Aston Villa hope Remi Garde’s development skills can reverse long decline

ANALYSIS: No manager in recent years has been able to turn Aston Villa's fortunes around

Remi Garde at White Hart Lane (GETTY IMAGES)

The new Aston Villa manager, Rémi Garde, who replaced Tim Sherwood, takes over a club that is drifting, its ambitions at odds with its history. Villa could easily become a Leeds, Wolves or Nottingham Forest, marooned in the Championship, or they could rejoin Everton and Tottenham in the clutch of clubs on the fringe of the Champions League.

When Randy Lerner bought Villa in 2006 it was with a view to propelling the club back into that group. Villa had just finished 16th but under new manager Martin O’Neill, backed by Lerner’s cash, they finished 11th, sixth, sixth and sixth again.

Progress, though, came at a price. By the summer of 2010, the American was £180m down, having doubled the wage bill and bankrolled recruits such as Ashley Young, James Milner and Stewart Downing. With Manchester City newly enriched, the gap to the top four was growing, so Lerner retrenched. O’Neill left, Young, Milner, Downing and many others were sold, results declined.

Villa have subsequently fought a series of relegation battles. Lerner has flirted with selling up. Transfer policy has switched from scouring the Football League for bargains to trawling France’s Ligue 1 for them. Managers Gérard Houllier, Alex McLeish, Paul Lambert and Sherwood have come and gone.

Now it is Garde’s turn in charge. With the club having signed a cluster of young French players, it makes sense to hire a French coach with a reputation for development. His star has waned slightly since late 2012, when he was touted as a potential replacement for Arsène Wenger at Arsenal. Ultimately, his Lyons teams were respectable rather than successful, though there was a French Cup triumph in 2012. He can also claim some credit for laying the foundations of last season’s second place in Ligue 1, not least in bringing on many of the young players involved both as coach and, prior to that, as the club’s academy head. It is that work which attracted Villa as much as his results. The statement announcing his appointment noted his “renown” for “developing young talent”.

Lerner said: “Rémi came with ideas, honesty, humour and a steely sense of what it will take for Aston Villa to be what it is meant to be – hard-working, tireless, creative and unwilling to concede.”

He added, in what seems a jibe at Sherwood: “We recruited aggressively this past summer and it is our responsibility to now harvest this talent rather than buckle under pressure and criticism – we are better than that.”

One club will watch Garde’s progress with more interest than most. Should Wenger ever be dragged from Arsenal’s dugout to take a role upstairs at the Emirates, Garde would be an obvious candidate to work under him. The 49-year-old was Wenger’s joint-first signing, arriving at the club with Patrick Vieira in 1996. Garde played only intermittently but was seen, former team-mate Adrian Clarke once told The Independent, “as a virtual player-coach”. Clarke added: “It was almost as if he was there to teach the rest of us what Wenger wanted.”

Garde said of his new job: “It is an unbelievable honour to be the manager of such an illustrious football club.” That illustriousness is part of the problem. A modest improvement ought to be possible but if Garde is expected to bring a return to the glory days on the current budget, or even the top six, his chances of seeing out a contract that runs until summer 2019 are limited.