@Rocko I believe Villa finished 6th 3 times in a row with Oâ Neill.* And they reached a cup final.
^I know youâd hate to have your facts wrong.
Indeed, youâre correct. But @Sidney is also presumably correct that their 11th placed finish in his first season was better than each of those higher placed finishes.
Indeed. I believe they worked the ball forward very well that year and didnât resort to the long ball.
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While you can knock the quality of our players I wouldnât consider there being much of a step up in class between them and the Swedish team which got out of a tougher group and overcame Italy in the qualifiers.
Despite the clean sheets which often get mentioned we have rode our luck and spent long periods of pretty much all of our qualifiers completely on the back foot as opposed to being a team able to soak up pressure. OâNeill has gotten results but he has relied on a good deal of fortune and eventually things will always regress back to the mean and that is why performance is important. Aside from Austria away there were very little spells of where we actually played well in this campaign. Serbia home and away, Wales at home, 80 odd minutes at home v Austria, Georgia away, Denmark at home were anywhere from anaemic to downright awful
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Youâre setting the bar for excellence very low if you believe OâNeill did an âexcellentâ job with Villa.
OâNeillâs net spend over that 2006-10 period was the joint second highest in the Premier League - ÂŁ74m, with only megabucks Manchester City spending more.
Youâd want to be improving a bit with that kind of money. And the vast majority of what he spent it on was very average and very British orientated, as it was with Celtic bar a few early decent signings there, signings which were also from British football.
It betrays a very old style British football mentality.
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Iâm not saying we were excellent or anything.
Sweden overachieved in qualifying and thatâs an excellent achievement. For every team that qualifies there has to be one or two that are disappointed. Ireland donât have a divine right to be better than Wales or Netherlands or Scotland or Austria or anyone else. Second place in the group was a decent achievement. It was the result of some mixed performances but I think youâre being very harsh on the two games against Serbia - we did at least reasonably well in both of them.
I thought our performance at home to Wales was most disappointing but we canât be excellent every match because we donât have the players to sustain that excellence.
Iâm certainly not arguing that this was a progressive campaign. I think there are some mitigating excuses (McCarthy and Coleman but every team will have those), some disappointing individual contributions and some unexpected deterioration in important players (Brady, Hendrick, Walters). All in all that amounted to an average enough campaign with a decent group stage outcome, one decent playoff result and one appalling result and performance.
But my main gripe is with what I think is lazy criticism of the style of play under OâNeill because we have three defenders who arenât comfortable at all on the ball (and no better options for them unfortunately), some midfielders who should be comfortable but arenât, a winger whose best attribute is chasing lost causes and a couple of misfiring strikers. Itâs not much of a template to build a good team around.
I think there were managerial mistakes made, particularly with where Meyler and Arter played on Tuesday, and also I think we were naive in how we defended corners which is unusual for an OâNeill managed team. But I donât think thatâs evidence that OâNeill is a poor manager with a mixed track record (not that youâre saying that).
Thatâs generally how it works - the players get a bit more credit for playing good football and the manager takes the heat when they donât.
OâNeill got credit for his work up to last November. But what weâve seen since that has been absolutely turgid and it canât be just put down to injuries to key players.
Nobody is asking OâNeill to produce a tiki-taka team. But I donât think itâs asking very much for him to produce a team higher than 51st out of 55 in Europe in terms of passes made per game, 50th in terms of passes completed and 48th in terms of passing accuracy.
The Premier League is arguably the best league in the world, certainly in the top two. Arter, Brady and Hendrick all survive pretty comfortably in it. McClean is a Premier League player too.
Are you seriously telling me that those players and the other midfielders used over the course of this campaign canât produce something a lot better than being in the bottom eight teams in all passing categories?
Yes, it is, which is why I havenât put that idea forward. But he is clearly a limited manager who relies on old school British football ideas.
Modern footballers are used to receiving more detailed coaching and tactical instruction. OâNeill clearly doesnât believe in that, and it shows.
Van Gaal lost his head that day. At least he had the excuse of not having a half-time to regain it as Eire unexpectedly went ahead half-way through the second half. OâNeill had time to think at half-time on Tuesday, and still lost his head tactically.
When players have little or no instructions or are positioned poorly by the manager, they tend to play in a headless manner.
Itâs nothing to do with British.
Youâre unsurprisingly changing your first argument that was patently stupid (âhe was shit apart from his first seasonâ 
) to one thatâs just more abstract - he was only good because he spent money. And then youâre bizarrely throwing in the fact that he spent money on British players as though thatâs in any way relevant. Itâs also not particularly true - 2/3rds of his signings at Celtic were not British.
Hereâs a little graph of Aston Villaâs last 17 seasons. That overachieving green section is when OâNeill managed them.
Iâd have much more time for your argument if you tried to construct it rationally (I know thatâs not your forte) but this contrarian nonsense that he was falling behind at Aston Villa is nonsense. They were inconsistent and in a bit of a mess when he took over. They have been brutal since. Who exactly was he falling behind?
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An irrelevant and misguided cliche.
Itâs not just down to injuries. If you need help with reading my posts then just ask for help. OâNeill got plenty wrong. But I doubt pass completion percentages were top on the list of anyoneâs criteria for celebrations on Tuesday evening.
Passing categories? Youâre rambling incoherently now. Iâm not knocking the Premier League but there are some shit players playing at shit clubs in it as well as talented players playing at bigger clubs. McClean is not a technically gifted player but he suits some teams and Ireland is one of them thankfully. Brady and Hendrick are talented but have been really poor for Ireland. And some of that is OâNeillâs fault, some of it is because of their attitude probably and some of it is because theyâre not actually superstars, theyâre just decent enough players who would be decent enough players if they were playing in Germany or France or wherever and arenât any better because theyâre playing in England.
