Remi Garde - Departs Aston Villa

[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.

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.

Agree somewhat, but I think the bit in bold is key.  Little things here and there are suggesting that noone at the club is managing to keep poor discipline and slack attitudes manageable.

[dave.woodhall]

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.

Agree somewhat, but I think the bit in bold is key.  Little things here and there are suggesting that noone at the club is managing to keep poor discipline and slack attitudes manageable.

That sounds about right to me.

[kippaxvilla2]

“To win games we have to have 11 players playing at 110 per cent and this is not the case at the moment. Every game the opponents are running more than us.”

Can we end the nonsense that it's not the players fault at all, they're trying, they are just shit. When a manager comes out and says the players are playing for themselves and not putting the effort in then you know something is really wrong in the dressing room.

Exactly. When Gestede just stopped running at one point when the ball was crossed in, I actually felt embarrassed for him. They're not putting a shift in, and in the case of that pair of twats Guzan and Lescott, they just don't care.

Lescott purports to be a Villa fan. I know of no Villa fan who would be able to sit watching us struggle against Wycombe, on a club record run without defeats, whilst laughing like a little school girl. Where is his passion for the club? Where is his personal pride? It's one last pay check on what he though was going to be the easiest of streets for him, no expectations, barrow boy of a manager, fans downbeat, no hierarchy who cares, a nice earner. He wasn't expecting this at all.

I have always had my doubts about his support for Villa.  His maniacle celebrations of goals against us being a case in point.

[Dave]

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.

The only justification I can think of is maybe after nearly a year without playing much first team football he thought three matches in ten days might be a bit much for him.

If it's not that, then I fully agree.

[andyh]

I have just watched Remi's pre Palace match interview on AVTV.
You really do have to give him some credit for his attitude, his demeanour and his approach.
He really does come across as a man with integrity.

But I can't help feeling that the bloke already looks a bit 'washed out'.
I also can't help the feeling that it seems he has been left to face the music, while others appear to be happy for him to do so.

[Marlon From Bearwood]

Re Lescott being one of us - what bollocks. I refer you to him giving it large in front of the Holte after scoring, and swinging his shirt around in front of us at Goodison.

If he'd been getting stick I could understand it, but he hadn't.

Wanker.

[postal]

But I can't help feeling that the bloke already looks a bit 'washed out'.

Sherwood aged quite quickly, I guess the job will do that to you.

I do feel for Garde. He must be bemused why they cant do simple things, but he also picks Gestade, so....
I'd rather see Gil or Grealish partner Ayew up front than pick Gestade.

[croatian]

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.

Tusen tak Denmark,
Entertaining read, very aposite.
In the same vein, as I'm obviously not a theatrical type, all I can think of is Sid James, Charles Hawtry, Hattie Jacques and Carry on up the Khyber........

[PaulWinch again]

If Garde can get rid of the rotten core of the squad that'll do for me. I don't expect results, because this has been coming for years. I don't care who had come in as manager they would have had no chance. Garde is at least showing the strength of character to take on people like Gabby. This club needs a tremendous amount of work and I don't think the results will change without sufficient ground work. I think Garde is trying to change the whole culture of the squad, and good luck to him.

[themossman]

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.

It's spooky the amount of parallels between Garde and Sherwood, considering they are chalk and cheese, e.g. the constant changing of formations and talk of players not taking instructions. Both things suggest problems with the players. Respectively, that we just don't have the quality for 11 players in their favoured positions to get us results (which is actually an insane position to be in), and that as a group they have zero football intelligence.

[brian green]

I think the explanation for the parallels between Sherwood's and Garde's malfunctions is that each had/has loyalty only from part of the squad. Sherwood's first picks (and KMac's) were the good old muckers, Garde can probably count the number of players loyal to him in the squad on the fingers of one hand.

[Toronto Villa]

To the 'Garde's got no guts' lot - whatever the agenda for this trip is, I get the impression he's the first manager since Houllier to try and tackle a decade+ long problem to do with player attitudes and culture at villa. And Houllier did it from the a position where he was a respected football elder and where he also had big players in the team who were his signings and loyal to him.

And one of his biggest influences is... Gerrard Houllier. You have to think he's hard a word with Houllier who has told him point blank the issues at the club. Tackle them head on and we might fix this mess. Skirt around it and it remain forever. I'm also Robert Duverne has also shared his views, so it's not a shock that Gabby is persona non grata.

[tomd2103]

To the 'Garde's got no guts' lot - whatever the agenda for this trip is, I get the impression he's the first manager since Houllier to try and tackle a decade+ long problem to do with player attitudes and culture at villa. And Houllier did it from the a position where he was a respected football elder and where he also had big players in the team who were his signings and loyal to him.

And one of his biggest influences is... Gerrard Houllier. You have to think he's hard a word with Houllier who has told him point blank the issues at the club. Tackle them head on and we might fix this mess. Skirt around it and it remain forever. I'm also Robert Duverne has also shared his views, so it's not a shock that Gabby is persona non grata.

Houllier's already in employment and is not exactly popular in B6, but he is exactly the type of person we could do with at the club in a position above Garde.  In fact with there already being a connection between the two, I couldn't think of many better people really.   

[Edvard Remberg]

We might also have an internal bunch of saboteurs, who like when Houllier  was here, didn't liked his approach. Sometimes it feels like the mistakes are done on purpose, and they hope they can get rid of Garde by this performance. Cut the head of the snake (Gabby?) and sell him asap - maybe the others will stop thinking they are in control of the club.

[Adam Gittins]

We might also have an internal bunch of saboteurs, who like when Houllier  was here, didn't liked his approach. Sometimes it feels like the mistakes are done on purpose, and they hope they can get rid of Garde by this performance. Cut the head of the snake (Gabby?) and sell him asap - maybe the others will stop thinking they are in control of the club.

Considering the team Kevin MacDonald picked when he had chance, and the previous issues with coaches under Lambert, I wonder quite how deep this runs. Certainly further than the playing staff I'd imagine.