Hobsons Choice

Managed two clubs in the PL, got club record points haul with Spurs just missing out on CL spot, 2nd place in Ligue 1 with Marseille, managed in five countries, won the league in two (admittedly not top leagues), got european coach of the year one year. He’s got more of a track record than Gerrard for sure.

Fair enough, and I respect that, but of those 200 games, how many were dead rubbers? It’s not the same risk as signing players with no experience. This will decide the direction of the club for the next few years. I suppose one skill he has been demonstrating is avoiding complacency when facing inferior teams. Tbf we’ve always made hard work of supposedly poor teams. We always lose cup games to bloody lower league teams.

Indeed, that occurred to me. He must be open to a switch to the PL

You say due diligence, but with no track record, that just amounts to his attitude at the interview. When you compare him with someone who has managed at the top level before it IS a gamble. Long term planning by it’s nature involves reducing risk and uncertainty as much as possible. That’s why it’s a plan.

Gotta say, it would be Favre or AVB for me.

Well yeah, but that’s hardly an inspiring list. Terry has never managed, and Lampard underachieved with a great Derby team, before underachieving with a great Chelsea team.

On most outlets I’ve seen today, most neutral fans have put us on top of the ‘most hated and hope they go down’ list, because of the sacking.

In a third rate league. I don’t dislike him, or think that potentially he could be a good manager, but there is no way you could convince me that his track record proves or even hints that he’s up to a Premier League job, because it objectively does not. The PL is the most competitive league in the world, with the best managers. The Scottish League, sad to say is not. If that is the case, then the appointment has to be a gamble. They may feel it’s a gamble worth taking, but it is a gamble. For my part, I don’t think we should be gambling right now. There is too much to lose. Plus, honestly, i’d like to think that we were at least getting rid of DS because we had seen an opportunity to move forward, not just to take a gamble on the possibility that SG might work out.

‘Chance’ is the word. We get Gerrard and we’re betting everything on a toss of a coin. I can’t believe that ownership such as NSWE would do that. It must be someone else, it must. If it’s Gerrard then there really is no plan.

Passion without tactical acumen =Sherwood. Has Gerrard got the nous to mix it with the best managers in the world. If the answer is 'I don't know', we should not touch him with an 80 mile bargepole.

In fairness we've just dismissed the only manager that has won honours with Villa in 25 years. I doubt not having won anything will disqualify a candidate.

Pashun?

I feel it important to point out that in terms of experience, Dean Smith has been at Villa as long as Gerrard has been in management. As much as I feel that Gerrard may have a future as a manager. For him to come to a PL club like Villa when his only managerial appointment has been in a league with almost no competition would be a suicidally naïve appointment.

He wears a nice sweater, though. That's what really matters. We learned that the hard way with Sherwood.

What a freaking list. Scott Parker

You are right. It's just sad. I just can't get excited about a manager losing his job, especially when he's Villa. After what he's done for us, to dump him just feels f***ing awful, regardless of recent results.

I think it's a fair point.

I like Potter a lot, but the only way we'd fly up the table is if he chloroformed the Brighton midfield and brought them here under cover of darkness in a transit van.

For a fanbase that does a lot of reminiscing about mistakes of the past, we don't half like to repeat them.

If we went for any of those, I would put money on our relegation this year. And I'd win.

Tragic.

Can’t face the the match thread tonight guys, so utv and I’ll see you afterward.

I was told once that a spoonful of honey before bed helped sleep. Not sure if it does or not, but bizarrely I find I get incredibly vivid dreams if I do that. Not bad dreams, just really clear ones I can remember later. Have no clue whatsoever why.

I've been looking at some studies online about whether to stick or twist with a manager, and found this article, which I found interesting. 'In 2013 a Dutch Economist did a study on exactly this. He analysed managerial turnover across 18 seasons (1986-2004) of the Dutch premier division, the Eredivisie. As well as looking at what happened to teams who sacked their manager when the going got tough, he looked at those who had faced a similar slump in form but who stood by their boss to ride out the crisis. "Changing a manager during a crisis in the season does improve the results in the short term," he says. "But this is a misleading statistic because not changing the manager would have had the same result." He found that both groups faced a similar pattern of declines and improvements in form. Chart compares relative performance of teams over time. At point "t", the manager is sacked or voluntarily departs. The analysis is based on 81 sackings, 103 voluntary departures and 212 performance dips in the Dutch football league from 1986-2004 While the research focused on Dutch football, he argues that this finding is not specific to the Netherlands. Major football leagues in Europe, including England, Germany, Italy and Spain also bore out the same conclusion - teams suffering an uncharacteristic slump in form will bounce back and return to their normal long-term position in the league, regardless of whether they replace their manager or not. So how can this be explained? It's an age-old statistical phenomenon known as regression to the mean. "In the same way that water seeks its own level, numbers and series of numbers will move towards the average, move towards the ordinary," David Sally, co-author of the football statistics book The Numbers Game, explains. "The extraordinary, numbers-wise, is followed by the ordinary; the ordinary is followed by the ordinary; the ordinary is what happens. The average is what happens more often than not." "a short term decline in performance is not a good reason to be firing your manager". "Managers and players sort in such a way that the best end up at the best clubs and the worst at the worst clubs. It is not a coincidence that Mourinho is with Chelsea and Guardiola with Bayern Munich. These clubs only attract the best managers. However, changing managers does not seem to improve the result. After releasing Villas-Boas [in March 2012] the performance of Chelsea did not improve." According to Sally [the economist], football clubs can be seen as any other business or company. Business research suggests that structural factors - such as how long it has been operating and which industry it is part of - are much more important than who the chief executive is. In money terms, around 15% profitability can be determined by the quality of the man or woman in charge and the same can be said for football managers, Sally estimates.'