Friday fun: Who winds you up the most?

[1_Pablo_Angel]

David O'Leary, the former Arsenal defender who went on to enjoy success as a manager with Leeds United and Aston Villa, has revealed that Inter boss Jose Mourinho is a significant ally in his search for a return to management.

O'Leary has stated that he is keen to make a return to top-level management as soon as possible, and Mourinho might be only to happy to provide him with a reference.

"I’ve had requests to go back into football and it’s not me bigging myself up or thinking I deserve a bigger job but I just felt that the jobs weren’t right in any way," the Irishman explained to The Daily Mail.

"I’ve had lots of offers mainly from abroad and I think that can only come from people remembering Leeds in the Champions League.
"Some with loads and loads of dollars. Jose Mourinho was very good and recommended me for a really big job but I just felt I couldn’t live where it was with the family really. That was about six or seven months ago.

"We’re not friends but Jose has always kind of rated me if you know what I mean. He was asked a question to recommend somebody for something or put them up and I was very grateful that he did it.

"When I thanked him he said, 'David, I wasn’t doing you a favour even though I like you, it’s because I rate you' and that’s his attitude.
‘I saw [Fabio] Capello at the soccer writers’ function the other week and he came down from the top table and said 'when are you bloody getting back in the game'?

"It was nice getting that from Capello. A lot of them know that you’re too good to be out of it. That’s not me trying to big myself up. People in the game know how difficult Doug Ellis and Aston Villa was."

O'Leary also feels that his record at Aston Villa stands up against that of his successor Martin O'Neill, especially with regard to the funds which were available to him to spend in the transfer market.

"I came in thinking Doug Ellis would go and I’d be the lucky one that Martin O’Neill is now," he added.

"I gave honest opinions at the end of that year [2005-06] saying we need investment here. I was hoping I would be the one that was there when Randy Lerner came in.
"I read people now and they like Martin. He’s media savvy and he’s saying he’s dealing with a young, small squad. Yet, when I said that it was 'Oh, he’s making excuses'. I said the club needed investment to keep it alive. Why did Martin need £50 million this summer?
"At the end of the day, Martin, for all the money he has spent over three years - and they’re raving about him - hasn’t finished any higher than what I finished. Those are the facts."

Love this interview. Hilarious.

Mcleish is a poor manager but I don't hate him as a person. MON could be a vindictive, spiteful shit but he gave us some bloody good moments. Houllier is and was a frail old man.

Sugarbags is the only one who I actually think is a genuine arsehole.

[andrew08]

I feel vaguely sorry for TSM. Clearly out of his depth and not backed financially, he always spoke well about the club and came across as a good caring guy during the start of Stan's battle. Crap football manager though.

MON. Showed his class the way he left. In the world where we all live it was the equivelant of telling your boss to 'shove your job up your arse' on pay day when your money is in the bank.He did it to 40,000 of us, so whatever he does after or wherever he goes I'll wish him ill. Pity it's Sunderland because they're ok.

For the FA Cup final of 2000 though JG rates almost as high.

[Chipsticks]

I feel vaguely sorry for TSM. Clearly out of his depth and not backed financially

Being as he spent 9.5 Million on N'zgobia, and then brought in more players such as Hutton and Given, I think it's quite hard to say that he wasn't backed financially. 

[ktvillan]

I'd taken an intense dislike to O'Neill long before he shat on us, with his dull out of date football, his arrogance and stubborness, his control freakishness and his blinkered and wasteful transfer dealings.  He did have one redeeming feature in that he got results - not enough to break top four but better than most managers could achieve.  Houllier was a PR twat, but had the redeeming feature of actually trying to get us to play football and was, I believe, taking us in the right direction.  O'Leary was a gobshite who would get his excuses in early and blame everyone and everything but himself for failings, but even he had us playing some decent stuff at times despite very little money to play with. He also made some decent signings - Laursen, Delaney, Bouma.  I can't think of any redeeming features for TSM except some felt he was a decent chap.  And I've never felt so embarrassed and humiliated as a Villa fan as that night at Spurs when he sent out a team with Hutton and Heskey in midfield and made zero attempt to even make a game of it.  And he did similar at home against Man Yoo. He was an absolute disgrace, and as others have said, it defies belief that anyone ever considered him a suitable manager for Villa.   

