Rumour has it........

[ali]

Martin O'Neill warns Aston Villa he could quit in the summer

 

• Manager to hold talks with club's owner Randy Lerner

• Disgruntled fans will have bearing on end-of-season discussion

 

* Stuart James

* The Guardian, Friday 2 April 2010

 

 

Martin O'Neill is to consider his position as Aston Villa manager at the end of the season when he plans to sit down with the club's chairman, Randy Lerner, and discuss his future.

 

Earlier this week there were erroneous reports that he had resigned from his post. Yesterday he moved to clarify the situation by rejecting rumours he had fallen out with Lerner, although he admitted that both parties had a decision to make in the summer and, tellingly, said that disgruntled Villa fans would have a bearing on how he approached those talks.

 

It appears several factors have combined to frustrate the manager, including the supporter unrest that has surfaced at times this season and the realisation that, once again, qualification for the Champions League looks beyond his side after the 7-1 drubbing at Chelsea last Saturday. There have also been suggestions Lerner will adopt a more prudent approach in the near future, although O'Neill claimed he had yet to discuss summer spending with the owner.

 

The Villa manager, who operates on a rolling one-year contract, acknowledged there is a bigger picture to analyse in terms of whether the club are "making the progress that people want to make" but he also took the unusual step of issuing a forthright defence of his own record, when he claimed that his arrival had been a "breath of fresh air" at Villa.

 

O'Neill has overseen back-to-back sixth-placed finishes and in February took Villa to their first major final for a decade, when they lost to Manchester United in the Carling Cup. There is also the prospect of another Wembley appearance, if Villa can overcome Chelsea in their FA Cup semi-final tomorrow week. That outcome, together with Villa's results in the final seven league matches, are likely to impact heavily on the end-of-season summit.

 

"I will sit down here and talk to the chairman at the end of the season, and we will see where we are positioned," O'Neill said. "People make judgments and calls and things. I will see, and if the Aston Villa fans are disgruntled with it, I will take it into consideration, if the chairman – who will have a big say in proceedings – agrees, and, interestingly, I will have a say in proceedings, because it is my life. That is the best time to go and make that assessment."

 

Asked whether he would assess things with respect to his own future, O'Neill replied: "With respect to everything. With respect to whether we are making the progress that people want to make, whether we are doing everything in our power to get that. Where we stand, where the football club stands in relation to the Premier League."

 

There have been rumblings that O'Neill's relationship with Lerner is no longer strong but the manager claimed the American was the first person to call him when rumours circulated on Tuesday he had quit. "The chairman said to me: 'We are in the throes of a successful season, and a setback [like Chelsea] shouldn't deter you from fighting back.' But he was only telling me what I already knew – we can qualify for Europe for a third consecutive season."

 

O'Neill, however, declined to answer directly a question about whether the chairman had made any money available in January, when Villa failed to sign any players, and said he would "find out when I speak to him" whether there are likely to be funds for the summer. The outcome of that conversation could well be crucial.

 

The former Celtic manager reminded everyone at Villa Park that his record demands respect. "I must stand up for myself somewhere along the way," he said. "You can be self-effacing all day long. By the time August comes around I will have invested £80m of Mr Lerner's money in the team. That equates to £20m per year. If the chairman so desires, which he has not intimated to me, that the club is choosing to sell four or five players, you would get a return on your money – with interest. I think all that has been forgotten."

 

O'Neill pointed out that he had inherited a "disaffected club" that had been fighting relegation, but added: "I have the utmost regard for some managers who have been here before. I think Graham Taylor was excellent in his first spell here. Ron Atkinson has proved himself an excellent manager. Brian Little did very well in '96 but, in recent times, I'd say I'd be a breath of fresh air looking at this club. And that's putting a few things in perspective."

 

Martin O'Neill warns Aston Villa he could quit in the summer | Football | The Guardian

[Code]

Rafa £15m per year

 

O'Neill £16m per year!

