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

[cheltenhamlion]

Hi Kingshirker

Here is my take on things if you wanted to share it with your fellow fans.

After the recent comments about “rewriting history” then I think it only appropriate to detail what I believe that history to be. When we appointed MON he was very much the right man, at the right time.

We had just parted company with one of the most unpopular managers we have ever had. A walking gaffe, who belittled the club to bolster his own ego about why it wasn’t his fault that we were underachieving and a man who had managed to turn a squad of decent players into racing certainties for relegation the following season. The atmosphere at the club had been poisonous for some time.

In no small part that was also down to our desperately unpopular chairman. A man who tried to expunge our greatest triumphs from the annals of our history as he was still sulking about being kicked off the board just before we achieved them. A man that many fans believed had held us back for years and you would hear plenty of arguments about him lining his own pockets, as well as feeding his own ego, being the only reasons he maintained his position. 

So our summer just kept getting better. The pantomime villain chairman agreed to flog the club to an American billionaire and we started to dream of Man City style spending before anyone had heard of Man City style spending. We just needed a figurehead manager to make us relevant again on the back of it. Enter, stage left, MON.

He was well regarded in the game and had been successful at his previous clubs. He was charismatic, he bounced up and down the touchline in a tracksuit and, most importantly of all, he seemed to get us. He walked into the club on a tide of goodwill and into the best working conditions of any Villa manager in living memory.

The first couple of years were fantastic. He had started to put his own team together in that first season and had a real splurge in the transfer market across the course of the second. We finished sixth, scoring a bucket load of goals (mainly from set pieces) and achieved an Intertoto place to give us a shot at European football the next year. Even that year though, although none us were prepared to bemoan it at the time, the first question marks were starting to rear their heads.

At the start of that season we looked short up front and were all speculating as to who the big money, foreign buy might be. A real “bums on seat” player was what we were expecting. Instead we got Marlon Harewood after hijacking a deal at the eleventh hour for his transfer to Wigan. We never did sign any exciting players from the continent in his entire time with us and he was regularly infuriating with his procrastinating over signing players until the last possible moment.

He also got rather lucky. For the first two and a half years of his time with us we could call upon a fit and firing Martin Laursen. A colossal defender, arguably the best in the league over that period, and who was good for a few goals each year as well. It should be noted though that Laursen is a player we would never have signed had it been down to MON. A Dane playing his trade in Italy? Not a chance. What we would have signed was the kind of player we got at the end of the summer deadline that year when he decided that Zat Knight was a better fit for the squad than Gary Cahill.

The third season saw yet more heavy expenditure although, again, none of this went on a striker. By Christmas, our fantastic away form had us looking like outsiders to challenge for the title. We maintained this right until the end of February in fact. This was based on fast counter attacking football.

And then it started to fall apart. Many fans were upset about us throwing our last 32 game in The Uefa Cup against Moscow to chase Champions League football. That we then threw away a two goal lead in the league game against Stoke that weekend only made that irritation worse. Luke Young complained about why we started the season In July if we were to chuck in the towel at the business end of the competition and was quickly ostracised from the first team It then got worse again.

He had rigidly stuck with the same first eleven throughout that season to the point they were out on their feet as March began. We managed to win just two of our last 12 games, falling away from being 8 points clear of fourth placed Arsenal to another sixth place in the league. 

In part this was also blamed on his one January capture. Carew was out injured for a period and we needed more goals to capitalise on our fine start. Instead we signed Heskey from Wigan and, to make matters worse, changed our style of play to accommodate the tumbling bear making us a much less potent attacking force. Lest we forget that this was the same window that Sunderland signed Bent from Spurs for not a great deal more by way of fee and a lesser salary.

The first rumblings of discontent had now begun amongst the support. The odd signings, our lack of any Plan B to break down teams that didn’t give us a chance to counter by parking the bus when we were at home and the feeling that we had let our one big chance of Champions League football pass us by. It was that January that Man City wont the lottery and signed Robinho for example.

Perhaps a more football savvy and ruthless board would have chopped him at the end of that year. They may have taken a view that our end of season collapse was unacceptable for a club that had invested as heavily as we had and that the manager should have made better use of the expensive resources, that he had signed, that were at his disposal. However, we didn’t have football men on the board and MON ran the club from top to bottom. Perhaps with that in mind it was understandable that they gave him yet more money and another tilt at it when we had come so close the year before.

The problem was that nothing had changed. The concerns that some had were never addressed. It was the same tired training methods (Walford and Robertson’s grasp of modern coaching techniques leading to them being known as Bibs and Cones by the players). We were still fishing only in the vastly overpriced UK market for players. We signed yet another back four. The style of play did not alter. His stubborn streak was to the fore at this time and he flatly refused to accept a need for change or any criticism of himself.

