Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: PaulTheVillan on October 05, 2011, 02:40:01 PM
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SW on Houllier & MacDonald etc (http://www.birminghammail.net/birmingham-sport/aston-villa-fc/aston-villa-news/2011/10/05/aston-villa-stephen-warnock-breaks-his-silence-on-his-hell-under-gerard-houllier-97319-29539429/)
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So no mention of why his life was hell or why he was banished to the reserves?
I think he has done really well this year but if you are going to slag a manager off then at least tell us why the nasty man put you in the reserves
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I thought the same.
Warnock & Hutton were better v Wigan. Wasn't hard though.
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It was Warnock's fault he fell out with Houllier.
It was Dunne's fault he fell out with Houllier.
It was Collins' fault he fell out with Houllier.
It was Gabby's fault he fell out with Houllier.
It was Carew's fault he fell out with Houllier.
It was Ireland's fault he fell out with Houllier.
It was Beye's fault he fell out with Houllier.
Houllier is in no way shit at managing relationships with his players, nosireebob.
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I don't give a shit whose fault it was, I want players standing up and doing their best for Aston Villa. I'm delighted Warnock has come back fighting, he was one of MON's best signings, a proper footballer but he only really showed it for 6 months.
You'd have thought Warnock would have embrassed the shift by Houllier to drag us forward to 21st century football. Sadly, he had history with Houllier and opted for the easy option. At least he's shown some respect for Kevin McDonald, a coach that can also help us stop playing shite football from years gone past but to do that, he needs Warnock and others to give 100%. He may have a point though about players taking more responsibility in the dressing room. They're not kids, they're paid a fortune, if they're standing up and fighting for the cause then I'll be more than happy.
Keep the sleeves rolled up, Stephen and show us just how good you can be.
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While I'm happy with Warnock's recent return to decent form I still hold him accountable for some shocking half-hearted displays over the last few years. His attitude and lack of concentration cost us many points and in my mind a SF place in last season's League Cup. It's easy to see why both MON and GH gave him the cold shoulder treatment the way they did.
He will need to keep up this form to win me over fully as he is still way overdrawn in the forgive and forget department.
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Do they wait until they have one half decent game to come out with this stuff? He was good against Wigan but it's one game in 18 months by my reckoning.
To be fair he hasn't really 'put the boot' in anyway.
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There is not really any criticism of Houllier in that article.
In fact the most telling thing is Warnocks praise of Kevin McDonald saying how he kept him and Habib Beye going through it all. Well done Kevin Mac, a 50% success rate.
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There is not really any criticism of Houllier in that article.
In fact the most telling thing is Warnocks praise of Kevin McDonald saying how he kept him and Habib Beye going through it all. Well done Kevin Mac, a 50% success rate.
That's what I thought - no real sticking in of the boot, just says he wasn't happy to be training with the reserves, which is good to hear.
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It's Mat Kendrck's interpretation i.e. 'after falling out with the former boss'.
Face it guys, we are so well rid of GH.
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Detest Warnock I really do. He is such a poor full back largely due to the amount of time he spends diving in and giving away freekicks. I think against Newcastle at home I counted 10 near our box all down to him. Liability. Houllier knew he was not good enough, and had standards higher than Warnock.
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Christ, we spent £8m on the gobshite? I'd forgotten. Fleeced for average English talent once more.
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There is not really any criticism of Houllier in that article.
In fact the most telling thing is Warnocks praise of Kevin McDonald saying how he kept him and Habib Beye going through it all. Well done Kevin Mac, a 50% success rate.
That's what I thought - no real sticking in of the boot, just says he wasn't happy to be training with the reserves, which is good to hear.
That's how I read it aswell.
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We can try to convince ourselves that we are better off without Houllier. But the real reason why so many of our players are happy to see the back of him is that he wanted them to leave the 1990-ies mentality of English football which involved six days of slack and 90 minutes of mindless gung-ho with no game-plan every week. Despite his flaws, Houllier knew that the players needed to train hard, use their head during training and matches and play with some composure and sophistication if they wanted to be successful. Sadly, a lot of our players were never comfortable with that.
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Wonder if Houllier ever pissed himself off last season.
