County Derry's Martin O'Neill regrets exit from club that 'meant a lot' to him

Martin O’Neill has revealed he regrets when and how he left Aston Villa.

The Kilrea native opened up about his departure from the Midlands club while talking to his co-host, Clive Tyldesley, on their podcast, The Football Authorities. 

O’Neill was at the helm of Villa from August 2006 until his resignation from the club four years later, in August 2010. 

The tenure of the County Derry Man was a relative success, as he guided them to three consecutive sixth-place finishes in the Premier League, reaching both the FA Cup semi-final and final of the League Cup in 2010. 

However, the 72-year-old would not bring any silverware back to Villa Park. 

The club had slowly been narrowing the gap to the Champions League qualification spots year on year; they had qualified for the Europa League and were coming close to domestic silverware, but yet O’Neill still walked away from the club.

The decision to resign for O’Neill was one he did not take easily. 

He said: “Aston Villa meant a lot to me, I must admit.

“I was trying to emulate what the 1982 team had won by winning the Champions League. 

“To win the Champions League, you have to get into it first, and that was the big thing, and we were getting close. It was this closeness and the proximity to it that just missed out on it by a couple of points the previous two years.

“I thought one more really, really big push could do it, and that probably meant keeping the players together.”

However, the two-time European Cup winner felt that decisions taken by owner Randy Lerner didn’t match his ambition for the club. 

The straw that broke the camel's back was the decision to sell James Milner to Manchester City. 

O’Neill said: “As has been wrongly suggested that I was looking for a lot more money to improve the team, what I wanted to do was try and keep the players there.

“We had this offer from Manchester City, a very, very substantial offer, and there was going to be a big profit for us for James Milner. 

“James wanted to go as well too, and that was going to be a bit of a blow, but you can’t stop someone from earning a lot more money, and at that time, Manchester City were on the rise, and they were certainly going to be competing for big trophies then for the next couple of years, which came to pass.

“The timing of it, Randy and I had not settled our differences, which we thought we had done. We had made some sort of pact just before the League Cup final, and for one, Randy had said we would keep James Milner. James would have stayed on at the football club, as he was not that type of person to throw in a tantrum.

“He would have stayed at the football club, and then there was a possibility of getting Parker from Queens Park Rangers at the time. 

“So, at one stage, it looked like we were going to keep James and get Parker, and I thought this was absolutely fantastic, and the following day the chairman changed his mind and said we are not getting Parker and James is going to Manchester City.”

Milner was sold to Villa for a reported £26 million, and Stephen Ireland was also included in the deal. 

The English international went on to win two Premier League titles and an FA Cup at Manchester City. 

Following O’Neill’s departure, Aston Villa would go through a difficult 12 seasons as the club suffered relegation to the Championship, spending three seasons in the second tier of English football.

However, the outlook of the club looks incredibly rosy, as last season Unai Emery guided the club to the elite European competition for the first time since 1983.

Meanwhile, after O’Neill resigned from the seven-time First Division winners, he would manage Sunderland, the Republic of Ireland, and Nottingham Forest.