Aston Villa fans have mixed views on Martin O'Neill

Mar 20 2009 Steve Wollaston

The emails still keep flying in from disgruntled Aston Villa fans unhappy with Martin O'Neill.

Yesterday's live webchat with our Villa writer Mat Kendrick was peppered with angry fans questioning the manager's decisions. Read the transcript here

Here are more of the dozens of emails we have received and postings appearing on our forums.

Laughing Spam Fritter: believe the time has come for O’Neill to put his cards on the table and explain where he sees us in two or three years because so far he has only succeeded in convincing me he can take us no further and has indeed reached his limit.

He models himself on Brian Clough that much is obvious he brings in a player out of favour and believes that by putting his arm around him and telling him he is great the player will suddenly transform and become what Martin wants him to be.

Sadly he has not got a Peter Taylor to vet the personality of the player and in my opinion lots of money has been wasted. But the big question and for me this question determines both the immediate future of O’Neill & Aston Villa is can he deliver and handle big name players.

The genius of Clough was he knew when to sign the right player at the right time, he broke the British transfer record to take Trevor Francis to Forest who after all are only a small provincial club. But look what followed after Clough made his move Genius.

Would O’Neill break the current British transfer record and sign the best players in the world, I think not, but we do deserve more than we have been given of that I am certain.

I believe O’Neill runs on nervous energy and this will always effect us tactically making us easy prey during games, especially in Europe as we have already seen. This campaign in Europe has been a joke it was if O’Neill deliberately put us the bad position we ended up in by misjudging the strength of opposition we faced. If he does this in that competition god help us in the Champions League.

I believe O’Neill is scared of his own ability to handle the big players earning big wages he is unsure if he is up to the job. A player like Ronaldo does not need an arm around him to tell him he is good, he already knows that. So what could O’Neill offer him certainly not tactics and forward thinking, you only need to look at this season to see forward planning is a weakness not strength.

Perhaps O’Neill should be given another year but he needs to buy some recognized Quality not players with a 50/50 chance of success I believe we need to sign at least six quality players to add to the squad and a couple of big names for big money who can generate excitement and also stamp our intent is to compete and challenge next season.