Villas next manager - Alex McLeish

You heard it here first - ALex has just left Birmingham.

What are your thoughts!

He is a brilliant young manager and deserves to be in the PL. Birmingham's relegation last year was down to injuries to key players and I think had they not had so many problems they'd have stayed up. His fantastic record last season and at Rangers in previous years shows he is a great manager.

I wish him all the best at Villa.

The Birmingham fans are gonna hate him! :P

Bein a brum fan i wouldnt say it was down to injuries more like negative football.
In a way im glad hes gone 4 years of boring football 2 relegations.
Obviously the cup win is brilliant but my nan could of scored martins goal.
Onwards and upwards!!

First trophy in god knows how many years and yet the many Birmingham fans were always quick to get on his back. He may not go to Villa but I think ultimately his job was made too difficult by constant undermining by successive MDs and the crazy expectations of some Brum fans. Feel he never got the credit he deserved

Just heard on radio 5 that there are rumours that McLeish could be going to Everton with Moyes going to Villa

McLeish is a good manager of poor players whilst IMO Moyes would be a very good manager of good players.
I think Moyes would be great at ManU or Chelsea.

Why would Davie Moyes want to jump ship to Villa? He has a far better squad at Everton and Villa are about to lose their best player in Ashley Young.

McLeish should be welcomed to Villa with open arms. Why care that he managed their rivals? He is a cracking manager and is no doubt a great man to lead them into next season. His football may be negative this season because you got relegated but this 'negative' football the season before got you to your highest league position ever. I really don't get football fans these days!

If he takes the Villa job he will have burnt all bridges with Birmingham fans. I think McLeish is an okay manager, not particuarly amazing and I think although finishing so high the first season was very impressive it perhaps might have been the first season after coming up fluke which we often see. I think Villa would have been better off with McClaren who apparently is off to Nottingham Forest now!

Randy Lerner is getting desperate now. McLeish is "ok" at best. Most of his reputation is from Rangers and even my Gran could win the title with them.

What now for Mark Hughes if McLeish does get this job?

Lets hope he doesnt get it.

Would take Hughes over McLeish.

OleH wrote:Randy Lerner is getting desperate now. McLeish is "ok" at best. Most of his reputation is from Rangers and even my Gran could win the title with them.

What now for Mark Hughes if McLeish does get this job?

Slightly harsh that, not every manager who takes over at the OF is destined to win. He was manager of Rangers at a time that Celtic were under the managerial ability of Martin O'Neill and had a hell of a squad at his disposal.

He did great the season before last with Birmingham, putting them through a massive unbeaten streak when he had no injuries within his squad. This season Birmingham were ravaged by injury and I fully believe that is the reason they went down.

If he ends up at Villa, it shows a real lack of class on his part.

Especially in direct light of Roberto Martinez' loyalty displayed last week.

Demon if you worked for a company and a rival firm offered you more money and a better team to manage would you turn it down out of loyalty?

Credit to you if you would, but I'd move in a shot!

It sets up a bad precident then though when the said manager moans about players showing lack of resepct when they hand in transfer requests etc.

Has McLeish done that in the past? I always fail to see why fans get so annoyed about players moving, it is their career afterall and aren't fans of the club.

As long as they behave respectfully I don't have a problem with it/.

Enforcer wrote:Demon if you worked for a company and a rival firm offered you more money and a better team to manage would you turn it down out of loyalty?

I know managers are not paid anything like players, but they are still paid enough for such decisions to be trivial. Martinez put a new training pitch ahead of his own pay deal as a priority at Wigan.

Martinez also admitted he has "a job still to do".

Bloody hell - if Martinez has a job still to do, what has McLeish got at Birmingham? What do they say about rats and sinking ships?

Martinez is a captain.
McLeish is a rat (if he does indeed become Villa manager)

Martinez in all honesty is a one in a million man, like you said above he put the clubs facilities before his own pay deal.

How many other managers could you say would do the same?

I completely agree with what you are saying Demon about the fact that there is a huge lack of loyalty these days but you aren't going to find a lot of managers like Martinez so we end up having to sit back and accept that most managers are going to move when they see more money.

AberdeenSteve wrote:Martinez in all honesty is a one in a million man, like you said above he put the clubs facilities before his own pay deal.

How many other managers could you say would do the same?

I completely agree with what you are saying Demon about the fact that there is a huge lack of loyalty these days but you aren't going to find a lot of managers like Martinez so we end up having to sit back and accept that most managers are going to move when they see more money.

I understand that Steve, and I can obviously see why a manager would leave for more money, like Enforcer said it's exactly the same as any other job.

But there must be a line where being a careerist over loyalty is too much, and a manager (or player) should have more self-respect, and respect for others than to leave for a local rival?

I would have loved to see him do it to Rangers...

Yeah, you are spot on with that mate. There really is far too little loyalty in football these days which is what is damaging the game. We see it a lot more in the lower leagues but it really will be the day when a 'big' player stands by his club even if a bigger club is interested.

