Past Managers, Love or Hate?

[olaftab]

From the ones in my supporting lifetime:

Total C-words: Gerrard, O'Leary
Clueless twat: Sherwood
Really rather bad: McLeish, Lambert, Garde, SGT Mk II, Houlier, Di Matteo, Bruce
Nearly, but not quite: O'Neill, Gregory
A nice idea, but no: Dr Jo
Some great football but I cannot forgive the choice of language: Atkinson
Heroes: SGT, Little, Smith
Divine: Emery

That's where I am overall.

Sorry but harsh on Sherwood, who gave me one of the best days of being a Villa fan in that semi-final at Wembley. And he seems quite nice.

With you Hane on that day in London which will only be bettered when Unai wins the cup next season however he is a bit of a twat😂

[Cliftonville Villlain]

Unai up there with SGT. What Graham Taylor did here in the late 80's was miraculous.

[Risso]

Bruce assembled the bones of the team that got us up - McGinn, JT, Elmo, AEG. Credit due where required.

Dean Smith perform miracles to get that team out the championship

Bruce had turned it into such a championship level team that when we went up we had to get rid of nearly all the players and buy in a completely new side

Honestly he was so bad it still upsets me to think he was anything to do with Villa

He did extremely well to make up the lost ground from Bruce's time, but that play off final team had Mings, McGinn, Grealish and Abraham, who were all miles too good for that level and are all international level still, as well as very good players for top end Championship/lower Prem like Hourihane, El Ghazi and Elmo.

[FatSam]

In my mind we tend to end the careers of managers, or at least their upward trajectory. If that is the case, is it just a symptom of us ultimately not being very good for the last 30 years? Or a combination of this and there not being many more prestigious manager positions available?

Who was the last Villa manager who went on to greater things (objectively speaking) after leaving us? SGT left on his own terms for the England job, but Watford and Villa were clearly his career highlights. We were obviously Big Ron’s last hurrah. Sir Brian entered the managerial wilderness fairly quickly, likewise Gregory. O’Neill had one more underwhelming EPL stint left in him.

[Sexual Ealing]

I think if I'd have met Saunders as a kid , I would still be in counselling now ! On the Scary Manager scale no one comes near Sir Ron.

He was built like a brick shithouse. He was managing in the days when a few pints and a packet of Benson and Hedges were seen as modern elite fuelling, but he had a physique that would put Cristiano Ronaldo to shame.



Think that was from his Norwich days.

Fit.

[maidstonevillain]

From the ones in my supporting lifetime:

Total C-words: Gerrard, O'Leary
Clueless twat: Sherwood
Really rather bad: McLeish, Lambert, Garde, SGT Mk II, Houlier, Di Matteo, Bruce
Nearly, but not quite: O'Neill, Gregory
A nice idea, but no: Dr Jo
Some great football but I cannot forgive the choice of language: Atkinson
Heroes: SGT, Little, Smith
Divine: Emery

That's where I am overall.

Sorry but harsh on Sherwood, who gave me one of the best days of being a Villa fan in that semi-final at Wembley. And he seems quite nice.

With you Hane on that day in London which will only be bettered when Unai wins the cup next season however he is a bit of a twat😂

Add me to that. I took my son, and it will be remembered as one of the great days out. And he kept us up. Just about.

Also I can't understand the total hatred for DOL. He didn't do too badly, just lost the plot a bit towards the end.

He was also manager for the first game I took son to. The 3-3 at Craven Cottage.

[Villa in Denmark]

From the ones in my supporting lifetime:

Total C-words: Gerrard, O'Leary
Clueless twat: Sherwood
Really rather bad: McLeish, Lambert, Garde, SGT Mk II, Houlier, Di Matteo, Bruce
Nearly, but not quite: O'Neill, Gregory
A nice idea, but no: Dr Jo
Some great football but I cannot forgive the choice of language: Atkinson
Heroes: SGT, Little, Smith
Divine: Emery

That's where I am overall.

Sorry but harsh on Sherwood, who gave me one of the best days of being a Villa fan in that semi-final at Wembley. And he seems quite nice.

With you Hane on that day in London which will only be bettered when Unai wins the cup next season however he is a bit of a twat😂

Add me to that. I took my son, and it will be remembered as one of the great days out. And he kept us up. Just about.

Also I can't understand the total hatred for DOL. He didn't do too badly, just lost the plot a bit towards the end.

He was also manager for the first game I took son to. The 3-3 at Craven Cottage.

Results not withstanding, he was a narcissistic bell end that spent his time here pining for Leeds, denigrating the club is my recollection.

I remember watching the press conference wheel he was announced and saying to my wife, "what the he'll is a chequebook manager like him doing with Ellis."

Honest bunch of lads.

[pauliewalnuts]

From the ones in my supporting lifetime:

Total C-words: Gerrard, O'Leary
Clueless twat: Sherwood
Really rather bad: McLeish, Lambert, Garde, SGT Mk II, Houlier, Di Matteo, Bruce
Nearly, but not quite: O'Neill, Gregory
A nice idea, but no: Dr Jo
Some great football but I cannot forgive the choice of language: Atkinson
Heroes: SGT, Little, Smith
Divine: Emery

That's where I am overall.

Sorry but harsh on Sherwood, who gave me one of the best days of being a Villa fan in that semi-final at Wembley. And he seems quite nice.

With you Hane on that day in London which will only be bettered when Unai wins the cup next season however he is a bit of a twat😂

Add me to that. I took my son, and it will be remembered as one of the great days out. And he kept us up. Just about.

Also I can't understand the total hatred for DOL. He didn't do too badly, just lost the plot a bit towards the end.

He was also manager for the first game I took son to. The 3-3 at Craven Cottage.

