Next Villa manager

[Richard E]

Jimbo nails it. It makes me cringe when we sing 'have you won the European Cup?' to people like Arsenal. I'd actually take down all the 1982 related banners etc at Villa Park until we have a team worthy of them again.

[Tony Erdington]

I think some of our problems have been down to our skewed view of ourselves, our stature and our place in the game. Many of us see Villa as a big club with a glorious history, a peerless pedigree, a club with a special aura surrounding it. Fair enough.

But for many years a lot of the football world saw us as boring, unsexy draw merchants who rarely had big name players, and never really did anything of note in football, certainly not in the modern era.

And that was before we turned into Randy Lerner's defeat worshippers, the club that loved failure, that habitually had its arse handed to it by lower league opposition in cups, and spent its time scrabbling around the foot of the table before being soundly walloped in front of an audience of millions at Wembley, and then scooting out the league as one of the most hapless and disgraceful 'teams' that ever got relegated.

Big grounds, nice training facilities, large away followings and impressive honours lists don't win games. But I can't help noticing a sense of entitlement that really doesn't help our cause.

The same entitlement that made many think we would have all the little teams quaking in their boots as we swaggered our way through the Championship, and back to the PL. The same entitlement that regards the likes of Steve Bruce as being below us, somehow. And the same goes for the likes of Allardyce and Pulis last year, both of whom might well have kept us up.

I think that attitude makes other teams think 'Who the fuck do Aston Villa think they are? They haven't won anything in a generation. Let's give 'em a kicking.' And do you know what, we're currently 19th in the Championship because nobody is overawed by Aston Villa, and we're as soft and woolly as a baby's blanket.

A few years ago Ian Holloway called us 'a half arsed club that used to be famous' and we all gave him shit for it. But he was right. More recently he predicted we would struggle in the Championship, and he was right about that too. He actually said we might get relegated. We're 19th and getting worse with every game. Don't think we're too big to go down, because some of us thought that five years ago and look where we are now.

I honestly think it's time to get over ourselves and start rebuilding from the bottom up. Forget the European Cup, and start thinking about winning a match. A single game of football. Then another. We are entitled to nothing unless we work our balls off and fight for it. And it's going to be ugly before it gets pretty. Hence, Steve Bruce.

top post

[LeeB]

Amen Jimbo.

[brian green]

I am resigned to never seeing us in the Premiership again.  Younger fans than I certainly will but not with Steve Bruce I fear.  With him there is slot in the Championship somewhere between 8th and 12th with our name on it.  It will be our level and Steve Bruce's level.

[Tony Erdington]

I am resigned to never seeing us in the Premiership again.  Younger fans than I certainly will but not with Steve Bruce I fear.  With him there is slot in the Championship somewhere between 8th and 12th with our name on it.  It will be our level and Steve Bruce's level.

oh thanks for that, you little ray of sunshine.

[Chris Smith]

I am resigned to never seeing us in the Premiership again.  Younger fans than I certainly will but not with Steve Bruce I fear.  With him there is slot in the Championship somewhere between 8th and 12th with our name on it.  It will be our level and Steve Bruce's level.

I don't see the logic in that when applied to a man who has four promotions to his name. Any manager can be lucky once but four times suggests something else.

[Jim Bradley]

Interesting to hear what Bruce has to say this morning on Goals On Sunday http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/10607476/on-goals-on-sunday-steve-and-alex-bruce

[Clampy]

I am resigned to never seeing us in the Premiership again.  Younger fans than I certainly will but not with Steve Bruce I fear.  With him there is slot in the Championship somewhere between 8th and 12th with our name on it.  It will be our level and Steve Bruce's level.

I don't see the logic in that when applied to a man who has four promotions to his name. Any manager can be lucky once but four times suggests something else.

I agree. He's got just as much chance as Dyche or Wagner if they were appointed.

[Richard E]

I am resigned to never seeing us in the Premiership again.  Younger fans than I certainly will but not with Steve Bruce I fear.  With him there is slot in the Championship somewhere between 8th and 12th with our name on it.  It will be our level and Steve Bruce's level.

oh thanks for that, you little ray of sunshine.

No need to play the man not the ball. Let's just hope Brian is wrong, especially about the first sentence.

[ozzjim]

I am resigned to never seeing us in the Premiership again.  Younger fans than I certainly will but not with Steve Bruce I fear.  With him there is slot in the Championship somewhere between 8th and 12th with our name on it.  It will be our level and Steve Bruce's level.

