Martin O'Neill

[VillaChris]

On 10/11/2022 at 16:55, The_Steve said:

All rather telling that Kendrick let MON ramble on about the young players he had, failing to mention how he let Cahill leave so he could sign Zat Knight and spending £10m on Curtis Davies.

Yep heard that. MON had the cheek to say Cahill was benched because he wasn't getting in ahead of Mellberg or Laursen. He conveniently forgot he actually moved Mellberg to play RB for whole of 2007/08 season so we effectively brought Knight and Davies to replace Cahill and that was pretty poor judgement given we sold Knight to Bolton 18 months after Cahill left for them and Davies frequently got injured.

Lerner was very generous in the funds in those early years. How many other managers would get 30-40m to basically sign a new defence in summer 2009?

[will87]

Still pissed off to this day with him for signing Zat effing Knight and to a lesser extent Curtis Davies, forcing Cahill out, he'd have been the bedrock of our defence for a decade. Incredibly short-sighted.

[the_eristic]

On 10/11/2022 at 09:55, The_Steve said:

Pretty laughable defence about the Moscow and Stoke debacles. 

Wish he'd been pressed on the Stoke game and his general performances in the final third of his seasons here.

[DCJonah]

The whole Cahil thing is daft. 

People moan that he didn't get us in the top 4, yet also moan that he wouldn't play a kid who clearly wasn't good enough at the time to play for a team with those aims. 

[villa4europe]

19 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

The whole Cahil thing is daft. 

People moan that he didn't get us in the top 4, yet also moan that he wouldn't play a kid who clearly wasn't good enough at the time to play for a team with those aims. 

Cahill is the tip of the iceberg

Nowhere near his main offence or the reason why he fell short of 4th

But at the same time its all part of his stubbornness

[DCJonah]

5 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Cahill is the tip of the iceberg

Nowhere near his main offence or the reason why he fell short of 4th

But at the same time its all part of his stubbornness

Not really. 

Cahil had a fantastic loan spell and wanted first team football. 

We couldn't give it him. 

It was bad timing with where we were as a club and were Cahil was as a player. 

[TheAuthority]

1 hour ago, DCJonah said:

Not really. 

Cahil had a fantastic loan spell and wanted first team football. 

We couldn't give it him. 

It was bad timing with where we were as a club and were Cahil was as a player. 

Are you telling me that when we were playing 45+ games a season there was no way to fold him into the first team? League cup, Europa, sub appearances etc.

Good management brings through your youth players and especially the ones that everyone can see are going to go on and do something good. Can you imagine Grealish under MON? He'd probably have bought Albert Luque for millions, given him 50k a week and sold Grealish for 2 million to Leicester.

[DCJonah]

44 minutes ago, TheAuthority said:

Are you telling me that when we were playing 45+ games a season there was no way to fold him into the first team? League cup, Europa, sub appearances etc.

Good management brings through your youth players and especially the ones that everyone can see are going to go on and do something good. Can you imagine Grealish under MON? He'd probably have bought Albert Luque for millions, given him 50k a week and sold Grealish for 2 million to Leicester.

Maybe. I got the impression though that he wanted regular first team football, which as I say, he wasn't good enough for if we were seriously pushing for top 4. 

I think people forget he went to Bolton. He was not the Cahil he turned into at that point. 

I think the Grealish point doesn't really make sense. He started as villa manager playing Luke Moore and Gabby loads. Gabby was always a regular under him. Did he not give Albrighton opportunities as well? 

Spent loads on a young Ashley Young as well. I don't think he was against youth. 

[VillaChris]

2 hours ago, DCJonah said:

Not really. 

Cahil had a fantastic loan spell and wanted first team football. 

We couldn't give it him. 

It was bad timing with where we were as a club and were Cahil was as a player. 

I think signing Davies and Zat Knight probably told him he wasn't getting a chance anytime soon under O'Neill.

Knight came in and actually started every single week for us in 07/08 given we moved Mellberg to RB for that season. If we'd just signed Davies then I think he'd have fancied his chances especially with Laursen's fitness record and of course Mellberg left on a free.

More I think about it we should've put Cahill out on a season long loan somewhere and then had final review in summer 2008. Laursen having to pack in the game six months later shows short term decisions don't come off sometimes. Also selling Knight to Bolton a year after we sold Cahill them.

We made some odd decisions with young players in those days. O'Neill said in the podcast he thought Delfoeunso would kick on but he was warming out subs bench for two seasons instead of going out and playing 40 games at decent level.

Edited November 12, 2022 by VillaChris

[TheAuthority]

11 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

I think the Grealish point doesn't really make sense. He started as villa manager playing Luke Moore and Gabby loads. Gabby was always a regular under him. Did he not give Albrighton opportunities as well? 

Spent loads on a young Ashley Young as well. I don't think he was against youth. 

Correct he did play Gabby loads. It was sort of MON's MO though - he'd pick one youth player, build them up and play them relentlessly. He did exactly the same thing at Sunderland. So maybe my Grealish point was a stretch.

You are mis-remembering Albrighton though. He didn't give him chances when a lot of the fan base were clamoring for him to after he played so well in the Peace Cup. I remember an interview at the time MON did when he joked that his wife thought Albrighton was good, but "he knew better" and Marc wasn't ready.

