Luke Slams Gerard

[kippaxvilla2]

Be fair, it must have been literally horrendous at times.  Your not playing, your still earning £55k a week and wife is literally in your ear at Selfridges banging on about which gucci watch to have, you'd be on suicide watch if you were in that situation.

[TheSandman]

I'd quite happily bomb Dunne, Collins, Warnock and any other second rate player who felt it was OK to coast last season out of it though, even now. Get them as far away from VP as possible.  Tie them to a tomahawk missile and just fcuk them out of it completely.

Yep. I'm not absolving Houllier of blame but the players were to blame as much as he was for last season yet he was the one who carried the can whilst they were able to carry on regardless.

[KevinGage]

I can well accept that GH's approach might have got the players backs up at times.  Not just if he was asking them to do extra work outside of the usual training, but the way he talks generally.

He pissed us off plenty of times, so why not the players?  Increase that by a factor of plenty as they had to see him (and listen to him) every day.  His gob was his biggest letdown dating back to his time at Liverpool, some of the riddles and excercises in passing the buck he came out with in press conferences even that far back were cringeworthy.

So I was prepared (ish)  for similar foot in mouth behaviour and the odd player or three finding that exiting B6 was suddenly a swell idea.

But:

He's not a complete space cadet.  Maybe his PR is lousy (understatement) but get through that and you have a sound footballing brain.  You don't achieve what he has in the game by being a bluffer and a bullshitter.

If Dunne, Collins, Warnock, Ireland or whoever were unsure of his credentials, they should all have just been called into a room by the top brass and told to bring their medals.  Only a player who can trump what he has achieved in the game can legitametly think that way, IMO.  Dunne, Collins, Warnock and Ireland?  Not a medal between them.  Unless we're counting runners up medals.

It's surprising for an intellligent man, but someone (a Redscouse fan IIRC) told me a while ago that GH's biggest failing is that he is emotional or 'too honest' at times.  I wasn't sure anyone could really be too honest, but I get what he meant now.

He took pelters (by me included) for the mid table barbs just prior to appointment. But most people outside of B6 generally consider us that -and we were closer to that more often than not during his last spell in England- when he would have probably seen more of us than at any other time in his career.  Maybe he wasn't prepared to sugar coat his verdict on players like Dunne, Collins, Warnock and Gabby.  Maybe a manager shouldn't really have to.

[Chris Smith]

I see your point, KG, but the job title is "manager" not "dictator". He is there to get the best out of the players and his approach clearly didn't do that. They don't have to like him but they need to respect his methods. Last season was just one bad news story after another and much of it centred around GH, I quite liked what he was trying to do on th pitch but that's only half of the job.

[KevinGage]

True Chris.

But we can probably all think of managers or people senior to us in our careers who -at the time- got our backs up. Yet later in life we might look at it and think 'actually, they had a point.'

It's great if you can get on well with the boss, but for me it's not a prerequisite.  So long as they impart some kind of knowledge and the scope is there to use that knowledge to improve your own skills or situation in some way. 

Whether one chooses to go that route, or the spolit brat approach some of our players took depends on the individual I guess. Maybe they would have been happy with Steve Harrison back at the club, complete with paper cup party pieces, card tricks and all the rest of it.

[eamonn]

Interesting you mention Harrison, could have sworn I saw him on the sidelines of Hull City I think, the other night.

[Chris Smith]

From all reports many didn't particularly like O'Neill on a personal level but they gave everything on the pitch. So I'm not suggesting that they have to best mates but the impression I'm getting is that he treated them like kids. It comes back to the idea of him trying to change too much too quickly, it's almost like he was implying that they were crap before and none of us would be happy with a boss like that.

It's like a less extreme version of Clough at Leeds, he might have been correct but went about it in the wrong way.

[Percy McCarthy]

As I posted in many a post-match thread last season,'the players are a disgrace, but we need a manager who can get these wankers playing.' GH didn't have a clue how to do that.

[DeKuip]

I'm getting really pissed of with players coming out and slagging off the previous manager. They know they can come out and say what they like without Gerard ever really being able to have a go back and give his version of things.
As for Luke Young, wasn't he also unhappy with O'Neill?

They're all paid a lot of money and really should just get on with it, whoever's in charge, otherwise it's an insult to the people that really matter at a football club – us.

[Eigentor]

GH tried to drag the players, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century. Even if GH is gone, the players are still kicking and screaming.

[dave.woodhall]

As Martin Swain once said, and as I'm forever repeating, there's a very good living to be made at Villa Park, just so long as the team don't look in danger of being relegated.

[oldtimernow]

Villa Park does seem to be a nest of vipers at times

[PeterWithe]

Young wasn't good enough to get in the team and yet was still being paid handsomely, is the manager not entitled to ask what extra effort the player is doing to remedy the situation?

[Brend'Watkins]

Houlier's mantra pretty much from day one as I was told was "adapt or die".  That doesn't particularly strike me as good man management.  Fair enough, he had a vision as to how the game should be played, but to try and instill that vision without thought to the personnel at his disposal was a strange thing to do. 

It's obvious he upset a lot of players and upset the fans too with his antics he was from the MON school where players were treated like kids except that in Houliers's case it wasn't a parent child relationship but more the headmaster unruly children one with the unruly children not allowed to express themselves.