By Dave Woodhall.
Well, that’s that then. An official announcement on Friday morning that Alex McLeish had been appointed Villa manager on a three-year contract was followed on Monday afternoon by a press conference which unveiled the new man to the world.
McLeish, the 22nd man to take the job in the Villa’s history, was in predictably upbeat form as he faced the media at Bodymoor Heath. He knows he will have a difficult job winning over supporters, but made a good start. “There is no way I couldn’t have been the manager of Villa” was the opener in a salvo of lines that successfully trod the difficult path between praise for the club and belittling his former employers. McLeish is definitely saying the right things – he’d shown more feeling for the club by ten o’clock on Friday morning than Gerard Houllier managed in eight months – but the propaganda war has only just begun.
The confirmation of McLeish’s appointment seems to have dampened much of the anger which led to 500 Villa supporters demonstrating outside the ground last Wednesday. The message boards have certainly lost some of the vitriolic language which has been flowing over the past week and there’s a general feel that while McLeish as manager is not a popular move, he’s here now so we have to make the best of it.
Ironically, it may be that McLeish will be given more money by Randy Lerner than any other manager in his position would have enjoyed. Lerner has had a rough time since the story first broke, and while some of the abuse he’s taken has been totally unwarranted, it has to be said that Villa have not handled the PR side of the saga well at all. Their perceived eagerness to get rid of Gerard Houllier led to an assumption that the board had a replacement already lined up, and although they had several weeks notice that the position was to become vacant, they seemed almost as unprepared this time round as they did when Martin O’Neill walked out last August.
While I doubt the ‘official’ reasons why Mark Hughes or Steve McLaren didn’t get the job, the explanations, that they left their previous club and would be unpopular with fans respectively, were shown up in the light of subsequent events. Lerner needs to get the fans back onside, to demonstrate that the club are as ambitious and progressive as ever, and handing over a large sum to the new manager for players this summer will be the best way of showing this. As a bonus, it would embarrass the national media who are forever portraying Villa as a skint, selling club, much as the signing of Darren Bent in January wrong footed them.
As I’ve been saying to anyone who’ll listen, I don’t think McLeish was the right man for the job. His football borders on turgid and he can’t claim the justification that it brings success – although I am getting tired of hearing “two relegations in three seasons” trotted out like some kind of mantra. More than anything I can’t understand the thinking behind replacing Martin O’Neill (dull football, chiefly interested in buying established Premier League players) with Gerard Houllier (better football, main reason for his appointment being the widespread scouting contacts he has throughout the game) and then going back to a man whose similarity to O’Neill even includes much of their managerial work being done while sharing a city.
Houllier seemed so fixated with the long term that he failed to notice the problems underneath his nose last season until they threatened to lap up at him. McLeish never seems to have worked to a long-term plan. It’s an odd appointment for that reason alone, let alone the obvious one. And let’s be honest; while most of the protestors were keen to stress that their objection was not based on the new manager’s previous place of employment, I don’t believe for one second that the events of last Wednesday, nor the 16,000-strong Facebook group it sprung from, would have taken place had anyone else have been in the frame.
But he’s here now, and he has to be backed. He’s the Aston Villa manager and anyone who wishes him anything other than success is a supporter we’re better off without.