The BIG Debate

Aston Villa were right not to fight harder to keep Martin O’Neill as he had taken them as far as he could

FOR

James Platt: I agree with this statement. I do think O’Neill performed respectably at Villa, and I certainly wouldn’t have advocated his sacking, or anything so drastic. However, I believe Villa under O’Neill had done as well as they were ever going to do.

The issue of transfer funds was obviously key at Villa Park. O’Neill felt the club needed to spend more and reinvest any finances generated from major sales (James Milner) if the club was to gain a Champions League place or better. I don’t disagree with this assessment – the current Villa squad doesn’t look strong enough to mount a serious top four challenge.

Nonetheless, the view that O’Neill has been starved of resources is simply not correct. By any stretch of the imagination. In four years at Villa Park, O’Neill spent a pretty substantial £120 million, That’s a lot of dough, and he only recouped £39 million in sales. So that’s a net outlay of £81 million. Therefore I don’t believe it is unreasonable for a chairman to want a little more than a couple of 6th place finishes and obdurate demands for further cash.

O’Neill did a lot of spending at Villa and yet didn’t really achieve an awful lot. There is propaganda around that O’Neill worked on some sort of shoestring – the facts show that to be patently untrue. Moreover, some of his buys are dubious at best.

Nigel Reo-Coker: £8.5m
Marlon Harewood: £3.5m
Curtis Davies: £10m
Nicky Shorey: £4m
Stuart Downing: £10m (that’s a conservative estimate too)
Steve Sidwell: £5.5m

The phrases ‘English’ and ‘over-priced’ spring to mind… O’Neill clearly wanted to build up a core of Englishmen, and that’s admirable in a way, but he fell into the trap of spending way too much on over-hyped domestic players. I mean even at the time, did anyone really think Curtis Davies was worth 10 million quid?

That’s not to mention the wages as well. Habib Baye and Luke Young reportedly both earning over £40,000 a week to warm the bench... I’m not sure that’s money well spent.

O’Neill splurged freely in the transfer market, secured some impressive one-off results, but was ultimately incapable of building a truly successful team and his side kept fading at the business end of the season, unable to secure 4th place or a trophy. With so much cash leaving the club, owner Randy Lerner, understandably I think, wanted to tighten things up a little. Now obviously we will never know exactly what was said or done, but from the outside it looks as though O’Neill threw something of a tantrum when told he couldn’t spend a bucket load more cash.

Faced with an ultimatum, Lerner decided it was time to cut O’Neill loose. I think that was a very reasonable decision. In four years O’Neill demonstrated that he’s a very competent manager, but despite significant funding, time and a sound infrastructure already in place at Villa (good stadium, strong fan base etc) he wasn’t really able to deliver what was expected.

O’Neill is clearly a good manager, but I remain unconvinced about the job he did at Villa. Decent, yes. Spectacular, certainly not. With the bottomless pit coming to an end, O’Neill had shown over a four year period that he wasn’t able to take Villa to the next level. And so the club were right, in my eyes, to let him go and look elsewhere.

Although the appointment of a new manager will be crucial for The Villans. Kevin MacDonald is not the man to take the club forward…

AGAINST

Matt Snelling: When I heard the news that Martin O’Neill had left Aston Villa, and then subsequently heard that the club, and a number of the supporters weren’t unduly upset about it, the phrase that instantly popped into my mind was ‘be careful what you wish for’.

Football folk are notoriously fickle, and it would seem that the conclusion of many, both inside and out at the club was that the former Leicester City and Celtic manager had taken them as far as he could. Now while Manchester City are throwing around money as if they were a bank in the Weimar Republic, the evidence of Tottenham shows that canny management, good coaching, sound player recruitment and obviously a little bit of luck along the way can still result in a club qualifying for the Champions League. Sure, it’s hard, but it can be done.

Which is why it’s hard to understand quite why so many at Aston Villa seemed so unconcerned that they were losing a manager who has enjoyed a sterling reputation in recent years. Under O’Neill the club achieved three successive 6th place finishes, which is in a way, why you can see where people are coming from when they argue that he had taken the club as far as he could, but glosses over the fact that this shows remarkable consistency and ignores the fact that their points tally was going up each year (albeit very marginally).

Many are arguing that in order to break through to the next level (i.e. get into the top four) the club required significant investment, which is hard to disagree with in terms of it would certainly help, however is the level of spending that the club had put into building its current squad not similar to that of Spurs? O’Neill has shown throughout his career that he is an excellent motivator who gets a lot from his players, and surely with him at the helm, they stood a better chance at progression than with anyone else. Who out there would you bet your house on doing a better job?

A lot has been made of the way he has invested the clubs money, and in a number of cases I don’t disagree that he has bought poorly, particularly when it has come to some rather over-hyped and over-priced British players. Then again, look at the profit made on Milner. Likewise, if Ashley Young were to move, the club would likely get a significant increase on what they paid for him. In my eyes the problem with his recruitment policy was the lack of a signing of a fantasy player, a creator, and a failure to look to the foreign markets where these types of imaginative players can more often be found. The team lacks an Arteta or a Modric for example. However, if he addressed this, and balanced the team a bit better he had the nucleus of a squad which is strong in many areas and I believe that the powers of O’Neill the coach were far from on the wane.

In a way perhaps, if he was to refuse to change his ways, and acknowledge that that the team needed to develop their style and mix it up a bit more then that does give some fuel to the argument that it was right he had taken the club to a certain glass ceiling that he was incapable of breaking through. However, I feel that this is something which, as an intelligent and astute manager (with a proven track record of winning trophies), he would have come round to. O’Neill, in my eyes, is still a very good football manager, who’s skills at building and coaching a team could have taken on a not un-talented squad to that next level if he was given the fulsome support and backing of the club and its supporters. Looking at the alleged shortlist of replacements and some of the managers out there, whose skills and record make them better qualified than O’Neill?