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We can try to convince ourselves that we are better off without Houllier. But the real reason why so many of our players are happy to see the back of him is that he wanted them to leave the 1990-ies mentality of English football which involved six days of slack and 90 minutes of mindless gung-ho with no game-plan every week. Despite his flaws, Houllier knew that the players needed to train hard, use their head during training and matches and play with some composure and sophistication if they wanted to be successful. Sadly, a lot of our players were never comfortable with that.
Pity Houllier didn't spend a bit more time practicing defending set pieces with this fantastic modern day training he supposedly implemented
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We can try to convince ourselves that we are better off without Houllier. But the real reason why so many of our players are happy to see the back of him is that he wanted them to leave the 1990-ies mentality of English football which involved six days of slack and 90 minutes of mindless gung-ho with no game-plan every week. Despite his flaws, Houllier knew that the players needed to train hard, use their head during training and matches and play with some composure and sophistication if they wanted to be successful. Sadly, a lot of our players were never comfortable with that.
Pity Houllier didn't spend a bit more time practicing defending set pieces with this fantastic modern day training he supposedly implemented
He was going to that during the summer, yes I thought is was a little bit late too.
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Warnock, Young, Dunne and anyone else you were all a disgrace to your profession and you all let us, the fans, down last year. Now shut up and pay back if you can if not leave. This Club will survive without you.
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Warnock, Young, Dunne and anyone else you were all a disgrace to your profession and you all let us, the fans, down last year. Now shut up and pay back if you can if not leave. This Club will survive without you.
Both Youngs have gone.
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Stephen Warnock born Ormskirk in December 1981 - lets hope he can emulate a certain winger playing that year, who also hails from Ormskirk.
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It was Warnock's fault he fell out with Houllier.
It was Dunne's fault he fell out with Houllier.
It was Collins' fault he fell out with Houllier.
It was Gabby's fault he fell out with Houllier.
It was Carew's fault he fell out with Houllier.
It was Ireland's fault he fell out with Houllier.
It was Beye's fault he fell out with Houllier.
Houllier is in no way shit at managing relationships with his players, nosireebob.
I'd say Dunne, Collins, Warnock and Carew would have to take a fair share of the responsibility for the falling out, Carew especially seemed to go out of his way to have a public falling out with Houllier. Some of the others would have to be put down to Houllier though.
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We can try to convince ourselves that we are better off without Houllier. But the real reason why so many of our players are happy to see the back of him is that he wanted them to leave the 1990-ies mentality of English football which involved six days of slack and 90 minutes of mindless gung-ho with no game-plan every week. Despite his flaws, Houllier knew that the players needed to train hard, use their head during training and matches and play with some composure and sophistication if they wanted to be successful. Sadly, a lot of our players were never comfortable with that.
Pity Houllier didn't spend a bit more time practicing defending set pieces with this fantastic modern day training he supposedly implemented
Actually, the previous manager used a more modern defensive system. Our defence didn't like the out-dated version that Thoroughly Modern Gerard implemented, which is why they thought he was out of touch with the modern game.
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Bore off with the Houllier shite. Its happened, get on with this season and we'll worry how the current manager does yeah? Thankyou
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We can try to convince ourselves that we are better off without Houllier. But the real reason why so many of our players are happy to see the back of him is that he wanted them to leave the 1990-ies mentality of English football which involved six days of slack and 90 minutes of mindless gung-ho with no game-plan every week. Despite his flaws, Houllier knew that the players needed to train hard, use their head during training and matches and play with some composure and sophistication if they wanted to be successful. Sadly, a lot of our players were never comfortable with that.
Pity Houllier didn't spend a bit more time practicing defending set pieces with this fantastic modern day training he supposedly implemented
Actually, the previous manager used a more modern defensive system. Our defence didn't like the out-dated version that Thoroughly Modern Gerard implemented, which is why they thought he was out of touch with the modern game.
I think that was entirely obvious from the sarcastic tone of ZoggyAlways's post.
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Houllier was right though about most of the players he fell out with apart from Dunne in terms of ability, but way before GED came Dunne was mightily over weight. Irelands head was all over the shop last season, Warnock was very poor in the 10 or so games GED started him, Luke Young was a regular and his beef was more with Martin. I still reckon long term GED would have proved a better bet than Eck for progression.
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Houllier was right though about most of the players he fell out with apart from Dunne in terms of ability, but way before GED came Dunne was mightily over weight. Irelands head was all over the shop last season, Warnock was very poor in the 10 or so games GED started him, Luke Young was a regular and his beef was more with Martin. I still reckon long term GED would have proved a better bet than Eck for progression.
