If Gerard Houllier becomes the new Villa manager as the press is reporting, then Randy Lerner might want to guard any accumulated cash closer than he did this off season with Martin O’Neill.
Yes, Gerard spent less money in more years on more players. But, it was also 6-12 years ago and player values were lower. The thing Randy may want to look at is: Did the Frenchman ever get his money back on those players?
Martin can point at the signings of Milner and Ashley Young and say he doubled Randy’s money with Milner and will more than double it if Young heads out in the next year.
Maybe Sami Hyypia was a bargain at 2.5 million. But, MON will counter that both Dunne and Collins are equal bargains.
They both are guilty of signing Emile Heskey, but Houllier actually took him off MON’s Leicester when he was a pretty quick player with a knack for goals, but, at least MON can say he didn’t pay 11 million when he got him back.
He signed Milan Baros, twice, which Villa fans would say was a waste, but, he actually was the one guy who could get the best out of the Czech.
It was a mixed time for Houllier at Liverpool. He had spells of poor results in the league and the team under-performed miserably for such a large club. Many say that to win the cup you need luck and the league is the true test of a team’s mettle.
It can be argued that luck played a huge role in 3 cup successes. They had favourable draws in the domestic cups and relied on penalties to beat Birmingham City. The FA cup had an even larger slice of luck as Arsenal must have wondered what they had to do to get a goal and then watched in despair as Owen struck twice.
The UEFA triumph didn’t have the luck of the draw for them, they had some tough opponents, however it seemed the Italian giants Roma were going to level their second leg game on aggregate when Babbel handled in the box and the match official pointed to the spot, but the ref strangely changed his mind and gave a corner. Pool went on and won the tournament on the golden goal rule in overtime against Dortmund.
Liverpool fans point out that Gerard always had a built in excuse when things went wrong. Apparently he blamed the failure of the French national side to qualify for the world cup in 1994 on former Villa David Ginola for failing to complete a pass to Eric Cantona, who apparently would not have missed. Ginola has threatened to sue.
Gabriel Agbonlahor and Nathaniel Delfouneso may very well find themselves as the two main strikers with the 2 big lads John Carew and Heskey are left in the cold with Houllier’s style. Also, the new manager may sit wondering how O’Neill could ever have played with 3 wingers on the field at the same time, which could leave Stewart Downing and Marc Albrighton waiting for Ashley Young to get injured.
Overall, though Mr H’s style of play will be much easier on the eyes than O’Neill’s and his teams are not easy to beat. But this looks like being the most controversial managerial appointment since Josef Venglos.