An example that springs to mind was a home game where we were behind against relegation strugglers and still plodding on with Plan A. The fans got restless and were heartened to finally see Delfouneso start to prepare to come on, suggesting that we were going to change things up front. It was greeted with ironic cheers. The response from the manager was to sit the player down and bring on a midfielder instead. Again, there was plenty of debate here as to whether this was done to prove a point to the fans that were questioning him.

Now some may argue that at the end of that season some Villa fans were way off beam to be questioning the manager openly. We finished sixth again. Got to a cup final and a semi. But, as plenty of us saw it, he had hit his glass ceiling. This was as good as it was ever going to get no matter how much money we let him throw at it.

We made the same substitutions, at the same time every week (Heskey time as it was known). He still wasn’t rotating the players as he had suggested himself he needed to in both previous summers. A lot of expensive squad players he had signed were kicking their heels in the stiffs and not getting a game. For the first time in his reign the board put a brake on expenditure and the fabled “sell to buy” policy began.

It wasn’t quite as it seemed though. What he had actually been told was to shift a bunch of squad players on that weren’t getting near a game. That the Famous Five he mooted in the local paper were pulling down nigh on £300,000 a week in scratch between them made this seem a pretty sensible thing for the board to do. MON’s problem was that these players were on salaries not commensurate with their talent and therefore it proved very difficult to drum up any interest in them.

He clung on until August in the desperate hope that he could get the owner to open the coffers again to bring further new blood in but this time Lerner remained resolute. I could do a whole piece about the why’s and wherefore’s of his departure. The players he wanted, the political wrangling behind the scenes, the Liverpool job etc. I don’t think that is for here though. It won’t interest you. And I know how litigious he can be.

What we can say without question is that he bailed out on us five days before the start of the season. It left us with no time to find a replacement. No time for that replacement to work with the squad. No time for him to make his own signings. It has been debated to death on here as to whether this was a calculated act of spite, designed to cause maximum damage to our season or whether this was, in fact, simply when he realised he was not going to get what he wanted and walked as he did not believe he could therefore do the job justice.

I suppose in summary it depends what you want as to how long you stick with him. Are you ever going to play free flowing, passing football? No you aren’t. With a couple more years, and plenty more money, you might find yourselves as regular mid table finishers who play decent, counter attacking stuff away from home but that is as far as he will take you . And what price do you put on those mid table finishes?

Where you have a real issue is that he doesn’t seem the same bloke that was our manager. He made up for a lot of his tactical naivety with his ability to motivate players. He did very well last season but looked a pale shadow of the guy who breezed  into Villa Park a few years ago. If he has lost his mojo for the job then you lose a lot of the good things he brings to the party.

I hope it works out alright for you as I happen to think Sunderland are a decent club and, for all the things I take issue with over his time managing us, it is certainly not a case of it being all bad in his time here. Far from it. Just don’t expect him to go beyond his limitations and, whatever you do, keep a tight grip on your wallet.
 

[astonvillan]

Sunderland also give away thousands of tickets to local schools most matches, too, I have heard.

They were also doing plenty of tickets for a tenner, too. I know Newcastle fans enjoyed that fact after having the Mackems taking the mick out of them recently for reducing ticket prices at St James' to £15.

And on that point, Albion fans were charged £15 for their game at Newcastle. We were charged £26. And I imagine they charged Man United fans £40+. Hardly fair.

Seems unfair charging different prices for away fans , I suppose they are not infringing trading standards but I think away fans should all pay the same in fairness.

I agree with you eastie. Villa are the same in that our top price is what we charge away fans. And with there being a number of different categories, you'll have Wigan fans being charged £37 at Villa Park (still a ridiculous price) whereas Man United fans on Saturday will have to pay £45 for the same seats. Are Manchester United fans more wealthy than Wigan supporters?!

Our ticket prices do not vary as much as some, though. Southampton & West Brom's tickets at Arsenal were (or in the case of Albion 'are') £25.50. We paid £35 there last season for an FA Cup game and, get this, they're charging Spurs fans £62! £62!!

[eastie]

Hi Kingshirker

Here is my take on things if you wanted to share it with your fellow fans.

After the recent comments about “rewriting history” then I think it only appropriate to detail what I believe that history to be. When we appointed MON he was very much the right man, at the right time.

We had just parted company with one of the most unpopular managers we have ever had. A walking gaffe, who belittled the club to bolster his own ego about why it wasn’t his fault that we were underachieving and a man who had managed to turn a squad of decent players into racing certainties for relegation the following season. The atmosphere at the club had been poisonous for some time.