What about Gabby? He was possibly the most scathing out of everybody.GH just didn't get the Villa and I'm glad he's gone
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To be honest, if the players had any brains about them, they'd refrain from talking too much about last season, lest they remind us of their own roles in it.
To listen to some of them recently, you'd think they contributed nothing to it. I don't remember Houllier forcing Dunne and Collins to go out and get shitfaced on the team bonding exercise and start throwing punches around, and I also don't see how Houllier was responsible for Dunne coming back from the summer the size of a branch of Tesco Express.
It is also somehwat early to start trumpeting how your success reflects your happiness with the new management team. We're six or seven games in. Come back and triumphantly tell us when we're sixth after 26 games, not 6.
I still reckon long term GED would have proved a better bet than Eck for progression.
So do I. For all his failings, Houllier had started to at least try to get us playing football, to pass the ball around a bit. I'll give AM a chance to show us his ethos, but it'd be beyond depressing to have parted company with one "traditional" British style manager, gone through all the pain of the Houllier year, started to show some progression, to then regress to the less appealing aesthetics of the British game.
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We can try to convince ourselves that we are better off without Houllier. But the real reason why so many of our players are happy to see the back of him is that he wanted them to leave the 1990-ies mentality of English football which involved six days of slack and 90 minutes of mindless gung-ho with no game-plan every week. Despite his flaws, Houllier knew that the players needed to train hard, use their head during training and matches and play with some composure and sophistication if they wanted to be successful. Sadly, a lot of our players were never comfortable with that.
Pretty much this.
I've said at various times I was never overly keen on the guy -dating back to his time at Liverpool, when any below par performance or bad result was always somebody else's fault. But reading Luke Young's whinge last week, I started to have some real sympathy for the guy. Saying before a big game 'keep calm and composed' ? Asking players who weren't in the side what extra work they were doing to get back in? What a rotter! He should have just left them to their own devices, to pocket small fortunes for doing next to nothing. And Luke was one of the good guys. :/
It's quite clear that the good professionals; Ash, Downing, Bent, NRC and Walker were OK with his methods -or if they weren't it didn't seem to harm their form. It's pretty certain also that had he remained, a fair smattering of the sugarbags piling in now would be elsewhere. That wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing as far as I can see. The new lot might have been more professional and in tune with what he was looking for. Maybe -and I accept we don't know this at all- when he referred to only being able to sort the defensive issues (and we definitely had them) in the summer, he meant in terms of new playing personnel and the coach he had at Liverpool and Lyon.
I'd agree with the wider point as well, it's way too early for Dunne, Collins, Warnock and co to be crowing about great form and this great new feeling around the place. We've faced a pretty easy run of fixtures thus far, and whilst the defence has been better, it's hardly been like a steel trap. When they've churned out a few clean sheets against the likes of the Manc pair, Chelsea, Tottingham and co they can pat each other on the back and piss in each others pockets- telling everyone how united they are.
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We can try to convince ourselves that we are better off without Houllier. But the real reason why so many of our players are happy to see the back of him is that he wanted them to leave the 1990-ies mentality of English football which involved six days of slack and 90 minutes of mindless gung-ho with no game-plan every week. Despite his flaws, Houllier knew that the players needed to train hard, use their head during training and matches and play with some composure and sophistication if they wanted to be successful. Sadly, a lot of our players were never comfortable with that.
Pity Houllier didn't spend a bit more time practicing defending set pieces with this fantastic modern day training he supposedly implemented
Actually, the previous manager used a more modern defensive system. Our defence didn't like the out-dated version that Thoroughly Modern Gerard implemented, which is why they thought he was out of touch with the modern game.
I think that was entirely obvious from the sarcastic tone of ZoggyAlways's post.
I know, I'm agreeing with him.
Just think it's funny how he is credited with all this 'modern' thinking when in some ways he was more old-fashioned than the previous bloke. I was particularly a fan of the cutting-edge fitness regime that generally made the players look less fit (on the odd occasion they got over their injuries and managed to actually play a game).
God help us if he'd still been manager. Probably another ten departures on top of those who left, and still no money to replace them. Most of the NextGen team would have been playing by now.
Actually, scratch that. Most of the NextGen team would have been out injured by now.
