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It seems there is a lot of panic about the fact that Aston Villa have not released a statement regarding their lack of approach for Alex McLeish.
Let me just take a moment to explain a few things regarding public relations, and how they are managed. As everyone is aware, Aston Villa released a statement regarding the approach of Roberto Martinez. This was, in part, due to the explicit statement by a Premier League chairman to detail an approach regarding their manager by Aston Villa. To that end, Aston Villa were obliged to respond to this. A statement was therefore released.
As Villa fans are also aware, there have been multiple media reports regarding a whole host of managers who have been seen as favourites by bookies or punters. To differentiate this from the public statement made regarding Martinez, this is not anything that requires the club’s denial.
Why? If we were linked with a player, have we ever been the sort of club to say “Yes, we are interested” or have we done our business behind closed doors, and released information afterwards? For evidence of the latter, check out the Darren Bent transfer.
How many statements?
I want you to imagine for a second the following situation:
Lets say that we are linked to A N Other manager. We don’t want him, so we release a public statement saying so. This goes on for a period of time through six other managers, each having a different denial statement. Finally, the media links us with the manager we are pursuing. What do we do in this eventuality? If we deny the report, we are lying. If we don’t deny the report, we are admitting we want that manager. We are also then breaking any legal agreement regarding communication that we may have drawn up in an indirect manner.
So the message is this – till you hear it from a club source that we have approached someone, either successfully or unsuccessfully, then ignore the media circus that is trying to make something out of nothing.
Villa will appoint a manager and until then a statement will not be released.
The Author
