Eric Black

I don't know that much about him but he doesn't seem to be a very popular fellow. The black box must have seen something:

http://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2016/06/30/aston-villa-fans-respond-on-twitter-to-eric-blacks-southampton-a/page/1/

The black box is for players? or am i missing something... This guy is primarily a french translator with the added bonus of football knowledge so he can interpret coaching methods. So many twisted knickers. If I wanted a translator i'd go for someone with experience of my business as well.

Sure that the Black box had nothing to do with it. Chosen by Puel, Black is well liked in France where he played for several seasons after he left Aberdeen. Probably a decent #2

I don't know that much about him but he doesn't seem to be a very popular fellow. The black box must have seen something:

 

http://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2016/06/30/aston-villa-fans-respond-on-twitter-to-eric-blacks-southampton-a/page/1/

Unpopular because he's had to walk into a mess.

One of the tweets "Eric Black was big part of the problem at Villa last season. Awful coach. Good luck Southampton!!"

He joined them in January when in everyones eyes they were all but down, I'd suggest the problem was already there.

Unpopular because he's had to walk into a mess.

 

One of the tweets "Eric Black was big part of the problem at Villa last season. Awful coach. Good luck Southampton!!"

 

He joined them in January when in everyones eyes they were all but down, I'd suggest the problem was already there.

Football supporters aren't generally blessed with the greatest intelligence, or so it seems.

He has a far superior management record to Les, the box has spoken...

He may very well be an excellent coach but he does seem to have a very bad habit of being around bad teams and managers getting the boot.

Birmingham, Relegated, bruce resigned

Sunderland, 16th Bruce Sacked

Blackburn, 17th Kean Resigned

Rotherham, 21st, Evans Sacked

Villa, bottom, Garde Sacked

I don't understand what some fans are on about ''He was the main reason we got relegated''. I think you'll find the reason you were relegated was based on the entire season, not the 4 months he was there as coach. I hate football fans sometimes, so clueless.

I don't understand what some fans are on about ''He was the main reason we got relegated''. I think you'll find the reason you were relegated was based on the entire season, not the 4 months he was there as coach. I hate football fans sometimes, so clueless.

well with no disrespect to the club's listed he has come to a club that finished 6th last year in the Premier League so arguably this is the biggest gig he has had as a coach so we shall no doubt soon see if he is any good or not.

The fact no top club has bent over backwards to add him to their coaching set up hopefully doesn't suggest what I'm thinking it might suggest :-)

He may very well be an excellent coach but he does seem to have a very bad habit of being around bad teams and managers getting the boot.

 

Birmingham, Relegated, bruce resigned

Sunderland, 16th Bruce Sacked

Blackburn, 17th Kean Resigned

Rotherham, 21st, Evans Sacked

Villa, bottom, Garde Sacked

That even puts Steve Wigley and Stuart Gray in the shade.

Not to mention Les Reed's illustrious spell at Charlton

Hopefully his career Has taken a turn for the better.

He may very well be an excellent coach but he does seem to have a very bad habit of being around bad teams and managers getting the boot.

 

Birmingham, Relegated, bruce resigned

Sunderland, 16th Bruce Sacked

Blackburn, 17th Kean Resigned

Rotherham, 21st, Evans Sacked

Villa, bottom, Garde Sacked

With a bit of thought this is nothing like as bad as it looks anyway.

Birmingham and Sunderland were and are yo-yo clubs, but Bruce left in November to go to Wigan (which was unexpected and probably contributed to their relegation later that season). Arguably sacking Bruce for coming 16th was one of Sunderland's stupider moves - plus Black left in December one match later, so again, they got relegated quite a while afterwards. Blackburn were an absolute basket case post-Walker with Venky's in charge and still haven't recovered, Rotherham were always up against it in the Championship and are barely better off now - plus again he left in September so relegation again was nothing to do with him, and Villa were already 3 years into being rubbish and all but relegated already when Garde and Black came in in January.

So yeah, bad habit but not much in the way of causation. He got fired from being manager at Coventry when liked by the fans and relatively successful too.

.....seems an ideal choice given the fact that Puel has confidence in him, and will translate (where necessary) Black knows Football and that can only be good.

It doesn't matter what people may think about him - if he's part of a successful managerial group - even better.

Bet he can't believe his luck with his record getting a top 6 club

I don't understand what some fans are on about ''He was the main reason we got relegated''. I think you'll find the reason you were relegated was based on the entire season, not the 4 months he was there as coach. I hate football fans sometimes, so clueless.

I'd say villa were relegated because of continued lack of investment over a very long period. a management combination of Ferguson, Mourinho, Ramsey & Clough wouldn't have kept them up.

The fact no top club has bent over backwards to add him to their coaching set up hopefully doesn't suggest what I'm thinking it might suggest :-)

Sammy Lee was off to Brighton just before we approached him to join our coaching staff, Erwin was at RKC Waalwijk. It's not as though our previous coaching staff turned down huge jobs to work for Saints...

Puel, we know, is a highly thought of coach, and has his own right hand man in The Plank. Dave Watson is both goal keeping coach and set piece maestro, and is also highly regarded.

Saints could probably have chosen from hundreds, if not thousands, of very good cone monitors. If they've chosen Black it is for very good reasons, and unlikely to be based upon some dinlo football fans' views of his track record.

#TrustLes

Unpopular because he's had to walk into a mess.

 

One of the tweets "Eric Black was big part of the problem at Villa last season. Awful coach. Good luck Southampton!!"

 

He joined them in January when in everyones eyes they were all but down, I'd suggest the problem was already there.

i recall the villa fans werent very complimentry about young ryan betrand either. funny how things turn out when people are dropped into a less toxic environment.

Hopefully his career Has taken a turn for the better.