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It's quite clear that the good professionals; Ash, Downing, Bent, NRC and Walker were OK with his methods -or if they weren't it didn't seem to harm their form. It's pretty certain also that had he remained, a fair smattering of the sugarbags piling in now would be elsewhere. That wouldn't necessarily have been a bad thing as far as I can see. The new lot might have been more professional and in tune with what he was looking for. Maybe -and I accept we don't know this at all- when he referred to only being able to sort the defensive issues (and we definitely had them) in the summer, he meant in terms of new playing personnel and the coach he had at Liverpool and Lyon.
I'd agree with the wider point as well, it's way too early for Dunne, Collins, Warnock and co to be crowing about great form and this great new feeling around the place. We've faced a pretty easy run of fixtures thus far, and whilst the defence has been better, it's hardly been like a steel trap. When they've churned out a few clean sheets against the likes of the Manc pair, Chelsea, Tottingham and co they can pat each other on the back and piss in each others pockets- telling everyone how united they are.
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Out of the good guys you've listed only Bent remains,and that would have been no different had GH remained in charge.Ash was always off to Manure.Downing to 'The Mighty Reds YNWA' for more money and 'Arry would never had let us sign Walker,oh and Gabby would have been on his way as well.He only played Bannan when he had to then loaned him out and slated Ireland publically..How would we have replaced the players sold and the players he'd alienated who are now playing especially with the financial constraints we've all seen imposed by Randy?
I know it's early days for AM but he strikes me as being a reallly good man manager who is proud to have the job.GH struck me as a really poor man manager who thought he was too good for the job.
I don't know anything about our new training regime but I do know Petrov and,Dunne look much fitter than last season
Apologies I'm rubbish at this quote thing
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So now GH is to blame for our horrendous injury situation last season? Ridiculous.
I'm with Eigentor/Walnuts/Gage on this one, too many players wanted to remain in the the comfort zone they were in under MON. Proper professionals, especially on the wages they are on, should have accepted the new manager's ideas and tried to adapt. GH wanted them to play a bit more football, wanted them to concentrate on training while at training rather than taking mobile calls or texting, and wanted them to work on their weaker areas. What a bastard eh? And for mere peanuts, it must have been sheer hell. Okay GH is hamfisted in his interpersonal skills as we could all see from his public outpourings, and he should have tried a more softly softly approach to changing things, but the players can't put all the blame on the ex-boss.
All managers fall out with players - the much loved MON managed to fall out with several players he had (very expensively) signed himself, including coming to blows with one of them.
Plus Warnock is mediocre anyway, and worth nowhere near the 8m we overpaid for him. Would much rather GH had stayed and shipped some of these wasters out.
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To be honest, if the players had any brains about them, they'd refrain from talking too much about last season, lest they remind us of their own roles in it.
To listen to some of them recently, you'd think they contributed nothing to it. I don't remember Houllier forcing Dunne and Collins to go out and get shitfaced on the team bonding exercise and start throwing punches around, and I also don't see how Houllier was responsible for Dunne coming back from the summer the size of a branch of Tesco Express.
It is also somehwat early to start trumpeting how your success reflects your happiness with the new management team. We're six or seven games in. Come back and triumphantly tell us when we're sixth after 26 games, not 6.
I still reckon long term GED would have proved a better bet than Eck for progression.
So do I. For all his failings, Houllier had started to at least try to get us playing football, to pass the ball around a bit. I'll give AM a chance to show us his ethos, but it'd be beyond depressing to have parted company with one "traditional" British style manager, gone through all the pain of the Houllier year, started to show some progression, to then regress to the less appealing aesthetics of the British game.
Good post
I never look at the league table until Christmas which is roughly halfway
talk of us being unbeaten in 7 and in 6th place will mean jack shit by then
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So now GH is to blame for our horrendous injury situation last season? Ridiculous.
I'm with Eigentor/Walnuts/Gage on this one, too many players wanted to remain in the the comfort zone they were in under MON. Proper professionals, especially on the wages they are on, should have accepted the new manager's ideas and tried to adapt. GH wanted them to play a bit more football, wanted them to concentrate on training while at training rather than taking mobile calls or texting, and wanted them to work on their weaker areas. What a bastard eh? And for mere peanuts, it must have been sheer hell. Okay GH is hamfisted in his interpersonal skills as we could all see from his public outpourings, and he should have tried a more softly softly approach to changing things, but the players can't put all the blame on the ex-boss.
