Steven Gerrard

[DJBOB]

What comes next is a different question than should Gerrard stay on.

1) It can both be true that Gerrard is horrifically out of his depth and is killing this squad, any chance for progress, and the fan's ability to even engage with the club.

2) It is also true, and maybe equally so, that sacking Gerrard will not solve an inept transfer strategy and a lack of first team strategy as a whole since we have been promoted.

But sacking Gerrard can solve one problem and then it is up to NSWE and Purslow to solve the other. Keeping Gerrard will in no way shape or form help this club going forward and will only further detriment it to the point of relegation. Yes - relegation can be a a fear mongering tool - but the results, the eye test, the high level stats, the underlying stats say otherwise.

Other clubs have already acted far more quickly than Villa. Why we haven't done anything, despite the colossal mountain of evidence in front of us, is the only question that remains.

Edited October 12, 2022 by DJBOB

[IrishVilla10]

7 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

That’s not to argue that Gerrard should stay. We cannot go on for much longer playing the desperately poor football we are seeing at present and it doesn’t look like he can turn things around in the short term.

Just don’t believe that a new manager will come equipped with a magic wand. 

Do you think he can long term? Despite all the evidence we have. We’ve appointed a very inexperienced, arguably incapable manager, how can you believe someone better can’t improve things. 

[romavillan]

8 minutes ago, pacbuddies said:

After years of McLeish, Lambert, Sherwood, Bruce, Smith & Gerrard type managers is it unreasonable to expect that our mega rich owners should appoint a decent manager for a change? Is it unreasonable to expect that we can get a Guardiola, Klopp, Ancelotti, Conte type manager or should we just accept our fate as Villa fans and be grateful for the shit our owners serve up no matter who runs the club? I am fortunate enough to remember the days when our owners employed someone that could get us promoted, win us the League Cup, the First Division Title & the European Cup. I hope that my son gets to see something close to that as all he has experienced is mediocrity in our good times and relegation in our bad times. NSWE breezed into VP with a shit load of money and a grand 5 year plan. This is the 5th year of their 5 year plan and we are miles from where they stated that they wanted to be. I am beginning to lose faith in them and I am feeling like I was duped. Sorry if this comes across as rather negative but over 50 years of supporting AVFC means I generally can see the wood for the trees.

You can't put Smith in that list, he was a total and complete success, took us from 16th(?) In the Championship playing total shite to promotion playing some great football, then he miraculously turned things around to keep us up. Recruitment during his spell will have made us millions too. He should not be in a list of failures, we should be very grateful for his spell in charge.

[OutByEaster?]

I think it's important that what we learn from this is that the manager should be a part of an ongoing plan, not someone who brings their own plan to the table and can dominate the club. We need to get back to the underlying principles of development, buying young and selling at value, developing youth, playing a certain way, all of those things - the manager should be required to fit into those principles - of course the manager should be able to bring some of their own thoughts and ideas to the table, but those underlying principles should always come first.

We need to get to a point where changing the manager doesn't change everything about the football club, where the head coach is a member of staff that works to the Villa plan. The plan should be coming from the CEO, the owners and the Director of football and a big part of the selection of the manager should be that they fit into that plan. Replacing the manager should then be a more comfortable process.

I think we've indulged Steven Gerrard and as a result we've ended up having taken a step back in our development, not just in terms of results this season, but in terms of the development of our squad, our youth set up, the relationship between fans and club and the way in which everything fits together.

Our next manager has to be, for want of a better description, less 'important' than Steven Gerrard, and our next Director of football needs to be someone with not just a very clear vision but the courage to put themselves and their job on the line if that vision in threatened.

 

[foreveryoung]

13 minutes ago, pacbuddies said:

After years of McLeish, Lambert, Sherwood, Bruce, Smith & Gerrard type managers is it unreasonable to expect that our mega rich owners should appoint a decent manager for a change? Is it unreasonable to expect that we can get a Guardiola, Klopp, Ancelotti, Conte type manager or should we just accept our fate as Villa fans and be grateful for the shit our owners serve up no matter who runs the club? I am fortunate enough to remember the days when our owners employed someone that could get us promoted, win us the League Cup, the First Division Title & the European Cup. I hope that my son gets to see something close to that as all he has experienced is mediocrity in our good times and relegation in our bad times. NSWE breezed into VP with a shit load of money and a grand 5 year plan. This is the 5th year of their 5 year plan and we are miles from where they stated that they wanted to be. I am beginning to lose faith in them and I am feeling like I was duped. Sorry if this comes across as rather negative but over 50 years of supporting AVFC means I generally can see the wood for the trees.

I'll be happy with a manager who can just get the best out of our team. It's just fortunate that I don't think Gerrard has lost the dressing room yet, but I would guess it's because he is so easy to work under, one of the lads, an the team are getting away with giving 60% every game, with a "you need to do better", every game with no consequences.

