I liked the guy, its a shame, he was passionate about the Villa.

He knew the constraints he was under and always seemed happy with it, and he seemed to have a plan to use the younger players.

I guess Doug is invloved somewhere........:rolleyes:

I echo what Davyboy says....it was inevitable too. :(

Why do villa managers never get the sack ??

They all seem to resign which is very odd !!

Or is it just a cover up by Mr Ellis ?

Damn...we might have to work to take the 6 points off you next year without the Turnip. I'm just glad you've still got Deadly Doug...should at least mean we finish above you again !!

As a Villa fan it no longer surprises me that all of our managers resign with that Deadly Doug thing as chairman. [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

I cannot see Villa regaining any form of success whilst Doug is in charge unless there is a manager out there strong enough to stand up to him........which I am very doubtful about. :(

4thegame.com article ... made me laugh...

Graham Taylor's season began with him sprinkling the F-word around Villa Park, publicly trading gratuitous insults after a 1-0 home defeat against Liverpool with the sort of fan who provided living proof of the dumbing-down of the nation's education system.
It ended this week in another flurry of more cultured F-words - this time 'Farewell' and 'Failure' figuring prominently.
And the overriding conclusion as Taylor packed his bags and headed out of Birmingham following his resignation was that Aston Villa, a founder member of the Football League, was a club walking with dinosaurs and about to go the same way as those unfortunate creatures.
That Taylor, a man ridiculed and pilloried during his term as England manager, was crazy to come out of retirement to take on the poisoned chalice which goes with working with Villa chairman Doug Ellis goes almost without saying.
Returning to scenes of former success rarely works - ask Howard Kendall at Everton and Malcolm Allison at Manchester City. Or, for that matter, Bjorn Borg in tennis and any manner of ageing and overweight boxers lured back by just one more crack at cash and kudos.
Taylor's second incarnation at Villa Park, however, never really stood a chance.
The Premiership rewards, above all, spenders with deep wallets, huge ambition and astute footballing brains.
Prising money out of 79-year-old Ellis is like trying to catch trout with your bare hands in a fast-flowing river.
Chipping an inventive tactical thought from Taylor, whose teams are long on graft and commitment but invariably lack craft and guile, is almost as difficult.
At times creosoting the garden fence has appeared more exciting than watching Villa this past season when they finished 16th and were thankful the finishing line did not come two weeks later as relegation neared.
So not only have fans been seriously disillusioned by a club which has been choked by the politics and parsimony of Ellis, a man whose dictatorial rule is as unflinching as his indisputable energy, they have They have been starved of hope. And a football club without hope ultimately goes the same way as a flower deprived of water.
Everywhere you turn at Villa Park there appears instability, lack of ambition and evidence of a club in serious decline.
There is no more accurate barometer of an impending calamity than men racing for the exits and at Villa Park the biggest challenge has been avoiding getting trampled in the rush.
Fans have deserted in droves while players in recent times such as Ugo Ehiogu, Gareth Southgate, George Boateng, David James and Peter Scheichel were not slow in finding the exits.
Many who remain pick up huge salaries but contribute zilch to the cause - such as £9 million Colombian striker Angel, Alpay, Hadji, Kachloul and beanpole front man Peter Crouch.
As an exercise in how not to run a football club it takes some beating - but then should we be surprised? This is, after all, the club which indulged such wastrels as Stan Collymore and talent past its sell-by-date such as David Ginola.
At least Taylor, whose integrity cannot be questioned, recognised the lunacy.
His remedy was to cut their losses, dump the baggage and start afresh with youthful talent emerging from Villa's schools of excellence - a solution too radical, in other words too costly, for Ellis and boardroom power-broker Mark Ansell.
So Taylor goes, his reputation at 58 in surely his last high-profile managerial post, hardly enhanced by his willingness to answer the club's SOS call after the departure of John Gregory.
As always, Ellis stays and whoever next sips from that tainted chalice - and surely the favourite, Charlton's Alan Curbishley, is too smart to fall for it - the premonition of impending doom gets ever darker.
It is one the dinosaurs would have recognised.

How painfully true. [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

ELLIS MUST GO. [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]