group for the bad (ala Purslow). They all play a part in everything.

Regardless, many of these opinions are made with a huge amount of hindsight. I maintain that Gerrard was a doomed appointment from the start, but everyone in that group agreed to it, the club line was that everyone agreed to it, and any other 'fact' is football insider tier conjecture. Bad managerial appointments happen to every club in football: it makes no sense to scapegoat a single individual for it when the decision was made by 5/6+ highly-qualified people. Mistakes were made, we moved on, and seemingly got the next one right. As for the players, Digne was one of the best left backs outside of the Sky 6, and Coutinho had proved he could still do it at Bayern just months before we signed him. There were excellent reasons to sign both, and fans were largely in agreement that they would be good signings: ultimately, they just didn't work out. Once again, it happens to every club. You can't pin the blame for any of these so-called 'sackable offences' (they are not) on a single individual without it being very reductive, especially as we fully well know what the big decision-making structure looks like at the club!

There are things that Purslow can be rightfully criticised for where he clearly has far more responsibility: overseeing the transition of our current commercial strategy into one that makes ethical errors every few months is one valid criticism. To scapegoat him because we made a few signings and appointments that haven't worked out (and doing so in spite of our long-term upwards trend), despite reasonable justification at the time, is just odd.

Coutinho might actually be a financial positive for all we know. He's a massive name, who knows how they've capitalised on that name. 

We may have had thousands of Villa shorts with Coutinho printed on them ordered from around the world.  We may have signed commercial deals around the world on the back of it. We may have millions more social media clicks.  Who knows.  He might have been seen as a no brainer regdless of how it's gone on the pitch. 

[allani]

19 minutes ago, wishywashy said:

The footballing decisions are clearly made by a collective: Purslow, Lange, the manager, and NSWE. They all are highly-paid professionals with great track records of keeping their mouth shut when it comes to leaks. Any speculation onto who exactly pushed for this, that and the other is nonsensical. It's bad faith to give merits to individuals in this group for the good decisions (ala NSWE) while scapegoating individuals in the group for the bad (ala Purslow). They all play a part in everything.

Regardless, many of these opinions are made with a huge amount of hindsight. I maintain that Gerrard was a doomed appointment from the start, but everyone in that group agreed to it, the club line was that everyone agreed to it, and any other 'fact' is football insider tier conjecture. Bad managerial appointments happen to every club in football: it makes no sense to scapegoat a single individual for it when the decision was made by 5/6+ highly-qualified people. Mistakes were made, we moved on, and seemingly got the next one right. As for the players, Digne was one of the best left backs outside of the Sky 6, and Coutinho had proved he could still do it at Bayern just months before we signed him. There were excellent reasons to sign both, and fans were largely in agreement that they would be good signings: ultimately, they just didn't work out. Once again, it happens to every club. You can't pin the blame for any of these so-called 'sackable offences' (they are not) on a single individual without it being very reductive, especially as we fully well know what the big decision-making structure looks like at the club!

There are things that Purslow can be rightfully criticised for where he clearly has far more responsibility: overseeing the transition of our current commercial strategy into one that makes ethical errors every few months is one valid criticism. To scapegoat him because we made a few signings and appointments that haven't worked out (and doing so in spite of our long-term upwards trend), despite reasonable justification at the time, is just odd.

If it took the Board signing Gerrard for them to realise that the answer was / is Unai - then ultimately it will prove to be a good bad decision.  It will be interesting to see (slightly linking to the Revenue stream) whether the V Sports group will do more integrated commercial work (e.g. joint sponsorship, shirt deals, partnerships, etc) and what Purslow's role in that will be (you would imagine pretty senior) as that is going to make some of the ethical decision making you mention more difficult (just based on national / cultural / religious differences on what is ethical).  On the flip side you'd hope that having multiple clubs involved is one way that we can exploit the set-up to negotiate better deals for all 3, 4 or however many clubs we end up with than each could negotiate on their own.  It is definitely a way that Purslow could use to justify a higher sponsorship deal than other similar sized clubs when it comes to the FFP "rules" (which appear not to apply equally to clubs at the moment).  And for his faults - I do think that if anyone can negotiate the muddy waters of FFP then it is probably Purslow.

Edited April 14, 2023 by allani

[wishywashy]

1 minute ago, sidcow said:

Coutinho might actually be a financial positive for all we know. He's a massive name, who knows how they've capitalised on that name. 

We may have had thousands of Villa shorts with Coutinho printed on them ordered from around the world.  We may have signed commercial deals around the world on the back of it. We may have millions more social media clicks.  Who knows.  He might have been seen as a no brainer regdless of how it's gone on the pitch. 