[Keyblade]

29 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

This is my main concern with this whole debate. People on Villatalk have become so obsessed with sacking Gerrard that they many have become blinded to a range of other problems that have bedevilled the club and held back progress for a very long time now.

The simplistic solution, replace Gerrard and performance improves, just may not be true. This looks like the repetition of a cycle that has been going on for at least 10 years, maybe 20.

During that time, has the club built the sort of squad that can flourish in the premier league? Do we have the right scouting and coaching set ups?

Without the right infrastructure in place, the possibility of a new manager floundering is greater.

That’s not to argue that Gerrard should stay. We cannot go on for much longer playing the desperately poor football we are seeing at present and it doesn’t look like he can turn things around in the short term.

Just don’t believe that a new manager will come equipped with a magic wand. 

Simply coaching the players competently will improve performances. Don't need to appoint a coaching wizard, as it were. Plenty of managers in this league with less resources than us show that it can be done. Whether or not we have problems higher up that might prevent us from truly challenging for anything meaningful is a separate problem to the problems we're seeing on the pitch right now. For all of these potential administrative failings, we should not look like relegation fodder, period.

[MSvillain]

51 minutes ago, nick76 said:

I’ve disagreed with a lot you’ve said recently but this is a good post! I don’t agree with all of it but fair dues.

Too mature for this forum, I think a ban is in order mods? 

[nick76]

34 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

This is my main concern with this whole debate. People on Villatalk have become so obsessed with sacking Gerrard that they many have become blinded to a range of other problems that have bedevilled the club and held back progress for a very long time now.

But Gerrard is a problem so sacking him is a solution to that problem.  

Does it solve everything else? Of course not but it’s a problem that is identifiable and can be solved.  

Does it mean they make the right selection next time? Again, we don’t know.  We have a problem, let’s fix it.  

Getting rid of Gerrard will also mean we can see some of the problems, whether they continue to be problems or whether Gerrard made them problems.  One obvious example is some of these players, are they not good enough or are some just not being used right by Gerrard or coached right but are actually good players.  Sacking Gerrard and bringing somebody else in we may see answers to that.

The other issues still need to be resolved of course but let’s not blur the picture with others issues when obviously Gerrard is a problem that we can take of.

[Villa_Vids]

5 hours ago, El Segundo said:

Nope it's standard practice for Chelsea, Spurs. City, Liverpool, PSG, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern and other successful clubs who are a long way from "rudderless".  When a manager doesn't meet the expectations or remit of the club and fans, those clubs do not stick with them for fear of damaging the club or putting off other managers.  When the managers do meet the expectations and carry out the remit they tend to stay.  It's that simple and it's blindingly obvious.

The Lerner and Xia years saw a succession of poor manager choices, true - but would we have been better off sticking with McLeish after a year of failure, or Lambert or Bruce after a couple of years of failure? No because we eventually got Smith who got us promoted and then to 11th place. How was that unsustainable?    The fans wanted them out, it didn't put Smith or Gerrard  off joining - because they know that's how football fans are, and that's how football is. As Gerrard has said himself in the video above.  

Accepting short term pain for the possibility of a longer term gain is not illogical.  I don't want us to lose any game, however if it meant we got rid of Gerrard I would take one or two defeats, because I think the long term upside would be much greater than if we win and keep him.  What is illogical is looking at an 11 month track record of failure and inability to learn from mistakes and still believing it is all magically going to change and that it isn't doing serious damage to the club.  It's way more of a fantasy to believe  Gerrard will suddenly learns how to manage and coach, than to believe a carefully selected new guy coming in would do better. 

This is no irrational mob, angry yes, but it is perfectly rational to want rid of someone who has been failing our club for 11 months.  There is (or was) a well reasoned plan - continuous progress towards European places, development of the Academy, Identifying and buying promising players, build up demand and increase capacity to increase revenue, and so on.  There are managers currently available that would represent a "well reasoned appointment" who, based on their track records, would be way more likely to deliver on that plan than this competent  version of Gerrard that you and very few others seem to think is just about to materialise.     

   

All the clubs you list have a proper set up that has been built on multiple successful teams over the years, the head coach is a smaller cog in a much larger system. They have multiple players they can depend on, if we are being honest we have only had one player that we could depend on,  that was Jack Grealish. That is unacceptable. I am not trying to dampen excitement but we are nowhere near that level of consistency yet, even sacking Gerrard ASAP wouldn't bring us to that level immediately.  We are striving to be that sort of club, we need to be run more consistently from above, then the team and of course more consistent individual performers. But we can't be sacking managers and replacing them with different plans and ideas each time. That is unsustainable and reckless.

