Gabby Agbonlahor slams Gary McAllister as coach follows Steven Gerrard out of Aston Villa
Gabby Agbonlahor has told Aston Villa never to bring Gary McAllister back to the club “ever again” after he left behind sacked manager Steven Gerrard.
The Villans manager was fired after the 3-0 defeat at Fulham on Thursday night (20 October), and his coaching staff has also gone, including the Scot who was previously an assistant and briefly caretaker boss between 2010 and 2011.
Agbonlahor was still playing at the time and has slammed the 57-year-old upon his second exit from the club and painted an unflattering picture of his coaching behind the scenes.
Writing on his personal Twitter account on Thursday night (20 October), the club’s record scorer said: “Gary maccalister [sic] by the way! This guy done nothing when he was at villa under houllier!
“The cheek to come back! He just done kick ups and wanted to join in games.
“Don’t bring him back ever again”.
Damning
Things are clearly pretty bad right now, and this peek behind the curtain makes McAllister look especially poor.
The former Leeds and Coventry manager and player is surely unlikely to be back at Villa Park for a third time now that he has been associated with such a miserable time, and with his stock clearly very low with ex-pros.
Gerrard will obviously take the brunt of the criticism for the past year, but his coaching staff also have a fair amount to answer for, as the tactics showed little clear plan to lift fortunes.
Although the success that former assistant Michael Beale is having at QPR despite a pretty rough end to the 2021/22 season while he was still with the Lions raises plenty of questions about the players as well.
It has felt like an inevitability that the former Rangers boss was going to go before long, as there has been so little to be positive about on the pitch since the start of 2022.
He can justifiably point to injuries to key signings, but he is not getting anything from a whole host of vital players, and created a rod for his own back by unnecessarily switching the captaincy in preseason.
Despite the 2-0 defeat to Chelsea on Sunday (16 October) where it felt like the players had rediscovered some form reminiscent of the draw with Manchester City (3 September), for things to come crashing back down to earth with such a thud in a heavy defeat at Craven Cottage shows things were heading badly in the wrong direction.
In other Aston Villa news, the club are big admirers of Thomas Frank at Brentford.