I completely agree with what you are saying Demon, there really does need to be a line drawn. I just feel that football will now always be about one thing. The managers and the players thinking about themselves which is a massive, massive shame

I don't really understand how the chairman can reject Steve McLaren due to fans, then ignore the fans thus far by courting McLeish, Mark Hughes is available for free on the 1st of July, whilst Villa may have to pay for McLeish and Hughes beats McLeish in terms of highest Premier League finish, and experience.

Eboue_and_co wrote:I don't really understand how the chairman can reject Steve McLaren due to fans, then ignore the fans thus far by courting McLeish, Mark Hughes is available for free on the 1st of July, whilst Villa may have to pay for McLeish and Hughes beats McLeish in terms of highest Premier League finish, and experience.

Spot on mate, he seems very confused at the moment!

What I think what happened is Wigan granted Villa permission to Speak to Martinez. Villa took this as a done deal and assured Martinez by rejecting all other candidates.

When Martinez turned em down they then fell into a panic mode.

McLeish saw this and handed his notice in and the rest is history.

Why do Villa fans seem to believe they are some sort of massive club? They held protests outside the stadium yesterday and one of the protesters was interviewed.

He said that Alex McLeish has no place at a club like Aston Villa because he is a nobody and no where near big enough for the club. Who the hell are they expecting to get in instead? I hate fans who think there club is bigger than it actually is, they were in the relegation fight at one point last season but now they reckon they're champions league contenders.

Aberdeensteve.

Not 1 Villa fan reckons we are champions league contenders.

Yes we had a poor season last seaon in a relegation fight, but ended up finising 9th, with 1 defeat in the last 8.

Every fan has a right to their opinion, whether its a protest or just voicing their opinion to mates etc.
We(fans in general) pay alot of money to support our clubs.

We want the best for our club.
Will McLeish be that, the only answer, is time will tell.
I dont think he's that good a manager(if he does get it, he'll get my backing though, there's nothing I can do about it).


You worry about your own club

:

all good though

I was a little harsh in that last post, sorry. I have only pointed the finger at Villa but it is a running theme through a lot of clubs.

It's more the fact that a club will absolutely hate a manager before they have even joined the club. I agree with that they do have every right to have their voices heard but it is these fans who just now are calling for McLeish's head will be singing his praises in 4 months time.

if he does well for us than yes.

I have no problem that he used to be at the blues.

Like I said I'll judge him at the end of next season. (If he is to become our manager).

"Aston Villa are set to appoint Alex McLeish as their new manager on Friday morning after concluding lengthy talks, BBC Sport understands.

It was expected the announcement would happen on Thursday but the decision has now been put back a day with just the formalities to be completed." http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/13770519.stm

Aberdeen Steve.

Let me give you a few reason why we don't want him.

1. He has been relegated from the prem twice in the last 3 years.

2. He was the manager of Villa's most hated rivals.

3. The style of football is even more boring and defensive than Martin O'Neill. Birmingham has a load of skillful kids on their books, plus they purchased some high quality skillful players and he had no clue what to do with them. The second Dann got injured they were stuffed.

4. Blues fans, who are a worse side than us were glad to get shot of him.

We should have got Steve MacLaren, apparantly Lerner listened to fans feelings on that. Despite having a bad experience with Wolvesberg and England, he won the Dutch league with twente (that is like winning the prem with Stoke) and got boro to the Uefa cup final (when he left they freefalled).

Not really even without Mclaren ,Twente lead the Dutch league until the last day of the season last year. Mclaren was awful with Wolfsburg, if he'd been kept another week they would have been relegated having won the Bundesliga only two years before.

Mcleish is a very good manager, Villa are a midtable team and he should keep them there if not a little better.

McClaren got a raw deal at a Wolfsburg side who just weren't there last season.

They struggled even after he left, and in actual fact, more so. They survived but they would have been expected to do far better than they did. The fact there were two managers with more or less equal time shows that it can't have been either of their methods, it was the players themselves.

Electric Demon wrote:

Enforcer wrote:Demon if you worked for a company and a rival firm offered you more money and a better team to manage would you turn it down out of loyalty?

I know managers are not paid anything like players, but they are still paid enough for such decisions to be trivial. Martinez put a new training pitch ahead of his own pay deal as a priority at Wigan.

Martinez also admitted he has "a job still to do".

Bloody hell - if Martinez has a job still to do, what has McLeish got at Birmingham? What do they say about rats and sinking ships?

Martinez is a captain.
McLeish is a rat (if he does indeed become Villa manager)

Wigan took a big risk on Martinez, perhaps he does feel he owes them... McLeish was being undermined by things going on in the background at Brum, so it is quite different. In addition, we'll see how loyal Wigan are if Martinez loses his first 6 games. I am surprised that McLeish took the Villa job, purely because it was always going to result in a fiasco and make life quite unpleasant for him and his family. I would have felt that I owed it to the Brum fans not to go to their arch rivals immediately after getting them relegated. Other jobs always come along in this game. but it is clear that McLeish was purely looking after his own needs here and the Villa job is a pretty good one.

I'd like to see McLeish go back to the 4-3-3 formation he used so well at Motherwell Rangers and Scotland, he can be a very positive minded manager when he wants to be, if he takes the defensive route the fans will never take to him