Remi Garde - Departs Aston Villa

[Scott Nielsen]

Garde can be part of that. I honestly don't know what people were expecting from a manager coming into a club which is clearly dysfunctional, which had lost almost every game it had played for months and months, and which had at most four or five players who give the first shit about the way things are going.

There's really nobody who was going to turn that shit around.

I wasn't expecting him to have no effect whatsoever so far, to be honest.  Sherwood had as good as relegated us by the ime he left, but surely some inprovement in results wasn't too much to ask for?  And not to keep playing that cart horse Gestede.  I agree about not appointing Pearson, but Garde has got to show something this season.  Something, anything.  In my opinion there's been nothing so far, and the last two matches have been scandalously bad.

The problem was that Sherwood had undermined confidence in the players and the team was spiralling downwards rapidly.  Garde came in and first of all had to put a brake on the situation before even trying to turn it around.

Yet he's not been able to do either so far. I like Garde and hope he'll be successful for us. I also believe he must be given substantially more time before a meaningful verdict is possible.

Saying that, and much like Paulie, I didn't expect Garde or anyone else to really be able to turn around the shit we find ourselves in; we're just too poor. I did expect it to be *less* shit, though. I realize this point has been made repeatedly by others but I haven't seen a convincing rebuttal of it and I so desperately want to be convinced we have finally found our man.

My worry is that Garde is not an effective leader. Ignoring longer term strategic objectives, for now, I'd expect a good football manager, at a minimum, to be able to apply flexible and appropriate methods to deal with a varied set of intricate problems. I.e. he must be able to tailor his approach to circumstance. To have a disjointed and poorly functioning team improve (at least to some degree), he must understand both the team dynamics and what makes the individuals tick in order to come up with an overall approach he believes will advance performances. If performances do not then improve and it is accepted this does not reflect negatively on the manager (because the group he manages is so abysmal absolutely nothing can be done to effect a positive change), I think our expectations have been managed to such a low level they are virtually non-existent. Whatever plan Garde has executed so far has not worked for him, suggesting he may not, in fact, be able to make an underperforming team perform better which I find underwhelming. In which case it’s difficult to muster any longer term optimism. When performances are record-breaking bad, it ought to be reasonably simple to effect some level of improvement we can seize upon as a sign of things to come. I don't doubt Garde knows football, I'm just not sure he can lead.

[mr underhill]

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. and in this case, a lame one.

[Chris Smith]

Remi Garde I am not sure is the man for a blood and guts fight to get out of the championship, but again if he does stop we will see yet another cycle of players going out the door, some obviously for financial reasons and go into next season with again at least 6 , 7 or 8 new players settling into life at Villa Park, this has been the ongoing situation since Randy arrived, even pube head and his two defenses in two seasons. This never allows for any connection between the players and the club and also the supporters and the players, leading to the present situation where we do not give one flying f..k about any of this current crop.

Blood and guts manager like that Eddie Howe at Bournemouth?

[Dave]

Remi Garde I am not sure is the man for a blood and guts fight to get out of the championship, but again if he does stop we will see yet another cycle of players going out the door, some obviously for financial reasons and go into next season with again at least 6 , 7 or 8 new players settling into life at Villa Park, this has been the ongoing situation since Randy arrived, even pube head and his two defenses in two seasons. This never allows for any connection between the players and the club and also the supporters and the players, leading to the present situation where we do not give one flying f..k about any of this current crop.

Blood and guts manager like that Eddie Howe at Bournemouth?

Or Slavisa Jokanovic at Watford.

[pbavfckuwait]

Both those mentioned set out teams who yes agreed can play football, but also have a team ethic that is based on blood and guts, blood and guts does not have to be Big Sam or Warnock, what it does mean is having a midfield that does not get blown over before the first winds of autumn, having a defense that can tackle and having the team ethic of working for each other when you have the ball and fighting like hell when you have not.

