I’ve spoken about this man before. Some love him, some hate him, few are indifferent.
I’m a church-going sort of a cove so I never regarded him as the Messiah. That would be blasphemous. But I thought he was, in his own way, a talented manager and I spent a large part of my time on the blogs defending him from baseless attacks.
I started to get nervous about O’Neill when he started to do odd things. It was odd the way he treated Reo-Coker. Silly, in fact. Premier League footballers live under extraordinary pressure and you have to have a certain amount of feistiness in your make-up to cope with it. Feistiness has some close relatives and you take the one with the rest of the family. Feisty has a brother called “Lippy”, a sister called “Snotty” and a cousin called “I know it all”. Feisty’s dad had a nick as a teenager – he was called “Jack the Lad”.
Feisty’s family lived on Castle Vale and had some pretty choice neighbours. Old Bill used to venture in there tentatively and always mob-handed. Funny thing was – this was the sort of environment that good footballers used to come from. They rarely seemed to come from Solihull or Sutton Coldfield.
For society in general they were a nuisance. Until, of course, Johnny Foreigner upset the Royal Family and Britain went to war with someone. Then you prayed they were on your side and not the other.
So you couldn’t live with them and you couldn’t live without them. And society, in its wisdom, learned a thing or two over the years. It learned that most of them grew up, acquired a family, settled down, and said things like, “…wasn’t like this in my day”, and, “…kids today, they’ve got no respect”.
You can see where I’m going with this. Young men with spirit are a handful. But you can’t just consign them to terminal custodial sentences, or the football equivalent, reserve team football. This attitude is counter-productive and is in the interests of neither the young man nor the club. It wastes a valuable asset.
Good managers and coaches know how to accommodate the wayward energy and harness it for the benefit of the team and the individual. O’Neill, instead, preferred to let them know “who was the boss”. On its own this wouldn’t be so bad but O’Neill had a big slice of vindictiveness in him and the combination was toxic. NRC cost millions and drew millions in salary and it was squandered on the bench, merely because O’Neill had the authority to do it. As I say – odd. There were other curiosities, as well.
What’s the point of having a squad if you keep picking the same eleven players? The point of a squad is “rotation” and rotation prevents burn-out. Villa always burnt out. Every season. I thought it was odd and there was more…
Our wage bill was much higher than comparable clubs with bigger, deeper squads, Spurs, Everton for example. This was definitely odd
Why did Villa, having achieved qualification, treat European football with contempt? This seemed odd to me, but what do I know?
When he walked out I wrote that O’Neill knew the writing was on the wall. Barry gone, Milner gone, Young restless, the money all spent – the game was up. It wasn’t particle-acceleration physics in the Swiss Alps, was it? We were going to have a bad season and as Matt has said, the brand was in danger. The timing of the departure was damaging and had to be deliberate. It’s all of a piece with the general spitefulness that, looking back, was part of his character.
And now he’s suing for constructive dismissal. He walks out at his own behest as his own choice and it’s “someone else’s fault”.
O’Neill fully expected the world and his wife to be clamouring for his services. All he got was West Ham – which came with an indifferent salary and a year’s supply of girlie mags. The inherent weakness in the brand had been sussed – he was a busted flush. We’ll probably never know, but when he resigned he likely expected Lerner to be straight on the blower – “Come back Martin, we’ll give you the funds.” Instead of which, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and muttered “Good riddance”.
His ego can’t take it. The action for dismissal is, I think, as much to restore the brand as anything else. In reality, all it will do is confirm the flaws in his character. How can you walk out and then claim you were pushed? He’ll be a laughing stock and clubs will be very wary of him.
Surprised? Don’t be. It’s all cut from the same cloth. He showed poor judgement as a manager and he showed poor judgement in protecting the brand. I’m not saying he can’t win with the tribunal. These institutional types are capable of anything but he can’t win on Main Street.
Some of you will be upset by this appraisal. At Damo’s, I had to forswear talking about it to avoid irritating peeps, but, come on, it ain’t like you don’t know… I despise O’Neill. I’ve got it in spades. He’s the bottom of the barrel. The very essence of a self-regarding man.
Why rehash all this? Because I want to – you don’t mind do you? And it’s instructive. That’s why I love the theatre that is the Premier League – the dramatis personae are stripped of the camouflage that hides their personality. All you have to do is watch and listen and they will reveal themselves. Men who own clubs have to make decisions about the appointment of managers – and their dismissal – and it helps to be able to read the cards.
It doesn’t hurt, for instance, to be ruthless, as long as it’s in the interests of the club and not in the interests of oneself. Mourinho and Ferguson are, I think, examples of the first, and O’Neill an example of the second. With O’Neill, it’s all about O’Neill. The brand.
Neither does it hurt to get angry, to lose your temper. The players need to know that you can have a row. You just need to call it a draw at some point and move on. Like Reo-Coker. Not nurse the grudge while hell freezes over.
Over a thousand words now and still the bile rises at his perfidious betrayal. But he’s had his collar felt . It’s West Ham or the knockings in the Championship for O’Neill. OK, he gets a gig with a decent club in the Premier League, don’t come running to me with “See Jerry, I told you so” – he is what he is , whoever employs him. I will not be gainsaid.
O’Neill’s sharp, he knows when it’s all coming unravelled, and when it does, he skips town. He’s got previous. Always a good excuse, of course, he’s not silly. The nerve of the man. To sue Lerner, when Lerner treated him like a prince. The gods will tolerate this sort of fraud for a summer, but, come autumn, they want their dues. O’Neill has doubled-down on protecting the brand and refused to honour his contract with the Fates and they are unforgiving.
May he rot in Hell.
The Author