It was an incredible opportunity that very few clubs had at their disposal. The potential benefit for having even a near-prime Coutinho (and his resulting fame) was absolutely massive. To have *not* taken that risk would have been utterly daft, given our position: even with the hindsight that it hasn't worked out from a footballing perspective. It was a low-medium risk, potentially very high-reward situation, and we'll probably sell him on this summer to try something else. It's bizarre that some consider this a sackable offence for a footballing CEO (it isn't).

[wishywashy]

12 minutes ago, allani said:

If it took the Board signing Gerrard for them to realise that the answer was / is Unai - then ultimately it will prove to be a good bad decision.

Precisely. If we went and made an 'alright' or 'decent' footballing decision such as hiring Hassenhuttl or someone of that calibre (like we were rumoured to) we probably wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad a place as we were under Gerrard, but I doubt we'd be in as good a place as we are now. We'd probably be in 11th lamenting how boring the season has been. The butterfly effect in football is genuinely crazy.

Edited April 14, 2023 by wishywashy

[blandy]

39 minutes ago, sidcow said:

It just makes me angry so I'll continue to call out the nonsense.

It's not nonsense. Some parts of it are extremely tenuous/wrong, as you've pointed out ...but it's not nonsense, completely.

You're right, I'm sure that the ultimate decision to appoint the previous manager (as with all of them under Purslow and NSWE) was "signed off" as a minimum, or in the case of Unai Emery, pretty much instigated by and implemented by the ownership duo, and Nasif in particular. Deano and Gerrard were, I believe, the recommended choices of Purslow to the two main owners. One went well, one went very badly. Collectively they signed off on them both, but both were Purslow recommendations as choices. Like @NurembergVillan says, you have to give credit for the good, including Deano, but personally, I have a few reservations about Purslow's judgement on the football side of things, though he seems to be exceedingly effective at an awful lot of other stuff and is a far better operator than a long line of predecessors.

[sidcow]

2 minutes ago, blandy said:

It's not nonsense. Some parts of it are extremely tenuous/wrong, as you've pointed out ...but it's not nonsense, completely.

You're right, I'm sure that the ultimate decision to appoint the previous manager (as with all of them under Purslow and NSWE) was "signed off" as a minimum, or in the case of Unai Emery, pretty much instigated by and implemented by the ownership duo, and Nasif in particular. Deano and Gerrard were, I believe, the recommended choices of Purslow to the two main owners. One went well, one went very badly. Collectively they signed off on them both, but both were Purslow recommendations as choices. Like @NurembergVillan says, you have to give credit for the good, including Deano, but personally, I have a few reservations about Purslow's judgement on the football side of things, though he seems to be exceedingly effective at an awful lot of other stuff and is a far better operator than a long line of predecessors.

If Purslow went to the board with ANY football decision the very first question that would be asked is what Lange thinks of it. 

Lange is the football man, no one is going to let Purslow overrule him. 

The nonsense I'm calling out is this view that Purslow personally appointed Gerrard, that Purslow tried to protect him and was reluctant to sack him and that Purslow personally signed x, y and z players. 

[Tomaszk]

51 minutes ago, sidcow said:

My point is what I've written has as much evidence and logic as this ridiculous ongoing attack on Purslow that he was responsible for hiring Gerrard and that he was responsible for squandering transfer fees. 

The reality is all these things will be joint board decisions. 

In fact my statement actually rings MORE true because the ruthless, highly successful businessmen who own us are clearly happy for Purslow to remain in his job.  Make no mistake, if they thought he'd **** up he would be gone.  People like that don't accumulate billions by entertaining weaklings who make fan boy appointments. 

Therefore I suspect they actually did have far more involvement than people know.

There's no evidence Mr. Blobby wasn't first choice to replace Smith.

Purslow brought Gerrard to the owners and he talked his way in. He shouldn't have been considered at all.

Then Gerrard was given free reign to put £70m+ into two silly players. The way the club talk up our recruitment process is not the reality. If Purslow had sorted that out in his 5+ years here I'd be more impressed than him doing an acceptable job with incredible resources.

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, Tomaszk said:

There's no evidence Mr. Blobby wasn't first choice to replace Smith.

Purslow brought Gerrard to the owners and he talked his way in. He shouldn't have been considered at all.

Then Gerrard was given free reign to put £70m+ into two silly players. The way the club talk up our recruitment process is not the reality. If Purslow had sorted that out in his 5+ years here I'd be more impressed than him doing an acceptable job with incredible resources.

OK if that's how you feel. 

The multi billionaire owners feel different. 

I'm glad they own us and are taking these level headed, informed decisions knowing the facts. 

[Tomaszk]

10 minutes ago, sidcow said:

OK if that's how you feel. 

The multi billionaire owners feel different. 