In no small part that was also down to our desperately unpopular chairman. A man who tried to expunge our greatest triumphs from the annals of our history as he was still sulking about being kicked off the board just before we achieved them. A man that many fans believed had held us back for years and you would hear plenty of arguments about him lining his own pockets, as well as feeding his own ego, being the only reasons he maintained his position. 

So our summer just kept getting better. The pantomime villain chairman agreed to flog the club to an American billionaire and we started to dream of Man City style spending before anyone had heard of Man City style spending. We just needed a figurehead manager to make us relevant again on the back of it. Enter, stage left, MON.

He was well regarded in the game and had been successful at his previous clubs. He was charismatic, he bounced up and down the touchline in a tracksuit and, most importantly of all, he seemed to get us. He walked into the club on a tide of goodwill and into the best working conditions of any Villa manager in living memory.

The first couple of years were fantastic. He had started to put his own team together in that first season and had a real splurge in the transfer market across the course of the second. We finished sixth, scoring a bucket load of goals (mainly from set pieces) and achieved an Intertoto place to give us a shot at European football the next year. Even that year though, although none us were prepared to bemoan it at the time, the first question marks were starting to rear their heads.

At the start of that season we looked short up front and were all speculating as to who the big money, foreign buy might be. A real “bums on seat” player was what we were expecting. Instead we got Marlon Harewood after hijacking a deal at the eleventh hour for his transfer to Wigan. We never did sign any exciting players from the continent in his entire time with us and he was regularly infuriating with his procrastinating over signing players until the last possible moment.

He also got rather lucky. For the first two and a half years of his time with us we could call upon a fit and firing Martin Laursen. A colossal defender, arguably the best in the league over that period, and who was good for a few goals each year as well. It should be noted though that Laursen is a player we would never have signed had it been down to MON. A Dane playing his trade in Italy? Not a chance. What we would have signed was the kind of player we got at the end of the summer deadline that year when he decided that Zat Knight was a better fit for the squad than Gary Cahill.

The third season saw yet more heavy expenditure although, again, none of this went on a striker. By Christmas, our fantastic away form had us looking like outsiders to challenge for the title. We maintained this right until the end of February in fact. This was based on fast counter attacking football.

And then it started to fall apart. Many fans were upset about us throwing our last 32 game in The Uefa Cup against Moscow to chase Champions League football. That we then threw away a two goal lead in the league game against Stoke that weekend only made that irritation worse. Luke Young complained about why we started the season In July if we were to chuck in the towel at the business end of the competition and was quickly ostracised from the first team It then got worse again.

He had rigidly stuck with the same first eleven throughout that season to the point they were out on their feet as March began. We managed to win just two of our last 12 games, falling away from being 8 points clear of fourth placed Arsenal to another sixth place in the league. 

In part this was also blamed on his one January capture. Carew was out injured for a period and we needed more goals to capitalise on our fine start. Instead we signed Heskey from Wigan and, to make matters worse, changed our style of play to accommodate the tumbling bear making us a much less potent attacking force. Lest we forget that this was the same window that Sunderland signed Bent from Spurs for not a great deal more by way of fee and a lesser salary.

The first rumblings of discontent had now begun amongst the support. The odd signings, our lack of any Plan B to break down teams that didn’t give us a chance to counter by parking the bus when we were at home and the feeling that we had let our one big chance of Champions League football pass us by. It was that January that Man City wont the lottery and signed Robinho for example.

Perhaps a more football savvy and ruthless board would have chopped him at the end of that year. They may have taken a view that our end of season collapse was unacceptable for a club that had invested as heavily as we had and that the manager should have made better use of the expensive resources, that he had signed, that were at his disposal. However, we didn’t have football men on the board and MON ran the club from top to bottom. Perhaps with that in mind it was understandable that they gave him yet more money and another tilt at it when we had come so close the year before.

The problem was that nothing had changed. The concerns that some had were never addressed. It was the same tired training methods (Walford and Robertson’s grasp of modern coaching techniques leading to them being known as Bibs and Cones by the players). We were still fishing only in the vastly overpriced UK market for players. We signed yet another back four. The style of play did not alter. His stubborn streak was to the fore at this time and he flatly refused to accept a need for change or any criticism of himself.

An example that springs to mind was a home game where we were behind against relegation strugglers and still plodding on with Plan A. The fans got restless and were heartened to finally see Delfouneso start to prepare to come on, suggesting that we were going to change things up front. It was greeted with ironic cheers. The response from the manager was to sit the player down and bring on a midfielder instead. Again, there was plenty of debate here as to whether this was done to prove a point to the fans that were questioning him.

