The always helpful team at JOE have come up with five possible occupations for Martin O‘Neill now he is out of the job at Aston Villa.
The football world was shocked on Monday afternoon when Martin O’Neill resigned as manager of Aston Villa after four years in charge.
Depending on who you believe, the reaction from camp Villa was a mixed one. While numerous fans expressed shock and disbelief that the man who brought Villa so close to Champions league football was gone, rumours abounded that certain Villa players texted pictures of bottles of champagne to each other in celebration.
Star striker Gaby Agbonlahor, on the other hand, seemed to treat the matter with a certain amount of indifference. On the day that his boss left the club, Agbonlahor tweeted the following message: “Toy Story 3 so much jokes! Not sure if meant 2 find dat stuff funny but da big kid in me says who caaaares!!” Still, young Gaby isn’t quite the sharpest tool in the box (see below).
Whatever the case, O’Neill is out of the job and despite the bundles of cash he probably has stacked under his bed (or, in a bank); he’ll be looking to be back in gainful employment before too long. Ever eager as we are to assist job-hunters here at JOE, we have devised a list of five possible occupations to get Martin back on his feet.
1. Lawyer/Criminologist:
O’Neill was a trainee lawyer about to embark on a degree in criminology at Queen’s University, Belfast, before leaving Northern Ireland to join Nottingham Forest in 1971. Despite leaving a legal career behind him, O’Neill has maintained an interest in criminology throughout his football career.
Former Northern Ireland team-mate Chris Nicholl once said of O’Neill: “When we joined up with the Irish squad he used to bring in these folders from Nottingham Police and it was things like the Yorkshire Ripper or the Black Panther in those days.
“He was fascinated by these criminals and he used to go to the venues where these atrocities took place. He’d walk the ground and study it. He’d also go to the trials of these people.
“He’s just fascinated by personalities. He’d go and sit there and watch them coming in. He’d watch people like the Yorkshire Ripper coming in and he’d study their personalities.â€
2. Aerobics Instructor:
As a manager, O’Neill was a throwback to the old days when managers would kick every ball on the sideline and looked on the verge of a heart attack every time their team conceded a corner.
One of the most interesting things about watching Villa under O’Neill was his constant manic movements on the touchline throughout the ninety minutes. No Benitez-like sitting down quietly and taking notes for this man and no fancy suit either.
Rolled up sleeves, tracksuit bottoms and frizzy hair was O’Neill’s match-day uniform and for a 58 year old, he is in great shape. He is the perfect man to take on the mantle of Richard Simmons and provide a male alternative to the slew of aerobic workout videos that seem to be par for the course for fading female celebrities.
3. Lesbian British Novelist:
Bear with me here for a moment. The resemblance between O’Neill and lesbian British novelist Jeanette Winterson is simply uncanny (see below). If Winterson is ever ill and needs a lookalike to fill in on a reading or two, O’Neill is her only man.
Martin would just need to brush up on Winterson’s most famous work, Oranges are not the only fruit, which interestingly enough, is about a young girl who is tormented by her religious mother and her colleagues for displaying homosexual tendencies.
4. Gaelic Football manager:
Coming from a nationalist background in Derry, Martin was a handy footballer in his youth and carried on a long tradition of Gaelic Football which existed within the family. His father, Leo, was a founding member of the Padraig Pearse’s GAA club in Kilrea and his brothers Gerry and Leo junior played on the Derry team that reached the All-Ireland final in 1958.
O’Neill played club and county football at underage level and played college football with St.Columb’s in Derry and St. Malachy’s in Belfast. The Derry football team are currently manager-less and could do with an authoritative figure like O’Neill to sort out a squad riddled with division, as was evident in star forward Paddy Bradley’s decision to quit the panel back in July.
5. Garden gnome:
Struggling for a fifth potential occupation for Martin, we’ve plumped for garden gnome (we know that technically, it’s not an occupation), purely on the basis that one of the brains in the JOE office reckons that if you popped a pointy hat on Martin’s head, he’d be a dead cert for the ever-popular garden figurines. We’ll leave it up to you to decide.
