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

[dave.woodhall]

Didn't O'Neill win his court case against Lerner which led people into thinking he was constructively dismissed?

John Lerwill won his case. I think it was Lizz who said that some massive percentage of unfair dismissals are successful, mainly because it's easier to settle than fight them.

[Richard E]

One reason why employers tend to settle is that it is very difficult indeed to get an Order for costs in the Employment Tribunal even if you win, so fighting the case inevitably leaves the employer out of pocket.

[David_Nab]

MON peaked with Celtic when he got them to the UEFA cup final.At Leicester he did remarkably well with a mostly journey man squad winning the League cup twice there were a solid if unspectacular team that got results.

By time he got to us he star was on the wane , even with far more money that he had a Leicester at Villa he was unable to replicate the cup success and only finished 2 places higher 6th than he managed with Leicester.His spent significant sums on transfer fee's at Villa for some very ordinary players compounded by huge wages (the club Lerner etc also need to take a share of responsibility for the wage issue ) the latter seeing us unable to offload players ,having to pay up contracts and then have no funds to replace them.The football its self got worse as time went on , the best we played style wise was with Berger in the team once he went we relied on a more counter attacking which was eventually found out.

Whilst we did receive decent fee's for Young / Downing / Milner / the profit was not huge.In Milners case considering we got lumbered with a highly paid Ireland you could argue we made zero on that deal , any profits on them were completely wiped out by the fee's never recouped from Harewood ,Davies , Dunne , Young , Baye to name a few.

MON was no tactical genius his management relies on his man management that to me seems to include giving average players huge salaries and telling them there are world beaters.He never rotated the squad , he seemed to have no scouting network and clearly had favorites in the squad.I recall for instance Bouma suffering his big iniury and getting a replacement and the best option he could come up with was £3.5mil on Nicky Shore who ended up on the bench with Luke Young player LB !!

He never looked abroad at players and yet ironically his one oversea's purchase ,Guzan is arguably his best value buy !

Leaving us in lurch he ended up at Sunderland and was was no better there, the transfer policy there was similar buying from UK and highly priced in general.£27MIL he spent on Fletcher /Johnson/ Graham.The team performed poorly and they were struggling near the relegation zone and he was sacked.He may do ok with Ireland ,only have to motivate players every month or so and he has no transfers to worry about but I suspect he won't do anything spectacular.

I think with Villa he didn't do as well as the money allowed and he had to keep rebuilding rather than add to a settle squad.Other manager's could have done as well or better with the resources he had at the time.He had too much control at the club and once that was (rightly) taken from him he stormed off and left us in the lurch and for that I have zero time for him.

[Chris Smith]

Nobody has said that the O'Neill years were bad. What HAS been said is that with the resources he had available he should have done better, and his legacy continues to cause problems.

Exactly my thoughts...with the addition that the way and timing of him leaving wiped out every drop of good faith that he built up.  The act of a gutless man.

Or one that was constructively dismissed

Yes, horrible Randy Lerner forcing him to resign five days before the start of the new season because he wasn't allowed to sign Aidan McGeady.

It must have required some quick revisionism when all those who had been so scathing of McGeady had to confront the fact that the esteemed Roberto Martinez thought him worth signing for Everton. He is a good player who would have added to the squad, problem was that, although we didn't yet know it, we were heading into this ongoing period of austerity where the club had scaled back their ambitions without seemingly coming to any agreement with the manager.

Of course MoN soured everything with his flounce off but as we are seeing with Lambert now there is a rush, in some quarters, to rubbish everything about people in a 'hell hath no fury' kind of style.

He's a perfectly reasonable player. But had he cost the £15m that O'Neill wanted to pay Celtic rather than the £1.5m paid to Spartak Moscow I wonder if Martinez would still have been so keen.

Clearly those figures are just speculation, we never got as far as making a bid and the Everton fee was reported as 'undisclosed. In any case, I was talking from a football rather than a financial point of view. One of MON's failings is that he was old school in that he didn't consider it his remit to worry about the money side but those days are long gone other than at a small number of super rich clubs.

[eamonn]

The fact he was going for McGeady, an inconsistent winger (he has improved in the past four years) from another British club who would command generous wages, like all the other British-based players he bought, was yet another sign that he had tunnel-vision when it came to transfer policies - pacy, direct, will understand my accent when I bark at them, and above-all a huge financial commitment when fee and wages were factored in compared to what a foreign-based alternative would have cost.

[edgysatsuma89]

I'll always remember the day O'Neill managed to get Bouma to lose weight. It always brings a tear to my eyes.

[Monty]

MON is one of the best examples there is of the glass ceiling. How is it that he spent increasing amounts of money only for us to stand exactly still? Sixth was literally the best he could do. His defenders really have to ask themselves if they think his football 'style' really stood a chance of getting us to the top in the age of Mourinho. Kick-and-rush-and-run-about-a-bit have absolutely no place at that end of the league, and it showed. A man with a pathological addiction to a flat 4-4-2 straight out of 1975, with a big-man-quick-man striker arrangement from the same year, is really so out of place in the high areas of the league that it's comical. Remember other managers calling us a 'long-ball team'? They were right.