[PeterWithesShin]

Gregory signed Delaney.

[Witton Warrior]

A.

And always A.

Yes, Oh yes

[Archbishop Herbert Cockthrottle]

Its Lambert for me; couldn't wait to jump ship from Colchester to Norwich and then on to the Villa once the big boys came a-calling. Whilst he managed to get a few names in early doors (something that O'Neill seemed averse to), those signings never made it and his football for all his words, turned out to be no better than the previous Scot.
Should've realised what he was like when he shipped off James Collins to West Ham, although I suppose even the most insightful of us wouldn't have guessed what a world class player he would turn out to be.

"What do you mean, its 2012?"
"But, they are not supposed to find out about this. Or the Dave Whelan takeover. Let alone the ground renaming ceremony and the Doug Ellis statue."
"Thank God we realised in time. This information could rip a gaping hole in the fabric of the space/time continuum."
"Ha ha ha. Phew."
"I'd better delete it."
"How do you do that?"
"Press 'post' I think"
"OK"

[Axl Rose]

Has to be Mcleish. He provided the least good memories for me, football-wise.

[not3bad]

For the FA Cup final of 2000 though JG rates almost as high.

I did wonder where JG was on the list.  Somebody mentioned how crap the football got under DOL.  Never got as bad as it was under Gregory.

[PeterWithesShin]

For the FA Cup final of 2000 though JG rates almost as high.

I did wonder where JG was on the list.  Somebody mentioned how crap the football got under DOL.  Never got as bad as it was under Gregory.

For some reason the shit football under Gregory gets ignored a lot.

[TheSandman]

I'm surprised that O'Leary has got so many votes and Pubehead so few, but then I also voted for O'Leary. I really hate the pugfaced clunge. For me, he's very closely followed by McLeish, a man so shockingly inept at football management I wouldn't wish him on the club of my worst enemy. Pubehead is somewhat distant in third. I still hate him for reasons that have been gone in to many times before by many people on here but he was not as toxic to the club as the other two. Houllier doesn't even chart on the axis of hate. Sure, he did things that annoyed me greatly but the damage done by him is far less than the other three.

[ExclDawg]

I voted for TSM, but sitting here thinking about it, I'm almost thinking it should be MON.

DOL sort of pre-dates me so I haven't really experienced his smugness firsthand.  Houllier made moves that would leave you scratching your head, and was somewhat of a Liverpool fan trapped in a Villa managers body ... yet he never had a summer window to do anything, and it still felt like he might be able to make something with the club.  He was just cut to soon to really make a judgement on him.

TSM, was just terrible.  Killed the atmosphere and ambition of Villa, and you just felt we were a relegation waiting to happen.  I almost get the feeling that Lerner hired him because he KNEW he needed a season to cut expenses and let some crappy contracts expire, so he went with the one guy that everyone would hate from the start and the venom would go in TSM's direction.

Which leads me to MON ... he's pretty much the reason that GH and TSM are on the list to begin with.  Sure he took the club places and got results, but he also had 3+ times the warchest the others got.  While he was able to bring in a few good players like Young ... he also pissed a lot of it away on guys that made huge wages to just sit on the bench.  Plus there was the "play guys out of position", "squad? what squad?" and "wait till the last second of the window to make moves" that would always grind people's gears.  So while GH and TSM were bad ... a lot of it was because they were stuck with the albatross contracts that MON handed out before he bailed on the team with a week before the season started.

[Meanwood Villa]

O'Leary all the way. That article name-dropping Mourinho and Capello sums him up, absolute c***. Perhaps 05/06 was worth going through to ruin his career as it appears to have done.

[Mister E]

* TSM was simply "The Man out of his Depth." Appointed for why exactly?
* GHou was the Man who could have rung the Changes until the Board realised what the cost might be.
* MON: spiteful and vindictive, for the manner of his departure; showed a gross lack of respect to the fans ...


... but not as much lack of respect as O'Dreary; who wins the "Isaac Hunt Award".

[The Laughing Policeman]

O'Leary because the arrogant twat thought he was bigger than our great club.
Mon a close second not only for the way he walked out, but for his inability to buy the right players at the right price and on the right wages.
TSM third, but on refection it was a bit like giving a JCB driver a place in the Maclaren F1 team.
Houllier, a man appointed about 10 years too late.