Alex Mcleish - good or average start?

[john e]

6 nill against Newcastle is appalling, not an unbeaten start to the league

[Ads]

while we are unbeaten against some pretty uninspiring opponents, its been appalling on the football front and i dont see that changing anytime soon...

Appalling? You really, truely think we've been appalling?

I think he's talking out his arse.

[itbrvilla]

Too defensive at home. Spoke to the father in law this morning whose a nose and told him about the complaints on here and he laughed and said although they went down the general feeling they have is that it's a breath of fresh air the football they have been playing so far compared to the last few years and have even been enjoying chanting 4-4-2.

[Ads]

Too defensive at home. Spoke to the father in law this morning whose a nose and told him about the complaints on here and he laughed and said although they went down the general feeling they have is that it's a breath of fresh air the football they have been playing so far compared to the last few years and have even been enjoying chanting 4-4-2.

Oh aye, getting swatted by Boro in the Mickey Mouse league is just what they all want.

[Clark W Griswold]

Too early to judge, although he does at least seem to have a plan, unlike Houllier. Most outsiders who saw the tit heads protesting at the appointment with think he may be up against it due to those circumstances. In my eyes though it's the opposite, he will get less critisism from me than under normal circumstances because the board have decided to cull the squad in terms of quality and quantity, so i'm expecting very little at the moment. Therefore, if we do shit as i expect i would not necessarilly point the blame at him, unless we end up in the relegation zone, which would be underachieving even with what he has.

[Steve67]

We are a bit negative. I felt that McLeish reacted to Mick McCarthy's substitutions yesterday rather than go on and try to win the game.  Anyone who thinks Emile Heskey is capable of playing behind the main striker is a sandwich short of a picnic. 

That said, if he can bring in a couple of players in order to play square pegs in square holes then perhaps the formation will work a whole lot better. If we are not winning games, it's very important that we are not losing them either.  The start is very average.

[Ads]

I certainly believe there is an element of our support who appear eager for us to lose our first game so the real remonstrations against him can commence. There was an element of that pent up feeling yesterday around me.

[DrGonzo]

Slow and steady wins the race in this new world of fiscal prudence.

It doesn't though does it.  In the Premier League slow and steady wins you absolutely nothing.

Also, there isn't really a new world of fiscal prudence in the Premier League apart from the one at Villa Park.

And Everton I suppose.

It's the one at VP I was reffering to, hence why I posted that on H+V. 

[Chris Smith]

Losing your two best players would be a challenge for any manager so I think it's difficult under those circumstances to assess his impact as were having to find a new way of playing. The defence appears to be much more tighter which is probably a combination of his methods and the players rediscovering their form.

Ask me again at Christmas.

[Chris Smith]

6 nill against Newcastle is appalling, not an unbeaten start to the league

Or four nil at home to Man City after an hour.

[Irish villain]

I like McLeish. It's not his fault we are downsizing in every sense of the word. He was brave enough to come to us and accept a very tough job. Like Clark W there I will give McLeish a lot of leeway this year. My gripes are with the board.

Trimming is all well and good but you can't go from one extreme to the other. I would like to see them develop a sustainable platform with more realistic wages etc. Raising the guts of £40m in transfer fees by selling your best players and clearing out the deadwood should result in re-investment but it hasn't. When we sold Yorke we re-invested in a clever way. Likewise when we lost Southgate & Ehiogu. What's happening at the club is setting us back years. We have become a coping team that will be slotting players like Herd in at right back and Heskey in at central midfield and for that I don't blame the manager but rather the board.

[Ads]

6 nill against Newcastle is appalling, not an unbeaten start to the league

Or four nil at home to Man City after an hour.

Spurs are on their way to Oakwell...

[Toronto Villa]

Making the defence strong again will serve us really well this season. There were a lot of games last year, despite the problems off the pitch that would have been won had we just defended better. This will be a season of us becoming hard to beat again. The hope is as it progresses the attacking side of it begins to come together and we become a more solid outfit all round. This team needed some discipline and that had to be the first task for McLeish.

[dave.woodhall]

I might be wrong, but I can't remember any new manager apart from Gez coming in and not making getting the defence right his first priority.

[Toronto Villa]

I might be wrong, but I can't remember any new manager apart from Gez coming in and not making getting the defence right his first priority.

we needed to get back to that, and I'm glad we have. The test will be the transition game and how we find ways of creating chances for the forwards. One thing MON made us great at was playing on the break, and Ash was a massive piece of that. We'll need to resdiscover how to do that.