I think they met Remi with the chairman (Randy Lerner) and they made their opinion.
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Speaking at a press conference on Friday, Arsene Wenger has tipped his compatriot Remi Garde for the Aston Villa job.
“It’s a big challenge for him but it’s a big opportunity”, said Wenger, who signed the former midfielder in 1996. You do not get 20 opportunities to come to England and at the moment, in Europe, you find 250 managers who want to come to England’.
“Lerner, the Villa chairman, flew by private jet from his home in New York to meet Garde earlier this week and the club are hopeful of naming the Frenchman as Tim Sherwood’s successor before next Sunday’s game against Manchester City”, the report states.
Ray Wilkins’ summer arrival as Sherwood’s assistant manager had allowed MacDonald, who nurtured Gary Cahill, Gabriel Agbonlahor and Gareth Barry into the first team during a previous period at the club, to concentrate on the Under-21s and below and there is no guarantee that he will return to doing so when a new manager is appointed. Whether Remi has been given the position and is maybe in the stands to watch then, I don’t know.
The delay is because Garde has encountered problems in trying to bring former assistants Gerald Baticle and Bruno Genesio with him to Villa.
But MacDonald thinks former Lyon manager and ex-Arsenal player Garde, 49, is close to accepting the job after his exit past year from the Ligue 1 side. The players coming in looked good on paper but were rather too many to be integrated quickly into the team, according to football management orthodoxy.
“I’m convinced he’s the frontrunner”, said Wenger.
But his old Arsenal boss has said he would be a fool not to take the job. “If Aston Villa are still in the Premier League at the end of the season it is a good appointment”. He should just take it. I don’t know if he will manage to sort it (coaching hold up) out or not.
“Remi is an intelligent man who has experience in Lyon now”.
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Kevin MacDonald is now in caretaker charge and oversaw Wednesday’s 2-1 Capital One Cup defeat at Southampton. He will try to get his ideas through, the ideas he got through in Lyon, and hopefully it can work.
