There was a thing I've been meaning to bring up with you a lot but have been waiting for the right time and I think it's now.
A long time ago, when we both still had sts, we were sat on a wall outside the gladys street waiting for a game to start and talking about alcaraz and duffy and brining in veterans rather than trusting the youth.
You were very unhappy about the fact we'd bought in over the hill veterans like Barry, Alcaraz and Kone rather than trusting our youth and you reckoned it would harm us the long run.
And I said part of the problem is veterans tend to be on more money so the club feels obliged to play them to get value for that money and it take a particuarly brave manager to start some kid on 5k a week when he's got a superstar on 80k sitting there because if it goes wrong, it'll be used as the reason the way it was when gullit benched shearer at newcastle and the superstar is more likely to posion the atmosphere if not picked.
And as a counter example I bought up was that Paul Lambert had a very well paid squad of the likes of Darren Bent and Shay Given and Alan Hutton and instead he was starting a bunch of kids who mostly weren't good enough and the result was a bad fracturing of morale and unity in the dressing room that made villa an ugly place.
And you said, that might well be true, but within 5 years those villa boys would have grown together as a team and so long term the strategy would pay off and Villa would be better off than we would.
Just thought I'd bring that up.