The Martin O'Neill thread (with added sacking #2188)

[N'ZMAV]

I never actually thought, even in his best time at Villa, that he was this managerial mastermind that some of the UK press make him out to be. His teams have one way of playing, he has one way of making substitutions, and no way of breaking down a stubborn opposition. He has finally been found out, and it gave me almost as much pleasure seeing the ****** lose on Saturday as it did seeing us win. He's a spoilt little brat, who fucks off whenever he can't get his own way. He'll get sacked soon enough, and I look forward to it, although, he'll probably take them to court for doing it.

[onje_villa]

i get emails from safc after i bought a scarf for a mackem whose funeral i went to, it went on his coffin as a present from the locals of our pub. however i digress, below is the email i had from mon after yesterdays game.


SUNDERLAND 0 - 1 ASTON VILLA

Dear Mark,

 We didn’t deserve to get beaten.

 We probably should have won the game but the ball just didn’t drop for us today.

We’re not scoring goals, we’ve had people in and around the penalty area, but it just doesn’t seem to be happening for us.

I could not fault the players’ effort whatsoever. I think it was epitomised by a fantastic performance from Lee Cattermole.

 It was as good a performance as I have seen from a player and he didn’t deserve to be on the losing side.

We drove at Villa and tried everything but we were unable to wear them down.

 We need to be resilient. It’s been tough going and we’ve found ourselves in the situation where we’re not getting goals.

You wouldn’t think we would have that problem with all of the attacking players we have in the team.
 We have to stick in at it and we’ll come back from this.

We have to remain strong and be resilient – we’re all in this together.

All the best,

Martin O'Neill

I had one a few years ago that went something like this:

Dear Mark,

 We did deserve to win.

 We probably should have won the game by more but the wind just didn’t drop for us today.

We’re scoring goals, we’ve nobody in and around the penalty area, it just seems to be happening for us.

I could not fault the players’ effort whatsoever. I think it was epitomised by a fantastic performance from Brad Freidel.

It was as good a performance as I have seen from a player and he didn’t deserve to be on the losing side.

They drove at us and tried everything but we were able to wear them down.

We need to stay resilient. It’s been tough going and we’ve found ourselves in the situation where we’re getting goals after 10 minutes.

You wouldn’t think we would have that problem with all of the attacking players we have in the team defending.
We have to stick in at it and we’ll get away with this.

All 14 squad players have to remain strong and be resilient – we’re all in this together, except NRC, Luke Young, Gary Cahill and a few others ( I forget their names).

All the best,

Martin O'Neill

Love it.

[Concrete John]

I was delighted the day mon arrived and thrilled for the future ,and delighted the day he left , having seen things turn sour in the final couple of years even though results in his last season weren't too bad.

The Moscow mistake was the beginning of the end and I never forgave him for that , compounded by his errors poor team selection, lack of plan b, constant poor substitutions, heskey, and the general poor quality of football- he had his great days but mon had to go and should have gone in may of his last season.

There were many discussions and as dave says both sides fought their corner, I along with the nasher dc5 and a few others were well outnumbered by the monettes at the time but gradually more and more realised he was not the answer.

Now I think most agree that he wasn't the success we hoped he would be , a decent enough time in our history but given the finances available to him it should have been so so much better.

I was wondering when someone would roll that one out!

Moscow wasn't a mistake - it was a decision.  A decision taken in light of us finding ourselves in a much better league position than we thought combined with the fear for our players playing of an artificial pitch in freezing conditions.  He may have mistakingkly mis-judged the fan reaction, that I grant you, but he did what he felt was best for the team/club.

Yes, he wasn't the success we hoped he'd be, but then we were all hoping for CL fottball and trophies, so by an actual lack of quantifiable 'success' then we were all disappointed, probably including MON himself.   

[olaftab]

Moscow wasn't a mistake - it was a decision.  A decision taken in light of us finding ourselves in a much better league position than we thought combined with the fear for our players playing of an artificial pitch in freezing conditions.  He may have mistakingkly mis-judged the fan reaction, that I grant you, but he did what he felt was best for the team/club.

We are a football club borne out of a desire to compete. Compete in every game that we play when claret and blue shirts are worn.  Doing what he did in Moscow can never be described as  best decision for the club.

[Concrete John]

Moscow wasn't a mistake - it was a decision.  A decision taken in light of us finding ourselves in a much better league position than we thought combined with the fear for our players playing of an artificial pitch in freezing conditions.  He may have mistakingkly mis-judged the fan reaction, that I grant you, but he did what he felt was best for the team/club.

We are a football club borne out of a desire to compete. Compete in every game that we play when claret and blue shirts are worn.  Doing what he did in Moscow can never be described as  best decision for the club.

Not getting 4th has shown it to be wrong.  However, he didn't know that at the time.  What would the reaction have been if we had gotten a bad injury to Gabby or Ash and gone on to lose the tie anyway? 

[olaftab]

But John he put huge pressure on the first team by leaving them at home as well as not competing in game of football.

[damon loves JT]

We should have ignored Moscow and concentrated on seizing the crucial oilfields in the Caucasus.