Results not withstanding, he was a narcissistic bell end that spent his time here pining for Leeds, denigrating the club is my recollection.

I remember watching the press conference wheel he was announced and saying to my wife, "what the he'll is a chequebook manager like him doing with Ellis."

Honest bunch of lads.

Indeed.

[pauliewalnuts]

Sir Graham - magnificent first spell, turned the club around, what a great job he did. Second spell - not great, but he's SGT.

Dr Jo - a surprisingly forward bit of thinking by Ellis, but didn't really get much of a chance. Nice chap, though.

BFR - gave us one of my favourite Villa sides, the football was great, until he went to the 1994 world cup and came back with John Fashanu. Alarm bells.

Sir Brian Little - loved him as a player, loved him as a manager, do not feel qualified to really criticise him in any way, my knees wobble a bit every time I think about him.

Gregory - did relatively well but with a penchant for resorting to horrorball football.

O'Leary - thought he was bigger than the club. Did decent job to start with but alienated people so much, in the end even Chris Smith had had enough of him.

MON - limited manager who ultimately wanted everything to be about him, and got us more or less where you'd expect us to get, given the money he got, but also factoring the IMMENSE money wastage he sanctioned.

Houllier - we actually had a reasonable season given the circumstances, and I thought he did a decent job, but he couldn't STFU about Liverpool. The badge tapping in the Anfield tunnel and the comments after his arrival press conference were fucking disgusting.

McLeish, Bruce - nice enough blokes, but relics from a bygone era, providing truly dreadful football. No malice, but fuck me, what horrible times.

Garde - honestly, hard to recall he was ever our manager. Didn't seem that bothered, but was saddled with a bunch of twats of a squad.

Lambert - thought it was a great appointment and started well. Soon disintegrated. Those photos of him and Keane sat on the bench looking like a couple of piss soaked tramps just sum up that grim period perfectly.

Sherwood - out of his depth, bit of a knob at times, but overall he seemed like a decent type who really cared, and still clearly has a huge amount of respect for us. He 'got' us. That semi final was majestic. Fuck me, the three times I've smiled more than any time in my recent life were seeing David Byrne live, seeing Kraftwerk, and winning that semi final. Although at the same time, that match at Leicester, what a turning point that was. If you'd said before those stupid subs, one of these teams is going to win the league, I'd have lumped everything I owned on us. Sliding doors moment.

Di Matteo - genuinely forget he was our manager.

Dean Smith - a good man, a Villa man, and he did a great job to get us promoted and keep us up, but I think even he knew that the next step was beyond him.

Gerrard - an absolute toxic arsehole with no idea what he was doing. Alienated the players and fans. The only good thing about him is that he united fans and players like no other - all united in thinking he was a cunt

Unai Emery - the English language is yet to evolve enough to provide sufficiently powerful words with which to describe him. Magnificent. And very demanding.

[amfy]

My overriding memory of Sherwood is his team being the most wretched bunch of losers I've seen in over 40 years watching Villa. Sank to the bottom of the table early on and never moved for the rest of the season.

To be fair, when he took over that wretched bunch hadn’t scored a goal for about 900 hours of football, and then it got quite exciting for a bit. We went on a cup run and looked good in some league games too! At the time it was great. Then we lost horribly at Southampton just before the cup final, & we just never looked the same again
…. there was a little while when he made those wretched bunch of losers inexplicably light up, before burning out again…
& that’s how I think of Tim Sherwood really - like a firework that burned really brightly for a while & then went pfffft.
….but it was a bit magical while it lasted.

[pauliewalnuts]

My overriding memory of Sherwood is his team being the most wretched bunch of losers I've seen in over 40 years watching Villa. Sank to the bottom of the table early on and never moved for the rest of the season.

To be fair, when he took over that wretched bunch hadn’t scored a goal for about 900 hours of football, and then it got quite exciting for a bit. We went on a cup run and looked good in some league games too! At the time it was great. Then we lost horribly at Southampton just before the cup final, & we just never looked the same again
…. there was a little while when he made those wretched bunch of losers inexplicably light up, before burning out again…
& that’s how I think of Tim Sherwood really - like a firework that burned really brightly for a while & then went pfffft.
….but it was a bit magical while it lasted.

I remember playing, I think, Burnley at home before the cup final, and their fans singing "Arsenal will murder you" and thinking, they're probably right. And they were.

[VillaTim]

Someone mentioned it earlier , Hourihane , another very good steve Bruce signing as was Kodija and Adoma .

[PeterWithesShin]

Someone mentioned it earlier , Hourihane , another very good steve Bruce signing as was Kodija and Adoma .

Kod and Albert were signed under RDM.

[BC Villain]

It’s pretty clear that there is universal agreement that Gerrard was ‘unloved’ here.

If you ever needed an endorsement of the difference between the previous two managers then their comments in recent days tell their own story.

One a humble man who has congratulated the club on getting into the top 4.

The other a self-indulgent berk who moaned the players didnt play for him, with not the slightest shred of congratulations.

[Jane]

My overriding memory of Sherwood is his team being the most wretched bunch of losers I've seen in over 40 years watching Villa. Sank to the bottom of the table early on and never moved for the rest of the season.

To be fair, when he took over that wretched bunch hadn’t scored a goal for about 900 hours of football, and then it got quite exciting for a bit. We went on a cup run and looked good in some league games too! At the time it was great. Then we lost horribly at Southampton just before the cup final, & we just never looked the same again
…. there was a little while when he made those wretched bunch of losers inexplicably light up, before burning out again…
& that’s how I think of Tim Sherwood really - like a firework that burned really brightly for a while & then went pfffft.
….but it was a bit magical while it lasted.

It really was!