handsworthvilla

Come on give him credit where its due. Coutinho, Bouba and Digne are all on record saying the Gerrard pull was a massive factor in them signing. By your logic no manager should ever get credit for signings because a final call is always made by the money men above a manager. He's a crap manager but the calibre of his signings have been top drawer.

Haha, agree with all of that. Apart from the signing players point. You can argue Bouba, Carlos, Digne and Coutinho have no resale value but they most definitely have improved the club. I'd also add that Purslow will have a view on the financial position of the club, the belief in the manager within the training ground, and the status of potential options for a new manager. He will have to consider all of that in the round and then come to a position. So it's a bit more nuanced than people like to make out. For what it's worth I'm usually one of the last to turn with Managers, it is just my nature to try and apply some patience. But I do agree that once the toxicity spreads it becomes impossible to recover the situation so it's better to pull the plug before that point.

Whilst I absolutely agree he should not let his personal relationship hinder his judgement, I would hope and expect he is not just basing his decision on fans opinion. I imagine fans opinion is just one of several factors he needs to consider before arriving at a position. If it was as simple as gauging fan opinion and acting on that we could do away with the CEO role and just conduct a monthly fans survey. We'd end up paying a lot of compensation though.

It's nice to read a balanced assessment. Nobody has a crystal ball. He obviously did what he thought was right for the club at the time, it doesn't make him a prick just because that decision has proved to be the wrong one.

To be fair if he was to leave tomorrow I don't think we're any worse off for the signings he has made. The only one you could really debate is Coutinho. Bouba / Carlos / Digne are all solid players that I'm sure the next manager will be more than happy to work with. But yeh if you mean 2 or 3 more Coutinho's then yes that is worrying.

Its revisionist to suggest he wasn't world class when Barca bought him. Klopp and Liverpool fought very hard to keep him, he was the best player in the PL at the time. But now his legs are gone. Carragher for once was spot on with his analysis, he doesn't have the power in his legs anymore to burst away from players and create his own space. Just compare the energy / running of Buendia with Coutinho and you will see this clearly. Both similar builds but at different stages of their career. Unfortunately for us you can't really be a wide player in the PL without bundles of energy / running these days. You could maybe get away with him at No10 but I'm always suspicious of any system that accommodates a No10 ... none of the top teams use them anymore.

Bit random but I was looking at his insta earlier. If you didn't already know he was Aston Villa manager you wouldn't be any the wiser from looking at his insta page. I couldn't see a single post about Villa on there, and his job isn't even listed in his bio. I thought that was a bit weird because its not like he isn't active on there, he has plenty of recent posts just nothing about being associated with Villa.

Agree its approaching time for him to go. But it's not right to say there is absolutely no logical reason he should be here still. We have no idea what is going on behind the scenes. There could be all sorts of logical reasons why it makes sense to hold fire at the moment. It's actually quite likely that conversations are going on with other potential targets, this is common when managers start to struggle. For all we know there may be advanced conversations with another manager, and until we reach a deal it makes sense to keep the current structure in place. Purslow seems like a smart operator and he wouldn't have got to where he is without taking tough decisions at the expense of personal relationships. Also, I for one will be delighted if we beat Chelsea on Sunday

I'm not sure about this. In terms of throwing the squad under the bus, I don't think I've ever heard him call out individuals. He often states the obvious, example being after yesterday's game saying he needs our attackers to start turning up. It would be more annoying / disrespectful to me if he didn't mention that and tried to deflect from reality by blaming bad luck, referee decisions etc. In terms of not acknowledging the away fans, is that a fact? I haven't been to an away game whilst he has been in charge so I really have no idea about that. It's not something I've heard from any other Villa fans. And as for moving on to bigger things after Villa. That is just conjecture / speculation. And really quite unlikely in my opinion. If / when he gets the boot from here he will be nowhere near the running for the England job, and will struggle to get a PL club for his next job (in my opinion). As I said in my earlier post I agree with most fans that he has been largely useless since joining. But I've never quite understand why people seem to dislike his personality so much. He seems a decent enough bloke trying his best to turn a situation around whilst being way out of his depth (don't shoot me!)

What has he done that is disrespectful? (serious question ...) I know he made the Mings captain call, which I guess you could call disrespectful to Mings, but what else? I think the football he is producing is utter crap but I'm kind of missing why people are taking such a strong dislike to him as a person.

Yep, its essentially impossible to get away tickets through the official routes now unless you have a booking history of away games from the previous season. I remember the season we got relegated and a few of the seasons before (Lambert era mainly) it was usually OK to grab an away ticket through the official site without that much of a history. I live in London so used to try and catch the London games. Not possible now

I really hope someone doesn't actually throw a Cabbage. It's such a distasteful act and doesn't show our fanbase in the best light. There are better and more civil ways to make our feelings known.

