McLeish: The gift that keeps on giving
These quotes surfaced yesterday, and I was interested to see what our former manager would make of his time at Villa, and whether he would take any blame or not. Here is a selection of what he had to say in an article on ESPN, and I will let you make up your own mind:
“I knew what I was taking on and at the end of the day it was quite a tough one, but staying in the Premiership was absolutely vital to Villa”
“We lost the same number of games as Liverpool, but the statistic that went against us was too many draws, in terms of climbing up the table.”
“At the end of the day, I felt that the squad was quite weak, quite thin experience-wise, and that could always be a problem”
He continues to do himself no favours, and it would have been nice to see him hold his hands up, and admit that he was at least partly to blame. His thinly veiled attacks on some of our younger players did not go down too well at all last season, and once again he appears keen to pass the buck on to someone else. I felt that when he was appointed we certainly wouldn’t have a good season, but felt things would be comfortable and we’d at least finish near the lower area of the middle of the table. To not be mathematically safe on the last game of the season isn’t really good enough, and the board soon acted by sacking him in the 24 hours following the Norwich game.
Granted we had injury problems galore, and we were always going to miss players like Petrov, Bent, Dunne and even Jenas to a degree. Still looking at the side we had we still should have had enough to perform better, at least in my opinion.
Anyway the McLeish period at Villa is done now, but it seems he’s keen to get back into management sooner rather than later:
“Right now I need to take a break, so I’m going to get a holiday, get some vitamin D through my body and regenerate, and come back hopefully stronger and look to take up the reins somewhere else at a future date.”
At the moment, and I’m not sure if it’s because I’m still bitter at what happened at Villa, I’m struggling to see where he might end up. Maybe a Championship team where he might still hold some appeal, I’d be surprised to see a Premiership team taking a punt on him, especially as you can’t imagine fan feedback being great. Saying that that didn’t stop the powers that be giving him a job here, so anywhere else might be a cakewalk for him regarding fan relations.
Wonder what kind of reaction he’d get if he ever came back to Villa Park?
UTV.
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He’s right though isn’t he.
The likes of Herd and Lichaj, Albrighton and Clarke should be closing on 80-100 apps at their age, but mis management earlier on has prevented them from doing so.
I’m not sticking up for Eck here but he has a point.
I agree they should have certainly had more appearances prior to this season mate and I still think that the squad needs a big overhaul. Our results the last few seasons suggest that it’s not just one man’s fault.
I was just interested to see if he would accept any of the blame, and I still don’t agree with him calling out some of the inexperienced bunch in public. This past season, as tough as it has been, will hopefully have done the names you mentioned, plus a few others a world of good, and they’ll be way more suited to the rigours of the Premiership in the future.
UTV.
Agree, MON could have been blooding these players slowly into the first team years ago but never.
Yep, that’s one of the reasons I started to turn on MON, he never would give the youth a chance. Given how we used to struggle due to his absolute lack of rotation they could have done great things, and be even further along now. I still look at Herd, Clark, Albrighton, Bannan et al as ‘young’ players, but most of them are in their early twenties now, and should have played far more games as mentioned.
Not sure I wanted to hear about him soaking up vitamin D courtesy of a fat pay off for his failure at Villa. Would much rather it was hepatitis C !
You are a failure as a manager who fails to face up to his own short comings. Villa have suffered in the short term but at least we may have helped rid the rest of football of your “free flowing, expansive football like the Dutch in the 70′s” (He REALLY did give this quote to the press earlier in the season). Maybe you and Emile Heskey (who you compared to Beckenbauer?) can both spend your twilight years on sun-loungers in the Caribbean courtesy of clueless uncle Randy’s millions.
Considering you keep going on about “leaving every club you have managed better off than when you arrived” (yet another GENUINE quote), have you ever wondered why your are not welcome back at any of the clubs you have managed? Is everyone wrong about you? P*SS OFF!
He’s like some football-rotting virus, and not in a good way.
Come back to Villa Park!!?? I would shoot the useless ginger tosser.
I have thought long and hard on this one, you really have got to blame the powers that be in appointing the Ginger twat, and looking at the headlines tonight on Managers God knows who we are going to end up with this season.
Ha Ha had to laugh, he was at the Footcell tournament launch and was asked about kids learning more technical skills and be able to keep posession. He agreed and said it was a good idea. WHAT! is people like him at the top of the tree stopping them from doing so, idiot. He should have said ” I am glad the kids are going to 9 a side, 1 goalie 7 defenders and lump it as high and as long as they can to the biggest kid on the planet. A disgrace to the beautiful game should never be allowed to manage again.
He should have his coaching badges taken off him. He should never be allowed to manage another professional club. An awful, awful, awful manager, if you can call him that.
I do think he’s finally been found out though.