Gerard Houllier

[eric woolban woolban]

I wouldn't sack him and especially not for Allardyce, I could not face him managing Villa.

That's like cutting off your penis to spite your missus.

[eastie]

I think there is much good he can do for us but he looked stressed after today's game and um not not sure he is handling the pressure well- I certainly would not sack him but would be in favour of him as director of football overseeing the academy and scouting and a coach like martin jol taking over the 1st team.

[avfcpg]

Give him a transfer window. He's obviously trying to change things but he's got non-performing hoofers who've reverted to type. I'm sure someone like allardyce could come in and improve things quicker but then we're back to square one. If we'll still struggling near the bottom by mid-february then panic

Surely MON created a team that was efficient at what it did. Call them hoofers if you want but I'd easily settle for 6th and 2 Wembleys at the moment. To ask the same players to start playing a different game from day one was a gamble to say the least.

So when do you ask them to play a new way? He needs to find out who can and can't play the way he wants to play...he's finding out pretty quickly!! I wouldn't settle for 6th place and 2 wembley visits. We lost both visits and crashed out of Europe early. I would rather sacrifice that for the greater good, or even a chance of it.

Sacking him is just madness. Give the guy a chance. Let him clear out what he can, work with kids, get in what he can and then maybe judge him.

[dave.woodhall]

I think there is much good he can do for us but he looked stressed after today's game and um not not sure he is handling the pressure well- I certainly would not sack him but would be in favour of him as director of football overseeing the academy and scouting and a coach like martin jol taking over the 1st team.

But again, no top manager would want to work with someone else as DoF/general manager.

[Mac]

I say burn him as sacking isn't enough, and bring in Allardyce, Hughton, Holloway or Warnock.

Your post started badly and went downhill from there.

Please allow me then to throw in Phil Brown and Paul Jewell

When in a hole stop digging.

[Greg N'Ash]

Give him a transfer window. He's obviously trying to change things but he's got non-performing hoofers who've reverted to type. I'm sure someone like allardyce could come in and improve things quicker but then we're back to square one. If we'll still struggling near the bottom by mid-february then panic

Surely MON created a team that was efficient at what it did. Call them hoofers if you want but I'd easily settle for 6th and 2 Wembleys at the moment. To ask the same players to start playing a different game from day one was a gamble to say the least.

Depends if you want that long term. 6th until another club gets a rich owner then 7th, because thats all the likes of allardyce and MON get you. An efficient workmanlike team with probably the sniff of a league cup win if you meet a good team on a bad day. I'm not sure what the owners plans are to be honest, and whether they've been downsized recently but if we're destined to be forever best of the rest at least i hope we'll do it playing attractive football. Do we really want to give allardyce 20m knowing its just some tactical cul-de-sac? where the next manager will have to play similar to get anything out of the players he's bought, just like we know allardyce would restore the status quo and have us playing a version of MON'S game plan? No doubt we'd be up to 8th by May and barring the annual big sam capitulation to Man U we'd be safe but dull for the foreseable future.

[Tony]

I'm all for giving Houllier more time, however if we were to replace him, Owen Coyle might get miffed at Bolton's lack of backing.

[Woofles The Wonder Dog]

Rest of the season for me, as I don't think it fair to judge someone on a single January window. In fact he should have longer.

Mind you, I confess to some nervousness around the shapeless mess our Plan A is. Unless it's a very cunning one that I'm too Baldrick to spot.

[Toronto Villa]

I say burn him as sacking isn't enough, and bring in Allardyce, Hughton, Holloway or Warnock.

Your post started badly and went downhill from there.

Please allow me then to throw in Phil Brown and Paul Jewell

When in a hole stop digging.

ok, ok....Paul Ince then

[ClarrieBlue]

Give him a transfer window. He's obviously trying to change things but he's got non-performing hoofers who've reverted to type. I'm sure someone like allardyce could come in and improve things quicker but then we're back to square one. If we'll still struggling near the bottom by mid-february then panic

Surely MON created a team that was efficient at what it did. Call them hoofers if you want but I'd easily settle for 6th and 2 Wembleys at the moment. To ask the same players to start playing a different game from day one was a gamble to say the least.

