Martin O'Neill

[JPJCB]

Not a fully robust statistic but the fact that the jobs he did after us were lower profile tells you everything about how he was viewed in the game. “I got villa 3 top 6 finishes in a row”- true Martin but did you go on to greater things? No, you ended up managing Sunderland because clubs could see that your “success” was built on short termism, bad transfer policy, high wages and dinosaur era football

[VillaChris]

Wonder if he'd been in line for the Man. United job if he stuck around for a few more years here.

Seems outlandish but Ferguson always respected him so could've well come down to him and Moyes and MON had done more in europe at that point.

Wasn't there some rumour he was really hacked off he didn't get the Liverpool job ahead of Hodgson in summer 2010? So contributed to his mood over that summer and eventual resignation on eye of the season.

Yeah he got found out big time at Sunderland really just doing the same stuff he did here with lesser group of players and that's why no prem club has touched him since. Him lasting five minutes at Forest also shows he can't really work under "interesting" owners and basically needs everyone to heroworship him.

We dared to dream under him but ultimately he had his limits. I'd like to think when Gerrard eventually leaves us we won't spend nearly a decade mourning his departure as I reckon we can hit similar heights under him soon.

[VillaChris]

1 hour ago, Villa_Vids said:

Or believing Zat Knight was a better prospect than Gary Cahill. 

He had some really bizarre ways on defending, very much of his time given the focus on full backs now.

Loads of debate on the money he spent but remember this....summer 2008 we signed Davies, Cuellar, Young and Shorey for 30m which was significant at the time.

Then the next summer we signed Dunne, Collins, Habib Beye, and Warnock for another 30m.

How many managers at the time would've just been given that to revamp the defence rather than have to work with what they have?

And after all that he randomly decides after one game Beye is no good and so he just bench warms for whole season (no idea what had happened to Luke Young as he was always pretty decent when he played) and just plays Cuellar at RB for the whole season!

Reminds me in summer 2007 of signing Zat Knight just so Mellberg could play RB and think we conceded 60 + goals that season.

[Villa_Vids]

34 minutes ago, VillaChris said:

He had some really bizarre ways on defending, very much of his time given the focus on full backs now.

Loads of debate on the money he spent but remember this....summer 2008 we signed Davies, Cuellar, Young and Shorey for 30m which was significant at the time.

Then the next summer we signed Dunne, Collins, Habib Beye, and Warnock for another 30m.

How many managers at the time would've just been given that to revamp the defence rather than have to work with what they have?

And after all that he randomly decides after one game Beye is no good and so he just bench warms for whole season (no idea what had happened to Luke Young as he was always pretty decent when he played) and just plays Cuellar at RB for the whole season!

Reminds me in summer 2007 of signing Zat Knight just so Mellberg could play RB and think we conceded 60 + goals that season.

 The season-on-season overhauls of the defence were absolutely crazy. And it was all to shoehorn a CB into the RB position  Pulis says Hi! Another fact is when we signed Beye for around about 3 Million, Kyle Walker was going to Spurs for 5 Million. Surely Walker would have been a better deal?  To be fair, I think he could spot a decent midfielder/winger. Or was that just fluke?

Who was sanctioning his transfers though? 

[Mantis]

I feel like he's fairly judged on here but outside of Villa circles he's still massively overrated. People genuinely believe he was this amazing manager and that finishing 6th three seasons in a row (back when it wasn't the herculean task it is now) after spending all that money is somehow akin to winning the league.

[VillaChris]

4 minutes ago, Mantis said:

I feel like he's fairly judged on here but outside of Villa circles he's still massively overrated. People genuinely believe he was this amazing manager and that finishing 6th three seasons in a row (back when it wasn't the herculean task it is now) after spending all that money is somehow akin to winning the league.

Moyes did better on a massively reduced budget at Everton and now doing similar at West Ham.

Think only defence is it was a very strong premier league during his time here when you look at all the prem teams who were regularly getting to CL finals in that period and also likes of Fulham getting to europa final so arguably tougher to get in top 4 than now with likes of Arsenal and Man. United pretty mediocre.

[Jono62]

Should have finished 4th when we were 12? points ahead of Arsenal, but playing the same team every game was always going to catch up.

[Demitri_C]

The only thing i would say about MON is we was robbed of a cup by that idiot ref dowd who should have sent vidic off after 10 minutes. Had that been a red i think mon would have delivered us a trophy we craved

[chappy]

4 hours ago, Jono62 said:

Should have finished 4th when we were 12? points ahead of Arsenal, but playing the same team every game was always going to catch up.

That Stoke match still haunts me

[Wainy316]

14 minutes ago, chappy said:

That Stoke match still haunts me

Our dark years are bookended by Glenn Whelan.

Him scoring the last minute Stoke equaliser in that game and then him missing the penalty against Preston to get Bruce sacked.

[Xela]

6 hours ago, VillaChris said:

He had some really bizarre ways on defending, very much of his time given the focus on full backs now.

