MacDonald Out.

[hilts_coolerking]

Just think he's from the Roy Keane school of motivation that thinks shouting constant swear words day in day out at training will somehow make players fulfil their potential.

Exactly.  And it's moronic.  You don't often hear players say, 'I would have made it, but Kevin MacDonald didn't call me a ****** enough.'

[Andy_Lochhead_in_the_air]

[quote

I’m glad we’ll never have to endure him at our club again.

Except he’s still at our club.

He’s at home looking at his lawn thinking “what the fuck am I going to do with this..?”

Clear the leaves ? But you wont will you, because your fuckin useless at clearing leaves and you are always going be fuckin useless at clearing leaves you c**t !

[BC Villain]

More allegations.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/dec/20/aston-villa-bullying-allegations-tony-mcandrew-kevin-macdonald-players

[sirlordbaltimore]

Piss poor.

[CT]

More allegations.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/dec/20/aston-villa-bullying-allegations-tony-mcandrew-kevin-macdonald-players

That's painful to read. Awful, awful stuff.

[jwarry]

That’s not good reading at all.  Makes you wonder how many nuggets we’ve lost because of these two if true

[john e]

a sad and sorry read

even if only half of it were true 20 years is a long time for it to go on for unnoticed or ignored

[aj2k77]

Fucking pathetic, two grown men picking on kids, they should be ashamed of themselves.

[supertom]

It's shite, and they're probably following the way the were raised in the ranks themselves in the 70's-80's. But we're talking over 20 years ago, in a culture where Ferguson could kick a boot at David Beckham, call his players everything under the son and be worshipped, or Barry Fry is seen as a somewhat amusing clown figure in some corners. Doesn't excuse grown men suffering from severe cases of toxic masculinity, but this was probably rife, throughout professional football. Yeah, by all means, if someone comes in from more recent times and accuses him over severe bullying, he'd have to go. But players getting called a Berkshire hunt over 20 years ago? We fire him and it sets a dangerous precedent I think for retrospective punishments. Jesus, look at Wimbledon. A ten year span, probably more and you could lock up the entire first team probably. It's historically been the English approach to coaching young players, up until the last decade or so. If things are changing, brilliant. Great. But this is the culture that used to see dads at kids football games shouting obscenities in the presence of 30 kids on the pitch and touchline.
What can be done about that? If they were more forthright about it back then they might have seen some action take place. If they were ignored, that would have been a failing on the clubs part.   

[villabear]

More allegations.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/dec/20/aston-villa-bullying-allegations-tony-mcandrew-kevin-macdonald-players

That's painful to read. Awful, awful stuff.

This article again highlights a shameful time within the club but this quote is just awful:

One other former player, who did not want to be named for personal reasons, makes similar claims, saying that as an adult he has realised it was wrong. “If they called me a ****** five times in a day that was a good day,” he says. “It was hell, day in and day out. Looking back, it wasn’t ‘old school’, it was crap school. I think it has had a bad impact on me over my whole life and now I cannot stand any form of bullying, or negativity.”

[Steve67]

I wish this had all come about when the club was in the doldrums.  It's a shame that it happened at all but when the club is on the up and we have a quality manager and owners.  I hope that justice is done come what may though.

[pauliewalnuts]

Wasn't there an incident in recent years when one of our players picked up a really bad training ground injury, and there was some controversy about how it had happened?

I know that sounds vague and is almost certainly not connected to this nonsense, but i remembered it reading these articles and couldn't for the life of me remember who it was.

[hilts_coolerking]

What I don't get is why anyone ever thought this was the way to produce top quality footballers.  And if McDonald didn't think that, why was he doing it?  Because that's the way things were then?  No, I'm not buying that.

The 'school of hard knocks' thing has always been a load of cobblers anyway.

[VILLA MOLE]

If this was just "old school" wouldn't other clubs have issues over bullying that we seem to have ?

[curiousorange]

I don't know if there's a definite causality between the two, but the mentions in the articles about how their experiences had a hugely negative impact on these men's personalities makes me wonder whether the relative lack of decent football careers post-academy was entirely to do with ability.