Journalist John Townley has warned that Aston Villa may struggle to find a new manager immediately as they begin their search with some rather ambitious names.
Steven Gerrard has been sacked for Premier League club during the week and it hasn’t taken long for an exciting list of possible replacements to emerge.
Indeed, the likes of Mauricio Pochettino, Ruben Amorim, and former Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel have all been linked, as has Villarreal boss Unai Emery.
However, seeing as Pochettino and Tuchel have already been ruled out as realistic options, Townley has claimed that Aston Villa may find it hard to convince options lower down on the list about the project.
When talking on the Claret & Blue – An Aston Villa Podcast, he explained: “You’ve mentioned there Amorim, Unai Emery as well, but after them, if they’re not accepting a job offer, then I’m not too sure where we are turning.
“Because that band of managers beneath, they are all of sudden thinking: ‘Well, yes, it’s good projects. And yes, it’s a big group to work out but you didn’t want me. You wanted these five managers before me.’
“It’s similar to the problem that Wolves have. And they’re in a proper situation now where they are going to have to use their academy manager up until 2023. That’s a big problem.”
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TIF thoughts on Aston Villa and the manager hunt…
It’s easy to see why he referenced Wolves as a comparison. After all, when Bruno Lage left it looked like Julen Lopetegui would be replacing him, only for that to fall through. They then chased Michael Beale as a second option, but he opted to stay with QPR instead.
As a result, the club have now confirmed that Steve Davis will stay in charge as interim manager until 2023 with no suitable alternative seemingly available.
It’s not hard to see a situation where the likes of Pochettino, Amorim, Emery, and Tuchel all reject Villa and when they move on to their four or fifth option, they miss out again for not showing enough interest in that manager in the first place.
It’ll certainly be interesting to see how it all plays out.