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Well, that’s it then, it’s official. After one of the most protracted and very public management searches ever, the club have confirmed that they have appointed ex-Birmingham City manager Alex McLeish as Gerard Houllier’s successor at Villa Park.
Frankly, it’s an astonishing move that has already upset the overwhelming majority of fans. It’s also a move, right or wrongly, that takes some extreme guts from everyone involved. If nothing else, you must have some respect for McLeish’s willingness to take this on.
In yesterday’s post I described it as an “all in” move for all involved; am I wrong?
I can’t pretend to see the logic at this stage, but I’ve said that whoever got the job would get a clean slate and support from this blog. I’ll stick to that and wish him every success because he’s got a monumental task ahead of him and failure is in none of our interests.
The summer ahead looks hectic with many important items jostling for immediate attention on the to do list: Ashley Young will obviously complete his move to Man Utd in due course. Stewart Downing is allegedly eyeing the exit door himself; good luck persuading him to stay. We have a pressing need for a goalkeeper amongst other positions. We only have three pre-season fixtures confirmed at the moment.
Not that it’s really much to do with McLeish, but we also have two shirt launches coming up. As I recall, the away shirt is due this month, the home shirt next month.
One plus point; the defense will at least get the overhaul required. McLeish’s ability to successful bolt our potent attacking force onto that back line is the cause, I believe, of biggest doubt among those of us scratching our heads at this appointment.
I will of course take a detailed look at his record when time allows and try to get a better feel for his approach to football. We all know he’s defensively minded, but there has to be more to him than that. Right? Right? Anyone?
There’s obviously lots more to come over the next couple of months, we’ll get through it all in time, but this isn’t Armageddon. The world won’t stop spinning. The club goes on. Let’s all just try to relax for a while and see what happens.
2011/12 Fixtures
Every year I tell myself I’m going to fly in the face of the archaic copyright laws that prevent me publishing the fixture list in full without paying an exorbitant license fee and every year I decide against it. This year will be no different, but if you haven’t seen the full list yet you can find the BBC’s list here.
What I will say is that the opening game will be at Craven Cottage (phew, lucky we didn’t appoint Hughes; that would have awkward), never an easy one, and that’s followed by two games at Villa Park to complete the August programme; Blackburn and Wolves. Could have been worse, could have been a little better.
As usual, it’s December that looks the most daunting with Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Man Utd all in the schedule, as well as trips to Bolton and Stoke. Obviously McLeish will need to have Villa in a reasonably comfortable position by then. We all saw the pressure Houllier was under as we flipped the calendar to 2011, 2012 could be the end of the world for one Scotsman at least.
But it shouldn’t come to that. We’ve now got just under two months to prepare, there’s no reason why we can’t be in good shape for next season. We’ll always score goals, however we play, and if we can stop shipping so many, we’ll pick up points. We’ll be fine.
As I’ve said in the past, whether you think McLeish can be successful in the job or not, there’s no question that it’s an impossible task if everyone works against him. He’s the manager of Aston Villa now, it’s the club we love and the right thing to do is provide support.
We might need some songs along the lines of Spurs fans when they couldn’t bring themselves to sing George Graham’s name though: “Man in the raincoat’s blue and white army”, they sang.
I wonder what we could come up with…
UTV and welcome to the best club you’ll ever work at Mr. McLeish!
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7 Comments to “It’s official: McLeish is the new gaffer and the first game is at Fulham”
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Welcome to our club Mr McLeish. we have high hopes for the future…let’s see if you can make all of our dreams come true.
I will try and accept this… it is hard, I really can’t see him doing much positive, and can’t see him lasting. Still, I hope to be surprised, and will support Villa as ever, through the shit ‘n’ shine
I wonder where Tom Hanks was on the list.
Ok he’s our new Boss,and i strongly disagree with this apointment. He must be a real head case to take this role,because both sides of the city will have a go at him wherever he goes,that said, and it sticks in my throat to say it but he is now the BOSS,and i will not critisize him out of hand untill i have a chance to see how he’s doing. good luck Alex your going to need it.
Arthur Sabin 1957
I hope things can settle down now.
Having no personal investment in this whole Bloods/Crips thing between the two fan bases, from a purely football point of view I don’t see why it can’t work. McLeish did reasonably well with the hand he was dealt, and he may show some real offensive creativity with some offensive talent to work with. Has he ever had a player to work with like Darren Bent? If he can bring Dann over, and possibly Foster or Jerome, so much the better. I think the language in the endorsement by SAF was telling.
And while I don’t endorse the selection, I have to admire Randy Lerner again – you succeed in any business by giving the customers what they want, which, of course is actually winning, not manager selection. You pursue that the way you think best; you don’t let the customers make the personnel decisions. No one ever accumulated the wealth to buy a professional sports team thinking that way. If this goes bad, Villa can and will recover, but it will be his money that bleeds away.
McLeish has all my support but I can’t for the life of me understand the reasoning behind the selection. We looked to be headed in a good direction with GH’s style of play. The Martinez connection was a step in the same direction — this seems to be a step backward. I just don’t see why we would take someone with PL experience at the cost of yet again retooling our style of play.
My only conclusion is that under MON we were a solid 2nd tier team (top-6 but not CL football) with the hope to achieve Champions League. We hired a manager to take us to that next level. Now we are “top half”, hoping to reach top-6 levels again. This appointment feels like an admission that we have peaked on the previous cycle and need to begin anew — sell off Young (and possibly Downing), build with youth and add a few key players. It feels like we are starting all over again…
Right, let’s get on with it. Canthelp thinking that a statement from Randy at this point would be rather useful.
I don’t give a shit what sort of football we play, as long as there is a plan, and IT WORKS.
Oh, and let’s get rid of all the greedy sods quickly so we can start building a team. (If there are elongated, media based ‘will he, won’t he’ sagas over Young/Downing then it will be a 1st nail in his coffin, for me.)
I couldn’t agree more, it’s totally an All-In move, the issue is he’s got a pair of jokers in his hand.
It’s a complete gamble by Lerner, what with McLeish’s lack of ability in the transfer market (err, Zigic – really?), his lack of experience bringing through youth players and his tactical negativity.
Wrote a wee piece about earlier today which you can see here http://bit.ly/jZr7Bg.
Good luck you Villains, you’re gonna need it.