 

Score!!!

 

Both are equal shite?

[Brownie]

He's definitely leaving.

[Manny]

He's definitely leaving.

 

Yep. Them quotes stink of laying the foundations.

[toneloc]

and it looks like Milner might be going to the Mancs - if only we could scupper that one - think he's a great player

[Brownie]

Milner is average, in my opinion.

[Rafa_The_Gaffa]

I wouldn't want O'Neill in charge.

[ali]

McLeish backs Rafa

Blues chief talks up Benitez's future prospects

 

By Danny Wright Last updated: 2nd April 2010

 

Birmingham manager Alex McLeish says Liverpool counterpart Rafa Benitez would walk into another job should he leave the club in the close season.

 

Speculation is rife that Benitez's days at Liverpool are numbered, with the club struggling in their battle to win a top four spot after a disappointing season.

 

A damaging defeat in Thursday's Europa League encounter at Benfica added to the Reds' woes, however they have the chance to put pressure on Tottenham - current occupiers of the last UEFA Champions League place - by beating McLeish's team at St Andrews on Sunday.

 

And the 51-year-old hailed the qualities of Spaniard Benitez, insisting the Champions League winner has the credentials to manage another big name side.

 

McLeish said: "He has been around. He is an experienced manager. He has managed Valencia at the top level. They had fantastic times under Benitez.

 

Calibre and credentials

 

"Now he is at a top club at Liverpool and been there a few years and, if he is not mentally tough, then I would be very surprised. He is under pressure but we are all under pressure. I am under pressure in a different way.

 

"Rafa has got to deal with that but, for a man of his calibre and managerial credentials, if it doesn't work out for him at Liverpool then there won't be a shortage of clubs looking to employ his services.

 

"But it looks like he has got Liverpool back to winning ways although hopefully we can put a spoke in their wheels and make sure they don't win here."

 

Sky Sports | Football | Premier League | News | McLeish backs Rafa

[chauncey]

Tuesday has brought the internet rumour that Martin O'Neill had stomped out of Aston Villa and Thursday has already generated a tour de force that would have impressed a barrister, which is what he might have become had he not run into Brian Clough. After impaling his critics with an impassioned defence of his four years at Villa Park O'Neill sits back to consider the biggest question. Does he really need this hassle?

 

"I wake up a number of mornings and convince myself that I need this. Sometimes it takes longer to convince myself that I need it," he says, smiling now. "Occasionally I have to work harder at it and it might take me into the afternoon to convince myself I need it."

 

Villa's training ground at Bodymoor Heath is still humming from O'Neill's decision to "fight back" in the wake of the team's 7-1 trouncing by Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. Along every corridor there is a sense that a major piece of theatre has been enacted. The Villa manager has left open the possibility that he may consider his position in the summer before issuing a statement to dampen speculation that he will leave if Randy Lerner, Villa's American owner, switches off the transfer-money pump at £80m.

 

O'Neill, whose side won at Bolton yesterday, had constructed an imaginary court around himself and attacked the prosecution's case with gusto. This was real stagecraft: a fine manager taking a stand against shallowness and negativity in the claret and blue half of Birmingham. Now, as a long afternoon of punch and counter-punch is expiring, he explains in greater detail his resistance to those who say the 7-1 defeat in London and the team's failure to secure the fourth Champions League spot for a third consecutive season would be terminal to his dream of establishing Villa as a conquering force.

 

"I've got two daughters who have grown up with this man, it's my background, it's my Catholic Irish nationalist background which feels that disaster is upon you any day that you have a good day," he says. "So, what I think is this: You should have this air of confidence and, while you can have it in your own demeanour, you should not be self-deprecating to the extent that what happens is people hammer the crap out of you."

