Lambert's replacement

[chrisw1]

i personally would like to see Moyes given the job, I think he would be ideal for us, we need experience and premier league knowledge.

Listening to TALKsport this morning the journalist they has on was saying that Tom Fox is no mug and is no ones fool, and how dissapointed Arsenal were when he left them....we will see who his first appointment is!

I just hope that we dont go for Allardyce, if you think the football was bad under McLeish / Lambert, then wait until Allardyce turns up with his brand of football!!

Some people live in cloud cuckoo land.  WTF would Alardyce leave a highly successful West Ham team, about to relocate to the Olympic stadium, to come to us where he'll have one arm tied behind his back?  And if you think his brand of football is that bad, have you actually watched any of their games recently?  They actually score goals sometimes.

Same goes for Moyes really, I would think he'll want to continue re-building his reputation of of the limelight and without the current hospital pass that is the Villa at the moment.

[NeilH]

In all seriousness, does anyone seriously think that Klinsmann would touch the job? He is established in the US, he is married there and his kids go to school there. Why would he give up a very cushy job managing the US team to enter a relegation battle?
Realistically I think that the only option in the current circumstances is to gamble on Sherwood. Offer him a short term contract with the carrot of a permanent deal, should he drag us out of this mess.

[cdbearsfan]

"Premier League knowledge" equates to someone who has managed for a few months in the top flight, someone with at least one relegation on his CV or someone who hates disabled people. It's a no from me.

We should not have a Martin O'Neill-signing attitude to appointing managers. There's a whole World of football managers out there.

I didn't necessarily mean managed in the league, but having an idea of the players is vital

Any football manager with access to a telly will have a working knowledge of most Premier League players.

[NeilH]

Now is not the time to start thinking forwards. Surely we just need someone in who can get the club over the line? If we want to be visionary, then being in the bottom three with 13 games to go is perhaps not the best time to do this. Oh and the last time we were ‘visionary’ we ended up with Venglos, so I have a huge degree of scepticism about this.

[villasjf]

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/aston-villa-open-letter-birmingham-8637953

[PeterWithe]

A plane you say, at an airport, well I never...

[Richard E]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/aston-villa/11409797/Paul-Lambert-twice-told-Aston-Villa-chairman-Randy-Lerner-to-sack-him.html

Yes, he was that desperate to be sacked he signed a 4 year contract extension, proclaiming as he did so that he now had his strongest squad ever.

[tomd2103]

The Evening Mail seemed suggested yesterday that we are looking to bring in a Director of Football in the coming weeks.  This will surely impact on the type of manager we are looking at? 

[DBTW]

Tim Sherwoods odds have dropped to 1/7 on betfair. I'm going to lay that one at that price!

[chrisw1]

I don't like Sherwood at all.  But I'm pretty sure he would have the wherewithal to keep us up with the squad we have.

It would be lovely to have a forward thinking foreign manager in the medium term, but can we really afford to risk one for the next 13 games? 

[Jimbo]

Whoever we get in needs to be living in 2015, and properly up-to-date with modern coaching methods. I posted a link to this Wired article about Prozone on another thread:

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2014/01/features/the-winning-formula

It paints a not very flattering image of us around the time Prozone appeared:

'Mylvaganam and Ramsay sent their sports scientists to football clubs to act as Prozone consultants -- what some of them found wasn't what they were expecting from multimillion-pound businesses. "At Aston Villa, there was an old-school bucket-and-sponge physio who didn't really speak to the manager and a manager who didn't really speak to the players," says the current managing director of Prozone, Barry McNeill. "There were few coaching meetings, no preparation meetings and I was just a 22-year old guy in a suit who had to explain how the software I had in my PC could add value."'

Things must have changed since then, but how much? They must change dramatically now, and it makes perfect sense to invest in this kind of thing - and an intelligent manager who understands its importance - especially in a time when the TV money keeps going up and up.

[Des Little]

Seen the odds list on Sky?  It's enough to make you cry. Alan Irvine is 4th favourite.

[Marlon From Bearwood]

An interim manager makes sense to me. In the summer there'll be far more choice. Many managers who wouldn't leave their current role now, mid-season, possibly would do in the summer.

We may also look a far more attractive proposition then. Premier league safety secured (hopefully) and potentially new owners coming in with money to spend. Remember we'd never had attracted MON had he not known that Lerner was about to take over.

[ozzjim]

They won't appoint Irvine!! The odds are just random names people can think up that people have put money on. Sherwood is so sorry because he is the most plausible on the list.

[garyfouroaks]

I can't see the attraction of Sherwood. If we are relegated his chances of getting us back up are minimal.