I also worry what culture you are projecting to the players if you sack managers over poor performances and results each season without giving them time to improve things. Gerrard overcoming this bad period to then kick us on will be game changing for the club's psychology  IMO (if he is capable of course). It is unlikely atm.

On your last paragraph, I am not denying what you are saying but maybe we have overhyped certain aspects based on a promotion bounce that has worn off as the seasons have gone on. We have only developed one player (Grealish) and have spent millions in the process on the first team. We have all the ingredients to be a successful club that is in Europe most seasons, but I  don't think we currently have the direction internally from those above Gerrard (i.e Lange & Purslow). It is why I worry about life after Gerrard.

And how does the hierarchy recapture that optimism of two season ago? I believe, to continue on this short term route, we would have to get a big name to take over (Poch?) and provide a decent level of funding to back that coach to achieve those short term aims. Is that realistic? Then what happens if that coach/manager can't get above a certain level? How long are they given? We don't have a clearly defined plan. Everton had been through a similar process, no guarantees when you start sacking coaches and give them limited time to implement ideas or learn, not withstanding bad luck with injuries/var decisions.

 

 

Edited October 12, 2022 by Villa_Vids

[romavillan]

23 minutes ago, MSvillain said:

Too mature for this forum, I think a ban is in order mods? 

I can haz fish punz?

[M_Afro]

Baring a very unlikely victory against Chelsea, Gerrard will be gone by 5pm Tuesday. I think it’s a bit sad. I didn’t want Gerrard but I desperately wanted him to be successful.

Our club is never going to be successful until we can appoint a manager of real proven quality and herein lies the problem. We never show real ambition in our managerial appointments. I would say that the last ambitious appointment was MON and even he was very limited. Prior to that you have to go all the way back to Big Ron.

I genuinely don’t trust the board to make the right appointment. I think their key appointments so far in Dean, Gerrard, Suso and Lange have been unimaginative and unambitious. We need to make a statement now and unless we do that and stick with it, nothing will change. Over to them to prove me wrong. To be fair, everything else that they have done has been fantastic. I just don’t think they have the football intelligence to make the right selection.

[romavillan]

46 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

I think it's important that what we learn from this is that the manager should be a part of an ongoing plan, not someone who brings their own plan to the table and can dominate the club. We need to get back to the underlying principles of development, buying young and selling at value, developing youth, playing a certain way, all of those things - the manager should be required to fit into those principles - of course the manager should be able to bring some of their own thoughts and ideas to the table, but those underlying principles should always come first.

We need to get to a point where changing the manager doesn't change everything about the football club, where the head coach is a member of staff that works to the Villa plan. The plan should be coming from the CEO, the owners and the Director of football and a big part of the selection of the manager should be that they fit into that plan. Replacing the manager should then be a more comfortable process.

I think we've indulged Steven Gerrard and as a result we've ended up having taken a step back in our development, not just in terms of results this season, but in terms of the development of our squad, our youth set up, the relationship between fans and club and the way in which everything fits together.

Our next manager has to be, for want of a better description, less 'important' than Steven Gerrard, and our next Director of football needs to be someone with not just a very clear vision but the courage to put themselves and their job on the line if that vision in threatened.

 

Completely spot on, we all thought Smith was head coach and we'd be implementing a Villa philosophy whereby changing head coach would mean hiring someone to continue the Villa way of doing things. Instead Gerrard is described as a manager and we Chuck all the good work out the window and completely change tack.

Disaster. 

[Villa_Vids]

1 hour ago, nick76 said:

How? There is more to a perfect platform than being unbeaten.  You can tell the players are really struggling, they are off form and lacking confidence.  The unbeaten run only includes one good performance arguably.  We played a poor Southampton team, a 10 man Leeds team for half a game and a poor Forest team.  We have been pretty poor from various viewpoints in the last three games and our points haul from those three games while ok at 5 points, the performances we sub par and in hindsight we should be picking up more points.  The quality of performances and lack quality in opposition has been masked by the view of points and been unbeaten. Only the City game was a good performance and great point.  The unbeaten run masks the massive underlying problems so I wouldn’t say it’s a perfect platform for a new manager.

As opposed to being "battered" by the opposition week in & out, I would choose us being unbeaten rather than being defeated. When Smith took over from Bruce, Bruce didn't lose a lot of games. He lost twice in 11 games but the club decided that it was time to act on that.

[AV82]

I'm confident we get pumped by Chelsea and he'll be relieved of his duties by Tuesday.

