We've not had a Martin O'Neill argument in ages...

[kippaxvilla2]

I must have imagined Neale Cooper.

[Ad@m]

Lets deal in facts;

You are Rafa Benitez and I claim my five pounds.

[supertom]

'Thoroughly decent'? And, again, 'held in high regard' - by whom? By Robbie Savage and Steve Claridge?

He is remarkable in one way. There aren't many managers who are so good at one thing and so bad at another. MON is, or at least was, quite amazing at motivating players, creating a club mentality or even a siege mentality, and inspiring loyalty in players and individual performances of a level higher than they often should be. However, he was a good candidate, even while with us, for the title of League's Least Progressive Tactician, along with training methods, player diets, squad use etc. He would have been a brilliant manager in the 1970s, but he was an inadequate one in the 2000s.

In regards to our training and fitness I think O Neills injury records compared to each of our managers since speaks volumes. Also whilst his rotating policies should have been better. We kept a high tempo for 90 minutes far better under O Neill than the last couple of managers.

I think there's some fallacy that O Neill had this lazy bunch of booze guzzling, fag smoking wasters at his disposal who couldn't last the season. I don't care how fit you are if you don't rotate your squad a bit, or make substitutions, even the fittest squad would struggle by March-April as we annually did. But in my view, on the seasons on a whole under O Neill our squad looked in much better nick than it does now. Players didn't drop like flies. And they always gave 110%
Compare Gabby now to back then. Fitness, attitude but mostly work-rate. It's like a different player.

If I had a squad of players I wanted fit for Prem competition and to be looked after. I'd be asking O Neill to do it long before I'd ask Houllier, Lambert, or TSM1.

[Monty]

Well, some of the players were very fit but others palpably were not. Anyway, by training I really don't just mean fitness, and that's the problem, we need to alter how we think as fans. We can't just accept a man whose training methods, according to loads of former players, essentially consisted of fitness and five-a-side. If you look at the successful managers these days, nobody else does that and the results show. By the way, saying that we kept a high tempo for 90 minutes better under MON is just obviously wrong - remember John Terry's interview where he said that everyone knew how to play against us - you just wait for the hour mark and we'll get knackered. That was MON's sustained high tempo for you.

[silhillvilla]

Well my point was MON set us back decades by all his frivolous expenditure on dodgy centre halves and suspect midfielders .

[stuart445]

3) The club settled out of court with him when he left. If they were in the right they would not have settled.

That might not be a case.  Quite often the person who takes a company to court gets an settlement out of court offer usually when the outcome is 50:50,  The person quite often accepts the out of court settlement as if the result is 50:50 it's best to accept because of the risk of the court siding with the company.  That way the complainant is happy because they get some money and the company are happy because they don't have to be distracted by a lengthy court case.

[PeterWithesShin]

MON wasn't a failure. But that doesn't mean he was a success either. What he did was underachieve with the resources he was given. He had 2 major faults, not including being a pubeheaded little shit, and that was lack of tactics, and a very short sighted and expensive transfer policy. He signed about 25 players in his time, I think only 3 weren't playing in the UK, and one of those was gifted to him on a plate by GH.

[Meanwood Villa]

I thought he was great when he was here. I was gutted when he went. I don't hate him now. I thoroughly enjoyed the majority of his 4 years in charge.  The 4 years since....

[silhillvilla]

MON wasn't a failure.

In my opinion he failed. He was given (at the time) CL money and he failed to get us there, certainly blowing it spectacularly in the Moscow Stoke apex.
I hate him for the way he left , but thoroughly enjoyed probably 85% of his time at the club.

[Ron Manager]

Its quite simple really. If MON had bought a goalscoring forward (say for example that bloke Bent who played for Sunderland) to replace Agbonlahor who never has scored consistently we might be in European competition again.

But he didn't he bought Heskey. Emile had many good qualities but like Agbonlahor goalscoring is not one of them.

Not a failure as others have agreed.But by no means a big success. And he is drifting out of the game slowly but surely.

[Legion]

He also thought it would be a good idea to buy Marlon F. Harewood.

[Mister E]

MON inherited Mellberg, Laursen, Gabby, Cahill, Sorensen, Delaney, Barry, Bouma, Angel. Certainly not horrible, I always felt the vibe around the club was worse than the players we actually had...... which sounds familiar to what we see right now.

Not to mention Gardner, Ridgewell and Davis who have all gone on to be solid Premiership players.

MO~N bought Marlene Scarewood, Pub player Davies, Zak, Habib ...

I was delighted when he joined us as part of the "Bright Future" gig and not disappointed when he departed (apart from the manner of his exit which was spiteful, vindictive and deeply disrespectful of the fans).

[Mister E]

We've gone from 15th to 15th under Lerner, I'm no fan of his, he's blown it at Villa and his disengagement from the club has been pathetic but compare to Ellis... he managed to take the European champions down in half a decade. We built on nothing. After World Cup 90 and then Euro 96 when sky got involved and football went through the roof we we're one of the 3/4 biggest teams in the country, no argument. By the time he left we'd been left behind and haven't caught up or are likely to. His corner shop mentality at a time when the game was changing has probably been the biggest chance missed in our history.

Well said.

[Ron Manager]

He also thought it would be a good idea to buy Marlon F. Harewood.

Sounds like a Marx Brothers character!

[dave.woodhall]

It's also made me think just how many clubs were undoubtedly bigger than us in 1996-ish. Liverpool and Manchester United definitely, Arsenal were re-building after George Graham and they'd have gone past us helped by the fact that Nick bloody Hornby helped make them the ideal club to cash in on the new footie boom but apart from that who? Spurs were doing poorly, Newcastle were massively in debt, Everton were mid-table in a good year and struggling in a bad one, Chelsea's rescuer was still six years away. We could have been right up there but for that corner shop mentality.