All managers fall out with players - the much loved MON managed to fall out with several players he had (very expensively) signed himself, including coming to blows with one of them.
Plus Warnock is mediocre anyway, and worth nowhere near the 8m we overpaid for him. Would much rather GH had stayed and shipped some of these wasters out.
Easy to say ship out the wasters but who to ? They've all got contracts and I didn't see any managers fighting for their signature and where would the money have come from to replace all these players on top of Young,Downing,Walker,NRC and Friedel ?
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Fair point Zoggy and maybe this had as much, if not more, to do with GH being let go than his health situation. GH and some senior players didn't get on, can't shift the senior players, then maybe you have to shift the manager and get someone in whose methods meet with their approval. Maybe it was a question of trying to get the best out of what you are stuck with. If so then ultimately that's another legacy of MON's contracts and wages mayhem.
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Fair point Zoggy and maybe this had as much, if not more, to do with GH being let go than his health situation. GH and some senior players didn't get on, can't shift the senior players, then maybe you have to shift the manager and get someone in whose methods meet with their approval. Maybe it was a question of trying to get the best out of what you are stuck with. If so then ultimately that's another legacy of MON's contracts and wages mayhem.
That's exactly how I see it KT and I know it's early days but AM at least seems to be achieving this
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Fair point Zoggy and maybe this had as much, if not more, to do with GH being let go than his health situation. GH and some senior players didn't get on, can't shift the senior players, then maybe you have to shift the manager and get someone in whose methods meet with their approval. Maybe it was a question of trying to get the best out of what you are stuck with. If so then ultimately that's another legacy of MON's contracts and wages mayhem.
That's exactly how I see it KT and I know it's early days but AM at least seems to be achieving this
Well the players, notably the rebels from last year, seem to like AM, but we've not had any real tests so far this season. So far so average and it remains to be seen whether AM is going to be a better option than GH. I just think it's shame if GH got the elbow partly because of a situation that was due to his predecessor's errors of judgement.
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Fair point Zoggy and maybe this had as much, if not more, to do with GH being let go than his health situation. GH and some senior players didn't get on, can't shift the senior players, then maybe you have to shift the manager and get someone in whose methods meet with their approval. Maybe it was a question of trying to get the best out of what you are stuck with. If so then ultimately that's another legacy of MON's contracts and wages mayhem.
That's exactly how I see it KT and I know it's early days but AM at least seems to be achieving this
Well the players, notably the rebels from last year, seem to like AM, but we've not had any real tests so far this season. So far so average and it remains to be seen whether AM is going to be a better option than GH. I just think it's shame if GH got the elbow partly because of a situation that was due to his predecessor's errors of judgement.
GH was definitely too poorly to continue. I heard him on the radio a couple of weeks ago and he said he was still only 80 % fit and would not be returning to football management so I don't think he was elbowed out as such, but maybe RL got scared at the amount of money GH was requiring for his Summer signings and thought lets work with what we've got hence why we ended up with Alex not Rafa
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GH continuing in the same high pressure role as before was never really a runner following his second major healthcare.
But I increasingly think that keeping him on in some capacity, as a co-ordinator, or Technical Director was an avenue that could have been explored further. We had to pay him the bulk of his huge salary when he departed anyroad. In purely cynical terms (and I know it sounds cynical when we are talking about a guy recovering from his type of illness) keeping him on might have actually given us something for our money.
Perhaps giving him the remit of spotting and signing players, and being responsible for overall strategy and someone like a Sanchez Flores or a Laudrup being responsible for team selections and day to day training directly under him would have been the way to go. Continental coaches are used to having transfers and the like largely decided by someone else. They would tolerate it better than the typical British control freak manager.
It would have been a departure for us, for sure. Going the European route. Definitely a gamble. But -who knows- it might have actually worked. I doubt it would have altered the cold, hard reality that 6th place is just about the best we could do, but you never know. If nothing else, there would have been a degree of excitement, perhaps a more progressive style of football and I doubt gates would have fallen away as drastically as they have.
It would have also looked like a degree of continuity, and would have perhaps countered this recent notion that the board don't have a clue. Hindsight being 20/20 vision, and all that.
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GH continuing in the same high pressure role as before was never really a runner following his second major healthcare.
