Poll: Are you going to give Alex McLeish a chance to prove himself?

[cdward]

No offence but i take the results of polls on here with a generous pinch of salt, when it comes to Villa supporters.
Regardless of what the majority of posters on here say, he will get stick from day one. Anyone who has been to Villa Park has sat within earshot of someone dishing out abuse to Villa players/managers/chairmen, as soon as the going gets tough. We may all on here want to give him a chance, but i think there are a lot of Villa fans that will not. Unless this manager achieves what no manager since the early 90's has done, i.e get us challenging for the title, I don't believe he will be given much time/chance to prove himself. Sad i know but true. Honestly can anyone ever see 40,000 Villa fans singing his name. I predict turbulent times ahead. He will be blamed for selling Young for starters, and then depending on the transfer window, he may not even get a chance of 8 games. The first defeat, and or first bad performance the fans will vent their frustration, (which a lot currently have against the board) at the manager.
I personally think it is a very disappointing and poor choice of manager, and would love to have to eat my words, but i just can't be positive about AM. Maybe this is the kind of appointment we need, as our expectation level is now so low, that anything positive is a bonus.
By the way i answered maybe.
Still support the Villa, but have lost faith and trust in the management to do the best for my club.

[Concrete John]

How could you use 8 games as a benchmark if those 8 games, or at least the majority of them, were all aginst the top sides?

It's hard to say until we see what each teams transfer dealings are, but as best you can I'd say:-
Fulham away - draw   
Blackburn home - win
Wolves home - win
Everton away - loss
Newcastle home - win
QPR   away - draw   
Wigan home - win
Man City away - loss

14 points from 8 sames is good form, but then we've got a relatively easy start!

[darren woolley]

I will back him 110% we must get behind him he just might turn out to be very good Villa manager who knows as long has he does his best for Villa that's the main thing I'm really looking forward to seeing which players he is going to bring in I can't wait until the pre-season games start everything will turn out good in the end. 

[Villa'Zawg]

...

It's measured 8 games of a PL football season that lasts 38, and you still have to throw in cup games which will influence peoples views. It's like saying you start a new job in a firm and within 2 months you need to know everyone, where everything is, who to ask when you have a problem, know your staff, get in the right staff, get rid of the bad staff, make sure everyone is happy and settled and pulling the right direction, and ensure that your business has gone in the direction that your supervisors and customers expect. It's completely unreasonable. Academic study or not. It doesn't work for football and it doesn't work in real life.

This started as a simple suggestion that 8 games (I should have said league games) might be the optimum amount of time for a honeymoon period and asking what yours is. You seem to be saying that their can't be a defined honeymoon period and there can't be a defined level of acceptable performance below which a manager should be sacked. I disagree with that and there is nothing unusual in other high-pressure, results orientated businesses for senior managers to be expected to get tangible results in a relatively short period of time.

[mozza]

If he changes the mindset of even 50% of the supporters who have been against his appointment
I reckon he ought to be awarded Premier Manager of Year -

Nothing against him personally even though he is associated with the other lot but can't say as I
have ever sat back and thought of him as a better than average manager -

It will be interesting who he brings with him and more importantly what happens to Sid & KMac along
with Academy coaching staff - I for one will be spitting feathers if those doing a good job with the youngsters
are shown the door -

Similarly how he deals with retaining current players, motivating some and possibly giving a chance to others
that were out of favour last season (Ireland & Warnock in particular) -

Having managed to refrain from punching holes in doors around the house I've also (whisper) decided to retain
my season ticket in the hope that it won't be a total disaster when our players kick off in a few weeks time-

Can't promise to give the guy much slack however, but would like to issue him a challenge ........make us hard to
beat and get the majority of our lads playing near their full potential on a consistent basis and I'm sure everything
will be hunkydory -

As others have said it's a win/win for Villa supporters like me ............if we play poorly and struggle to pick up points
there will be cries of 'told you so' aimed at Mr Lerner but positive football and decent results will maybe win a few
votes of support which clearly Big Eck is short of at this moment in time, although I note that several distinguished
names have leapt to his defence in the last 48 hours   

[paul_e]

What a stupid question. Anyone with any kind of common sense would give him a chance!

That's just it. It isn't a stupid question given some of the anger shown against him leading up today, and even today. It should be a stupid question, but some people will turn on him with the first defeat predicting impending doom as early as August or September. I hope I am wrong, and people will be patient.

I once read an academic paper that suggested the appropriate period for a PL manager's "honeymoon period" should be 8 games. If they didn't attain a certain level of performance after that you were as well to get rid.

How long are you going to give him?

Not sure what the number is, but much longer than 8 games VD. Whoever wrote that paper is an idiot. I don't believe in honeymoon periods, I believe in giving someone a chance to establish themselves in a position, and have to time to influence those around them as to their beliefs and principles. Be it in business or football. Sport by nature is far more volatile and I get that, and even more so today with everyone having instant opinions patience comes at a premium.

We will all gauge his progress differently, and maybe 8 games will give us a chance to see what the future might look like. But it can never tell us the full story, and especially at the start of a season in a new job. In fact, if 8 games was any gauge, David Moyes would have been sacked several times over at Everton. Maybe I'll just look at things in 1/2 season increments for now.

He wasn't an idiot, I wouldn't have paid it any attention if he was. He just an academic who produced a simple (simplistic?) model for determining when was the best time to sack a manager. If I remember correctly, the purpose of the model was to assess the point at which performance drops below the acceptable level for clubs with different ambitions and facilities.

