Hennessy's future?

[dazmanwolf]

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/2008/07/22/aston-villa-plot-brad-friedel-bid-89520-20661857/

Lined up by villa next season?

Nothing like a bit of forward planning! :D

How dare they!!!! :eek:

[Markwolf]

If we don't achieve promotion, I think its a given that Hennessey, SEB & Kightly will be on their way.

[dr cool]

no chance then, hes staying...

[jbarnettuk1984]

If we don't achieve promotion, I think its a given that Hennessey, SEB & Kightly will be on their way.
Agreed Mark.

Its basically do or die this season. If we go up, great... If we don't, i think we can kiss goodbye to all our prized posessions.

[Del Woppio]

Yep. This is a massive season - to be honest, if we're out of touch by January we can expect to lose a few. And, of course, the gaffer.

[Bumbamuffin]

And that would put this 'slow building' nonsense to bed.If we are to progress as a club,promotion is a must this season.

It would be acceptable maybe losing 1 if the trade off was to get rid of the current manager,but 3 or 4 would send us back to square one.

[ROVERT47]

$$$$ing ell,lets get a few games from next season out of the way before starting a debate on who will be playing for us the season after next.

[Bumbamuffin]

$$$ ell,lets get a few games from next season out of the way before starting a debate on who will be playing for us the season after next.

I agree with the sentiment mate,but like it or not,this pressure will be here all this season :get promotion or the squad will be dismantled.

[No. 7 George Bowen]

Kightly-E Bennett
SEB-Vokes
Hennessey-Ikeme/Murray

Not that big a problem. The new manager would also get a substantial transfer budget given, I would expect, that a fair amount of that money would probably be made available. You can all put the nooses and chairs away.

[goldeneyed]

Kightly-E Bennett
SEB-Vokes
Hennessey-Ikeme/Murray

Not that big a problem. The new manager would also get a substantial transfer budget given, I would expect, that a fair amount of that money would probably be made available. You can all put the nooses and chairs away.


No problem at all and don't forget Collins to replace Stearman and Harte for Elokobi, Potter for Davies and S Ward for Jarvis. What a great vision for the future thanks to our abundance of talent.

Tell you what, how about a Plan B, ie getting up next season and thereby keeping our best three players by investing in a couple more quality players in the next month rather than buying journeymen and transmitting complacency. Why MM insists on dicing with death (ie probably losing his job if we fail again) only he knows. The squad is NOT good enough for a top two but a couple of good signings would up the odds enormously in his/our favour. But his stubborness (and lack of vision) will cost him ultimately imv.

[Bumbamuffin]

Why MM insists on dicing with death (ie probably losing his job if we fail again) only he knows. The squad is NOT good enough for a top two but a couple of good signings would up the odds enormously in his/our favour. But his stubborness (and lack of vision) will cost him ultimately imv.

It could be that Morgan has long term doubts over McCarthy and the budget has been adjusted accordingly.Likewise,the pile of poor players we're now trying to sell not long after they joined probably won't help the recruitment.

If not and Mick has a free hand,I agree with you completely.

[ROVERT47]

I agree with the sentiment mate,but like it or not,this pressure will be here all this season :get promotion or the squad will be dismantled.

Fair enough,if that what some want to do,personaly i'm not looking any further ahead than 9/08/2008.

[No. 7 George Bowen]

I doubt Stearman and Davies would leave. Anyway if our players are that good we have no need to worry. Albion survived not going up, players moved on for big money and new ones brought in with some of that money and Moanbray duly took them up.

I don't think Mick has been given that much money so we will have to wait for players to be moved on. If its looking good in January we can always spend if there is an obvious weakness with us being a more attractive proposotion if promotion looks on the cards.

Ultimately in my opinion this squad +1CB is already good enough to be champions and radical surgery is not and was not needed.

[goldeneyed]

It could be that Morgan has long term doubts over McCarthy and the budget has been adjusted accordingly.Likewise,the pile of poor players we're now trying to sell not long after they joined probably won't help the recruitment.

If not and Mick has a free hand,I agree with you completely.

I'm a bit puzzled by what MM's budget is this summer. I can understand that Moxey/Morgan would like to see three or four of the transfer listed players out to reduce the wage bill before allowing anyone else in. Morgan has always apparently been fully supportive of MM so can't believe he would suddenly limit his spending. We did bid up to £2.25m for Lafferty (MM's top target perhaps) but generally speaking there seems to have been a ceiling on bids of around £1.5m. If someone really good became available would the club spend say, £3m to get him? Someone like Ledley for instance. It seems not, even with around that £3m likely to come in from the sale of Olo alone.

[Berkswolf]

Agreed Mark.

Its basically do or die this season. If we go up, great... If we don't, i think we can kiss goodbye to all our prized posessions.

I'm not so sure. Clearly it is a possibility, and if we don't achieve our goals it may well be difficult to hang on to our better players. But exactly the same thing was said half way through last season (not necessarily by you). Bids/enquirys have been made this close season and were rebuffed. Its by no means certain they would go. And I would definitely be gob smacked if ALL of them did. And anyway, if they are as good as most of us think they are, they should get us the promotion we all crave anyway.

[cannockwolves]

Lets face it the Championship is a tough league to get out of, we may have a good season and finsh 3rd on goal difference and miss out on the play offs.

If we do miss out this year then I do beleive that we will loose Hennersey, SEB, and Kightly next summer. But that must be £15m of incoming resources and you can buy a lot of players with that sort of cash.

May be Vokes or another bid for Mclean could sort the striking position out. We don't know if Elliot Bennett can step up - but from what I saw at Chasetown he has improved no end. Then of course there is still Murray who could be better than Wayne, even if his is not fit you could probably buy 99% of all goal keepers in league football for less than £3m

It would be a blow to building a team for the prem. If we got up those three players look the most likely to make the step up. BUT with the money coming in you could buy replacements who would be good enough to get you out of this league - although they may not be good enough for the prem. I would worry about that when we got there and we had the £60m to play with

Yes we do really want to get out this year, but if we don't we will have serious money to rebuild.

[Wolv3nsam]

I could see a SEB being a given to go - but maybe not so much Hennessey and Kightly, though I think what's keeping many of the players at this club is Mick McCarthy given how so many of them appear to have undying loyalty to him (rightfully so in many cases, McCarthy took a chance on many of them when they weren't getting a look in at other clubs a la Henry or when other clubs weren't taking a chance on them a la Kightly). If we don't get promoted this season, Mick getting the sack is pretty much sure fire - that's when I'd expect a mass squad exodus.

Though on the same sentiment I wouldn't expect us to sack McCarthy unless there was a better replacement available or we had a replacement lined up immediately, I recall rumours a couple of months ago that Morgan was waiting for Coppell to get the sack so he could offer him the job.

[WorcesterWolf]

It'd be disappointing but not the end of the world if we failed this season - as others have said, think of the money coming in for those three if they left. They're all tied on long term contracts and I wouldn't consider anything less than £5m for each in the current market.

That puts us in a much better position than we were in when McCarthy originally came in, and even that season we finished in the play offs.

Lets just see where this season takes us, but if we don't go up I don't think the implications would be TOO serious.

[Gratters]

Hennessey would need to be polished off a fair bit before he would get in the Villa Prem team - I wouldn't panic just yet.

[ashfordwolf]

I'm not sure he's our number one when they are all fit so I won't panic just yet.