Houllier - released from contract with FFF

[Straygoat]

just trying to remember how long MoN hadnt managed in the premier league or had anything to do with football before we had him as our manager? cant understand the media crap about GH not managing in premier league for 6 years?.

That's because the media LOVE MON. If Mr H gets off to a bad start, you'll see loads of articles praising MON and saying that Lerner has really made a mess of things, mark my words. The media is blatantly biased...take no notice of it.

[chrissmith921]

I'm pleased - I give him my full support but on the other hand he aint a miracle worker so can only do with what tools he has.

[ozvilla28]

He's got my backing I'm happy we got a manager not British to ,but someone who is different maybe with a different style also.He won 3 trophys at liverpool and has be credited for his work with youth in France for a very longtime to.

[chrissmith921]

To Randy and General K , as they say in Paris "Muchas Gracias" :winkold:

I am delighted with this appointment.

Best man for the job out of all the candidates.

Welcome to Aston Villa "Mr H" ( as our favourite General addressed him.)

[MYSTERYMAN]

Welcome to Villa Park Gerard and I for one an optimistic it will work out .

[DUNTONVILLA]

MM

what do you think his team will look like.

will KM have a senior role?

[theunderstudy]

Agreed. Welcome, Mr. H.

[BG_Villa_Fan]

Considering the alternatives, I'm happy with this appointment ( as long as Phil Thompson is not part of it ). Obviously, would have prefered Moyes but he wasn't available and apparently we have actually tried for him, so this is good enough for me. TBF I expected a worse manager to be named, so yea, I voted happy.

I have my reservations, but I'll gladly give him my support 100% and wait to see how it goes from here.

Good luck to him. UTV!

[wiggyrichard]

Great appointment, as many have said, i agree that he was the best available. They said on the radio on the way into work this morning that in his final season at Liverpool, the team scored something like 125 goals.

I just hope Kevin MacDonald is given a decent role in the running of things, maybe 1st team coach.

MYSTERYMAN, any news on this?

[Jez]

this is a black day in the history of aston villa football club. I've never ever been this deflated in my entire life. we've really been sold down the river. I stayed in bed all day with the covers over my head praying hard that someone of hiddinks class would come. I'm staying in bed all day tomorrow. 3 year contract? that means competing for honours is 8 years away. a disgusting appointment.

Who has achieved more in the game Houllier or MON? Why 8 years anyway?

Deleted pointless quoting, if something is worth quoting, its worth commenting on, what you'd put was actually point scoring for the sake of it

[wiganvillain]

Welcome Gerrard.

Bonne chance

You'll need it for the vocal minority

[Neil]

Happy as larry...mainly because my skybet account now shows a balance of £275.

[JulieB]

Just reading from Newsnow about reasons for Phil Thompson not accepting the chance to work with GH...Interested particularly...

"Had circumstances been different, I would have been delighted to accept the chance to join Gerard Houllier and work with him and Patrice Bergues once again at Aston Villa......."

Would appear from this then that it won't in fact be KMac as GH's assistant.

Liverpool Echo

[Cracker1234]

MM

what do you think his team will look like.

will KM have a senior role?

I'm very sure it will look like 11 men running after a ball, I could be mistaken though.

[theunderstudy]

I don't think that guys joking... He's a jobsworth anyway. Please, o'lbs, tell me what fabled manager we should have got instead? Curbishley, Sarf London's Moirinho? Dowie, the new Fergie? Southgate, the answer to Hiddink?

I think the 90% yes voting shows our opinion doesn't it!

He's old! He's french! Leaves Heskey on the bench, Houllier! Houllier!

[Jez]

Gérard Houllier has fight to win over Aston Villa's deflated fans

Club ask unconvinced supporters to get behind the former Liverpool manager as successor to Martin O'Neill

Stuart James

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 8 September 2010 21.10 BST

Gérard Houllier will return to top-flight management with Aston Villa after a three-year break from coaching. Photograph: David Azia/AP

The search has lasted 30 days but Aston Villa have finally got their man. The Villa Park board should be feeling relief and satisfaction after identifying a successor to Martin O'Neill, yet one of the club's non-executive directors has been busy posting messages on supporters' websites defending the decision to bring in Gérard Houllier and warning fans that derogatory remarks might scare the Frenchman off before he has said bonjour.

