AVFC statement - McLeish sacked.

[Vanilla]

Have a horrid feeling that the club will try and make a celebration of the fact we won't get relegated at the end of the season, to try and draw fans into a warped feel good factor.

[Irish villain]

We'll stay up but it won't be comfortably.

I was worried this time last year but nothing like I am this season. What's particularly disturbing this year is the lack of a plan, any sense that a new broom is sweeping through the club and the fact that we are beginning to get injuries (while having a weaker squad than last season). It's not going to be a nice end to the season.

[Lee]

How can one hundred million buy such brittle and rotten foundations? The scale of collapse since O'Neill vindictively left the club is unreal. Not even an English middle order collapse is comparable. We're left hoping we stay up for a second year in a row. The monumental lack of thought in dithering last September and then appointing Houllier, spending five million to get rid, only to be followed up by spending Christ knows what on getting Mcliesh here, defies any sort of logic.

Couple that with the awful negative and fearful football that has produced just six wins, not one at home since November and it leads me to the conclusion that three owner, board and manager are an appalling disgrace.

We'll stay up and comfortably too, but nothing will change and the squad will get smaller and weaker until it becomes a real effort staying in the league.

With the exception of the last paragraph, which I am not so convinced on, my view exactly.

And mine too. I've lost total faith in the Gang of Four (minus Krulak). There was a thread a few weeks ago, bemoaning the tough Summer that we have upcoming. The last few weeks performances have have made this rise exponentially.

[pauliewalnuts]

Have a horrid feeling that the club will try and make a celebration of the fact we won't get relegated at the end of the season, to try and draw fans into a warped feel good factor.

Free commemorative scarves.

[Vanilla]

Have a horrid feeling that the club will try and make a celebration of the fact we won't get relegated at the end of the season, to try and draw fans into a warped feel good factor.

Free commemorative scarves.

They should start playing those funereal bells again.

[Irish villain]

Have a horrid feeling that the club will try and make a celebration of the fact we won't get relegated at the end of the season, to try and draw fans into a warped feel good factor.

Free commemorative scarves.

They wouldn't would they?

[tarzansbrother]

Ignoring another turgid draw against Backburn next week, I believe the Fulham home game will decide his fate. Can anyone confirm that by losing to Fulham will result in our poorest run of home results since 1927? If true what a truly terrible stat.

[Bad English]

Yes. Quelle garce ! Just started series 3 thanks to my, erm, alternative content supplier. Forgotten about the Villa game...

[Irish villain]

Ignoring another turgid draw against Backburn next week, I believe the Fulham home game will decide his fate. Can anyone confirm that by losing to Fulham will result in our poorest run of home results since 1927? If true what a truly terrible stat.

It's terrible enough as it is.

[Greg N'Ash]

Tell me who we would bring in at this point of the season? Remember when we changed our manager in the summer with many options available added to the ease of getting someone in the close season.

I would be sorely tempted to give Curbishley 18 months. Where we are at the moment he might be able to get some performances out of us and at least has a clue.

Alternatively, Zola and Willkins would be going back to more of the way Houllier wanted to play, without the dire constraints they had at West Ham.

Either are better than McLeish.

Most good managers in the Championship would take it like a shot too.

See this is what i don't get. Say we give the job to Curbishley (who to my mind hasn't a better record than Mcleish and far worse than GH), then come the summer he'll realise we need 5 or 6 players in the first team alone, let alone the squad, and he'll have no money. The only option will be to cash in on the likes of Bent, and once Lerner has taken his third or half of the proceeds, he'll have 15m max to get a new striker plus all the other players we need. Can't be done and as sure as night follows day, we'll be here this time next year discussing who to replace him with.

I mean is there some sort of unspoken assumption that a new guy will get money, because i think you're kidding youselves.

[Eigentor]

I'm starting to feel that AM is being portrayed as a worse manager than he actually is; Curbishley is just as limited and uninspirational as Big 'Eck.

In fact, McLeish isn't underperforming: he is doing about what we could expect looking at his record. Previously he has done pretty well under benign conditions (his penultimate season at Birmingham, eg), but also been rather shite and unable to stop the rot when things haven't been going his way (eg, his last season at Birmingham).

As being mentioned several times, the players, the fans are turning on him, and backed into a corner he reverts to type, his natural instinct which is to play for a scoreless draw (and as a bonus, hope that we, somehow, by a miracle, score). He is doing as we should expect under unfavourable conditions.

[Stu]

Keown thinks the villa fans need to lower their expectations: http://www.sundaymercury.net/midlands-sport/aston-villa-fc/aston-villa-fc-news/2012/02/26/martin-keown-says-aston-villa-fans-need-a-reality-check-66331-30407347/

He can mind his own business, the pug ugly gimp.

[Vanilla]

I'm starting to feel that AM is being portrayed as a worse manager than he actually is; Curbishley is just as limited and uninspirational as Big 'Eck.

I think out of those two, Villa fans would happily take neither. I wouldn't have minded if Villa had scoured Europe and targeted an up and coming manager rather than the one they did. At least Doug used to have a social network in football and always had someone lined up when a manager departed. It's obvious that the hierarchy at Villa now have no footballing network at all.

I still can't see why we didn't approach Mark Hughes.

[Greg N'Ash]

I'm starting to feel that AM is being portrayed as a worse manager than he actually is; Curbishley is just as limited and uninspirational as Big 'Eck.

I think out of those two, Villa fans would happily take neither. I wouldn't have minded if Villa had scoured Europe and targeted an up and coming manager rather than the one they did. At least Doug used to have a social network in football and always had someone lined up when a manager departed. It's obvious that the hierarchy at Villa now have no footballing network at all.

I still can't see why we didn't approach Mark Hughes.

no money? I can't imagine Hughes would have agreed to take the job with the brief AM was given

[Boz]

Cowans would be a manager by now if he ever had the ambition to be one. I love Sid but I don't think he's management material, and if he did get the job I think we'd be in an even bigger hole than we are now.
I'd stick with McLeish till the season ends. Can't see us being relegated. The bottom 4 teams are truly awful and it would take a miracle for two of them to overtake us.

Make that the bottom 5, we are truly awful at present with the McLeish way of playing.