romavillan

I think from now on the verb "to Brathwaite" should be used to mean "to spectacularly piss on someone's chips from a a great height" We did well to even have a good chance coming in to the last over, Stokes has a good future in all formats ahead of him and will learn from it. This group are young and talented, best batting depth I can ever remember england having and we have players who can bowl too. Looking forward to watching them develop together in the longer formats as well as T20.

Just no to Pearson. Rodgers needs a big project to get him back in the top flight game. Monk would be an interesting gamble, he knows the lower leagues very well and he knows what a promotion run is all about. I don't understand why foreign managers should not be considered? Seems a bit weird to me. Moyes, well, Moyes IMO would have been a good appointment when we got Houllier, or after he left. Not sure about him now. Don't know why.

I'm not going to enjoy watching this man have success elsewhere. I am pretty sure he will too. Massive shame, totally not his fault, the people that hired him and promised him whatever they did to get him here were then undermined (rightly probably) and so he found himself in a position that no-one fancies authorising cheques in Jan and he gets completely left out to dry. Then the people that hired him get pushed out the club and he is given not even a scrap of verbal backing the entire time. He had identified what the problems were and it's a shame he is gone in my humblest of opinions. He got totally shafted and it's another stain on the clubs already tarnished reputation. The ONLY positive in doing it now is the chance to give a new man some competitive games to work out what Garde knew, that we need a massive overhaul and to start working ASAP on building a good squad.

Yes, but he obviously ha an idea of exactly WHO the problems are and we don't have time for someone to come in and try and get the same knowledge in a non competitive setting and then do something abotu it all in time for the start of a long hard Championship season

Wow, MEMORIES!

Yep that's some fine work if true. Couldn't have handled it better really, bodes well for the future.

Exactly, so Tim after 10, Garde after 18-20, someonw else now canned around game 30, announce new fall guy for last 8 games, loses 8 straight, new manager in the summer... Garde is not the problem.

See my post above, it's got nothign to do with a free pass, if you are going on acceptable points return for a manager over a run of 8-10 games we'd be on our fourth manager of the season by now and just as deep in the shit.

Totally not the point, right now for all I care we can lose every week. The important thing is what happens in the summer.

In 10 years, looking at their respective careers IMO only one of Sherwood and Garde will have actually had a managerial career, and that won't be Sherwood. Garde's record with this squad is mitigated by the total mindfudging they received losing every week under Sherwood. As I've said before, they tend to start games looking organised and almost like a football team, then there is a mistake and we either get humped or not depending on the opposition. That woudl suggest that during the week the right sort of work is happening, but this lot just cannot handle any kind of setback after being beaten so often, as a group they are shot, and they were when Garde arrived IMO. Sherwood on the other hand did not have this burden, there was lots of optimism around right up to the West Brom game for me. He'd already lost the plot by then though and the damage just got worse and worse. It's like comparing lap times in the "same" car, but driver one smashes the shit out of it before handing it over to driver 2.

Ooooh. *wipes away a tear* I was trying to be funny but that wound is too raw...

Doug would have probably sold his shirt for a £5 outside before the game.

The performance on the weekend was classic Garde era Villa, start the game actually playing decent and looking well prepared and then a mistake at the back and then the players heads drop and that's it. Followed by a stuffing or a slow death depending on the strength of the opposition. Now, for me that says that he is doign a dcent job through the week of training the squad who then through incompetence, stupidity or bad luck contrive to **** it up and then lack any kind of belief after losing so often to be able to come back from a goal down. It doesn't look like he is a bad manager to me, it looks like the job was impossible at the start and got harder after the generous backing of the board in Jan.

Well, it IS a start, but we've had quite a few goes at this since Lerner took over and it's never gone well. I have very little faith that we will make the sort of appointments we need to sort this out. Personally I'd involve Garde as he is the ONLY member of non playing staff to have been part of a well run football club operating at the top end of their league and doing well in europe. See if with his help we can assemble a team which is not incompetent, that would be enough to be a major improvement on the last 5 years.

So pre tekkers out and the rest in? All academic really now this idiot has overseen us get relegated in the worst year in history to get relegated.

I'd rather the club say "we will do what we can to keep him and back him in the summer to rebuild" rather than preparing to make it look like it was him who couldn't be arsed.

Just read a few pages, can't really believe that some are so anti Garde? He produced the ONLY decent spell of form over 5/6 games this group of players (cough) have managed all year. That fell apart when the squad realised that the manager wasn't getting backed by the board, which was a total piss take. If he resigns or gets sacked before the season is out then this poisonous dressing room has won AGAIN. Think about it, it really can't be the manager can it? How many managers do we need to sack before we realise it isn't the manager that is the problem here.

massive gang bumming in the face for us methinks.

Yeah it's never a one man band, even in the british game where managers are supposed to be the boss of everything it's never been that way. Taylor and Clough being a prime example, Clough never had success with anyone else. I bet it was more Pearson and the scouts working together, as it was with them and Ranieri last summer. You would hope the head coach/manager has last word on signings though, whether there's a soprting director or director of football or whatever or not.

Ranieiri is and always has been about doing the basics well, being compact and organised in defence and counter attack quickly when you can, otherwise keep hold of the ball when you can't and be patient. It's the Italian ABC of football, it's not flashy and continental it's just about knowing your job in the team, it being well defined, obeying orders, having enough of a decent technique to be able to do that. It's abotu discipline and hard work. These are not uniquely British characteristics.

I wouldn't be 100% sure Pearson built that team single handed, some of the people responsible for the player recruitment for pearson will be the same that found mahrez and kante etc. this summer. It's not 100% true to call it Pearson's team last year, just the same as it isn't 100% true to call it Ranieri's this year. What you can say is we missed a trick not trying to get Ranieri when we went for Sherwood, I would have been getting him on the phone as I probably said when McLeish left and when Lambert left. He's always been a class act. Back on the Garde thing, I really hope the reshuffle with Fox possibly going and some others will mean we get some support around Garde, it's pretty depressing seeing him struggle so badly, he has been treated very very badly, it's a shit situation all round.

Shame the press guy interrupted, although Garde had certainly dropped some pretty heavy hints beforehand that he found out a lot of "stuff" AFTER he got the job which he didn't know beforehand. So essentially you *could* read into that the board have led him up the garden path and then pulled his trousers down and laughed at his willy.

@dounavilla where'd you watch it?

For me it says more about the dressing room than Garde. we've had too much of this shit for too long, lambert tried to sort it and still some of the bomb squad are around drawing a wage. the time to sort it was backing lambert with more cash at the end of the first season and the following Jan. that way we would have had genuine options instead of these dicks and they would have been more motivated to **** off.

CEO no way! Director of Football yes please, well maybe yes please when he got better after the end of that first season. We wouldn't be in the shit we are now. Possibly a bit old now.