Like nearly all managers, he has his limitations. But you seem to think heâs living off his reputation as a player which is clearly not the case. In an effort to question his effectiveness youâve lost the run of yourself and have ended up trying to dismiss all his achievements and refusing to acknowledge his successes. It just makes you out to be a crank who canât see the middle ground.
Van Gaal again. Nothing to do with anything.
Agreed. In your blind fury of typing you seem to have missed that I was criticising OâNeill.
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The contrarian argument here is yours.
You seem determined to ignore the fact that a ÂŁ74 million net spend, the joint second highest in the Premier League, is serious spending by any standards. Thatâs higher than Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and every other team bar Manchester City and Tottenham over that period.
And who did Aston Villa end up with playing up front under OâNeill? Emile bloody Heskey.
OâNeill made two successful signings from outside British football - Valgaeren and Balde. His other successful signings - Sutton, Agathe, Thompson, Lennon, Hartson and Bellamy (a loan signing which was his only real successful signing post-2001) - were from British football.
Aston Villa have not been successful since 2010 because Randy Lerner tightened the purse strings and became completely apathetic about the club, perhaps because of the money OâNeill pissed away on dross.
Nice looking graph. Pity it doesnât have any numbers on it, and OâNeill managed them for four seasons, not five.
Sidney an hour ago: Martin OâNeill was not a successful manager.
Sidney now: He was only successful because he spent money and because he bought players from British clubs.
When youâre explaining why he was successful youâre making my point for me.
Sidney an hour ago: He was only good in his first season at Aston Villa. 
But that generally is how it works.
No need to get sarky, now.
Perhaps not. But when you put out a team that plays very much like they are in the bottom eight in Europe in all passing categories, you shouldnât grumble when people grumble.
So weâve established that McClean can produce for Eire even though he isnât a technically gifted player, but he still has enough about him to be a Premier League player.
Brady, Hendrick and Arter are doing pretty well in the Premier League. Yes, the fact that they are not doing well for Eire has to be to a large extent laid at OâNeillâs door, because itâs up to him to get them playing in a system where they their strengths can be better utilised, certainly to a level higher than in the bottom eight in all passing categories. Over the last year, he clearly hasnât done that.
I havenât dismissed his achievements at all, if you read my posts.
His reputation as a player is a large part of the reason why he has the stature in the game that he has and helps a lot in earning respect from players.
I think heâs living off his reputation as a manager that he earned in his Leicester and Celtic days to a large extent. His style was really best suited to 1980s or 1990s British football - heâs primarily a man manager/motivator type who is good at organising teams defensively and generally makes them tough to break down, but he struggles to instill attacking nous in his teams and prefers to play in the sort of 1980s British style that values physicality over passing football, creativity and tactical adapability.
I think thatâs a more than fair middle ground evaluation.
Again, itâs a very fair reference point as to how a manager can lose their head in a pressure situation and turn his team into a shapeless mess. Iâm quite surprised you canât get the relevance of the reference, to be honest.
Thereâs only one poster in this exchange who is posting with blind fury, honey, and it ainât me.
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This just isnât true. O Neil had the contacts and reputation to recruit exactly what was needed in Scottish football, a spine of tough professionals, along with a sprinkling of stardust. Larson merely benefited from playing with better players. He was a genius, like moravcek,and was equally good before o Neil arrived. You need to watch a few games from before the Munster of soccer pira bandwagon time.
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Larsson hit 29 league goals and 38 in all competitions under Dr. Jo Venglos in 1998/99. Thatâs pretty much in line with what he scored under OâNeill, bar his golden 2000/01 season when he hit 53 in all competitions.
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Would arter have launched it into the sky for Bournemouth though? Would he fuck. Thatâs obviously OâNeills programming
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Larsson was obviously a superb player. Nobody is arguing otherwise. But Celtic were a much better team under OâNeill than under the other managers who had the use of Larsson at Celtic.
Itâs not a negative to build great teams around great players. Itâs not easy to do either.
I think OâNeill misread how comfortable he could be balancing that defensive role with trying to keep the ball a little. Clearly he wasnât executing it very well because he was hooked at half time after a really poor individual mistake for the first goal. I can kind of see why he was retained there after playing well in Denmark but it seemed like it would be the wrong call and it certainly turned out that way. That doesnât absolve Arter of a shit performance either though.
So it was his best season apart from the better ones. Like Aston Villaâs stunning 11th place finish which was their best finish under OâNeill apart from all the other ones.
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Iâm not grumbling when people grumble. Iâm pointing out that youâre grumbling for the wrong reasons.
You said OâNeill was living off his reputation as a player. Thatâs patently not the case. Whether you think itâs deserved or not he has earned a reputation as a manager over a long, long time.
You donât even recognise the mistakes he did make on Tuesday because youâd rather stick to your misguided original argument. So you defend the nonsensical argument about Aston Villa and write off all his success to having players from British teams, as though they was cheating somehow. And you bizarrely reckon his success at Celtic was best suited to the 1980s despite itâs actual occurrence two decades later.
To conclude: OâNeill has been a successful manager for a long time. He has many flaws. Some were evident over this qualifying campaign. Tuesday night was really very poor. He doesnât have the job because of his achievements as a player (Whelan or Lawrenson or Irwin donât have the job). 11th place is not better than 6th place.
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