Very good manager, doesn't bother me re his patter and at times over familiarity with the media. He's from the old school as per Big Ron, El Tel and co. If he wasn't managing he'd be doing the after dinner speaking circuit. Likes the sound of his own voice, what odds.
You can't imagine Pardew, McCarthy, Pulis, or Alan 'interesting' Curbishley holding anyone's attention going that route. For the latter, hiring him for a night would only make sense if you were aiming for a David Koresh-style mass suicide pact from your guests on conclusion.
Candleface has turned things around at WHL, and fair fcuks to him. Go back as recently as 2006 and he was seen as the archetypal lower end of the table manager. I think he's still been relegated more than any other manager in the topflight and when Pompey appointed him in 2006 he was hardly pulling up trees in the Championship with Southampton. Makes you wonder what managers with a similar profile and reputation for handling struggling clubs might be capable of given a decent platform.
He's had a hate-hate relationship with most Villa fans since his antics in 2007. We were giving him a bit of stick after the BBC documentary but if he'd been big enough to laugh it off -as the likes of Grobbelaar, Benitez and Seaman often did- nothing more would have been made of it. Instead he took it personal, calling Villa fans 'scum' et.c. Most of the vitriol seems to have stemmed from then.
That and his less than endearing habit of talking about other clubs players as well, obv.