But I increasingly think that keeping him on in some capacity, as a co-ordinator, or Technical Director was an avenue that could have been explored further. We had to pay him the bulk of his huge salary when he departed anyroad. In purely cynical terms (and I know it sounds cynical when we are talking about a guy recovering from his type of illness) keeping him on might have actually given us something for our money.
Perhaps giving him the remit of spotting and signing players, and being responsible for overall strategy and someone like a Sanchez Flores or a Laudrup being responsible for team selections and day to day training directly under him would have been the way to go. Continental coaches are used to having transfers and the like largely decided by someone else. They would tolerate it better than the typical British control freak manager.
It would have been a departure for us, for sure. Going the European route. Definitely a gamble. But -who knows- it might have actually worked. I doubt it would have altered the cold, hard reality that 6th place is just about the best we could do, but you never know. If nothing else, there would have been a degree of excitement, perhaps a more progressive style of football and I doubt gates would have fallen away as drastically as they have.
It would have also looked like a degree of continuity, and would have perhaps countered this recent notion that the board don't have a clue. Hindsight being 20/20 vision, and all that.
I think this is a decent idea. Allthough not my first choice when appointed, I always find myself defending GH on here. Firstly because between the PR gaffes, cup defeatism and unneccessary player fall-outs there were actually some spells of football worth watching (even if results weren't always great). Secondly, because he at times managed to make me believe (allthough possibly a pipe dream) that he had a plan for long-term success that didn't rely solely on massive spending (though surely more investment than we saw this summer). It was a couple of bright spots in the dull affair of following a team outside the top four, and I miss both.
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I did say earlier in the summer I would have preferred a Hughes or a Moyes.
I wouldn't attempt to play down or gloss over some of GH's errors either. I never thought I'd hear a Villa manager speak the way he did after the Anfield and Man Citeh debacles.
But a behind the scenes, less pressurised role might have suited his talents more at this stage of his life -and wouldn't have resulted in the same foot in mouth incidents as per last season. He could definitely spot a player, Kyle Walker, the lad who eventually went from Barcelona reserves to Chelsea (Romalou?) and Fofana -who was the star player at the recent U21 tournament. Bannan was also singing his praises earlier in the week- as the first Villa manager to display a degree of faith in him (even though he should have probably featured more last season).
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I agree with what you've said above Kevin Gage, and it would have been nice to see us try that. But with RL being stuck with MON's overpaid, over-contracted comfort zoners with a very "British" attitude to how things should be done, I suppose he thought going down the "European" route was just another recipe for all out revolt.
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Houllier had one idea: get the fuck out of France as he was instrumental in keeping Domenech on for the French fiasco at the last World Cup. He tried to come to us on a sabbatical year. I was shitting myself for Villa.* Bollocks to him, notwithstanding health issues.
*Funnily enough, with McLeish, I'm just mildly constipated.
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Ah yes, how triumphantly brilliant he was in the more directorial role being suggested on here.
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Ah yes, how triumphantly brilliant he was in the more directorial role being suggested on here.
One less point from the home games compared to your Martin's bestest ever season, despite an injury crisis, a player revolt and no pre-season to work with the lads suggests they were both crap, just one slightly more than the other.
Bring back Brian.
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I assume you've taken off the points won by KMac and GMac? Where would O'Neill be in an all-time table counting only away points?
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The point is Percy, neither were very good managers, not because they weren't capable individuals but because both had huge egos and surrounded themselves with idiots.
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Under Houllier we played more football at home in not even one season than we did in two full seasons with O'Neill.
For all Houllier's faults, I thought we were on,y seeing the start of his methods being put into place.
Under O'Neill we saw the same thing over over again, as it was the only thing he knew how to do. If he'd stayed another ten seasons, we'd have played the same artless, tedious guff at home the whole decade.
A slightly more palatable version of his Leicester City except at a bank breaking cost which has left us skint. Far too often at home he had that expensive team looking like less than the sum of its parts.
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Ah yes, how triumphantly brilliant he was in the more directorial role being suggested on here.
One less point from the home games compared to your Martin's bestest ever season, despite an injury crisis, a player revolt and no pre-season to work with the lads suggests they were both crap, just one slightly more than the other.
Bring back Brian.
Both were crap, indeed. And yes, bring back Sir Brian. He's only crap because his heart isn't in it anywhere else. Come back and both he and us would be brilliant again.