Remi Garde - Departs Aston Villa

[Neil Hawkes]

The most immediate and basic thing Remi Garde has to do is to sort out the dressing room. You cannot even begin to hope to win games or survive in any league until you have a team on the pitch and on the bench who at the very least try to get along with each other. Sherwood's legacy to Garde was a dressing room in turmoil.  In the same way MON gave us the finger so did Sherwood with his final shit stir of the dressing room with his never-wanted-them-in-the-first-place media release.

My big fear is that Garde will find the whole task insurmountable and will leave us to wallow.

This and thrice this

[john e]

I've not been impressed with Gards's team sheets, but I don't want him gone

I think he will get time and only Fox etc can see what he's doing off the pitch in getting stuff sorted out, this will be key and it's something we will know little about

I argued in favour of the last two managers for longer than I should have, in fact even now would probably see Sherwood in a better light than most others on here,

but I'm turning into Risso now and just say what I see, and what I see isn't a great deal yet, he can't do a lot and has been dealt a shitty hand, but he can motivate he can pick better lineups, he can make better subs and make them earlier when it's obvious thing arnt going well, and he's failed to do this so far

I'm sticking with him, I like a lot of other stuff about the guy, but as Risso says we need to see something on the pitch to give us something to believe in before the inevitable drop

[PaulWinch again]

I was reasonably happy with his team selections for the West Ham and Newcastle games, but I agree the subs can be an issue. In fairness to him though I think he probably has in his mind which players in the existing squad will start when fit, he then needs to bring on the young players like Adama and bring in his own players in Jan.

[Risso]

Well, he's had chance to see that the defence is shit, and the forward line excluding Ayew is horrific, so hopefully he can do something about it. Remy would be a start.

[PaulWinch again]

See I think that Lescott and Okore actually looked reasonable together and Lescott seemed to benefit from being captain. I think if fit, and that's a bit if, they're worth persevering with as a pairing. Shove Richards to right back and get in a decent left back and then the back four might look a bit better.

[brian green]

I agree with the general thrust of Riss and John's posts. There have to be visible improvements for Remi's own sake as much as for the players and the fans. Rigor mortis must not be allowed to set in, relegation or no relegation.

My personal gut feeling, strengthened by contacts with those better connected than I, is that there are worse problems behind the scenes than we actually are allowed to know about.  Remi has more on his plate than meets the eye. Villa's future will be defined this coming January.

[PaulWinch again]

I've suspected that there are bigger problems behind the scenes for a while. It's purely supposition on my part, but there's no way a club can just have the feel about it that Villa do for so long without there being big problems. It doesn't seem to matter who comes in, be that managers or players, we seem to be in a inescapable spiral downwards. Even beyond the obvious statisical evidence, there's just a general intangible dark cloud over the club.

[Rigadon]

I agree with the general thrust of Riss and John's posts. There have to be visible improvements for Remi's own sake as much as for the players and the fans. Rigor mortis must not be allowed to set in, relegation or no relegation.

My personal gut feeling, strengthened by contacts with those better connected than I, is that there are worse problems behind the scenes than we actually are allowed to know about.  Remi has more on his plate than meets the eye. Villa's future will be defined this coming January.

Do you mean financially, Brian?  Or squad unrest.  Or both.

[curiousorange]

Villa seems to be one of those failing businesses that the Beeb send a fixer into for a documentary, and then when some major flaw in the model is exposed someone says "but it's always been done like that."

[Lizz]

At the risk of sounding naive, and I'm old and ugly enough to take that risk, behind the scenes problems don't bring about a 'the end is nigh' reaction from me - even if it is. Every place I've worked has behind the scenes problems to varying degrees. It certainly suits the current situation as an added ingredient to the drama. I'm not happy about the prospect of relegation at all, no ideas on how to improve things either.

[Dante Lavelli]

I've suspected that there are bigger problems behind the scenes for a while. It's purely supposition on my part, but there's no way a club can just have the feel about it that Villa do for so long without there being big problems. It doesn't seem to matter who comes in, be that managers or players, we seem to be in a inescapable spiral downwards. Even beyond the obvious statisical evidence, there's just a general intangible dark cloud over the club.

I agree with this.  I'm probably in the minority here but I actually think we have spent enough over the years too, enough to not be where we are right now anyway.  So there must be something else rotten at the club which is preventing us from moving forward.  Brian, if you can, it would be great if you could elaborate a tad.

[curiousorange]

I'd imagine that when a club is winning, the inevitable problems that go on from day-to-day don't seem as bad. When you have a losing mentality, I bet nobody even bothers to bring in milk for the office fridge.

[mr underhill]

I think we should try not bringing in footballs as that might improve our game

[curiousorange]

I think we should try not bringing in footballs as that might improve our game

It worked for Mike Bassett. England made the World Cup Semis.

[mr underhill]

marvellous - football without footballs ; we'd be very good at that I think. A new game called no balls