I found it funny in the Claret & Blue podcast that he said he would have started Albrighton against West Ham. O'Neil - always got an answer for everything. Almost too clever for his own good. He knows he f****d up leaving here the way he did but he's so arrogant he couldn't bring himself to be humble and apologize.

 

[DCJonah]

https://astonvilla.vitalfootball.co.uk/gary-cahill-was-not-forced-out-of-villa/

Have a read of this. 

Especially this

Quote

Cahill explains in the article he departed because he wanted regular first team football, at the time he couldn’t get that at Villa with Martin Laursen and Olof the bearded wonder Mellberg being the regulars.

 

He admits, ‘If I had bided my time there, I might have got into the side and carried on playing there — but I chose to move and I’ve not looked back since. It has turned out to be a good decision.’

And this

Quote

Adding that there is no animosity between him and MON and ‘He never for one minute pushed me out of the door. It was just a decision I made to go because he couldn’t guarantee me playing week in, week out which is what I needed to do.’

Cahill wanted regular first team football and we couldn't give it him. 

He spent 4 years at Bolton. He was not that top class defender when he left us. 

Edited November 12, 2022 by DCJonah

[JPJCB]

1 hour ago, DCJonah said:

https://astonvilla.vitalfootball.co.uk/gary-cahill-was-not-forced-out-of-villa/

Have a read of this. 

Especially this

And this

Cahill wanted regular first team football and we couldn't give it him. 

He spent 4 years at Bolton. He was not that top class defender when he left us. 

The question isn’t whether he was top class or not; it’s whether he was better than zat knight and Curtis Davies who were between them taking up his position. I think he was and history has proved that investing that faith in him over those two at that time would have been well worth the reward. You clearly think differently. Worth also noting that Cahill was exactly the same age as Davies- he was backing one young player over another and got the judgment wrong 

there was a weird dissonance in that MON interview on this point btw where he goes on to mock Curtis Davies for claiming MON had his favourites when he left. That’s a player who was keeping Cahill out of the side just 2 years beforehand so maybe MON himself actually regrets that decision 

[DCJonah]

32 minutes ago, JPJCB said:

The question isn’t whether he was top class or not; it’s whether he was better than zat knight and Curtis Davies who were between them taking up his position. I think he was and history has proved that investing that faith in him over those two at that time would have been well worth the reward. You clearly think differently. Worth also noting that Cahill was exactly the same age as Davies- he was backing one young player over another and got the judgment wrong 

there was a weird dissonance in that MON interview on this point btw where he goes on to mock Curtis Davies for claiming MON had his favourites when he left. That’s a player who was keeping Cahill out of the side just 2 years beforehand so maybe MON himself actually regrets that decision 

I think people forget how Cahill was at that point. 

There's a reason this player was available and Bolton were the team that made the move. 

[Spoony]

I think people might be misremembering this a bit? I remember at the time there being a huuuuge number of fans being pissed at Cahill being sold. Even if it is the case that he wasn’t ready for what we wanted to be he sure as shit was better than Knight.

That was just one of his many many crimes as Villa manager. 

[PaulC]

I thought it was a very interesting podcast. Regrets leaving how he did. Seems strange that many are are very critical about only achieving top 6 ,finishes when we have been nowhere near that since he left.

[Zatman]

8 hours ago, DCJonah said:

The whole Cahil thing is daft. 

People moan that he didn't get us in the top 4, yet also moan that he wouldn't play a kid who clearly wasn't good enough at the time to play for a team with those aims. 

Cahill left in 2008 and we were nowhere near top 4. Davies, Knight, Dunne, Cuellar (he was shit) and Collins were all signed by MON

Thats about 30 million on centre backs in 3 years and lost Cahill for peanuts....same for Davis we never sighed better midfielders

[Zatman]

4 minutes ago, PaulC said:

I thought it was a very interesting podcast. Regrets leaving how he did. Seems strange that many are are very critical about only achieving top 6 ,finishes when we have been nowhere near that since he left.

He had the 5th highest budget in the league and finished behind Everton who were signing Arteta and Cahill for 4 million combined while we had 8.5 million Reo Coker

[Zatman]

5 hours ago, DCJonah said:

https://astonvilla.vitalfootball.co.uk/gary-cahill-was-not-forced-out-of-villa/

Have a read of this. 

Especially this

And this

Cahill wanted regular first team football and we couldn't give it him. 

He spent 4 years at Bolton. He was not that top class defender when he left us. 

Maybe some coaching and faith woukd have.....he always had more potential than Davies and Knight

[sidcow]

On 10/11/2022 at 13:21, The_Steve said:

Are there a subsection of the fan base that still respect this fraud? I really have no interest in hearing his revisionist history. Probably blames everyone but himself. 

To be fair he got us 3 top 6 finishes. 

If some still respect him I would find the significantly less baffling than the weirdos who still like Sherwood. 

[PaulC]

12 minutes ago, Zatman said:

He had the 5th highest budget in the league and finished behind Everton who were signing Arteta and Cahill for 4 million combined while we had 8.5 million Reo Coker

Yes they were in a better position to be begin with. Problem was we had a good first team but no squad so they were always burnt out by march. Maybe he's at fault for signing poor squad players but they were good times imo