So old Sparky has been shown the exit at Eastlands. Hands up if that shocked you. Alright, the powers that be at City handled the matter with as little class as you’d expect based on the vulgar way they throw their money around, but I struggle to feel much sympathy for Hughes. Two Footed Tackle does a fine job representing my own perspective, so I won’t waste space here repeating that view.
In any case, if Hughes really
Continue Reading
Martin O’Neill recently took part in the BRMB Villa Forum here. Go listen, it’s well worth it. The second and third parts are available in the menu on the right under ‘Football Forums with Tom Ross’.
I was just updating some data and I noticed a little nugget; Martin O’Neill has now amassed 189 points in the Premiership from his 123 league games in charge of Aston Villa, which is the same number of points Brian Little achieved in his 130 game career.
Next target, John Gregory’s 229 points from 148 games:-
John Gregory – 229 points, 148 games
Martin O’Neill – 189 points, 123 games
Brian Little – 189 points, 130 games
David O’Leary – 145 points, 114 games
Ron Atkinson
Continue Reading
Definitely news we already knew, Stewart Downing may be fit before Christmas. Or New Year. Basically, nothing different from when he came to the club in the summer. Still, it’s nice to be reminded of his existence.
The reserves were recently held to a scoreless draw in Stoke, but the Academy smashed Reading for six at home. New picks Halfhuid and Carruthers were involved. Nice.
You can listen to MON interviewed by Stan Collymore on Talk Sport here. Worth
Continue Reading
Regular readers will not need reminding that I’m an ardent supporter of the Lerner/O’Neill management of our club. Aston Villa are barely recognizable from the club they were a little over 3 years ago. In fact, they’re almost polar opposite.
However, no one is beyond criticism and I must confess one trait of Martin O’Neill’s that frequently leaves me scratching my head is his apparent willingness to ask players to perform roles outside of their natural positions. Sure,
Continue Reading
A story surfaced today that initially seemed completely ludicrous. In fact, so ludicrous that you probably couldn’t make it up, so there was probably a grain of truth in there somewhere. The Sun, ever the bastions of journalistic integrity, reported that Martin O’Neill and Nigel Reo-Coker had a training ground bust up that resulted with the pair wrestling on the ground. Yeah, picture that scene!
It was really heated and at one point they fell to the ground
Continue Reading
A few days ago a story appeared on the OS that featured a quote from Martin O’Neill that he’s rightly taken some stick over:-
At the end of last week, I went to a meeting for managers and they put up some interesting statistics. They showed that 17 of our lads had played in the Barclays Premier League last season. Other teams had used 23, 27 and others over 30. I was a wee bit surprised. I knew how
Continue Reading
I just saw a comment on a forum somewhere that made me chuckle. A poster was countering this ‘lost the dressing room’ nonsense by pointing out that Brad Friedel has recently compared Martin O’Neill to Sir Alex Ferguson in terms of his authority, command and respect at Aston Villa. He quite rightly points to this aspect being a key element in Man Utd’s growth to the club they are today.
Another poster totally missed the point and argued:-
Fergie has
Continue Reading
In part one we looked at a graphical representation of four Aston Villa managers accumulating points in the Premiership over the course of their first 114 games at Aston Villa – roughly a 3 year period. John Gregory was in first place with 174 points, Martin O’Neill and Brian Little were tied on 172 points and David O’Leary was predictably bringing up the rear with 145 points.
We’re now going to look at the data behind the chart to compare
Continue Reading