 

Having people "hammer the crap out of you" must be close to being included in every Premier League manager's contract as a health and safety warning. Villa, who face their tormentors again in Saturday's FA Cup semi-final at Wembley, have beaten Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United (at Old Trafford) in this campaign and reached the Carling Cup final, which they lost to Sir Alex Ferguson's side.

 

But progress in the Premier League has stagnated and O'Neill faced a litany of charges (does not rotate enough, does not give youth a chance, etc) that conspired with Tuesday's internet fiasco to light his fuse. The gossip was that he had fallen out with Lerner over a supposed move by James Milner to Manchester United and that Villa would be needing a new leader.

 

He says: "The man who will sit down and determine a lot of things will be the chairman of the football club but I wanted to say [in his Thursday press conference]: 'Well actually, I will have a part-say in that, because it's my life.' I know that there will be people who will say, 'Well, he's not committed now.' I didn't say that. I actually said I would like to stay on but I will have to evaluate things at the end to see."

 

O'Neill had to be told by Midlands football writers how the blogosphere works. Later, during our interview, he jokes: "I've never had – I'm probably a typical Irishman – a long-term plan and I've ended up in this position. I do retain a great enthusiasm. Of course, there are days, like Tuesday, that make you think that, if something so small so can grow so great, I can actually use this to my advantage because with some shares I have bought I'm going to put on the blog that there's going to be an immediate takeover.

 

"I couldn't even spell blog and my children are incredibly embarrassed that I couldn't open... what do you call it... a computer. But I'm going to. That has got me going. I'm going to learn the computer to deal with it and I'm going to start a couple of rumours in a couple of shares that I have bought and haven't moved a muscle in two years. I'm going to put it on a blog. I've learned all that. It will probably take me a year."

 

Taking a year to do anything in football these days is strictly prohibited. The preferred delivery date is yesterday.

 

In football O'Neill, 58, is held to have at least one more marquee job in him: Liverpool, England, Manchester City or Manchester United would all be on the radar of his agent, if he had one. The "typical Irishman without a long-term plan" has a rolling one-year deal at Villa. He claims not to be a self-promoter: "I don't think I have ever in my managerial time really given my valuation its proper consideration. Honestly. People can turn around and tell you, you are the biggest big-head ever but I actually don't think I've done that.

 

"I don't have an agent, I've never had an agent, I might be the only manager in Europe who doesn't have an agent. What I should do, I should really consider my value a wee bit more.

 

"That sounds big-headed but I said here in my time of trying to fight back – I have been a breath of fresh air to these people, because this club was totally disaffected four years ago." Self-deprecation, he has decided, "is of no benefit to anybody".

 

The context to this friction is the 7-1 defeat and conjecture about Lerner's willingness to go on chasing top-four status when the team keep banging their head on the ceiling that is sixth place, and Tottenham and Manchester City are spending heavily. In his American HQ, some speculate, Lerner is comprehending the futility of trying to break the cartel on £20m net transfer spending per season, and may soon stop the flow.

 

O'Neill says: "If that situation did develop, that wouldn't necessarily mean I would go and down tools and say, 'Well, listen, we can't go any further.' What you would do is see if you can come up with some other ways, maybe through the scheme here with the younger players coming through, maybe with a bit of trading here and there, maybe taking a risk with a major player to be transferred [out] to sort things out.

 

"You wouldn't just down tools. It's not been in my nature to do that. I couldn't envisage that sort of scene – just throwing the toys out of the pram. I feel maybe I should have a say in my career as much as anyone else – that was the point I was trying to make. Actually I didn't make it too cleverly but it doesn't really matter."

 

In this mode O'Neill is a torrent of passion mixed with legalistic precision. With tracksuit trousers tucked in socks, as ever, and eyes blazing behind spectacles, he embarks on several monologues. I ask him: have this Villa side already reached the furthest frontier of their talents?