I don't see the logic in that when applied to a man who has four promotions to his name. Any manager can be lucky once but four times suggests something else.

3 out of his last 3 with less resource too. I am sorry but your post has no basis in any logic Brian

[Monty]

Here's the thing though, Jimbo - it's not a case of thinking we're 'above' the likes of Bruce (God knows we've had some managers below his level recently), but that this long-slog rebuild you speak of will be held back by handing the club over to someone so ostensibly short-term as him.

You say we need to get over ourselves a bit. Fine - sometimes I think the same. But if that's the case then it should involve forgetting about the Premier League for a while, if that's such a fanciful dream as you suggest. It should involve patience, time and Southamptoning - establishing a new club structure, playing style, ideology almost, which might take three years of Championship football to get in place but will be worth it in the long run.

Appointing Bruce is almost an arrogant thing to do, because his job will be promotion as soon as possible and damn the rest, like our right to be in the top division is such that any means will do to achieve it. It's the 'half-arsed' thing to do, the latest scrabbling for a quick fix, and - in my opinion - one that at best will get us back to the shitty place we were at before, the sheer boredom and doldrums of continual 16th-at-best finishes. If some people are happy with that, fine, but for me being 16th in the Premier League isn't all that different from being 10th in the Championship - you're still doing nothing.

Rebuilding from the bottom up would perhaps require a new manager, perhaps an unknown quantity with good recommendations, like Karanka was or Wagner was when their clubs took a chance on them. Someone like Patrick Vieira, say, who's had rave reviews for his work with City's youth system but is currently wasting his time in New York. Rebuilding from the bottom up means really giving a damn about club structure, about youth development, about having a club playing style which can stay ingrained through various coaching appointments and player sales and signings. Rebuilding from the bottom up requires swallowing that excessive pride you talk about, and going through at least a couple of years of hard work to get to somewhere better for the long-term.

I utterly fail to see how it involves hiring a manager who's never been known for his forward-thinking approach to football, who's never been known for anything close to youth development, who regards email as subversive new voodoo, and whose sole recommendation is that he's a pretty good gun-for-hire if all you have is short-term ambitions of yo-yoing mediocrity.

[Chris Jameson]

Isn't what some are saying on this thread very similar to what is used to berate the 'delusional' Geordies? Supposed big club thinking they should be attracting managers from supposed smaller clubs or even the likes of Mancini. See suggestions we approach Man United to get Marcus Radhford on loan in the summer!

We won the league in 1981, the European Cup in 1982, last won a trophy 20 years ago and are currently 19th in the Championship and a division below the likes of Watford, Bournemouth, Burnley and Hull City having recently sacked our third manager in 12 months.

[Monty]

Isn't what some are saying on this thread very similar to what is used to berate the 'delusional' Geordies? Supposed big club thinking they should be attracting managers from supposed smaller clubs or even the likes of Mancini. See suggestions we approach Man United to get Marcus Radhford on loan in the summer!

We won the league in 1981, the European Cup in 1982, last won a trophy 20 years ago and are currently 19th in the Championship and a division below the likes of Watford, Bournemouth, Burnley and Hull City having recently sacked our third manager in 12 months.

In fairness, the manager of those 'delusional Geordies' is Rafa Benitez.

[Walmley_Villa]

A good point raised on The Sunday Supplement (where they all agreed he is the ideal man for the job) was that will he put up with Dr Tony tweeting publically all the time as it suggests he is in and out of the dressing room?
Old school managers take a dim view of this behaviour and interference...

If it is Bruce I am comforted by the thought that we have a footballing hierarchy now to hopefully handle a strategy moving forward. At the end of the day the hangover from last season has continued and we need someone to stabilise the ship or we run the risk of slipping down again. Not the time for a risky and inexperienced appointment.

[Jimbo]

Monty, the simplest way I can put it is we've been in freefall and we're not showing any signs of hitting the ground yet. We can't rebuild while we're still falling. We have to stop the rot first, get some stability, learn how to win a few games and then rebuild. We can't start any forward thinking while we're still slipping backwards.

Our short term ambitions are not getting into a full blooded relegation battle. That's what I mean by a wartime manager. Once we're on an even keel, then perhaps we can find this mystery Karanka / Wagner figure who can haul us into the 21st century, whoever it is. We're so far from that right now it's ridiculous.

Everyone in the Championship can smell blood. We are weak, they know it, and they will happily give us a kicking. We have two derbies coming up, for instance, which I'm not looking forward to in any way. Is anyone?