Villa Manager Circus
If the managerial circus at Villa Park wasn’t bad enough, the fact that ex-Villa player chancers like Dwight Yorke and Benito Carbone have come out saying they should be given a crack at the job, has threaten to turn the search for the next Aston villa boss into the biggest joke of the season. Well, second biggest, after Jurgen’s Flopp’s attempt to get Liverpool into the Champions League places this season.
Yorke told anybody who’d listen that he could do the Villa job, despite the small matter of his zero managerial experience.
“People will say I don’t have any experience but we’ve seen people with experience go in there and struggle to do a job,” said Yorke, whose delusion extends to claiming he knew ‘the club inside out’ and that he had kept tabs on the goings on of the Premier League through his media work.
Joker number two out of the ex-Villa player pack was Benito Carbone, who was hoping his experience of helping Serie D teams in Italy avoid relegation and also coaching Leeds United Under-21’s for three weeks would be just the ticket that Lerner was looking for.
It’s unlikely that Villa CEO Tom Fox would even return both joker’s calls, but a MOMS insider at Villa Park reports that Fox almost fell off his chair, when he received a call in his office from another ex-player with actual real credentials to save Aston Villa’s season.
The insider said that Fox, who was struggling to find anyone better than Rémi Garde on his Arsenal contact rolodex to take up the Villa manager reigns, was considering writing his letter of resignation to Randy Lerner, when he received the very welcome call.
Bulletproof
“Mr Fox, sounded like a very relieved man, when I put in the call,” recalls Villa legend, Moustapha Salifou. “Tom said, I had originally been top of Randy’s list to replace Alex McLeish, but they had no idea where I was!”
It turns out the 32-year-old Togolese Zidane has this season been plying his trade in the sixth-tier of German football with Türkspor Augsburg.
When asked how he ended up there, Salifou was all smiles.
“I’ve always had a sense of humour when it comes to who I’ve played for,” he laughs. “That’s probably how I ended up at Villa in the first place, playing for that clown with the glasses.”
Moustapha Salifou Legend
Salifou admits he had actually only called the club to see how plans for his statue outside the Holte End were going, when Fox started talking to him about taking over from Tim Sherwood.
The attraction of Salifou to the Villa board was obvious in that he possesses the main` quality needed to do the job of Villa boss in the club’s current situation – he’s bulletproof.
Bullproof and also the fact that he’s got no time for gilets.
“I saw Sherwood prancing around the touchline throwing his padded vest around and thought what a nonce,” recalls Salifou. “He just let the club down and himself down wearing that. Me? If I took the job, I’d manage and do press conferences wearing a leather jacket. When you’re bulletproof, you can’t look like no fool.”
The reality of Lerner getting his man remains slim though, with it very doubtful that the club could match Salifou’s wage demands.
After all, it was also the stumbling block to why Salifou didn’t stay on at Villa as a player, leading Lerner to opt for the cheaper option of getting in Charles N’Zogbia instead.
Still, we can dream.
UTV
A Venglos View is a satirical (and sometimes surreal) look at the Villa.
John Gregory for rest of season
he also had the coolest song in the last 20 years
Ed Balls is out of work at the moment, he would be the one to keep us up.
Yes, a guaranteed Balls up at VP.
fucking love bulletproof
billy walker did well as a manager after the villa, and he also captained England Any chance of getting him back from the dead? Being dead does not seem to be a disaqualification for managing villa, though admittedly most of the candidates are only from the neck up.
Trevor Fisher