Lambert's Last Chance

Lambert's Last Chance

PAUL Lambert needs this one to work. Once the brightest thing in English football, his future is totally wrapped up in what he achieves with Stoke.

When Lambert arrived at Aston Villa on June 2, 2012, he was bright, cheery, full of optimism for himself, for his new club.

He had finished his main press conference in one of the big rooms in Villa’s Trinity Road Stand and was chatting with a few of us, getting to know each other.

Lambert looked out of the room, through some big executive box windows, out towards the Holte End.

“Getting those people on side in that big Holte, that’s the key to success here, isn’t that it, lads?”

He never did that.

As the owner of the club, the often hard-to-fathom Randy Lerner, lost interest in something that he led with initial vigour, the heavy workload fell more and more on Lambert’s shoulders.

It was hard to notice it at the time, seeing him on a regular basis, but look at those photographs of Lambert from three years ago when he was sacked by Villa to now and they are stark images.

He was haunted, fighting depression almost, a man left on his own to try and save a great old club.

Lambert became almost morose and certainly repetitive. Particularly on TV he came over badly, and Aston Villa’s fans lost faith in him.

Later, when it was all over, Lambert confided that he knew he was saying the same things over and over, he knew he looked bad, but he couldn’t tell the truth. How could he say the club’s owner wanted out?

Lambert was a defeated dead man walking when he was sacked from his biggest managerial job on February 15, 2015.

He lost his way, as he has admitted since, forgot what he was good at, listened to too many opinions, doubted himself and at the finish was nothing like the optimist that had arrived.