I understand that 8 games seems low but the average tenure for a PL manager is (was?) less than 18 months (50 games??). It's not impossible that 8 games is the optimum amount of time for the honeymoon period where sacking shouldn't be considered at all.

The point about Moyes doesn't apply because you don't reset the honeymoon period every season, you use a weighted average of his results since he took over.

It's measured 8 games of a PL football season that lasts 38, and you still have to throw in cup games which will influence peoples views. It's like saying you start a new job in a firm and within 2 months you need to know everyone, where everything is, who to ask when you have a problem, know your staff, get in the right staff, get rid of the bad staff, make sure everyone is happy and settled and pulling the right direction, and ensure that your business has gone in the direction that your supervisors and customers expect. It's completely unreasonable. Academic study or not. It doesn't work for football and it doesn't work in real life.

The only problem with your analogy is that in most jobs you don't have 80-90% of your customer base not wanting you to get the job.  Add to that the fact that he's going to be earning more in a season that many people will earn in their lifetime and it's perfectly reasonable to expect him to be able to come in and do a good job from day one, 8 games takes us into october and is probably a fair point to reflect on his.  Less than 10 points will suggest a relegation battle above 15 suggests challenging the top 4.

In his favour is a very very nice run at the start of the season of 7 games that we should be looking to win most of, if he can get that right  the momentum may be enough to turn the fans in his favour and see us progress, if he fails there calls for his head will be ringing around the ground.  Look at the fixtures in december, there's not too many points around after swansea  in november until we play them again in January.

[Chris Smith]

McLeish is a desperately poor appointment.  That's not his fault, it's Lerner's.

I see no reason to expect McLeish to change his methods so it's almost certainly going to be dour, safety-first, attritional football which will bring mediocre results.  But again, you can't blame McLeish for that - it's what he does.

My beef is with Lerner for appointing McLeish, not McLeish himself.

Do you know for a fact that is how his teams in Scotland played? Or did he, perhaps, change his methods to suit the situation when he was managing a small club in England?

[villa-love]

Any news on whether KMac/Cowans/etc will be staying?

[olaftab]

I will support him  based on results.

[Toronto Villa]

...

It's measured 8 games of a PL football season that lasts 38, and you still have to throw in cup games which will influence peoples views. It's like saying you start a new job in a firm and within 2 months you need to know everyone, where everything is, who to ask when you have a problem, know your staff, get in the right staff, get rid of the bad staff, make sure everyone is happy and settled and pulling the right direction, and ensure that your business has gone in the direction that your supervisors and customers expect. It's completely unreasonable. Academic study or not. It doesn't work for football and it doesn't work in real life.

This started as a simple suggestion that 8 games (I should have said league games) might be the optimum amount of time for a honeymoon period and asking what yours is. You seem to be saying that their can't be a defined honeymoon period and there can't be a defined level of acceptable performance below which a manager should be sacked. I disagree with that and there is nothing unusual in other high-pressure, results orientated businesses for senior managers to be expected to get tangible results in a relatively short period of time.

I'm not trying to be argumentative VD. I just think 8 games, however you cut it is a really short period of time to judge anyone on anything. You can get an idea in terms of the direction being created, but nothing more than that. If it was 8 games into his second season then at least we have a body of work to go by. I think by Christmas we'll have a better picture because players/coaches will mostly have settled in to their new roles, and we should be able to see a playing style.

I don't entirely agree with the notion that he always plays one way, because just as GH found out early on, you have to have certain players to play a certain way. Maybe he worked with what he had based on the criteria set by their meddling board. His mandate at Villa will be to compete at the top end of the table. Hopefully his tactics, style of play, players he buys etc will reflect that in time.

[paul_e]

McLeish is a desperately poor appointment.  That's not his fault, it's Lerner's.

I see no reason to expect McLeish to change his methods so it's almost certainly going to be dour, safety-first, attritional football which will bring mediocre results.  But again, you can't blame McLeish for that - it's what he does.

My beef is with Lerner for appointing McLeish, not McLeish himself.

Do you know for a fact that is how his teams in Scotland played? Or did he, perhaps, change his methods to suit the situation when he was managing a small club in England?

The problem is Chris, the board have stated that he was employed due to his proven premier league record, the argument against is that his premier league record is far from proven.

That said, out of interest in his first full season at rangers they got over 100 goals.  After that they recorded 76 and 79 (and less the following year but he wasn't manager for the full season).  I guess the discussion therefore has to be whether 2 goals a game a good return in that league.

[MYSTERYMAN]

Cowans has a job for life going nowhere! .  Re AM aint happy but will back him now and no doubt about it must have knackers the size of spacehoppers .

As for Randy he has put 200 million in without taking anything out so he has my trust and backing 100 % despite my misgivings over AM appointment hope he goes on to prove me wrong .

[not3bad]

Cowans has a job for life going nowhere! .  Re AM aint happy but will back him now and no doubt about it must have knackers the size of spacehoppers .

Yes I think he has.  People say "oh he's going to be paid such and such and he'll have compensation if he gets fired" - but the same is true of many far cushier options he could have chosen, not to mention the massive blot this would put on his record if it does all go wrong.

[LeeB]

12 people so far are arseholes, and effectively wish our club ill.

Shame, shame, shame on you.

[Brend'Watkins]

Cowans has a job for life going nowhere! .  Re AM aint happy but will back him now and no doubt about it must have knackers the size of spacehoppers .

Yes I think he has.  People say "oh he's going to be paid such and such and he'll have compensation if he gets fired" - but the same is true of many far cushier options he could have chosen, not to mention the massive blot this would put on his record if it does all go wrong.

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