I'm glad they own us and are taking these level headed, informed decisions knowing the facts. 

I'm glad Purslow has butted out of the football side of the club. The longer he stays out of it, the more we'll improve.

[sidcow]

3 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

I'm glad Purslow has butted out of the football side of the club. The longer he stays out of it, the more we'll improve.

 

[viivvaa66]

5 minutes ago, sidcow said:

OK if that's how you feel. 

The multi billionaire owners feel different. 

I'm glad they own us and are taking these level headed, informed decisions knowing the facts. 

The appointment of Gerrard was a brain dead decision. Toward the end of last season it started to be clear it wasn’t working, more or less every match under Gerrard this season was further evidence that he should have been replaced. Letting him continue in the job for that long could only be done by an imbecile.
 

The question is; do we have one rotten apple at the top that was responsible for it all, or are they all rotten apples that if Emery one day leave, could hire Southgate?

[Guest av1]

We were mid table in the championship when the new owners and CP came to the club, now we have a threads discussing our chances of European football and a shiny new stand. 
 

Of course our fabulous owners deserve most of the credit for that, but any suggestion that CP hasn’t played a part in that I find strange. 
 

Mistakes happen, Gerrard was a big one, but during his time here we have gone from an absolute joke (on and off the pitch) to a club quite clearly on the up. I think he’s done a fantastic job and perhaps doesn’t get the credit he deserves. 

[sidcow]

1 minute ago, viivvaa66 said:

The appointment of Gerrard was a brain dead decision. Toward the end of last season it started to be clear it wasn’t working, more or less every match under Gerrard this season was further evidence that he should have been replaced. Letting him continue in the job for that long could only be done by an imbecile.
 

The question is; do we have one rotten apple at the top that was responsible for it all, or are they all rotten apples that if Emery one day leave, could hire Southgate?

Or are there no rotten apples and it was just a bad appointment like every club makes, several times in any given regime. 

[Tomaszk]

35 minutes ago, av1 said:

I think he’s done a fantastic job and perhaps doesn’t get the credit he deserves. 

What's he done that anyone with a brain wouldn't have? 

The owners and Jack Grealish have changed us, not the Fernando Torres of finance.

[Zatman]

6 hours ago, sidcow said:

Supposedly Purslow had no interest in getting in Gerrard but Wes Edens wanted him badly as he'd missed out on big name Thierry Henry and instructed Purslow to use his contact to get him in against Purslow's better judgement. 

Purslow followed Gerrard around Melwood like a fanboy when he worked at Liverpool. His interview with Talksport when he signed made it sound like he headhunted the best young manager in the world

[villa4europe]

2 hours ago, sidcow said:

Or are there no rotten apples and it was just a bad appointment like every club makes, several times in any given regime. 

Nope, something has to be wrong, there has to be a negative, it's not the manager, it's not the owners, the squad looks alright, the tea lady doesn't have her own thread... That **** purslow...

8 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Purslow followed Gerrard around Melwood like a fanboy when he worked at Liverpool. His interview with Talksport when he signed made it sound like he headhunted the best young manager in the world

If you add in the word "English" to best young manager in the world there's an argument that he did... The argument would be how sound the logic is of wanting English

And I don't know why this is still coming up because none of us know what happened so why make up a stick to beat him with? At a time when we're doing well? Did we approach Potter? Would Potter have failed here too? Did we approach Emery back then also? Did we offer pep more money than man City? Would someone have still moaned if we got him...

We don't know for sure who appointed Gerrard, how he was appointed or why he was appointed... But purslow is shit because of it? It's bizzare

Edited April 14, 2023 by villa4europe

[Zatman]

2 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

 

And I don't know why this is still coming up because none of us know what happened so why make up a stick to beat him with? At a time when we're doing well? Did we approach Potter? Would Potter have failed here too? Did we approach Emery back then also? Did we offer pep more money than man City? Would someone have still moaned if we got him...

 

Was 4 days between Smith getting sacked and Gerrard being hired. No other manager was ever considered

[villa4europe]

12 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Was 4 days between Smith getting sacked and Gerrard being hired. No other manager was ever considered

How do you know that?

All that says is that they lined up the replacement before Smith was sacked rather than sacking Smith and then having a look and making phone calls

That's a good thing and how it should be done

[Zatman]

11 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

How do you know that?

All that says is that they lined up the replacement before Smith was sacked rather than sacking Smith and then having a look and making phone calls

That's a good thing and how it should be done

Smith got sacked off a 3 week bad run of form and was not really even talk of sacking him when he went then to instantly hire Gerrard doesn't make sense we did due diligence elsewhere

Gerrard was the only candidate and we panicked as Newcastle approached him about 2 weeks before and felt we were missing our chance. He had been linked with the job since 2020