Please Randy sack Houllier

[Eigentor]

its a good point about the best man you can. not the best man available. Signing Houllier was the equivalent of signing Pires... an over the hill waste of space.

I full expect randy to guide us to full mediocrity again after a season where are arse scrapes relegation..

Alright then. Who would you have appointed at the time?

well for starters i may have gone after people in a job with a proven record. oh and a bit quicker as well so we had a window to operate in...

Houllier was in a job and had a proven record.

[taylorsworkrate]

relegations a certainty,

Reading the posts on this thred you get the impression that we have been hopelessly stuck in the relegation zone for months now.

Nope, we just will be.  If we stick with the current manager.

[koreanmeatballs]

its a good point about the best man you can. not the best man available. Signing Houllier was the equivalent of signing Pires... an over the hill waste of space.

I full expect randy to guide us to full mediocrity again after a season where are arse scrapes relegation..

Alright then. Who would you have appointed at the time?

well for starters i may have gone after people in a job with a proven record. oh and a bit quicker as well so we had a window to operate in...

Houllier was in a job and had a proven record.

Houllier didn't really have a job he was behind a desk pushing paper.

The French haven't even appointed a successor yet so it was hardly vital work.

[SteveD]

The problem however in my eyes is players not doing the basic things they have the ability to do.

Precisely, and before Houllier goes through the club like a dose of salts, restructures it, reorganises the scouting system, clears the deadwood, gets us playing attractive football, brings a five-year plan or a 10-year vision to pass, he needs to get the players he has to do the very basics. That's his job and he's paid very well to do it. I'll happily let him get on with the rest when we're comfortably mid table but we are now a shambolic jelly of a team.

Basics for players? For some of them, that now means turning up on an afternoon; for the rest it's to care enough to compete and for Houllier, the very least we expect is for him to be putting on the pitch the semblance of an organised and motivated team. He's not doing that and his body language suggests he is struggling and out of his depth. I'm not a doom monger and I always look for positives after defeats and not knee-jerk solutions but you have to be an extreme optimist bordering on delusional not to smell the failure around the club at the moment and it's even harder to identify characters on and off the pitch to turn it around. I'd love us to beat Chelsea. And even if we lose 4-0, I wouldnn't want Houllier sacked on Monday, but if results - and too many performances - remain as they have been since he arrived, we are in extreme danger of going down. I see far more fight in those teams around us and below us. I'd say his postion, if we fail to pick up points against Sunderland and our nearest and dearest rivals will be untenable. 

[WA Villan]

The players are letting the fans down not so much the manager. Players who pick up their wages should be professional, and do their job. You cannot kiss the badge one day and ignore it the next,  because you disagree with something. They should keep their petty opinions to themselves because their letting us and the club down. Not the manager.

[supertom]

Hiddink before he goes back to Chelsea. One can dream. God there's shit all available right now isn't there? We're never gonna pay out to get a working manager.
What's that once promising Leeds manager up to these days? You know, the Irish guy, used to play for Arsenal?

Allardyce I'd half consider, but I'd only want him for the season, to kick a few arses, get a gameplan of somesort, and pull us clear of the mire. Long term it would be horrifically dull to watch us and we'd never approach the top 6. But, though nothing surprises in football, we're hardly gonna go hiring an established name only to replace him with better in the summer. Sadly.

[Legion]

I'll do it. I'm cheap and have a successful track record at U-11 level.

[frank]

I see far more fight in those teams around us and below us.

This is the most worrying aspect of the situation we're in. Compare our effort against Citeh with that of Blues v Man U and Wolves at Liverpool.

[supertom]

Obviously the players need to take the lions share of flak, well, certain senior players. However, why did they bust a gut for one guy, and appear to be half cocked for Houllier?

I'm all for giving time. I happily gave O Neill the benefit of doubt when he went on that winless run in his first season. It was never for the lack of effort, just a horrific dearth in quality, even more so than now. But he WAS the right appointment. Almost to a man we welcomed it, and it gives him the benefit of some slack.

Trouble for Houllier is, most of us were thoroughly underwhelmed at his appointment. Clearly it's not a match. Would you ever have thought of Gerard Houllier as a Villa kind of manager? I wouldn't, and don't.