[romavillan]

17 minutes ago, Villa_Vids said:

All the clubs you list have a proper set up that has been built on multiple successful teams over the years, the head coach is a smaller cog in a much larger system. They have multiple players they can depend on, if we are being honest we have only had one player that we could depend on,  that was Jack Grealish. That is unacceptable. I am not trying to dampen excitement but we are nowhere near that level of consistency yet, even sacking Gerrard ASAP wouldn't bring us to that level immediately.  We are striving to be that sort of club, we need to be run more consistently from above, then the team and of course more consistent individual performers. But we can't be sacking managers and replacing them with different plans and ideas each time. That is unsustainable and reckless.

I also worry what culture you are projecting to the players if you sack managers over poor performances and results each season without giving them time to improve things. Gerrard overcoming this bad period to then kick us on will be game changing for the club's psychology  IMO (if he is capable of course). It is unlikely atm.

On your last paragraph, I am not denying what you are saying but maybe we have overhyped certain aspects based on a promotion bounce that has worn off as the seasons have gone on. We have only developed one player (Grealish) and have spent millions in the process on the first team. We have all the ingredients to be a successful club that is in Europe most seasons, but I  don't think we currently have the direction internally from those above Gerrard (i.e Lange & Purslow). It is why I worry about life after Gerrard.

And how does the hierarchy recapture that optimism of two season ago? I believe, to continue on this short term route, we would have to get a big name to take over (Poch?) and provide a decent level of funding to back that coach to achieve those short term aims. Is that realistic? Then what happens if that coach/manager can't get above a certain level? How long are they given? We don't have a clearly defined plan. Everton had been through a similar process, no guarantees when you start sacking coaches and give them limited time to implement ideas or learn, not withstanding bad luck with injuries/var decisions.

 

 

Don't know where to start with this but only in produced Joe Gucci? Wtf? Ramsey has been a regular for two seasons without going any further back in recent history.

The 'proper set up' is what was in place with Smith as Head Coach and has been destroyed with Gerrard as Manager. Along with transfer policy, club culture etc etc

[Keyblade]

18 minutes ago, romavillan said:

Completely spot on, we all thought Smith was head coach and we'd be implementing a Villa philosophy whereby changing head coach would mean hiring someone to continue the Villa way of doing things. Instead Gerrard is described as a manager and we Chuck all the good work out the window and completely change tack.

Disaster. 

I don't blame Gerrard for this. That's on Purslow. Or maybe we were wrong to believe this was the strategy and we overestimated our higher ups?

[romavillan]

Just now, Keyblade said:

I don't blame Gerrard for this. That's on Purslow. Or maybe we were wrong to believe this was the strategy and we overestimated our higher ups?

Yeah you might be right, probably a mix of the two though when agreeing the appointment. Might be an idea to get ourselves a strong DoF if Lange is not that and only recruitment.

[Django_Zooms]

Rashly, just bought a ticket for Villa v Man U on November 6th. Looking forward to witnessing the battle of wits between Mauricio Pochettino and Caretaker Manager...

[DCJonah]

1 hour ago, briny_ear said:

This is my main concern with this whole debate. People on Villatalk have become so obsessed with sacking Gerrard that they many have become blinded to a range of other problems that have bedevilled the club and held back progress for a very long time now.

The simplistic solution, replace Gerrard and performance improves, just may not be true. This looks like the repetition of a cycle that has been going on for at least 10 years, maybe 20.

During that time, has the club built the sort of squad that can flourish in the premier league? Do we have the right scouting and coaching set ups?

Without the right infrastructure in place, the possibility of a new manager floundering is greater.

That’s not to argue that Gerrard should stay. We cannot go on for much longer playing the desperately poor football we are seeing at present and it doesn’t look like he can turn things around in the short term.

Just don’t believe that a new manager will come equipped with a magic wand. 

Agree with a lot of that. But it also doesn't mean you stick with Gerrard because there are other issues. 

It's quite clear that Gerrard is also a massive issue at the club. One that can be fixed in the short term whilst other long term issues are addressed. 

 

[nick76]

43 minutes ago, Villa_Vids said:

As opposed to being "battered" by the opposition week in & out, I would choose us being unbeaten rather than being defeated.

We aren’t likely to be battered every week are we? Only the poorest of teams get battered every week, we are just poor for the level we are at plus we are 16th in the league and just had 3 comparative easy fixtures against a poor Southampton team, a 10 man Leeds team for 45 minutes and a poor Forest.  We are highly unlikely to get battered by any of them.  Unbeaten is being thrown around as if we’ve done something brilliant yet you look at those games and would be surprised if we weren’t however poor we were.  City game is the only shinning light in that run.  5 points from those three games on reflection looks poor as Leeds were there for the taking and we should’ve had more than enough to beat Forest.

50 minutes ago, Villa_Vids said:

When Smith took over from Bruce, Bruce didn't lose a lot of games. He lost twice in 11 games but the club decided that it was time to act on that.

and Smith got replaced by Gerrard.  That’s why it’s so baffling that Gerrard is still here in that thought of consistency.