Now some may argue that at the end of that season some Villa fans were way off beam to be questioning the manager openly. We finished sixth again. Got to a cup final and a semi. But, as plenty of us saw it, he had hit his glass ceiling. This was as good as it was ever going to get no matter how much money we let him throw at it.

We made the same substitutions, at the same time every week (Heskey time as it was known). He still wasn’t rotating the players as he had suggested himself he needed to in both previous summers. A lot of expensive squad players he had signed were kicking their heels in the stiffs and not getting a game. For the first time in his reign the board put a brake on expenditure and the fabled “sell to buy” policy began.

It wasn’t quite as it seemed though. What he had actually been told was to shift a bunch of squad players on that weren’t getting near a game. That the Famous Five he mooted in the local paper were pulling down nigh on £300,000 a week in scratch between them made this seem a pretty sensible thing for the board to do. MON’s problem was that these players were on salaries not commensurate with their talent and therefore it proved very difficult to drum up any interest in them.

He clung on until August in the desperate hope that he could get the owner to open the coffers again to bring further new blood in but this time Lerner remained resolute. I could do a whole piece about the why’s and wherefore’s of his departure. The players he wanted, the political wrangling behind the scenes, the Liverpool job etc. I don’t think that is for here though. It won’t interest you. And I know how litigious he can be.

What we can say without question is that he bailed out on us five days before the start of the season. It left us with no time to find a replacement. No time for that replacement to work with the squad. No time for him to make his own signings. It has been debated to death on here as to whether this was a calculated act of spite, designed to cause maximum damage to our season or whether this was, in fact, simply when he realised he was not going to get what he wanted and walked as he did not believe he could therefore do the job justice.

I suppose in summary it depends what you want as to how long you stick with him. Are you ever going to play free flowing, passing football? No you aren’t. With a couple more years, and plenty more money, you might find yourselves as regular mid table finishers who play decent, counter attacking stuff away from home but that is as far as he will take you . And what price do you put on those mid table finishes?

Where you have a real issue is that he doesn’t seem the same bloke that was our manager. He made up for a lot of his tactical naivety with his ability to motivate players. He did very well last season but looked a pale shadow of the guy who breezed  into Villa Park a few years ago. If he has lost his mojo for the job then you lose a lot of the good things he brings to the party.

I hope it works out alright for you as I happen to think Sunderland are a decent club and, for all the things I take issue with over his time managing us, it is certainly not a case of it being all bad in his time here. Far from it. Just don’t expect him to go beyond his limitations and, whatever you do, keep a tight grip on your wallet.
 

A really excellent post - very long but well worth reading.

[davisa]

Great post above. However going back to what was said about the unimaginative signings by MON i could not agree more. Heskey Sidwell Reo-Joker Shorey Downing etc were all such obvious signing at the time, playing well for their previous clubs and all saw the Money at villa and very much underperformed.  The best bits of business done were the Carew swap deal, Ashley Young, Chris Sutton (he was what we needed in that transitional period), Brad Friedal and Jimmy Milner.  Others like Warnock and Dunne were quick fixes who made an instant impact only to show their endless cracks as time went by.

[villajk]

What Eastie posted.  Well said, Chelts.

[Legion]

Submit that to Dave for the next H&V, CL. Sums it up perfectly.

[Mike Jeffries]

Nicely put Chelts, I think that's a fair summary.

[frank]

An excellent assessment, cheltenhamlion

[cheltenhamlion]

Did someone just say something about Dicky Dunne's endless crack?

[aevillain]

Good post Cheltenham lion but get some bloody work done tomorrow, that must of taken you all day to write.

[cheltenhamlion]

Less than an hour and I took lunch towards when I was supposed to be leaving for the day!

Dave - If you want top open up old wounds and use that for the Chrimbo edition you are welcome.

Perhaps as an open letter to their fans if so.

[London Villan]

Can you reply with that to the emails mon sent to the sland fans?!

Great post.

[hilts_coolerking]

Excellent post CL.  A heart-breaking read in some ways, particularly when you consider how close we were, but the bottom line is that O'Neill's idiosyncrasies were simultaneously the reason why we did so well and the reason why we were never going to do any better.

[Irish villain]

Less than an hour and I took lunch towards when I was supposed to be leaving for the day!

Dave - If you want top open up old wounds and use that for the Chrimbo edition you are welcome.

Perhaps as an open letter to their fans if so.

Take a bow son, top quality stuff. It actually is the first time since MON left that I have had a vivid memory of what it was like when he was our manager and how bloody frustrating it was every time we reached a crossroads and he chose the wrong bloody turn.

[Ian.]

Fantastic post Chelts.