After a generally well received first press conference, it looks like life at Villa Park is getting off to a predictably busy start for Alex McLeish. During his time in front of the cameras on Monday, he mentioned being inundated with calls from agents offering their players, but it’s the futures of Carlos Cuellar and Michael Bradley that are capturing the headlines first.
Carlos Cuellar
McLeish was quizzed about Cuellar’s future specifically because it’s become fairly open knowledge that Rangers are interested
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I don’t know if a player or manager has ever literally been ‘unveiled’, but I’d love to see it happen once and, given the odd nature of this whole appointment, this would have been an ideal occasion. Can you imagine if a claret & blue chequered sheet was whipped away matador style to reveal the new manager sheepishly sat there waiting for questions?
No? Just me then. Oh well.
However the introduction went down, the press conference officially introducing Alex McLeish as
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As we were awaiting confirmation last night of Alex McLeish’s appointment at Villa Park, the Birmingham Mail’s Mat Kendrick spoke with theScore’s Brendan Dunlop and Kristian Jack of The Footy Show podcast to share his reaction to events over the past week or so.
It’s an interesting insight so I’ve borrowed a little under five minutes from the final 16 minutes or so of the podcast which featured the interview with the man from the Mail. The clip picks up with
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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
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We were promised an announcement confirming Alex McLeish’s appointment by now*, but that’s about as timely as everything else connected to the search for a manager, so I thought I’d share something I was just looking at instead.
For one reason or another, it doesn’t matter why, someone put it to me on Twitter that all MON’s Villa side did was hoof it up the pitch; the old long ball. It’s not a new charge, of course, or particularly accurate
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It’s hard to know where to begin at the moment, any thought I try to commit to the page risks spiralling into a 5,000 word mess. I’m sure you all have dozens of competing thoughts bouncing around inside your heads too. Whatever ends up here in this post, trust me, I’ve deleted more than remains. Chances are, this post doesn’t say now what I started out trying to say.
To keep things as brief as possible though, there are two subjects
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I don’t think I’d classify this as a good day to bury bad news – although your tastes may cause you to disagree, but while we’re all wailing and gnashing teeth over the Alex McLeish debacle, it appears that the new 2011/12 away shirt may have found its way on to the internet.
I stress may because unlike the 2011/12 home shirt, which I have very high resolution pictures I obtained myself, I’m not sure of the authenticity of this one.
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You’ll already be aware that Aston Villa issued an official statement earlier this evening confirming the intention to interview Alex McLeish. Birmingham City have issued their own statement declaring their intention to take legal action in response.
Both statements in full:
Aston Villa Football Club
This is a message to the fans of Aston Villa.
The Club has been reluctant to elaborate publicly on our search for a new manager and, in particular, to confirm or deny our interest in specific candidates.
This is not
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I’ve managed to post very little on the subject of our manager search; the absence is probably bordering on conspicuous by now despite my distaste for diving into pure speculation. There’s nothing sinister about it though, the situation seems to be ever-changing, I’d be writing a half dozen posts a day if I attempted to cover every twist and turn.
For instance, I had barely finished writing one post that held Roberto Martinez at its heart before the Lactics manager withdrew
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