Birmingham Mail Slaughters Lions

Have the Birmingham Mail (formerly the Birmingham Evening Mail) finally taken an anti Ellis stance?

Certainly looks like it with their ‘comment’ piece saying:

‘You’ve led Villa for decades, Doug, and in that time you’ve put loads of effort and passion into building the club’s fabric and structure. We sincerely thank you for that.

But, in truth, you should have stepped down a few years ago, and last night’s cock-up has reminded us all that you really shouldn’t hang around any longer.


We know you’re in talks with potential buyers. Please don’t delay, nor haggle too much. Sell while you’ve got something worth selling. Don’t hang around interfering as a non-executive director.

Just go now. And Doug, please take O’Leary – your 13th manager – with you’

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They also laid into the team and manager saying that last nights performance was an ‘insult’ to fans due to the ‘We can’t be bothered,’ body language of the team. Adding ‘Manager David O’Leary apparantly called players together after the match to tell them how he felt ‘sick and gutted’. Join the club, David…’

Interesting to see the paper take such a hard line, fans have certainly called for it for a long time and I’ve not seen anything this strong since the sports pages hey day under Leon Hickman. A reporter who would always tell it like it is!

The Villa forums are certainly full of ‘O’Leary out’ sentiments today. Not happy days at all at the club, not only have we made our worst start to a league campaign for over three decades, but now we have had to see our multi million pound stars tamed by a league one team who simply had more passion and more pride.

I’m not convinced that the blame for yesterdays disaster in the Carling Cup can be laid at Doug’s door, but the general position of the club, the amount of money wasted, the amount of managers brought in and then sacked, etc etc, certainly can be. And lets not get started on the vandalism of one of the most beautiful and historic stands in the league. The Trinity is missed, Doug and O’Leary won’t be.