It is a strange backdrop to the arrival of a new manager, whose appointment was officially confirmed tonight, and one that contrasts sharply with the open-arms welcome O'Neill was given after he took over four years ago, when he was hailed as Villa's saviour. General Charles C Krulak, right-hand man of the chairman Randy Lerner, had not joined Villa at that point, though had he been in post it is safe to assume he would not have been fighting fires over O'Neill's recruitment as he has with Houllier.

Although it is difficult to gauge the overriding mood of Villa fans about the former Liverpool manager – message boards generally carry negative rather than positive comments – there does seem to be some apprehension about the Frenchman. It is almost as if the more sceptical Villa fans want to run a highlighter pen over the end of his six-year-reign at Anfield, when things started to unravel, and overlook everything else on his CV.

That seemed to be the point that Krulak, who has earned notoriety for his candid messages, was trying to make when he turned on the more critical Villa supporters.

"Take Mr H for example," Krulak wrote. "Whatever anyone thinks of him, he deserves respect from the fans of this club. He has a fine record with multiple clubs and deserves better for the amount of effort he has put into his chosen career than to be ridiculed by AVFC."

Houllier is unlikely to lose any sleep over the criticism, despite Krulak's concerns that "any manager worth their salt is going to do some due diligence on the club and that would probably include reading up on the fans and the type of support they might receive". The reality is that Houllier will have far more important things on his mind as he gets to grips with being a manager again for the first time since 2007 and returning to the Premier League after a six-year absence.

On the face of it, both timescales present potential problems, but those close to Houllier are confident he will readapt to frontline management in England with the minimum of fuss. "Football is his life," said Rick Parry, the former Liverpool chief executive. "The fact he's wanting to get back into the hurly-burly of football at this stage, when he could easily put his feet up, sums him up. I have the utmost respect for him and he will bring a wealth of knowledge with him to Villa."

There is a sense that Houllier still remains upset at how Liverpool treated him at the end. He recently claimed that when Rafael Benítez, his successor, left Anfield last summer, one of the Liverpool players sent him a text that said: "Boss, he hasn't beaten you." The problem for Houllier, however, is that he seems to be remembered more for the poor signings that tarnished the end of his reign than the four trophies he collected along the way.

With Brad Friedel, Stephen Warnock and Emile Heskey all having played under him at Liverpool, the Villa squad will be well briefed as to what to expect. The 63-year-old is set to bring in Patrice Bergues, who worked alongside him at Anfield until 2001, as his assistant, although it remains to be seen whether there will be a role for Kevin MacDonald, who took over on a caretaker basis when O'Neill resigned. It could be a wise move to keep MacDonald given the respect he commands from the players.

Getting off to a good start at Stoke on Monday would be another step in terms of winning over the doubters, many of whom seem to have ignored the unenviable position O'Neill placed Villa in when he quit five days before the season started. It is easy to pick faults in the appointment of Houllier, but much more difficult to come up with a better choice of manager from a limited field.

"There will always be some people against a manager because he is not the one they wanted, but I think the majority will give Gérard a go," said Dave Woodhall, the editor of the Heroes and Villains fanzine and a supporters' trust board member. "The people I have spoken to accept it was an horrendous time to be dropped in it, and that Houllier is the best available at the moment. I'm sure he'll get the reception an Aston Villa manager deserves."

Clicky

Aston Villa's new boss Gerard Houllier to appoint old friend Patrice Bergues to backroom team

Sep 9 2010 by Mathew Kendrick,

Birmingham Mail

GERARD Houllier’s influential French lieutenant Patrice Bergues will form part of his backroom team – after the former Liverpool boss was last night officially confirmed as Villa’s new manager.

Bergues worked alongside the newly-appointed claret and blue chief with the French Football Federation, at Anfield and again at Lyon after they hit it off at RC Lens in the mid-1980s.

At 62, Bergues is a year younger than Houllier and will provide the familiar face the Villa boss wants as he launches his French revolution at Villa Park as Martin O’Neill’s successor.