[peter w]

Garde can be part of that. I honestly don't know what people were expecting from a manager coming into a club which is clearly dysfunctional, which had lost almost every game it had played for months and months, and which had at most four or five players who give the first shit about the way things are going.

There's really nobody who was going to turn that shit around.

I wasn't expecting him to have no effect whatsoever so far, to be honest.  Sherwood had as good as relegated us by the ime he left, but surely some inprovement in results wasn't too much to ask for?  And not to keep playing that cart horse Gestede.  I agree about not appointing Pearson, but Garde has got to show something this season.  Something, anything.  In my opinion there's been nothing so far, and the last two matches have been scandalously bad.

Play who instead of Gestede though? And it's not as if he plays him game after game for 90 minutes. You can say Kozak but by all accounts he hasn't looked good with the stiffs so why should he be thrown in? What was criminal was that we didn't look to spend 15-20 million on a forward first and foremost in the summer and try and add a few bricks in and round that. We approached the summer like someone playing Championship Manager and having 50 million spends it stupidly on lots of okay players and no real proven quality. Going into the season with just Gestede as the main forward was crazy.

[ChicagoLion]

Guzan as the main Goalkepper is as daft as the Gestede situation

[Walmley_Villa]

One issue that has haunted us all season is fitness or lack of it. On TS this morning it was stated that our players ran 1/2 mile less than Sunderland's on top of the fact before Garde came that we ran the least distance in the league.

We haven't worked hard enough - end of. Sherwood stated the players were not fit enough, Garde has said the same, who exactly is responsible for delivering this area??

[ozzjim]

Duverne is now but we won't see his effect until march or  April. It's true though we simply don't work hard enough to complete.

[Villa in Denmark]

One issue that has haunted us all season is fitness or lack of it. On TS this morning it was stated that our players ran 1/2 mile less than Sunderland's on top of the fact before Garde came that we ran the least distance in the league.

We haven't worked hard enough - end of. Sherwood stated the players were not fit enough, Garde has said the same, who exactly is responsible for delivering this area??

Was that 1/2 mile per player on average or 1/2 mile across the team, because one's a lot and one is chuff all.

[nick harper]

Duverne is now but we won't see his effect until march or  April. It's true though we simply don't work hard enough to complete.

I agree completely. There is a lack of closing down in an organised way all over the pitch, which led to more goals on Saturday. Not just that but other teams hunt the ball down in packs. How was Defoe left one on one with Lescott 12 yards out. It's beyond awful.

Garde should be demanding that effort as a minimum.

[peter w]

One issue that has haunted us all season is fitness or lack of it. On TS this morning it was stated that our players ran 1/2 mile less than Sunderland's on top of the fact before Garde came that we ran the least distance in the league.

We haven't worked hard enough - end of. Sherwood stated the players were not fit enough, Garde has said the same, who exactly is responsible for delivering this area??

Not sure that means a great deal though. Sunderland running more may simply mean we kept the ball better. Which for large parts we did.

[OzVilla]

One issue that has haunted us all season is fitness or lack of it. On TS this morning it was stated that our players ran 1/2 mile less than Sunderland's on top of the fact before Garde came that we ran the least distance in the league.

We haven't worked hard enough - end of. Sherwood stated the players were not fit enough, Garde has said the same, who exactly is responsible for delivering this area??

Not sure that means a great deal though. Sunderland running more may simply mean we kept the ball better. Which for large parts we did.

I think it's fair to say that that probably hasn't been the case in the vast majority of our games this season so the fact that we've covered less ground than everyone else would suggest we don't work anywhere near hard enough.

Klopp gave his side a shoeing for only being at 95% against West Ham effort wise - McGrath knows what he'd make of our lot.

[peter w]

The effort is there. It's just that we're shit.

[OzVilla]

No doubt we're shit, thats why we are where we are. But I also don't think we have anything like the same work rate as other sides, not just the top sides either.