[supertom]

MON is one of the best examples there is of the glass ceiling. How is it that he spent increasing amounts of money only for us to stand exactly still? Sixth was literally the best he could do. His defenders really have to ask themselves if they think his football 'style' really stood a chance of getting us to the top in the age of Mourinho. Kick-and-rush-and-run-about-a-bit have absolutely no place at that end of the league, and it showed. A man with a pathological addiction to a flat 4-4-2 straight out of 1975, with a big-man-quick-man striker arrangement from the same year, is really so out of place in the high areas of the league that it's comical. Remember other managers calling us a 'long-ball team'? They were right.

64 points was undoubtedly our peak, at the end of 3 years of slow and steady progression (in terms of points and perhaps regression in style).
In other years that might have got us higher than 6th, but as we see with the league now, the gap between the big boys and the dross is getting bigger. Though this season given the erratic form of some clubs, we've only really a big two, and even City are struggling for consistency.

Certainly though I think part of O Neill's leaving was undoubtedly an admission that he knew a fall was coming. We largely sensed it too. We perhaps didn't sense quite such a fall so quickly from 6th to a relegation scrap, but O Neill wanted to look after number one. Leave a club with three 6th placed finishes as opposed to a year later when we probably finish 8th-10th, maybe lower.

[pauliewalnuts]

O'Neill failed. He did no better than Gregory, but spent more than any manager in our history, bringing the club to it's knees financially, which is also Lerner's fault for handing the cretin the cash so readily. The summer he said hang on, the bellend walked out on us to cause maximum damage.

My thoughts precisely.

[Chris Smith]

MON is one of the best examples there is of the glass ceiling. How is it that he spent increasing amounts of money only for us to stand exactly still? Sixth was literally the best he could do. His defenders really have to ask themselves if they think his football 'style' really stood a chance of getting us to the top in the age of Mourinho. Kick-and-rush-and-run-about-a-bit have absolutely no place at that end of the league, and it showed. A man with a pathological addiction to a flat 4-4-2 straight out of 1975, with a big-man-quick-man striker arrangement from the same year, is really so out of place in the high areas of the league that it's comical. Remember other managers calling us a 'long-ball team'? They were right.

You are right, Monty I do think that is as far as he could with his limited approach. That said the world moved on and the money we spent is comparatively insignificant when you see what Man City had to fork out in order to break into the Cartel. Everton and Spurs have similarly failed to make any significant impact despite sniffing around for a number of years. It's a rigged game.

[pauliewalnuts]

MON is one of the best examples there is of the glass ceiling. How is it that he spent increasing amounts of money only for us to stand exactly still? Sixth was literally the best he could do. His defenders really have to ask themselves if they think his football 'style' really stood a chance of getting us to the top in the age of Mourinho. Kick-and-rush-and-run-about-a-bit have absolutely no place at that end of the league, and it showed. A man with a pathological addiction to a flat 4-4-2 straight out of 1975, with a big-man-quick-man striker arrangement from the same year, is really so out of place in the high areas of the league that it's comical. Remember other managers calling us a 'long-ball team'? They were right.

The difference between MON, a decent manager, and the really good managers is that they can all get to a certain point via the traditional route of spending a bit and doing their job - say sixth or so - but to get beyond that, other things come in to play which make all the difference.

Like you said, Monty, tactical acuity, and also an ability to spot a player and work the transfer system a bit to get as much out of it as you can.

On the first of those, MON was absolutely hopeless. We just did the same thing game after game. I can't remember him ever significantly changing our set up to reflect the team we were playing. It was "one size fits all". Even his substitutions were the same week after week.

On the second one, he was even worse, just lumping huge amounts of money at predictable signings. All of his 40 plus signings bar two (Guzan and Carew) came from the overpriced UK market, and of those one was a suggestion from elsewhere rather than his idea, and the other was a punt on a cheap back up goalkeeper.

If we had given MON another three seasons with the same sort of money to spend every year, he'd have got us no further at all, we'd reached the point where extra money wouldn't have improved us, it would just have got us further in the mire.

[Monty]

We needed to get into the Champions' League and procure all the associated money while Randy's cheques were still big enough to make the difference - that's to say, before City got there and Spurs stopped being terrible. MON has many qualities, but his smorgasbord of faults were the deciding factor in our failing to make it in those years.

[LeeB]

Strange I ignored the abuse from the Neanderthal that called me a f$#@@ div, I explain tagain.

Pleasentext of my comment from last night in , which several posters thought meant soneting else and ask you to prove your comment.

Your response whilst appearing to admonish me does not answer the question. So I'll try again.

What is your proof that he was not constructively dismissed? Other than stating"no he wasn't"

I retracted that, and replaced it with contemptible buffoon, which I presume you are satisfied with.

Again, I trust the matter is now closed.

[pauliewalnuts]

Didn't O'Neill win his court case against Lerner which led people into thinking he was constructively dismissed?

*sadly chalks another mark on the wall*

That's a comment we see pretty much every time MON is discussed. As Richard E said, no.

[Ron Manager]

I may be wrong (I usually am!) but wasn't Ian Storey Moore our foreign scout. If MON took no notice of his recomendations what was the point of paying him a salary?