Richard Dunne has confirmed what we already knew; he was heading for the exit door under Gerard Houllier. He’s yet another player to lift the lid on a testing atmosphere under the Frenchman last season.

Speaking to ESPNsoccernet ahead of Ireland’s vital Euro 2012 play-off match against Estonia the veteran defender said:

Last season was very difficult for me as I was not enjoying coming to work every day at Villa and there were some issues with the Ireland team as well.

It was a shame because the previous campaign had been great for me personally, but there wasn’t a very good atmosphere around the club last season and it affected all of us.

I would have probably left Villa in the summer if Houllier had stayed, but Alex McLeish changed everything around very quickly.

It should probably be remembered that Dunne wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire well before Houllier’s arrival, but McLeish deserves credit for making the situation better while Houllier apparently had the exact opposite effect.

The boss spoke to me soon after he arrived to let me know that he saw me as being a key part of his defence and hopefully I have repaid some of the faith he has shown in me.

This season has been really enjoyable so far. The new manager made himself very open to talk to from day one and he has got all the lads feeling as if they want to do well for him.

He is very approachable and gives the impression that he is one of us, out on the training ground every day and kicking every ball with us.

Certainly not the school teacher approach reportedly adopted by Houllier then, but will it ultimately yield any more success?

That positive feeling has changed the mood at the club and I have been pleased with the way things have gone for me so far.

It still feels as if there is so much more to come from this Villa team and another big bonus for me has been the progress Ireland have made. We are so close to qualifying for our first major finals in a decade and it needs just one final push now.

While I’m pleased to hear that so many players are happier on the training ground under McLeish than they were under Houllier, it’s impossible to forget the salaries they pick up. Football is and always will be about results first and foremost. If the results don’t follow, I’m not sure how much I care whether they’re having a happier time on the training pitch.

But they’re still human beings of course, happy players should make for better players, that’s common sense, but that’s for us to judge at the end of the season. They are at least talking in positive terms about more to come in the future. That’s encouraging and they’ll certainly need to draw on this new team spirit as we go through the tough run of fixtures in December.

So far this term, as you may have spotted on the Season Rankr page, we’re a couple of points ahead of last season at this same stage, a few points behind where we were the season before. It could be better, it could be worse then.

Under the circumstances, no major complaints, and if there is indeed more to come, as Dunne and others have promised, then this season won’t shape up too badly.

You can read the full interview at ESPN.