Mcleish quits Birmingham
- Thread starter Robzere31
- Start date
All this could turn out to be true.
However;
1) McLiesh had by all accounts been treated quite badly by the BCFC board. Hughes just wanted a better job. To be fair, i wouldn't have let that bother me there isn't much honour in football!
2) No escaping that point! But see below for the reasons.
3) I don't think Birmingham have the youth structure that Villa have.
4) Mcliesh did a pretty good job on very average resources at Birmingham. They can't just blow £19m on a striker, and lets face it if you don't have the players coming through that's almost a minimum spend these days to get a proven scorer. Instead he had to gamble on that big Croat whose name escapes me and it didn't pay off. They didn't have the squad depth to cover him, or the resources to replace him hence no goals.
Attractive football. I agree in principle, but it seems to me that elegant football doesn't always get the job done. MON did the best anyone has ever done at Villa recently by relying on set plays and a direct playing style. Mourino did much the same at Chelsea, with players who cost 4 times as much!
Wigan played decent football - nearly got relegated. Wolves played decent football - nearly got relegated. Blackpool played decent football - got relegated. What do fans want?
I'm not desperatly happy with McLiesh coming, i'd have liked a serious punt at getting Moyes out of Everton but that was never going to happen after Martinez said no. We were never going to get the second choice and were effectively condemed to 6th or 7th choice. I think the fans need to get behind him and give him a chance. If he was a blue nose he wouldn't have left and certainly wouldn't have come here.
Very disappointed with the appointment - irrespective of the fact he's a Blue Nose, his record does very little to inspire, however, the field of targets was thinning rapidly.
McLeish didn't do a good job at Birmingham - he took them down twice.
There's no hiding that fact, and all the nonsense regarding his "marvellous defence" is flawed as he sacrificed playing attractive football, scoring goals, winning points and ultimately survival through his negativity.
Under MON we thrived playing a counter-attacking direct approach and at times we were fantastic to watch.
I will be further devastated if any of the hapless Blues follow him, particularly the overrated Johnson who thinks he's Franz Beckenbaeur.
McLeish didn't do a good job at Birmingham - he took them down twice.
There's no hiding that fact, and all the nonsense regarding his "marvellous defence" is flawed as he sacrificed playing attractive football, scoring goals, winning points and ultimately survival through his negativity.
Under MON we thrived playing a counter-attacking direct approach and at times we were fantastic to watch.
I will be further devastated if any of the hapless Blues follow him, particularly the overrated Johnson who thinks he's Franz Beckenbaeur.
Maybe the plan is, under McLeish, to get relegated so they can win the Championship (or is it League 1)?It's funny listening to Villa fans on the television saying they need a manager who can "win them the League again"
Mmmm, wonder now who'll we be getting in at Blues.
Hopefully someone who will concentrate a little more on the attacking side of things. Our biggest problem has always been lack of goals,
but has been covered up by a decent defence.
With Dann & Johnson out though for quite a while last season, it highlighted just how desperate we are for a 15-20 goal a season player.
Hopefully someone who will concentrate a little more on the attacking side of things. Our biggest problem has always been lack of goals,
but has been covered up by a decent defence.
With Dann & Johnson out though for quite a while last season, it highlighted just how desperate we are for a 15-20 goal a season player.
Caporegime
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I said at the time, poor reporters considered the timing to mean something, 1st of june or so was being talked about for a couple months as the time Hughes was supposed to either renew his contract or quit, thats simply the time his decision was to be made, Houllier being dumped and Villa looking for a job was a coincidence, nothing more or less.
Fulham are a relatively frustrating job as frankly no matter how good a job the manager does, the uber rich owner doesn't want to spend to hit the next level and thats seemingly why he left, because the club were talking about transfers and when it came to discussions and contracts he was seemingly told you'll have basically whatever you can generate from sales or something along those lines, and decided he didn't want to be there anymore.
What was he supposed to do, ask Al Fayed to give him an extra 3 weeks on his contract so timing didn't appear to be for the Villa job?
I think Fulham do well though, nice to see an owner who just because he has money doesn't want to throw it all into a football club. They seem to suffer in Euro years though, Fulham get to a Europa cup final and do crap in the league.
If Mcleish is to be believed he tried to go for several good strikers but the owners didn't want to know about it, so was forced to look around for a budget striker and get lucky, though personally I thought the gimmicky lanky pratt player was always a bad idea. I said before, look at the difference between Torres out of form, and Suarez in form, team performing completely differently. Have no idea why anyone is looking to be Jerome Cameron, sure, works hard but a non scoring striker can pretty much ruin a good team. Brum with a good striker should quite easily have stayed up, infact probably very very easily, if the owners simply won't buy one not sure what you can really do about it.
Brum are really in the same situation again, sign a striker, should do very well in the championship, don't sign a striker, could be in trouble, but will obviously depend if the end up picked apart as players want to move to other clubs.
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Man of Honour
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I'd also possibly call him a Blue Nose but for managing a different team. I think it's worth pointing out that earlier in his career despite technically presiding over Hibs relegation* he did manage to get them back into the SPL at the first attempt with a record points total for the time - he also (and much as I'm loathe to admit it) had them playing pretty good football.
*Although I'd like to credit Mr McLeish with getting Hibs relegated he was given the job when they were already too far gone to save so the real credit must go to Jim Duffy - sadly often unrecognised in the annals of great Hibs bosses, provided me with much joy when he all but sent Hibs down.
Didn't he also get them promoted and to 9th in the PL? And win the league cup? Given the resources available not bad acheivements.
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I thought the first time they went down he inherited a relatively poor team more than half way through the season and he brought them straight back up.
Fair enough this season but the first season they went down you can't put the blame solely on him.
<-- Celtic fan here, though I do think he is a pretty good manager and should at least be given a chance.
Fair enough this season but the first season they went down you can't put the blame solely on him.
<-- Celtic fan here, though I do think he is a pretty good manager and should at least be given a chance.
He took a relegated side back up - they still had a Premiership squad and resources, I don't consider it a great achievement.
A League Cup or Relegation? Which would the Blue Noses of sacrificed....
This, tbh.
He did take over from Bruce and the squad was in a poor way, no surprise they went down.
I thought he did well at Birmingham but we'll never know the story with the board, all seemed a bit strange with the transfers there.
Hope he does a good job there, will always remember him for his time at Rangers
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Looks like its between Chris Hughton and Roberto Di Matteo for the blues job. I would prefer it to be Hughton, he did a good job at Newcastle so hopefully he can guide us back to the Premier League. Hopefully the deal can be done as soon as possible so he can sort out all the player transfer and hopefully keep some key players.