PAUL Lambert can’t win.
Prior to Roy Keane’s arrival as his assistant, the Aston Villa manager had a 32 per cent win ratio and was constantly punching below his weight with a club capable of mid-table mediocrity but who instead were constantly fighting relegation.
Towards the end of last season, his assistants were fired. In came Roy Keane. Big name. But a big mistake?
Having bit the managerial dust with Sunderland and Ipswich, the easy conclusion to make was that the dugout was not the Corkman’s natural habitat. His best days were on the park, not in the technical area.
But managers improve with age. Gordon Strachan, once sacked by Coventry, rehabilitated both himself and Southampton in his next job before performing exceptionally well at Celtic.
Keane, we are told, has learned. He is biting his tongue. He is warmer towards players. He has learned the benefit of keeping a low profile.
But if Aston Villa continue to produce results like last Saturday’s, when they defeated Stoke 1-0, then Keane’s profile will not be low.
His was a vibrant presence on the Britannia touchline and the ferocity of Villa’s tackling suggested his message had travelled across the sideline as a team who mastered the art of coughing up leads last season, held onto the advantage Andi Weimann’s goal gave them.
So Lambert won.
Didn’t he?
In terms of the scoreline, the answer was yes. But the praise by-passed him — instead being attributed to his new number two.
“Roy’s own playing career was outstanding, he was one of the best that has come out of the Premier League, and for me to have him as an assistant manager has been outstanding,” said Lambert afterwards. “He has that presence about him.”
Presence is so difficult to define in a manager. With players, it is more visible, evident in Keane when he stormed around a pitch in Turin, cajoling and motivating Manchester United to a come-from-behind victory against Juventus in the 1999 Champions League semi-final.
But the dressing-room doors are locked. We never see nor hear what goes on in there. We are told Brian Clough had an aura but all we can do is accept the eye-witness reports.
Clearly Alex Ferguson had it, otherwise he wouldn’t have been so terrifically successful. Yet anyone who ever sat in a Ferguson press conference tended to feel either underwhelmed or undermined.
Keane, in contrast, provided much better copy but much poorer results. Yet Lambert testifies to “his presence” on the same day John Hartson opined that Martin O’Neill had an aura which surpassed that of every other manager he played under.
“I played under 17 managers,” said Hartson.
“You look at them: David Pleat, Mark Hughes, Arsene Wenger, George Graham, Joe Kinnear, Gordon Strachan, John Toshack — none of them had the aura about them that Martin has.
“He has got the fear factor, very similar to Alex Ferguson. How come United players grafted and worked and dug out results for Fergie and then didn’t kick a ball for David Moyes? Because Moyes did not have that presence that Ferguson possessed.
“Martin has that presence. When he places his trust in you, you do everything within your power to pay that trust back. And if that means running the extra yard, throwing your head in when the boots are flying, then you do it because that is the respect you have for him. It gets results.”
Or rather, it got results. At Wycombe, Leicester, Celtic and Aston Villa, O’Neill delivered. Sunderland was less successful but had he been given the time, it too could have been a road paved in glory.
As it happened, he is with Ireland now because of what happened there. He has a presence, we are told. So has Keane, his — as well as Lambert’s — assistant.
They have also won just one of their seven games to date. It’s time they made their presence felt.
