Well you can forget comparing everyone you've mentioned from Doug Ellis onwards as they were owners/senior management.
I thought Billy McNeil was the worst ever Villa manager but, at least he tried to get us playing attack minded football, not at all times close to successfully.
Dr Jo Venglos was too far before his time to be successful. I really liked that guy for his, what were then, brand new idea's about not only playing but, training, having the players look after themselves with their intake and type of food taken, the alcohol abstinence etc etc. It was player rebellion that got rid of Dr Jo.
Graham Turner I felt sorry for because he was given charge of a squad that was starting to fall apart and he had no experience of dealing with a club run anything like this club was being run. Nor of players with as much power as our players had.
O'Leary was a bad choice, he'd only managed one club and he was given an almost bottomless pit of cash with them. When he came here he tried getting the team he'd inherited to play the exspansive type of football he'd played at Leeds but, two things stood in his way. One being the difference in class of the players he had had and the ones he had here. Two and the most telling, instead of being backed in everything he wanted, he now had a chairman who not only had very deep pockets but, extremely short arms.
I felt very sorry for Lambert, he was hamstrung from the very beginning, his primary job was replacing players with cheaper versions so the owner could save and recoup some money. An impossible task.
With Garde he wasn't only not here long enough to influence anything but, he was refused any kind of backing in transfers and/or loans.
RDM, just like Garde, wasn't here long enough to unpack his suitcase, so what damage could they do.
Bruce came in with a reputation and I was expecting him to be able to sort things out and get us pointed in the right direction.
When Dr Tone said to gamble everything on promotion, Bruce should have been a loud voice shouting against it, pointing out the many pit
falls.
I expected Bruce to balance the unbalanced squad, not to make it more unbalanced with his love of rightbacks and hatred of anykind of leftsided player.
We had 3 senior rightbacks and he got a loan from Man U that he insists oin playing at rightback, that makes 4. He is reported as being interested in Hayden from Newcastle, another rightback. We have 1 senior leftback, who probably needs psychological help to get over his part in an horrendous accident on Seamus Coleman.
We have two senior centrebacks, one of whom he doesn't want to use, he'd rather use a slow 34 year old DM in defence instead.
This manager, Oh hell you've read the arguments, 'square pegs' and 'tactics' should make the points.
In interviews he, Bruce, talks about needing wingers and a forward, doesn't he see the need to get the backline sorted.
Will the only time he'll be satisfied, be when we field a team made up entirely of rightbacks.
We have some great kids in our U23 squad but, the only chance any of them have of playing for the first team is if there are injuries and he doesn't have enough rightbacks to cover.
With a manager unwilling to give the kids anything resembling a chance, the good kids will stop signing for our club.
This is hurting the name of our club and will continue to, unless things are changed very shortly.
I really do give up now trying to explain to Bruce supporters who obviously think the sun rises and sets in his arse, what the man isn't and is doing to our club.