Only 2 years ago Puel took Nice to 17th in the French league and his career has taken a turn for the better so I guess Eric Black's could too.

17th!

Puel's career hasn't been an unqualified success anywhere he's been but Eric Black''s has been an unqualified failure at 5 clubs in a row. Managers do have their ups and downs though. Roy Hodgson did a fantatstic job at Fulham, taking them to their highest ever Premier League finish and a Europa League final whereas Chris Coleman was a failure there, taking them to 16th and being sacked after a 7-game winless run.

i recall the villa fans werent very complimentry about young ryan betrand either. funny how things turn out when people are dropped into a less toxic environment.

This!

Puel's career hasn't been an unqualified success anywhere he's been but Eric Black''s has been an unqualified failure at 5 clubs in a row. Managers do have their ups and downs though. Roy Hodgson did a fantatstic job at Fulham, taking them to their highest ever Premier League finish and a Europa League final whereas Chris Coleman was a failure there, taking them to 16th and being sacked after a 7-game winless run.

Roy Hodgson may have done well at Fulham, but he didn't have many fans after the time he spent at Blackburn and Liverpool.

However, his selection of 6 Spurs players with minimal International experience v. Iceland was very amateurish, whilst he let Milner, Lallana and Clyne sit on the bench.

A lot of managers haven't " won things" , but still do a fair / good job. Puel has at least delivered fairly consistant results over a longer period.

As far as I can see Eric Black isn't there to pick the Saints team (!), he can ...(as told) speaks French, and Puel knows him from previous contacts.

If he only does a job as " a good interpreter" then he's worth the investment. Managers need people around them that they trust, and move clubs with their own staff.

Maybe we shouldn't always condemn everyone on past experience. There are a lot of poorly run clubs, with ......untalented players, and there are limits to everything.

You can't blame just one person for a club's downfall.....in the end it's down to the 11 men on the pitch....and as the proverb says.. you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

I think it's ridiculous to keep dragging up Les Reed's sad sojourn as Charlton manager. There are far more illustrious names of former players who were equally poor.

Les Reed is fulfilling a vital role at Saints, and doing it well....in time, Eric Black may well surprise a lot of his critics.

If we are going to entrust Puel with the team management, then we must also trust his judgement on the staff he chooses.

Puel's career hasn't been an unqualified success anywhere he's been but Eric Black''s has been an unqualified failure at 5 clubs in a row. Managers do have their ups and downs though. Roy Hodgson did a fantatstic job at Fulham, taking them to their highest ever Premier League finish and a Europa League final whereas Chris Coleman was a failure there, taking them to 16th and being sacked after a 7-game winless run.

I'm afraid you're just not very good at analysing circumstance.

Puel's career hasn't been an unqualified success anywhere he's been but Eric Black''s has been an unqualified failure at 5 clubs in a row. Managers do have their ups and downs though. Roy Hodgson did a fantatstic job at Fulham, taking them to their highest ever Premier League finish and a Europa League final whereas Chris Coleman was a failure there, taking them to 16th and being sacked after a 7-game winless run.

Bit of a Negative Nancy aren't you?

Re Hodgson:Agger has recently retired (injury) , he said Benitez was an excellent tactition who kept his cool when things were going wrong , Hodgson did the same training session day after day to the extent that Agger hated the thought of going to work each day ! Rogers ,he says ,would berate the defence during a match so Agger went over and told him " what do you expect we are doing what you have told us to do all week "

......for better or worse Eric Black has his own experience (success/ failure) as a player and coach, but it's Puel who is the manager.

It's pretty obvious that Puel has a limited vocabulary of English, but it seems he knows Black quite well and Claude trusts him to convey " his message ".

Be able to translate certain nuances of the language correctly can be the most important facet of Black's tenure as assistant. ( He's not a "junior"version of Puel )

As far as his responsibility for team selection (if Puel were absent with a 40 deg. fever ) ..I'd assume he'd caste an eye to KD and Dave Watson before making any major decisions affecting team selection.

What was the name of that first team coach during our dark days that everyone was convinced was to blame for our downfall? Short haircut, round glasses...

What was the name of that first team coach during our dark days that everyone was convinced was to blame for our downfall? Short haircut, round glasses...

Mick Wadsworth...

Interesting in that video when Black talks so positively about the set-up at Saints. He's obviously not going to make any direct comparisons or be negative about his previous employer, but it would be easy to make such an inference from his words.

Interesting in that video when Black talks so positively about the set-up at Saints. He's obviously not going to make any direct comparisons or be negative about his previous employer, but it would be easy to make such an inference from his words.

....especially the part about being....." very impressed by their attitude and work rate ".... (that said a lot - if he was comparing us to former clubs)

My failing memory needed a bit of a reminder on Eric Black's playing career, and so I dug out part of this from Wikipedia.

He played as a striker in the Aberdeen sides that (the then) Alex Ferguson managed in the early 1980's.

EB had already debuted as a teenager and was very successful and part of the side that won the old (Euro) Cup Winners Cup v. Real Madrid (when he scored).

After playing a couple of games for the Scottish international side, he moved to France where his career petered out after 5 years with Metz, when he developed serious back problems, which Ferguson put down to ...." too many games as a young player" ..(when in fact it was he who had selected him so much in that period).

His career stats. were quite fair with 96 goals from his 265 games.

Like many former players....his managerial career (such as it was) can be easily criticised for poor results, but having to pick up the shi**y end of the stick, when a manager leaves / is sacked from a club is no walk in the park for anyone. By the time anyone gets the " caretaker job " the situation is fairly critical.

Eric does seem to have a pleasant manner (in his interview) but perhaps " a bit more grit " would be needed to handle the job in a club who had serious problems(?), but at the end of the day, there is no disgrace in being a good assistant with a considerable knowledge of the game.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!