So when do you ask them to play a new way? He needs to find out who can and can't play the way he wants to play...he's finding out pretty quickly!! I wouldn't settle for 6th place and 2 wembley visits. We lost both visits and crashed out of Europe early. I would rather sacrifice that for the greater good, or even a chance of it.

Sacking him is just madness. Give the guy a chance. Let him clear out what he can, work with kids, get in what he can and then maybe judge him.

I am not advocating the sack rather I am questioning the timing of the changes. I would suggest that it would have been best to get some new players around him who can play his way and then start implementing the changes. Until then stick with what we were good at. We seem to have thrown the baby out with the dishwater here. Evolution not revolution I think they call it. Certainly 6th etc looks better than a relegation fight to me. I get your point about the longer term good but it’s a big gamble that currently is not paying off. I am not a supporter of the view that a year in the Championship wouldn’t do us any harm as has been posted on this site before.

[Greg N'Ash]

you'd bet on allardyce keeping us up given our squad. more so than gerrard anyway. I'm holding me nerve though just because i don't want to go back to hoof! ball. Come february i reserve the right to suddenly abandon all my principals and embrace the hoof though

[ronshirt]

Depends if you want that long term. 6th until another club gets a rich owner then 7th, because thats all the likes of allardyce and MON get you. An efficient workmanlike team with probably the sniff of a league cup win if you meet a good team on a bad day. I'm not sure what the owners plans are to be honest, and whether they've been downsized recently but if we're destined to be forever best of the rest at least i hope we'll do it playing attractive football. Do we really want to give allardyce 20m knowing its just some tactical cul-de-sac? where the next manager will have to play similar to get anything out of the players he's bought, just like we know allardyce would restore the status quo and have us playing a version of MON'S game plan? No doubt we'd be up to 8th by May and barring the annual big sam capitulation to Man U we'd be safe but dull for the foreseable future.
[/quot

you'd bet on allardyce keeping us up given our squad. more so than gerrard anyway. I'm holding me nerve though just because i don't want to go back to hoof! ball. Come february i reserve the right to suddenly abandon all my principals and embrace the hoof though

I like it when you don't use upper case.

[Toronto Villa]

you'd bet on allardyce keeping us up given our squad. more so than gerrard anyway. I'm holding me nerve though just because i don't want to go back to hoof! ball. Come february i reserve the right to suddenly abandon all my principals and embrace the hoof though

It's a question of short term satisfaction versus something the great majority of us actually want in terms of a long term vision for the club. I'll take the shirt term struggle and long term vision over appointing any one of the complete muppets I mentioned in my previous posts.

[Shrek]

I'm confused here, have forgot what it was like under Oneil?

People say he got the best out of his players, we played 3 CB's, dross football and won fuck all.

He held back all of our academy players .

Houllier needs time, we were today done again by individual errors('first goal).
We missed Ash really bad and were shocking when we never had the ball.

This is a transitional season, we canno hide from this.

[TheSandman]

Give him more time. However, this time should be finite and affected by the depth of the hole he has began to dig.

I'm glad some of our fans are not running the club (note I said some, not all) as guys like Allardyce or Jol I'm not sure are the men to take us where we need to be (look at their records and compare with Ged). I also recall a few suggesting we employ Grant or Hughes upon MoN's departure and look at how they are doing this season with fewer injuries and having had transfer windows to work in. I'm not yet sure if Ged will be any better. I will give him the rest of the season to see what happens (or if it gets much worse earlier) before taking the nuclear option and bringing in an Allardyce to keep us up. As I said if Randy wants to reign in spending to a considerably smaller level and is content for us to bob along in midtable then I think he should bring in Big Sam and we should suck Big Sam's football up. However, I still think he nurtures a desire to build to a higher level and is willing to spend and in that kind of context I think Ged has more of a record (cf Liverpool and Lyon) in doing that. If we spend in January and allow Ged the chance to spend on his own players of his own liking he will keep us up and quite possibly start to build something.

I did say some time ago that things would get better before they get worse. Well despite the West Brom victory this has been largely been borne out and this will continue. However, I anticipate that towards February things will look up but not down.   

This post may have come out a little more positivist than I truly feel. I do have reservations and I'm pissed off about tonight's result so in truth I'm wavering a little bit more than I've made out.