Remi Garde - Departs Aston Villa

[Phil from the upper holte]

Why  are we assuming that Garde , in that picture, was getting abused? May be supporters were telling him to get rid of the  bunch of non triers we had on the pitch?

Do you really believe that? I've heard him suffer dogs abuse. All this abuse is too far and illegal. Just because someone earns good money it doesn't give you the right to abuse them

[andyh]

Maybe not on the pitch but he is sorting things out behind the scenes. The treatment of Grealish was correct: he needed disciplining not pandering to as the previous boss did; the realisation that Gabby Agbonlahor is not that good has been a realisation far too late; his desire to get rid of the bad eggs in the squad is a good thing.
You'd have hoped for better results, but our fate looks inevitable so whilst we're in the mess we are in it's best to sort some of the manageable problems out in the meantime.

I'm not sure he's 'sorting things out behind the scenes'.
The treatment of Grealish may have been correct in your opinion, but it doesn't appear to have made him knuckle down and come back more determined to prove himself. In my opinion,a talented, promising youngster looks like he has been made an example of and has subsequently dipped even further in form.
In the meantime, senior players appear to pissing about on the bench and getting into altercations with fans.

[Villa in Denmark]

Sorry, but "sorting things out behind the scenes" sounds awfully like Tom Fox and his "look beyond the results" nonsense. Means nothing if we're as bad as ever in front of the scenes.

I hate whats happening on the pitch but as themossman says, get things right as a club and it gets better on the pitch. Or should do in theory. I'm more saying that I think Remi Garde is doing some good despite our results continuing to be bad than I think we should ignore the results. The results are more painful than anything else of course, but if there's a mess it needs sorting.

To continue the theatrical theme, what we've been getting the last few years has been poor productions with flimsy props and shabby stage dressings, whilst a series of artistic directors of limited abilities and in some case temperaments have struggled to control a bunch of actors who for the most part appear to have been paid far too much in relation to their abilities.

On the plus side one of the former artistic directors was good box office for the press, but seemed more concerned with the moto the only bad publicity is no publicity. On the negative side he proved to be incapable of finding any coherent performances from his cast with castings that appeared to have been put together by Jackson Pollock wearing a welders mask in a darkened room

There's a couple of former leading lights who still hang around the place, but these days they're more like pantomime dames, which doesn't really help much when you're trying to persuade the cast that they should be looking at performing A Midsummer Night's Dream instead of one of the great tragedies such as Macbeth or King Lear.

The new artistic director is apparently not very happy with most of the assembled cast and has taken on the responsibility of pretty much building up the acting crew from scratch whilst trying to fit in renovating the entire theatre infrastructure and dealing with a promoter who's new to the business and an impresario who appears to be related in some way to Howard Hughes.

Personally I have a feeling the January performance will be Much Ado About Nothing and the season finale is a toss up between The Divine Comedy or Love's Labour's Lost.

[Villa in Denmark]

Maybe not on the pitch but he is sorting things out behind the scenes. The treatment of Grealish was correct: he needed disciplining not pandering to as the previous boss did; the realisation that Gabby Agbonlahor is not that good has been a realisation far too late; his desire to get rid of the bad eggs in the squad is a good thing.
You'd have hoped for better results, but our fate looks inevitable so whilst we're in the mess we are in it's best to sort some of the manageable problems out in the meantime.

I'm not sure he's 'sorting things out behind the scenes'.
The treatment of Grealish may have been correct in your opinion, but it doesn't appear to have made him knuckle down and come back more determined to prove himself. In my opinion,a talented, promising youngster looks like he has been made an example of and has subsequently dipped even further in form.
In the meantime, senior players appear to pissing about on the bench and getting into altercations with fans.

1. Grealish is still young enough to possibly respond to that kind of punishment. If he can't recognise the wake up call then that's on him, not Garde.  Sherwood blowing smoke up his arse hadn't exactly got him performing like the next great hope either.

2. Let's see what happens with Guzan and Lescott before jumping on him for that

[mattjpa]

We are down, I think everyone knows that. The worst thing this club could do would be get rid/allow Garde to leave. We would have to go through the pain of the last 12wks all over again. The frsh start bollocks quotes from the squad, a few games giving CNZ another chance, Gabby having his obligatory 2 good games and getting back in the side, The seemingly never ending search for a CB pairing that works, the realisation that we have no confidence and no leaders, the pass the parcel with the captains armband etc...
In my opinion Garde will now know who he wants to keep and who he wants to bring in. He will know who is going to fight for the cause and ultimately who just plain isnt good enough. He is obviously looking at the youth set up and is also looking at psycologists and fitness experts. We have a unique opportunity in that we can plan for the championship with half a season and two transfer windows to prepare. Lets not do a 'Villa' for once and f**k it up because were all angry and looking for a scapegoat.

[tomd2103]

Maybe not on the pitch but he is sorting things out behind the scenes. The treatment of Grealish was correct: he needed disciplining not pandering to as the previous boss did; the realisation that Gabby Agbonlahor is not that good has been a realisation far too late; his desire to get rid of the bad eggs in the squad is a good thing.
You'd have hoped for better results, but our fate looks inevitable so whilst we're in the mess we are in it's best to sort some of the manageable problems out in the meantime.

I'm not sure he's 'sorting things out behind the scenes'.
The treatment of Grealish may have been correct in your opinion, but it doesn't appear to have made him knuckle down and come back more determined to prove himself. In my opinion,a talented, promising youngster looks like he has been made an example of and has subsequently dipped even further in form.
In the meantime, senior players appear to pissing about on the bench and getting into altercations with fans.

