Villarocker

Thank fook Kevin Mcdonald isn't our new manager. His team selection and formation was so outdated it could be on the Antiques Roadshow. Clark was shocking first half but the pundits were right, why wasn't Lescott covering across? Both shite. Westwood is too lightweight to be anywhere near the pitch, let alone the back four! I still can't believe that arm made him go off. Sanchez has been our only protection in that half. Gabby didn't get a touch because of two things: poor movement and the rest couldn't pick him out if he wore a badge saying 'it was me' in an identity parade. Expect worse second half because they're shit of the smelliest kind.

This is the first manager that's left me not really knowing whether I like the appointment or not. Under Lerner, I've been OK with them all except McLeish, who was always going to be shite. Maybe Garde is someone that we need. Relatively unknown so can't really be judged before he's started. I obviously support him 100% until I feel he deserves criticism. Hopefully, that will be never!

Do you think he will save us, Rich? Are you happy about this appointment or do you think we should have gone for someone with more managerial perhaps?

Nothing like a good yarn hey!

We can jump two places tomorrow night with a win. You would think that would be a big enough incentive for our players to win, wouldn't you? I think tomorrow will show what they're made of. If we get a footballing lesson tomorrow, when there is is so much to play for, it will leave me the most worried I've been about being relegated, this season.

Tony Casperino

Also, if it's accepted that the board would get rid of Collymore from the programme because of his thoughts about the direction of the club, surely it would then be right for someone to assume that the Captain questioning the board's decision to sack the previous manager would not go down too well with them?

Maybe he got the guarantee he wanted from Sherwood - that he wouldn't be playing right back - and his worried that he will be asked to do so by a new manager? Just saying.

Morley and Jonah, you are both right, in a way. Jonah is right about protests being needed to try to put some heat on Lerner and Morley is right because there are far too many people, me being one of them, who just don't have the time or resources to make it happen. The fact remains that Lerner's stewardship is guiding us on a downward spiral to nothingness. Even if we do stay in the Premier League season after season, we are not going to challenge for anything. The odd cup final may come along but as long as we come up against any team that's half decent, we won't be winning. Relegation might bring about some more wins and even promotion, which would obviously, at that point, be classed as a success. But, for a club such as ours, it simply isn't good enough. If, as Tom Fox says, Lerner is "not a motivated seller" and is "having fun" these really are worrying times for our club. How can anyone claiming to be a Villa fan be "having fun" right now? Even if that quote came at the beginning of the season, it was hardly fun times! OK, so we had the excitement of seeing a squad being rebuilt but, we arguably lost the best players that we had, in the summer. The newcomers were always going to be a gamble and the biggest part of that was how long they would take to adjust to what is supposed to be the hardest league in the world. Even then, it was no guarantee they would have the necessary quality to compete at our level. That's not me writing them off already. I'm merely stating that they were young, foreign and new to our league, so it was a gamble, especially with the quantity that we brought in. Also, we were wanting four or five of them to go straight into the starting line-up! People say that protesting against a man who is looking for a buyer is a waste of time. That may be true! But, we have to remember that he is not investing any of his family's money into the club and just ticking over on the small profits that we apparently make. The likes of Wigan have shown this to be a suicidal way of doing business in the past and our name and heritage alone will not protect us from becoming another fallen giant of the game. For me, unless there is pressure applied to him, Lerner is going to sink this ship and it might be this season that he manages to do it. He may not turn up to watch the team play any more but, others do. I am not saying that people should use insults against him personally but, if his judgement and overall leadership is questioned severely, and his family name is shamed, possibly by the negative comments being fed back to the states and maybe making back-page headlines in some of their newspapers, maybe that could lead to pressure being placed on him by other family members and him selling up quicker. Let's face it, Lerner CAN sell Aston Villa FC - it just needs to be at a price that someone is willing to pay!

It's interesting to hear his thoughts that Sherwood should have been given longer. I wonder how that went down with the board? I also wonder if he's worried he'll be asked to play right back?

It doesn't really matter too much who we get in. Whoever gets the job has to work with players sought after by the money men, on a budget that someone on Bargain Hunt would be proud of! Good luck to whoever gets the job, they're gonna need it.

Regardless of the penny-pinching and other various crimes of the Ellis years, after we came back up to the top flight (yes, I know, it was under him that we went down in the first place), overall, the football was better to watch than the dross served up during Lerner's reign. The players may have had to replace their own shirts but it didn't stop them trying harder than the overpaid dross we have suffered in recent years.