 

A long pause, then: "I will honestly have a look at it, regardless, at the end of the season and start to analyse it in a wee more detail. For instance, Gareth Barry has left and what appeared to be a gaping hole in our team has actually been very successfully filled by James Milner, who has ended up scoring double figures. That's great. Now, for James to continue to improve he will need ... more help. By that I mean we will need to improve the standard of our player.

 

"We have an up-and-coming young player in Nathan Delfouneso, a young centre-forward who I think is going to be a really decent player, and he can improve our side in time, but asking him to step into a man's job at this minute, to do wonders for us over that last seven games, is asking a lot. But next season he can go from peripheral into the mix and come up trumps.

 

"We need quality if we're going to go there. More quality, and more people than ever before to deal comfortably with the ball, and that doesn't just mean midfield players and a centre-forward, that means defenders. That's where I've been impressed this season. Richard Dunne and James Collins as central defenders are able to deal with the ball, they're comfortable with it at their feet and that's been an improvement."

 

What Villa need now, he says, is: "The kind of quality Tottenham possess in their overall squad. Well done, Harry [Redknapp, the Spurs manager]. Well done for being able to get those things in. I know he got one or two players from Portsmouth, and Portsmouth owed money, but well done. Manchester City, regardless of how the season ends, are going to go stronger again, so for us to compete we need a bit more quality."

 

In this week of blog-slaying and misconception-correcting, this European Cup-winning midfielder from Clough's great Nottingham Forest sides is in no mood to take credit for creating a nursery for England starlets, and is not one to plead for patience, just perspective.

 

"It would make me laugh, make me smile, if some manager came in and said he had a five-year plan for a football club. Fine, if you actually own the football club at the same time."

 

If the Stamford Bridge If the Stamford Bridge pounding served any purpose it was for psychologists searching for an insight into sports-induced pain, because there was a lot of it, for two days, before O'Neill realised Villa had "conceded 23, 24 goals in 29 matches before that, the best record in the Premier League." He says: "I shouldn't allow everything to be affected by the last half-hour of the game."

 

But for a manager whose identity is hewn from defiance, from insatiability, a curious hint of shame crept in. "It's my team and therefore what they do on that field is my responsibility. Where it was hard to take was that the side giving up really meant that I had given up.

 

"I took a long time as a player to get over things. A long time. I was always the last one to get changed. If I thought I was bad as a player, to quote my father, I'm 10 worses now – that old Irish phrase."

 

He recalls a bleak day at Forest: "We got beaten at Derby County one day, 4-1. We were a big team and we went to Derby and got thumped at the Baseball Ground. And Clough [who had managed County] was apoplectic in that little room at Derby, which is akin to a little corridor, right beside where the press are. He didn't care who he offended. He laid into us right, left and centre, for losing."

 

Clough's message, O'Neill says, was: "You cannot lose at Derby, don't lose at Derby and don't lose 4-1 at Derby. It was a desperately long weekend. And we came back [on Monday] wanting to know what his response was because his response was the club's response.

 

"He had calmed down a bit, obviously, [but] we were left in no doubt that this would never happen again, particularly at the Baseball Ground, and never again would you ever dream of going into a game at Derby and downing tools, which is what he thought we did. We were European champions at the time and he thought we had downed tools."

 

With the spectre of Chelsea's power still probably haunting his side, O'Neill agrees that Saturday's tie will be "an x-ray of Villa's soul". The FA Cup offers a chance to make amends for their Carling Cup defeat against United. "Did Sir Alex Ferguson need another League Cup? Not at all. Did we need a League Cup? Yes we did, just to get this football club going again."

 

If not this one, maybe another, because other top Premier League clubs will now think O'Neill is poachable.

 

Aston Villa's Martin O'Neill: It is not in my nature to 'down tools' | Paul Hayward | Football | The Observer

 

Hasn't O'Neill pulled this trick before: using his press chums to promote himself for bigger, better jobs?

 

I, for one, pray he gets his 'marquee job' and that it plants him firmly down the East Lancs.