Once we had possession of Maikop and Grozny, Stalin would have sued for peace and we could probably have forced him to cede the Ukraine.

[eastie]

Moscow wasn't a mistake - it was a decision.  A decision taken in light of us finding ourselves in a much better league position than we thought combined with the fear for our players playing of an artificial pitch in freezing conditions.  He may have mistakingkly mis-judged the fan reaction, that I grant you, but he did what he felt was best for the team/club.

We are a football club borne out of a desire to compete. Compete in every game that we play when claret and blue shirts are worn.  Doing what he did in Moscow can never be described as  best decision for the club.

Totally agree aftab, Moscow was a mistake concrete John, a manager of aston villa should not put out such a weak side in a European competition at such a crucial stage- think of the poor fans who paid out to travel to see basically a reserve side- it was a dreadful decision and in no way can he be excused blame.

If he wasn't going to take the competition seriously why the hell put out a strong team in all the other rounds to them throw it away in the knockout stage .

From that moment our season imploded and it was a disaster.

[Concrete John]

But we could have sent the first team, had Ash pick up an injury that ruled him out for 6 months, still not won and seen the season go to pot anyway.  It's almost like a 'sliding doors scenario' where everyone is presuming that things would have been better had we gone to other way. 

This one's been done to death so I'll leave it there.

[eastie]

But we could have sent the first team, had Ash pick up an injury that ruled him out for 6 months, still not won and seen the season go to pot anyway.  It's almost like a 'sliding doors scenario' where everyone is presuming that things would have been better had we gone to other way. 

This one's been done to death so I'll leave it there.

Yes and we could have sent our 1st team, won and continued the momentum and gone on to have a great season- it's no use saying what if ash had picked up an injury ruling him out 6 months, he could have got injured in training or in any match - that's no excuse .

O Neill took that gamble and it went disasterously wrong from there, the feel good factor went and  he lost a lot of fans belief in him .

[Rudy Can't Fail]

At first I liked MO'N but after a while I grew tired of him buying older, overrated and overpaid players, instead of young up and coming players who were keen to impress (see Lowton, Westwood, Benteke etc).
I think it ended for him and the fans after the Moscow debacle. I felt for those who paid good hard earned money to go over there to see the reserves play, because we had a game coming up against Stoke!!!!!! 

If memory serves, we only managed to win 2 of our remaining 12 games that season.

[PaulTheVillan]

At first I liked MO'N but after a while I grew tired of him buying older, overrated and overpaid players, instead of young up and coming players who were keen to impress (see Lowton, Westwood, Benteke etc).
I think it ended for him and the fans after the Moscow debacle. I felt for those who paid good hard earned money to go over there to see the reserves play, because we had a game coming up against Stoke!!!!!! 

If memory serves, we only managed to win 2 of our remaining 12 games that season.

I trusted that MON knew what he was doing. 2-0 up at home to Stoke I was happy. Later that day I was devestated.

I was just as happy when he went as when he arrived. Almost perfect timing for both

[Percy McCarthy]

I wasn't that bothered when he went. I thought a competent replacement would do well. In my mind he was inheriting a good first team and some squad players who would be straining at the leash to prove their worth at last. He would address all the issues that we had been debating seemingly forever - specialised full-backs, rotation, passing football etc, we had the players didn't we?

Instead we got Houllier, who couldn't get the best out of Gabby and Ireland, played Young out of position, already had his mind made up about Carew, and alienated Dunne and Collins. Friedel and Petrov, being the brilliant pros they are, carried on as normal, and he got some decent performances out of Heskey.

A good manager would have massaged the egos of all the wankers and players he didn't rate until such time as they were comfortable in the table or he could actually do something about shipping them out and replacing them.

Then we followed that clown with T-fucking-S-fucking-M. Unbelievable.

[eastie]

I wasn't that bothered when he went. I thought a competent replacement would do well. In my mind he was inheriting a good first team and some squad players who would be straining at the leash to prove their worth at last. He would address all the issues that we had been debating seemingly forever - specialised full-backs, rotation, passing football etc, we had the players didn't we?

Instead we got Houllier, who couldn't get the best out of Gabby and Ireland, played Young out of position, already had his mind made up about Carew, and alienated Dunne and Collins. Friedel and Petrov, being the brilliant pros they are, carried on as normal, and he got some decent performances out of Heskey.

A good manager would have massaged the egos of all the wankers and players he didn't rate until such time as they were comfortable in the table or he could actually do something about shipping them out and replacing them.

Then we followed that clown with T-fucking-S-fucking-M. Unbelievable.

I agree Percy, when mon left I thought we would kick on under a better manager and attract a decent manager maybe from Europe, I certainly hoped for a much better appointment than houllier and the 2 years that followed were a huge shock to the system under both houllier and the ginger one.

[peter w]

We should have ignored Moscow and concentrated on seizing the crucial oilfields in the Caucasus.

Once we had possession of Maikop and Grozny, Stalin would have sued for peace and we could probably have forced him to cede the Ukraine.

yeah, but we'd have only fecked it up in the semis and had to hand it all back.