McLeish:No Regrets

[PaulTheVillan]

Link

[Irish villain]

Somebody's looking for a new job.

[Gareth]

'McLeish:No Regrets' - a phrase I'm sure no Villa fan could ever use.  Obviously hawking himself around for a new job

[PaulMcGrathsNo5Shirt]

As a man I can't fault him. I just don't think he's a very good football manager.

[OzVilla]

Agreed, he's always carried himself with more dignity than most managers.  I like him as a bloke, just not as a Manager.

[supertom]

Not his fault really. He's just a poor manager. He was in way over head. Randy made the decision to hire a manager with two relegations under his CV. He's championship at best. I blame Randy on that front. We all knew what was coming. It wasn't a surprise to any of us we struggled so much and played dire football.
Add to the fact, as Eck ways, he lost experienced players and lost Stan and Bent in the tail end of the season. So what you're left with is a poor manager with one hand tied behind his back. That we didn't get relegated was pure luck.

Good luck to him. He's had his time in the top flight.

[dave.woodhall]

Of course, the great irony is that if Bent hadn't got injured we'd have very likely won two or three more games, finished 12th/13th and he'd have kept his job.

[KevinGage]

Even with Bent in the team we looked dismal as an attacking unit, so I wouldn't have banked on us winning more games. 

[*shellac*]

Agreed, he's always carried himself with more dignity than most managers.  I like him as a bloke, just not as our Manager.

[Concrete John]

He makes some decent points in that about the strength of the squad and seems quite respectful to us, so fair play on that.  But he once again comes out with the 'I played 4 attackers' line, which is missing the point that the tactics were such that none of them had either the licence or support to actually attack the opposition.

But as others have said, decent bloke who was on a hiding to nothing, so best of luck to him in his next job.

[Le Lapin]

He's a good guy, it just didn't happen for him at Villa. Negative tactics that the players didn't buy into and injuries cost him. Should never have been put in that position,
he wasn't ready or able to manage our club.
Randy or whoever advised Randy has to take the blame there. He'll be back and will do well at some stage.

[paul_e]

See the problem is there's still no admitting to his faults and he still plays the 'it was hard because of where I came from' card too much.  I understand he won't come out and say it was all his fault because that screws his chances of another job but the wording of that article makes him out to be far to much of a victim of events rather than a key element in them.

Teaching the team to defend corners and free kicks was totally within his remit but he failed massively on it.  In tandem teaching the team to score from corners and free kicks was also something he should've been able to work on.  Just getting those 2 right would've seen us comofrtably clear of relegation and probably would've earned him the summer to make the squad changes he wanted to.

I just get the feeling that he never worked out what he wanted to do on the training field, with most managers, even if things are going badly, you can see what they want to achieve, last season it was impossible to pin down any area where we improved thanks to training, we weren't solid defensively, we weren't potent in attack, we didn't play for set pieces, we didn't counter-attack, we weren't even particularly fit.

Final whinge, he yet again uses the excuse "I always played 4 attacking players" as if by picking a couple of strikers and wingers you're showing the intent to attack, it's this lack of understanding that picking the players is only a small part of the process that worried me at the time and he hasn't learned any better from being sacked.

[Chris Smith]

Even with Bent in the team we looked dismal as an attacking unit, so I wouldn't have banked on us winning more games. 

We were comfortably mid table until the last third of the season so I don't think Dave is saying anything controversial.

[UK Redsox]

[pauliewalnuts]

He wasn't good enough.

He also did the absolute worst thing he could have done - fall back on the same, dreadfully unambitious nonsense he used at Blues.

Deserved the sack, got the sack.

I still can't believe our leaders actually thought it'd be a good idea to appoint him.