That is a concern if true.  Would suggest a lack of discipline if true and I can't imagine that happening under managers we have had in the past.

[themossman]

Agree 100% with VID. Grealish isn't ten years old. If he's sulking because he got called out or because his favourite teacher Mr Sherwood got sacked, and this is leading to his crap performances - despite his obvious talent and supposed loyalty to the cause - then that's entirely on him.

[Tom_Mc9?]

Again it could show more about the players than it does the manager. I'm really not saying that he's come in and set the world alight - I just don't think he's done diabolically (as odd as that sounds looking at the results) since coming in. Or to put it another way I have more faith that he can get it right than I had faith that Sherwood would, and I prefer him in charge to Lambert and McLeish.

[Tom_Mc9?]

Looking at that list of managers, we've been truly blessed in recent years.

[themossman]

Maybe not on the pitch but he is sorting things out behind the scenes. The treatment of Grealish was correct: he needed disciplining not pandering to as the previous boss did; the realisation that Gabby Agbonlahor is not that good has been a realisation far too late; his desire to get rid of the bad eggs in the squad is a good thing.
You'd have hoped for better results, but our fate looks inevitable so whilst we're in the mess we are in it's best to sort some of the manageable problems out in the meantime.

I'm not sure he's 'sorting things out behind the scenes'.
The treatment of Grealish may have been correct in your opinion, but it doesn't appear to have made him knuckle down and come back more determined to prove himself. In my opinion,a talented, promising youngster looks like he has been made an example of and has subsequently dipped even further in form.
In the meantime, senior players appear to pissing about on the bench and getting into altercations with fans.

That is a concern if true.  Would suggest a lack of discipline if true and I can't imagine that happening under managers we have had in the past.

I can imagine it happening under every manager we've had during the last 14 years. Even under MON we had player discipline/attitude issues but he relied on his total authority and strength of personality to keep it manageable.

[David_Nab]

Does anyone else find it strange that once the signal was given to Kozak to get ready to come on Richards suddenly developed a life threatening injury prior to which he didn't seem to be suffering.

No. That is a top of the pile conspiracy post.

It may be top of the pile but it is unexplainable, why get the player ready to come on and then Richards decides he has to come off. This is more to do with Richards than Garde though.

He was blatantly suffering with it. He slowed down considerably after taking the blow to the ankle when scoring and we were less effective down that side of the pitch. Just seems he  played on until he couldn't any more.

I noticed that , he was bombing down the right until he scored and took a knock after he eased back and look noticeably in discomfort when moving.We lost momentum from this especially as on the opposite side Richardson is hopeless going forward

[Risso]

1 thing is for sure, Garde is not to blame for this mess

Exactly, people need way way more patience with Garde given the utter shambles he's come into.

There's no sign of improvement whatsoever though. If we had improved from being absolutely shit under Sherwood to merely being rubbish under Garde, I'd cut him some slack and have a little patience. But we've just laboured to a 1-1 draw against a side over 50 positions lower than us in the league. Not sure who's fault that is? Sherwoods? O'Neill's? It really is difficult to remain patient at the moment. 
 

The quotes from the Wycombe manager were fairly damning, saying it was impossible to scout Villa as Garde used different players and a different formation every week.

[aj2k77]

1 thing is for sure, Garde is not to blame for this mess

Exactly, people need way way more patience with Garde given the utter shambles he's come into.

There's no sign of improvement whatsoever though. If we had improved from being absolutely shit under Sherwood to merely being rubbish under Garde, I'd cut him some slack and have a little patience. But we've just laboured to a 1-1 draw against a side over 50 positions lower than us in the league. Not sure who's fault that is? Sherwoods? O'Neill's? It really is difficult to remain patient at the moment. 
 

The quotes from the Wycombe manager were fairly damning, saying it was impossible to scout Villa as Garde used different players and a different formation every week.

Maybe he's at the point we were at a few months ago, thinking the players weren't that bad surely, drop him try so and so, they're ok aren't they? Then they play and you see how shit they are as well and you're back to square one and start trying to think outside the box and doing something crazy like playing Bacuna behind the forwards or something because everyone is half arsed and shit.

[castlefields_villan]

Did Remi almost lose his temper on Saturday - I'm sure I saw him going to throw a water bottle on the floor in frustration - perhaps this is what we need - after TS he does seem a tad placid !

[Risso]

I noticed that , he was bombing down the right until he scored and took a knock after he eased back and look noticeably in discomfort when moving.We lost momentum from this especially as on the opposite side Richardson is hopeless going forward

I've still no idea why he picked Richardson on Saturday.  He recalls Cissokho from loan because we're so poor at left back, then instead of giving Cissokho a run out in a supposedly easy game to gain some understanding with the rest of the defence, he reverts to Richardson who is dire at every facet of the game.  I don't advocate getting rid of Garde at all, but he's got to start showing his worth.  People are saying that he's sorting things out, but what things exactly?

We don't have anything like a settled team or formation.  I wasn't expecting to suddenly go on a 6 match winning spree, but the odd clean sheet or win is surely not beyond the realms of possibility.  And while I acknowledge how poor the squad is, he needs to at least work out what the least shit team is.  Carrying on with Gestede for example, but then not picking a team to provide any crosses is just idiocy, he just doesn't add anything else to the team whatsoever. 

It's all looking a bit "emperor's new clothes" to me at the moment.  He's clearly an intelligent, articulate bloke, but what use is that if he can't translate that into an improvement on what Sherwood offered?