Gerard Houllier-A Reflection On His Time At Aston Villa

Gérard Houllier arrived at Aston Villa in September 2010, with the club in disarray as Martin O’Neill, who had completely changed the club in his four years in charge, walked out five days before the beginning of the 2010-11 season. With rumours of player celebration following his exit, Villa’s hierarchy needed to appoint somebody with experience who could steady the ship, trim the wage bill (one of chairman Randy Lerner’s main aims for the season) and utilise the club’s exciting youth prospects.

After extensive negotiations, they chose Houllier-a successful manager with years of experience, a reputation as a developer of young players and a burning desire to return to club football. Having convinced the board and his doctors that he was fit enough to return to football management, he severed his ties with the French Football Federation and took the job.

Despite what some may see as a disappointing season for Villa, the club have a lot to be grateful to the Frenchman for. His no-nonsense approach to management has helped the club root out the disruptive influences in a team that had obviously seen little discipline during MON’s reign. The players struggled to adapt to a more hands-on approach that required them to spend more time on the training pitch, paying more attention to their technical approach than they did under the previous regime. Many players were vocal in their opposition to doing extra fitness training and it soon became clear that Houllier’s methods did not sit well within the dressing room.

Partly due to a high number of injuries and partly because he realised that Villa have an outstanding current crop of promising youngsters, Houllier introduced members of the youth team into the first team almost immediately. Marc Albrighton and Barry Bannan, who had featured under caretaker manager Kevin Macdonald at the beginning of the season, became regulars in the first XI and Villa’s offensive play in Houllier’s early games benefitted as a result. In addition to Albrighton and Bannan, Ciaran Clark was introduced to the defence and impressed greatly, excelling by virtue of his adaptability (played as left-back, defensive midfielder and centre-back) and quickly established himself in the side.

In addition to this, Houllier now leaves a stronger squad than the one he inherited after some extremely good business in the January transfer window. An initial £18 million purchase of Darren Bent from Sunderland made people baulk at the time, but following his nine goals in 16 matches, goals that arguably kept the club in the league, it seems an absolute bargain. Villa have lacked a serial goalscorer since Dwight Yorke and now with Bent at the club, if they can keep hold of Stewart Downing and Ashley Young, the club can legitimately look at breaking back into the Premier League’s top six again next year.

Coupled with the addition of marauding full-back Kyle Walker, Villa’s offensive threats multiplied greatly in the second half of the season and the players both made immediate impacts, scoring on their debuts and setting their standards for the next few months. Walker’s presence not only saw Villa looking more dangerous going forward but it also saw the defence finally look more balanced as Houllier compensated for his reluctance to utilise Stephen Warnock on the left by playing Clark there and Walker on the right. His preferred system of playing with one man up front and another just behind him got the best out of Young, Bent and Downing and if the club can keep these three prized assets next season they will finish higher than ninth place.

As well as Walker and Bent, Houllier introduced Jean II Makoun to the team signing him for £3.5 million from Olympique Lyonnais. Despite not producing his best form in his first five months at Villa, Makoun looks like a solid, combative midfielder, a type of player that they had been lacking under O’Neill as he chose to prefer Stilian Petrov in that role.

As a result of these transfer dealings, the club have been able to dispose of players that were surplus to requirements, past their best and earning far too much money. Nigel Reo-Coker, John Carew and Steve Sidwell have been shown the door whilst Houllier’s experiment with Robert Pires has also proved to be a costly error and he has since departed. Brad Friedel has also recently left and without these players the now have freed up a large tranche of wages, fulfilling one of Lerner’s key aims for this season.

Desite these relative successes; Houllier never established a relationship between himself and the fans. Until the Liverpool match at Anfield in December, fans had been happy to give the Frenchman a chance but following what was seen as a love-in and his faux-pas in the post-match press conference ("If I have got to lose 3-0, I would prefer it to be to them as I like Liverpool"), they began to turn on him and he never really recovered his reputation. Indeed, he actually repeated this mistake when Villa faced Manchester City in the FA Cup in March. Less than a month after beating them at home in the league, Houllier justified his weakened team selection by saying “First of all, you play against a bigger team than ours. Sorry, Manchester City at the moment, are above us” and then added “I knew they would put their best side out and their squad is better than ours.” This defeatist attitude and clear disregard for the cup outraged fans and led to calls for him to be sacked.

The fans also struggled with what they perceived to be a lack of passion. Houllier, a man with a history of heart problems, often cut a forlorn and inept figure on the touchline and, used to Martin O’Neill’s infectious exuberance, the fans quickly decided that he was not enthusiastic enough about the club. This was probably untrue, but the fans thrive on what they see and what they saw each week was a decrepit old man who was the polar opposite of the Ulsterman.

His damaged relationship with the fans was not helped by an equally fractious relationship with the players, as stories of in-fighting and dressing room factions became common. Although this was not entirely his fault as the players were not professional enough to accept his old-school, hands-on approach, his appointment of Gary McAllister as assistant manager, a man with a reputation as a bully and a hard-man, did not help. The Scotsman was at odds with members of the first team, culminating in an ugly incident during a team bonding break.

Houllier was also guilty of letting pretty squabbles get in the way of his strongest line-up. Stephen Warnock, a player with a history under the Frenchman, was demoted from the first team to the reserves and then stripped of his squad number after refusing to move his family to Birmingham. Although Houllier had a fair point, this should not have been an issue at the time as Warnock was in form and also the club’s only natural left-back. Bearing a grudge from his time at Liverpool, Houllier’s refusal to let go of previous issues impaired his ability to deal with the disruptive influences in the team effectively.

However, in a job where you are judged mainly on your ability to get results, Houllier was not successful. His team selections were criticised as Villa plummeted down the table, although it was not his fault that the team experienced an injury crisis that deprived them of the majority of their first team members over a four-month period, the Frenchman had no choice but to blood the youngsters. However, his refusal to play players such as Michael Bradley, a player that he had identified and brought in during the January transfer window was baffling, and he often refused to use players like John Carew despite an absence of any other fit senior strikers.

Essentially, Gérard Houllier is a man that belongs to another era of football. His traditional, hands-on, disciplinarian approach was not respected by the players, the same players who probably had it too easy under Martin O’Neill and had become accustomed to very little preparation work, and he was constantly undermined in the dressing room. He has demonstrated that he still has a good eye for a player and, with regards to where he goes next, although I feel that a return to the touchlines is now impossible, a return for Houllier as a Director of Football somewhere would be a good fit.

Overall, despite his many drawbacks and unsavoury incidents throughout the season, Villa fans should be grateful to Houllier for what he has done for the club this past season. He has done everything he was asked by Randy Lerner; he has stabilised the club, finishing in ninth place, only three places behind last season’s finals standing, he has cut the wage bill, introduced some youngsters that will now be pushing for regular starting places and he has managed to identify the troublesome influences within the team to the club’s hierarchy.

Although Houllier’s time at Villa will probably not be remembered too fondly by anybody associated with it, it was inevitable that his health was always going to catch up with him at some point. In terms of what Villa fans were expecting from the season, in the wake of Martin O’Neill’s resignation, they must have thought the club was destined to finish in the bottom half of the table. Now, with some new players in the team and a summer to appoint a new manager and plan for next season, Villa really have a chance to re-emerge as a contender for a top-six position.