john craig wrote:stmichael wrote:so i get home last night and hear that martin o'neill has returned to football to manage the poisoned challice that is aston villa and it got me thinking about the guy in general.
opinion seems to be split on this guy. whilst he's been criticised for his somewhat one dimensional style at times, nobody can really argue with his results. he took wycombe into the football league, he won two cups and had 3 top 10 premiership finishes with unfashionable leicester. and whatever you say about scotland being a two horse race every year, the season he went to celtic, they had just finished 20 points behind rangers the previous season and were light years behind. he won the title back in his first season and then went on to win several more trophies and take celtic to the UEFA cup final.
i relate this to liverpool, because i'm sure many of the elder statesman of this forum will remember two years ago at this time, after houllier had been sacked and before anybody really had heard of rafael benitez. many people on here were advocating martin o'neill as being our new manager at the time. others (notably owzat if i remember rightly) didn't think he was up to the job.
now i have to be honest that i'm not a fan of the football that his teams play. as i said before i think he's very one dimensional in that he likes to sign beasts to play at the back and big men upfront. infact if he had arrived that summer i don't think heskey would have been sold as he liked him from his time at leicester. he also advocates playing 3 at the back on a frequent basis which is something that has never led to any success in england down the years.
as far as i see it, the guy's main strength is his motivation and man management skills (sounds like a certain portugese manager doesn't it?). i don't think he's that great tactically but if he can get an extra 10% out of all his players then that will reap success in itself. i know benitez came in and won us the european cup but in all fairness we were domestically dire in that first season. obviously we came on leaps and bounds last season and the style of football improved tenfold. however it's just interesting looking back in hidsight at what could have been. so.....
a) do you rate martin o'neill as a manager? what are his main strengths and weaknesses in your eyes?
b) do you think that the guy is of the standard required to ever manage a top 4 premiership club? or do you think that a club like villa is about his level in that it is a potential sleeping giant that has underachieved and needs picking up?
c) had martin o'neill taken over liverpool as many predicted before rafa came, would you have been happy at the time and where would the club be now in terms of progress?
Interesting post St. Mike
a) Yes I do rate O'Neill as a good manager. I think he's better than any of the English born managers around right now, although that's partly because there is a real dearth of managerial talent in England just now. What you say about his style is true, he has a formula that he stuck to at Leicester and then Celtic which was to build a team full of 6-foot plus players and simply bully teams rather than play good football. His Leicester team were long ball merchants and despite winning week-in, week-out with Celtic, they were also long merchants, although not to the same extent. Although he got Celtic to the UEFA cup final, in reality it was more like Larsson got Celtic there. That was a freak season and I think O'Neill's tactics were normally found out in European competition. His motivational skills must be superb, which is obviously his strength and he knows exactly the players to buy who will fit into his preferred system.
3 at the back is interesting, he always played it until his last season at Celtic when he scrapped it and went 4-4-2. I don't think he's a strictly 3-at-the-back-man and I'm not convinced he'll play that way at Villa.
b) While O'Neill's tactics work for smaller clubs like Leicester in taking them into the top 10 in the league and in winning the SPL with Celtic, I believe the same tactics can also be a hindrance. His one dimensional style is not good enough to compete at the very top end of football - ie competitions like the Premiership and CL. I don't think O'Neill is suited to a top 4 prem club.
c) O'Neill wouldn't have been my first choice back then, but we certainly could have done worse at the time. He certainly would have steadied the ship and instilled some team morale after morale had all but been destroyed under Houllier. We'd also have done better in the league than under Benitez in his first season, but in the long term I don't think O'Neill would have been capable of taking us as far as Benitez is.
How are you John ? good to see you mate.