Ozvillain Ellis did a lot of wrong things at Villa (breaking up a side that were Champions of Europe being the worst) but he also had to oversee the rebuilding of 3 sides of the stadium. He also gave large transfer funding to more than one manager and a long time before Lerner came here and without the amount of money that the clubs now get thrown at them from Sky. Although he left us near the bottom of the league, we never became a club like Wigan where season after season we got closer and closer to the trap door. The inevitable will happen under Lerner and maybe then people will start to see him in a similar light to Ellis.

Southampton are an example of how to run a football club properly. Randy Lerner's AVFC is an example of how to run a football club badly. End of!

You know, it wouldn't surprise me at all if, before the end of this season, we change manager again. That's not me writing off the new man, I mean, how could I when I don't even know who he is? It's just that the people behind the scenes at the club are so keen to call the shots that maybe they will sack another manager during the season if it looks like we're going to struggle to stay up. I also wouldn't be surprised to see Rodgers return to Swansea at some point, if they look in any danger.

Maybe his remit was to not risk injury to certain players? Maybe there's something going on behind the scenes that made him not choose certain players? He's the manager for tonight and I stick by him. I wanted to see the best possible team and I doubt this is it but, he may prove us wrong.

He should play our strongest possible team against Southampton. A win, if we could get it, would go a long way to building some much needed confidence.

Doing a good job where he is. Isn't a big name. He's foreign. Isn't in the betting. Is it the Watford manager? Would Sir Elton John make the sacrifice?

Can't do quotes so here goes: A surprise name? Barry Bannan with Con as his number two? Surprise name taken seriously; Martin Jol? Why can't McLeish or Lambert be mentioned? This is the New Manager thread and there's no guarantees they won't return just to confirm our demise.

Yorke would stay 5 minutes until a bog cleaning job came up at Old Trafford where he could go and polish the turds of those following in his footsteps.

It looks like Garde is not only the man Villa want but he's also the choice of the majority of the fans on here, it seems. I'm not so sure he has that much of a previous record but, like every man that takes the job on, he'll get my support. One thing I will say is that I think a lot of people are getting a bit ahead of themselves with regards to the quality of football we can expect from Garde's team. He's still got this bunch to work with and it's not guaranteed they will be able to play the way he wants them to. I admit though, the sound of a manager who is a tactician is music to the ears. MON had a plan b of moving a midfielder to full back, McLeish just played every defender he could possibly get on the pitch, Lambert's plan b was to put every possible striker on and hoof it into the box, Sherwood well, his master stroke was to fool the opposition into thinking they were good by telling us to play shite first half - for one game.

What happens if the new man comes in and plays the same players that Sherwood had, with the same results? What next? It could be possible that the new signings are not good enough and will contribute to our downfall via poor performance. I think it would be wrong of everyone to assume that these players are all going to suddenly become excellent and shoot us up the league. They may yet turn out to be duds although, I hope they aren't.

I'm one of those that thinks our newer players are decent enough to be more than relegation battlers. But, my concern is this, what if they aren't really any good and can't cut it in England? That leaves us royally f**ked right? The squad doesn't contain enough decent players to carry any passengers so we're really relying on the new manager to get these new players playing good football.

Randy Lerner is killing our club and he still has support. To me, those fans are either blind or, they are afraid that another owner will come in and be worse, somehow. He's not the slightest bit interested in us and wants away. He's made bad call after bad call. People say there's nothing else he can really do. How's about bringing proper football people into the club for starters? How's about stopping with the bullshit? How's about stop worrying about commercial revenue and giving us players that want to play for Aston Villa with pride? How's about employing a proper football manager who can sign his own players instead of being enforced to work with players that may not suit the way he wants his team to play? There's lots of things Lerner can do. The biggest of all would be to lower the price further to attract a serious buyer. OK, we may not get £100m to spend but maybe we would get more than £7-£10m net or whatever it is that we've had for the last few seasons. Who knows, the new man just might be clued up enough to see that it's football men we need at the club and not money men!

I'm unable to quote from my phone but want to reply in reference to a post on page 51 whereby the OP mentions about us being more likely to go foreign in our manager search because the "committee" appear to be buying the players and British managers don't like that because they like to have the last say on dealings, or something along those lines. That post made me think of Villa and how we are now operating in the transfer market. It kind of reminded me of Debenhams employing a new Buying Manager, whose only previous job was working at Aldi's, and is asked to purchase at prices he's used to dealing with but with the intent of not damaging Debenhams's reputation or position as one of the most acclaimed stores in Britain.