Rémi Garde stroked his chin and blinked a few times in his seat in the Tottenham Hotspur directors’ box, all the while maintaining a commendably urgent, thoughtful expression. So far the Garde era at Aston Villa had unfolded as follows – 4.45pm: announced as Villa manager. 4.48pm: announced via the club Twitter feed with the unfortunate hashtag #welcomeRemy (sic). 8.03pm pictured on television looking calm in the cold, harsh light of White Hart Lane as a caretaker team went behind in the third minute of his first match not quite in charge.
Garde stroked his chin again, processing with admirable sangfroid the spectacle of Ciaran Clark’s attempt to grapple Tottenham’s Mousa Dembélé off the ball on the edge of the penalty area. But Dembélé is not easily wrestled. He rolled Clark, steadied himself and fired a low shot through the legs of Brad Guzan.
Good luck, Rémi, old boy! Remember Lyon, the long-term plan, cutting the budget, investment in youth, steady upturn in fortunes. Do that again. One more of those – only, if you could do it all in the next six months, please.
Before kick-off the cameras at pitch-level had craned upwards as Garde took his seat in the second tier, the latest to take charge of a club that in the last three years has often swirled around in the pull of the plughole without ever quite sinking down it. Dressed in a navy pea coat and open-neck shirt, he looked almost deliberately un-managerial, self-consciously unassuming. Presumably when he stood up and left his seat midway through the second half of this 3-1 defeat Villa sent someone with him. Just, you know, to check.
Not that all is lost, even after 11 games and nine defeats, seven in a row in the league, with Manchester City to come next. Garde may be faced with a team that requires instant, surface-level reorganisation but there was at least a glimmer of spirit in Villa’s response to going first one and then two goals behind.
Spurs’ second just before half-time was a fine finish by the excellent Dele Alli but it was fanfared by Villa’s failure to clear and accompanied by the sight of the caretaker manager, Kevin MacDonald, gripped by the spectre of what was about to happen, leaping up and waving his arms and finally punting a water bottle along the touchline as the ball was spanked crisply into the corner.
For Garde, a man for the long game who likes to coach and trust young players with his own kind of short-passing, hard-running football, the task is at least straightforward. Fire up the defibrillator, rub a couple of sticks together. Do something: quick. Given Randy Lerner’s desire to sell up in the face of the task at hand it is in some ways an odd appointment, a long-term call from an owner who wants out. Not necessarily a bad call judging by Garde’s work at Lyon. But whether he gets the chance to show it over three seasons or more will of course will be another matter.
Garde is now Villa’s fifth manager in five years. Amazingly, at the end of that period not one former Aston Villa manager is currently working in club football. Four of the last seven have not had a job since as, in outline at least, this grand old stasis-ridden English club has become a genteel kind of managerial graveyard.
It may be coincidence, of course, but perhaps also a function of the degrading effects of operating in a gradually deflating bubble, marking time while the continuing ownership drama plays itself out at a club that has lacked any consistent sense of inner drive or of real expertise in key supporting roles. This is Villa’s sixth successive relegation battle. It has been 18 months since Lerner put the club up for sale, during which time he has, by his own admission, been largely absent, damagingly hands-off.
Here Tottenham provided an uncomfortable counterpoint, a club of similar scale that has been gripped by a frenzy of applied ambition in the last few years. Daniel Levy may frustrate some fans but he is absolutely present in every deal, nose pressed right up against the fine print. If Villa have suffered a lack of executive-level attention, Spurs have been feverishly micromanaged towards what is a fascinating turn in the club’s recent history: new stadium, young team and now, with Chelsea in turnaround, a fair chance of an on-the-hoof top-four finish.
For Garde, Villa’s long-term man for a short-term fix, the task starts here. “Rémi Garde’s claret and blue army,” the Villa fans had sung from as early as the 20-minute mark, sense of the absurd still intact. As they had in the Capital One Cup at Southampton, Villa’s support filled their section in one corner – and the manager will need them just as every component of this grand, glorious, rather under-loved club will need to pull itself up to its full height to raise any hopes of avoiding a financially ruinous relegation.
Late in the game Spurs drifted, Villa rallied and Jordan Ayew pulled a goal back with a deflected shot. “We’ve scored a goal,” Villa’s fans sang before Harry Kane’s injury-time clincher – a boisterous period in a losing cause from which perhaps some hope can be drawn.
