An argument for David O'Leary and not David Platt

Despite what all of the naysayers and predictors of doom would have you believe, there have been some genuine signs of quality shown from our team at times.

These moments may have been brief and they may have been undone by periods of absolute ineptitude, but they have been there and they have been the sort of thing that you just don't get from your average 'honest bunch of lads'.

We've been outplayed at times but equally we've also outplayed other teams too.

Take a handful of shoddy bits of defending from our season and we'd not have conceded the goal against Boro yesterday, we'd not have panicked in the box against Spurs in the last 5 minutes and we'd probably not have let 2 in within the first 5 minutes against Bolton.

5 points extra is plenty at this early stage of the season, plus it's only a couple of results away from where we are now.

OK, say we do let O'Leary go. So what then? Somebody mentioned David Platt on a blog earlier.

I don't want to sound like I don't like the guy, but lets get something straight, David Platt is not the same level as a manager as he was a player.

My formative years were spent watching this guy and I honestly don't think I've seen a player in this role as good as Platty was since he left the Villa, and for his country he was equally effective.

As a manager he took a recently relegated Forest side and nearly made it 2 relegations on the bounce. Fair enough, Forest were (and still are) a shadow of their former selves, but to describe how they played would make this site an over 18's only page, and it wouldn't be fun, so the less said the better.

Peter Taylor had just left the England under 21's, after breaking records for team successes, to pursue a league managerial career, and so the FA hired 'our hero'.

Some said because he was an England Old Boy and they wanted him fast-tracked for the top, others said it was because the FA wanted to help Forest out by giving them compensatation for poaching their newly appointed manager.

All say it was the wrong decision, as he was nothing short of embarrassing.

Let's get it straight, there's no manager who'll work under Ellis that will bring the success this club needs and deserves, with the exception of O'Leary, who's only doing it for his career purposes.

Ex-players don't like Doug, current managers don't like Doug, hell, the fans don't even like him. What chance have we got of attracting anybody who's sought after?

Then let's say we do find a guy who's quite good and would love to work for a miserable geriatric, what happens then? He'll bring in his own players, over time, because of the joint constraints of the transfer window and Doug's wallet, so there's 18 months gone.

Then we actually find he's just alright, not some amazing magician or anything, and there's a run of 4 or 5 games when results go against us, so there's shouts of 'what a load of rubbish' in a few home games and a website or two posts up negative comments saying how the manager should go and revelations about how he can't even do his own shoelaces up, never has been able to either.

And wham! we're in the same spot as we are now. Or the same spot Newcastle are, or Everton, or Southampton. The alternative to all of this is we can sit it out, like Man United did in the late 80's with Alex Ferguson, and we can genuinely build something that we can all sing about, build something on proper foundations, rather than perpetuate this cycle of hiring and firing which sees us in the same place every couple of years.

So to summarise, O'Leary should stay not only because it's good for the club long term, but there's nobody better short term either.

Agree or disagree with Lorenzo? Email your opinion to lorenzo@astonvilla.biz.