I'm being pessimistic and negative, but I really don't envision him turning this around. He was rapidly declining at Liverpool before going to a fairly easy job at Lyon where everything was set in place and they were winning left, right and centre.  After that he'd pretty much retired.

I don't genuinely believe we'll go down. We're half way through on 20 points. Our second half we'll see us pick up more, so we'll probably survive with getting over 40 points. Finishing 17th would be just bloody rubbish though. I'd still like us to really give a good push for the top 8. It's not unreasonable. Under Houllier it probably is. But if we could have a season like 97-98 when we were looking fucked, until we changed manager, and we pulled off a pretty impressive finish by the end of the season.

[supertom]

I'll do it. I'm cheap and have a successful track record at U-11 level.

You've got my vote. Any chance of prising Carew away from Stringfellows and somehow inspiring him to put in some modicum of effort and come in and score a few goals. He's the only forward on our books, right now, who can make something out of nothing.

[Chris Jameson]

I think we're all missing the obvious. We have dozens of experts on this forum who try to show us every week what a piece of piss managing a football club is, we just hold a raffle and let one of them do the job.

That's what the board did and now we have 'Coopers Injury' making a mess of things. Funny how he no longer posts now Houllier is the boss, bet we sign Beckford in January and start running on to the pitch to some monstrosity from Ufucking2.

[MarkM]

Looking at the initial basis for this thread, it looks like a smoke screen to cover the shit situation we are in.

Mac, are you saying that GH is the best option for us?

His record since taking over is piss poor in anyones book. We can clutch the injury straw all we like it won't help if we go down

What you seem to be saying is this...

Be happy with who we have because we could have anyone of these instead! arent we lucky!

Whether GH is a fantastic manager is not the point, the point is he is not a fantastic manager at the Villa!

I feel like I am watching a potential train wreck in slow motion, we need to change the direction of the train before it is too late.

[This is where I make myself unpopular]
I'm not in the Randy is god camp, he has done some good things since he came in but then look who we are comparing him to!

Now is the time for him to lead the club, and if he gets us out of this mess and shows some leadership during this dark time then my respect for him will grow.

Are we in a mess: Yes
Can we get out of it: I hope so
Is GH the best man for the Villa: No
Should we replace him now: Yes

[darren woolley]

If results don't change then it will only be a matter of time, what i am worried about is the other teams around us are picking up points i think we should see were we are after the Small Heath game.  But what i don't want is us to get sucked into the relegation battle i wan't us to push on in 2011.

[brian green]

In my earlier small hours post I was wrong about Frankie Broome .   I was avery small boy when I saw him play and I have no reference books to use when writing on here.   However I could have added Derek Dougan and Bruce Rioch to my list.   Bruce would be added reluctantly because we got his brother Neil as part of the deal and he has been a magnificent Villa servant behind the scenes.

The numbers of goals scored by Trevor Ford or Jackie Sewell or Tommy Thompson or Billy Myerscough or Derek Dougan do not tell the story of a Villa constantly haunted by the spectre of relegation.   In the early years of my following Villa through the 40s and 50s I don't think I ever saw us out of the bottom third of the table for more than a week or two at a time.   I shall now have a post directed at me by somebody with a reference library of all things Villa that actually we were fourth for a month under Joe Mercer with Deakin and Tindall both winning England caps and Harry Stubbings scoring twenty goals before Christmas.   The yardstick we used to use to measure our survival chances against was Liverpool.   If we can only stay above those clogging bastards and hold our own against Stoke City we can survive - sounds familiar?

The point of my post was to highlight the sense of deja vu which surrounds our situation.   It was ever thus that the views of old men with long memories are dismissed by young men with short ones.   And for what it is worth we paid a record fee for Trevor Ford when he was bought and Jackie Sewell did very little to win the cup the last time we won it.   One man took that game by the scuff of the neck and won it for us and it was not Jackie Sewell.

[DrGonzo]

Look I'm ot of the opinion that we need to sack Houllier, whatever you lot think is up to you. If we do end up looking for a replacement though, what do you think about Simon Grayson?  Ex-player, manager of the month in his 1st full year in charge at Blackpool and got them promotion to the Championship...doing well at Leeds, a good attitude towards positive football...