Thirty days on from O’Neill’s shock resignation Houllier was confirmed as Villa’s new boss at 9pm yesterday after resigning his role as the French Football Federation’s technical director.

“I am very happy and proud to join this great and historic club,” said Houllier, who has signed a three-year contract.

“It was a very difficult decision for me to leave the FFF but I could not turn down the opportunity to manage a club whose approach, both on and off the pitch, I have long admired.

“Aston Villa is one of England’s biggest clubs and has an amazing set of fans.

“This is a tremendous challenge and one I am very much looking forward to taking on.”

Chief executive Paul Faulkner expressed his and chairman Randy Lerner’s delight at recruiting an ambassadorial figure who met the key requirements of

“Gerard Houllier comfortably satisfies these criteria,” said Faulkner.

“In fact, he stands out as a football man who understands the ethos of our club and shares our core values.

“We look forward to working with Gerard and supporting him and we ask our supporters to get behind the new manager and the team as we look to build on the progress we have made over the past four years in all areas of the club.”

Meanwhile, Bergues’ exact role is still to be established, but he operated as first team coach, with Phil Thompson as assistant boss, during the most successful spell of Houllier’s Liverpool tenure.

He helped the Reds achieve the UEFA Cup, FA Cup and League Cup treble in 2001 and his departure months later to become general manager at Lens is regarded on Merseyside as the tipping point when Houllier’s reign first started to unravel.

Thompson alludes to Bergues’ involvement at Villa in an exclusive interview inside today’s Birmingham Mail where he reveals his own reasons for not joining Houllier at Villa Park.

There is still scope for Kevin MacDonald to form part of the new coaching team with Houllier due to meet the caretaker manager and players at Bodymoor Heath today before being unveiled at a press conference tomorrow.

Houllier’s new captain Stiliyan Petrov could be hanging up his international boots now rather than after Euro 2012 to concentrate on club football after two qualifying defeats for Bulgaria, whose coach Stanimir Stoilov resigned on Tuesday.

“Stiliyan also said he may quit, but I hope he’ll change his mind,” said Stoilov after losses to England and Montenegro.

John Carew, who has been plagued by a knee problem, is a fitness doubt for Houllier’s first match in charge on Monday at Stoke, where the boss would welcome a repeat of his last trip to the Britannia Stadium which ended in a 8-0 League Cup win for Liverpool in November 2000.

Clicky

[R.I.C.O.]

I think this will be a very astute appointment. He's a better manager than MON.

[Villarocker]

In my opinion, Gerard Houllier is the biggest name manager we have ever had, certainly in my lifetime.

No manager, whether it be Moyes, Jol, Hiddink etc, would have been guaranteed to succeed at Villa. Also, what we have to ask is, what will be success for Gerard Houllier? MON took us to a cup final and three 6th place finishes but what did we actually win apart from a pre-season friendly tournament?

I believe that we should give Gerard Houllier a minimum of 3 years before we really judge him, unless of course we are in the bottom 6 or 7 with 15 games remaining, then we probably would have to have a re-think. He has some big earners at Villa that he will probably have to farm out before putting his own mark on the playing side. Every manager has failures so he will probably have a few in and out before establishing a decent playing side that he is happy with, hence the reason I suggest giving him at least 3 years. We gave Martin O'Neill 4 years and would have continued to support him longer, even if he didn't bring success, so would it do any harm to be as kind to Houllier? I don't think so.

Gerard Houllier has my 100% backing and support, even if he gets off to a slow start I will continue to support him and will reserve judgement until his mark has been well and truly made on the team.

Gerard, being a Frenchman you should have a good taste in fine wine. You have sampled a cheap and cheerful Red, now it's time for you to enjoy a very fine and distinguished Claret. Welcome to Aston Villa Football Club - Good Luck

[Maradona10]

I'm very impressed by Bergues coming with him, very good coach and respected on many levels.

[Pez1974]

This is a good thing.

We needed experience at the top, given the lack of football experience at board level and with the lack of managerial experience of our (excellent) coaches.

He is respected within the game, and will ensure that the Villa name is well regarded in football circles.

And he is a good manager in my opinion.