Loads of debate on the money he spent but remember this....summer 2008 we signed Davies, Cuellar, Young and Shorey for 30m which was significant at the time.

Then the next summer we signed Dunne, Collins, Habib Beye, and Warnock for another 30m.

How many managers at the time would've just been given that to revamp the defence rather than have to work with what they have?

And after all that he randomly decides after one game Beye is no good and so he just bench warms for whole season (no idea what had happened to Luke Young as he was always pretty decent when he played) and just plays Cuellar at RB for the whole season!

Reminds me in summer 2007 of signing Zat Knight just so Mellberg could play RB and think we conceded 60 + goals that season.

MON's best defenders were Laursen, Bouma and Mellberg. Players he never signed

I wonder if DOL had been given the same resources as MON, whether he would have done better than him?

[ozvillafan]

48 minutes ago, Xela said:

MON's best defenders were Laursen, Bouma and Mellberg. Players he never signed

I wonder if DOL had been given the same resources as MON, whether he would have done better than him?

I'd suggest just about anyone could. Another gripe with MON was his insistence on using Brittish players - so of course he would never have signed Larson, Bouma or Mellberg even if they fell in his lap.

Was never a fan and never changed my VT signature from when Houllier was getting pelters on here by the "he's a downgrade from MON" brigade.

[The Fun Factory]

10 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

Was he that unpopular before he quit? I dont think he was. Certainly not as bad as o leary, mcleish etc. The fans turned on him quitying the way he did

No he was largely liked. I mean he had delivered 3 6th places in a row.  And a league cup and FA cup semi final. Granted it felt like for at least one of the seasons we should finished higher but still. I think by the third season there was a slight sense that we were being left behind and growing feeling that whilst we had a good team, we lacked true quality to get top 4. There were rumours he wasn't happy in the last season after the Chelsea hammering. Had he left in June/July time I think and stated it was down to Lerner turning off the taps I think we would have a more sympathetic appraisal. But to walk out like he did less than a week before the season did leave  a bad taste.

[The Fun Factory]

1 hour ago, Wainy316 said:

Our dark years are bookended by Glenn Whelan.

Him scoring the last minute Stoke equaliser in that game and then him missing the penalty against Preston to get Bruce sacked.

Aston Villa 2009-2019 ' The Glenn Whelan Years'

Coming soon to Netflix

[Zatman]

10 hours ago, LondonLax said:

Still our most successful manager this century

Is he? David OLeary got closer to a top 4 finish 

[Zatman]

10 hours ago, Davkaus said:

I was furious at the timing with his resignation, but with what went on after him in the Lerner era, it's hard to blame him, he knew what was coming.

I agree though, we should have done much better with the resources at his disposal

Or you could say his approach led to Lerner cutting down. Paying 40k a week for players he then realised he didnt actually rate because he never saw them play

MON is one of the biggest pieces of shit to ever grace Villa Park. McLeish, Bruce, Sherwood, Garde were nothing compared to this scumbag charlatan

[Zatman]

7 hours ago, Mantis said:

I feel like he's fairly judged on here but outside of Villa circles he's still massively overrated. People genuinely believe he was this amazing manager and that finishing 6th three seasons in a row (back when it wasn't the herculean task it is now) after spending all that money is somehow akin to winning the league.

The Irish media saw through him very quickly but in some parts of the English media he is respected on Clough levels

[ciggiesnbeer]

3 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Or you could say his approach led to Lerner cutting down. Paying 40k a week for players he then realised he didnt actually rate because he never saw them play

MON is one of the biggest pieces of shit to ever grace Villa Park. McLeish, Bruce, Sherwood, Garde were nothing compared to this scumbag charlatan

 

[Zatman]

2 hours ago, Xela said:

MON's best defenders were Laursen, Bouma and Mellberg. Players he never signed

I wonder if DOL had been given the same resources as MON, whether he would have done better than him?

Sure his Celtic reputation was built on Henrik Larsson, Moravcik and Petrov.  players he didn't sign and then when he did sign Petrov at Villa he tried showhorn him into the team because he wasnt as good as his SPL form

[The Fun Factory]

7 hours ago, Zatman said:

Or you could say his approach led to Lerner cutting down. Paying 40k a week for players he then realised he didnt actually rate because he never saw them play

MON is one of the biggest pieces of shit to ever grace Villa Park. McLeish, Bruce, Sherwood, Garde were nothing compared to this scumbag charlatan

I don't think  the fans particularly cared about what we were paying per week at the time. We had super Randy Lerner our amazing philanthropic owner who was going to take us back to the big time after the depressing post 2000 Doug years. Then his divorce and credit crunch happened.

Our current model looks almost as unsustainable unless we sell top players most summer, or massively increase our commercial revenue. We just have to be better managed in bringing in quality replacements and  to reinvest in the squad, which we failed to do 2010-2016.