McGinn defo getting a booking tonight

Hate? Jesus Christ its just football. Yes he's a crap manager but don't hate the guy, he's not doing this on purpose.

Yeah because he was really pulling up trees under Smith

I think your points regarding Southgate's role are very valid. I'm not sure whether he has acted deliberately (because he seems like quite a measured and level headed man) but there's no doubt that his attitude and treatment of Jack has been bizarre and detrimental to Villa. He has indirectly pushed him towards the exit with his treatment of him. For a long time I've said to my non-Villa friends "wait until he leaves Villa, he'll be the first name on the england team sheet". And would you believe it last night he goes straight into the starting line up, when the only start he could get during the Euro's was in a dead rubber. Its almost like now that Guardiola has said he's worth £100m and is a better option than Sterling on the left, Southgate doesn't really have a leg to stand on so he has to start him. Whereas before he could come up with all sorts of nonsense about why he wasn't starting. I'm still baffled about the time he said Jack needed to be playing regular PL football to get in the squad, then the next squad comes around and he calls up Hudson-Odoi who hadn't made a league appearance for Chelsea yet by that point. So many baffling consistencies which when you add them all together does make you wonder whether he actually had an agenda against Jack and/or Villa

Good point actually. I met him at VP once and he was a top bloke as well. Hendrie was sound as well although he did try to chat up my then Mrs on her way to the bathroom

Well I was born a stones throw from VP to a Villa family, and I find the vitriol absolutely baffling, bordering on ridiculous. Ignoring for a minute all the things Jack did for the club, anyone with half a brain can see how much Jack and his family love Villa. He was a fan long before he became one of the best players in the world. You could hear it in his voice when he talked about the club and the ground and see it in his face when we won. I've been going to VP since '94 and I've never heard another player come close to having so much genuine love for the club. Who else would describe scoring the winner against Blues as the best day of their life? I think people are guilty of over-simplifying situations which they have no real knowledge about. I love Villa just as much as the next person, but if I was 25 and had the whole of the country telling me I had the potential to be the best player in the world, I think I would owe it to myself to try and achieve everything I possibly could. Its about not having regrets. Who wants to look back at 50 and say I could've been the best player in the world, I could've won loads of trophies, but I turned down the opportunities that were offered to me. People always over-simplify and make it out as if its always about money because that's a simple narrative and gives them an easy reason to blame the player. They take the human element out of it. If Jack was your brother what would you advise him to do? With a heavy heart I'd probably tell him he owes it to himself to see how good he can actually be, because he'll probably regret it if he didn't For what its worth, all my real life Villa friends feel exactly the same way and will always hold Jack in high regard, and hope we get to see him in claret and blue again one day

Ah thank you - interesting! Gabby has just put a post up on insta with a link to the interview, basically confirming that it was him, and that in his eyes he just wouldn't let himself be bullied by Roy

Absolutely loved that interview, he showed a different side to him and at times it felt like he almost forgot the camera was there. The bit about Villa was really interesting, I couldn't really work out who he was referring to when he said the bit about Villa having 2 of the worst professionals he's ever worked with. Could well be Gabby, because just before that he did say something like "I see them doing media work now" - and obviously Gabby is doing talksport these days. He talked about it in the interview and I've always found it baffling how his managerial career has been misconstrued. He did a pretty remarkable job at Sunderland, but that seems to be completely glossed over because he had a poor spell at Ipswich. Not been able to get a job since, strange. Ironic really that when he talked about some championship/league 1 managers being able to get 6 or 7 managerial jobs in a row without any success the first name I thought of was Lambert, who he worked for at Villa.

So annoying. Especially after Mings' comments on the subject last year, wouldve thought people had learned

Wow. They are actually pretty compelling stats. I've never really been a fan but this will make me reconsider. Although saying that he did start last Saturday

I literally read that article an hour before the announcement, and whilst reading it I was thinking the author has got a point here, one of the top 6 should definitely go and nab Ings. Then an hour later I see we've bought him. So surreal

Agree with everything you say apart from the part in bold. Leicester have (nearly) proven over the past 2 seasons that it is possible to sell your best player and reinvest the money in building a better team/squad. It only works if you let one of them go at a time, which is what their model is. (Mahrez one summer, Maguire next summer, Chilwell next summer etc). There is also the example of Liverpool when they sold Coutinho. They were desperate to hold onto him, Barcelona wouldn't go away and eventually were forced into selling him for £140m. Everyone was convinced that was them done for. They didn't even get a like for like replacement, just invested the money across the squad in different positions (Alison, Van Dijk) and won the champions league the next season. I don't think we'll ever be able to find a like for like replacement for Jack as I genuinely think he's one of the rarest types of players. But if we change the way we play, invest in different types of players, we could end up with a better overall team (albeit without anyone in the team as good as Jack)

No way will the holte end ever boo Jack with the memories he's given us. I certainly won't