Matt Maher comment: Steven Gerrard's Aston Villa reign was an expensive failure

With Gerrard now dismissed having failed to complete a year in charge, it is not a statement which has aged well.

Far from fantastic, his 11 months at the helm were entirely forgettable. Statistically, Gerrard does not go down as Villa’s worst-ever manager but there probably hasn’t been another who so spectacularly failed to live up to the hype.

Inheriting a team 16th in the Premier League, two points clear of the relegation zone, he left them one place lower, only outside the bottom three on goals scored. Billed as the man capable of building on the work of predecessor Dean Smith, he was instead at real risk of ruining it before the axe fell in brutal fashion after Thursday’s 3-0 defeat at Fulham.

In Gerrard’s defence, it is doubtful he could have worked any harder to make a success of it. He arrived from Rangers, to whom Villa paid compensation of around £4million, desperate to fulfil the remit and the insistence he was “all-in” was no mere soundbite.

Yet after a bright start, which saw wins in four of his first six matches in charge, he steadily began to look like what he was: A relatively inexperienced manager finding out the hard way how relentlessly unforgiving the Premier League can be, prone to making mistakes and – more worryingly – unable to learn from them.

Villa have won just eight of 32 top flight matches from Boxing Day onward, including just four of the last 22 (and only two of those against teams still in the division). Privately, the club’s hierarchy began to realise they may need to make a change since early last month. By Thursday, with supporters in open revolt, the decision was obvious.

Gerrard has never previously experienced failure of such magnitude and while getting the sack will sting any manager, the circumstances of his exit were particularly tough. Travelling back on the team coach, with everyone on board knowing your fate and packing up his office in the early hours of yesterday morning seems needlessly cruel. Whatever his failings, he deserved better than that.

At least, aged just 42, there is plenty of time for him to regroup, learn from the experience and return stronger and wiser.

When he reflects in the week’s ahead, there are two decisions in particular he may regret more than most. The first of those will be signing Philippe Coutinho.

Granted, the move to initially bring his former team-mate on loan from Barcelona in January appeared a worthy punt at the time, even though some might argue the Brazilian’s arrival disrupted the progress of Emi Buendia just when the club record signing seemed to be finding his feet.

But the decision to make the deal permanent, following a temporary stay of diminishing returns, has been the real problem with Coutinho failing to score or create a goal this season. Whether or not Gerrard who was chiefly responsible for pushing the transfer through (Purslow is also thought to have been keen), the 29-year-old is the player most tightly associated with the manager.

Villa’s net spend during Gerrard’s reign of around £40m was modest compared to some other clubs and the boss could point to misfortune with injuries to other key signings including Diego Carlos, Boubacar Kamara and Lucas Digne.

Yet Coutinho’s ineffectiveness eroded the mitigation and Gerrard’s insistence on playing him, at the expense of Buendia, eroded goodwill among supporters.

The other significant moment in Gerrard’s tenure came in June when his long-serving No.2 Michael Beale left to become manager of QPR. Described by some players being “like a second manager”, Beale’s exit was always going to leave a significant hole yet the opportunity was there for Gerrard to go and appoint an experienced, top-level coach as his replacement. Instead, he went with what he knew, recruiting Neil Critchley from Blackpool.

Critchley is regarded as a fine coach but had only worked in academy football before two years managing the Seasiders. Stepping up to work with first-team Premier League players was always going to require some adjustment and at the top level you do not get much time. It did not then help when passport issues forced the new man to miss the tour to Australia which dominated pre-season.

Gerrard felt confident heading into the campaign but the opening day defeat at Bournemouth instantly changed the mood and from then on it always felt as though Villa were playing catch-up. A manager who toward the end of last season had the air of someone who knew exactly what needed fixing, increasingly looked lost.

Typically clear and engaging when speaking to the press, Gerrard’s messages to players could be contradictory and confusing. Tyrone Mings was relieved of the captaincy to help improve his performances but promptly dropped for the defeat at Bournemouth, then rapidly reinstalled and weeks later touted for an England recall.

Arguably the more puzzling opening day decision was leaving out Ollie Watkins, top scorer for the past two seasons. Watkins, a character who needs occasional reassurance, has started every match since but looked short of confidence. Danny Ings, Villa’s other main striker, was dropped the week after scoring his only Premier League goal of the season against Everton.

Then there is Marvelous Nakamba, arguably Villa’s best player through Gerrard’s first five matches in charge. Back from the knee injury which ruled him out of the second half of last season, this term he found himself relegated beneath Kamara and – more puzzlingly – Douglas Luiz, a player who has long been inconsistent in a deep-lying midfield role. That it was Luiz who effectively sealed Gerrard’s fate with his petulant dismissal on Thursday night carried no shortage of irony. With Morgan Sanson also out in the cold, Gerrard has for weeks been naming two players on the bench who had no hope of getting on the pitch.

It wasn’t merely in team selection or tactics where decisions seemed to be taken off-the-cuff. Disagreements are also thought to have occurred over recruitment, most notably a proposed £25million deal for Watford winger Ismaila Sarr, upon which Gerrard pulled the plug at the last minute to the bewilderment of sporting director Johan Lange, who had spent days negotiating with the Hornets.

Gerrard, of course, cannot be blamed for his own appointment, or Villa’s questionable recruitment prior to it.

While he was clearly a poor choice as manager, the club’s biggest issue has been a failure to sign players who have improved the first-team squad for a period now dating back two years and four transfer windows, during which time they also lost talisman Jack Grealish.

Even if Villa had pulled off a coup and convinced No.1 target Mauricio Pochettino to join, a quick turnaround would not have been easy. Granted, they should be better than 17th, yet whether they have a squad capable of competing for a top half finish, as the hierarchy are thought to believe, is more questionable.

Scrutiny for recruitment should, obviously, fall on the sporting director, though there will also be eyes on Purslow, who is known to get involved, some would say too much, in the business of transfers.

There are several statements he may now regret, not least the detailed explanation of how Buendia, Ings and Leon Bailey had been signed to replace Grealish’s qualities. The trio, signed for a combined £80million-plus, have so far fallen a long way short of expectations. It was also Purslow who decided to announce Coutinho’s permanent signing, to much fanfare, at the end of season awards. Having been happy to previously accept the praise, he must now also take his share of the criticism.

Purslow can point to some credit in the bank having previously appointed Dean Smith but the choice of Gerrard, in which he was so confident, has proven an expensive error. His reign, at best, has been a wasted year in the ambitious project of billionaire owners Nassef Sawiris and Wes Edens. For that reason, Purslow is among those sitting just a little more uncomfortably than before.