Danny Murphy thinks his former Liverpool team-mate Steven Gerrard is now heading for a Championship job after being sacked by Aston Villa.
The Villans made the decision to let Gerrard go last week after their 3-0 loss to newly-promoted Fulham with caretaker manager Aaron Danks presiding over a 4-0 win against Brentford at the weekend.
And Aston Villa moved quickly to appoint former Arsenal boss Unai Emery as their replacement for Gerrard with the Spaniard insisting he “had to take” the job.
Aston Villa collected just nine points from their opening 11 matches of the Premier League season with the club outside the relegation zone on goal difference when Gerrard was sacked.
And his former Liverpool team-mate Murphy thinks Gerrard will now have to drop down to the Championship if he wants to carry on working in England.
Murphy told talkSPORT: “I think he probably will, yes – what choice has he got?
“He’s not going to get another Premier League job. He has failed, ultimately, and you have to take two steps back sometimes.
“I don’t see him ending up anywhere abroad. I don’t see that in him, learning a new language and going down that route, I think Championship would be the way.
“I do think that when he got the Villa job that it was very overtop, the expectation of what was going to be achieved. Their net spend this summer was 14th or 15th in the division, so where do you expect to be? Where he left them is where he found them, really.
“Stevie has probably learned more in his one year at Aston Villa than he did in all his time at Rangers.”
Ex-Crystal Palace chairman Simon Jordan agrees that Gerrard’s opportunities to manage in the Premier League in the “near future” will be few and far between.
“I don’t think he’s got it at this level,” Jordan added.
“He has ample time at Aston Villa. I know it was only a year, but in a year you get to understand what needs doing at a football club and put things into action.
“In three months you don’t, but after a year if things are no better, or are arguably worse, you’ve fallen out with people, you’ve made decisions, the style of football you’re playing isn’t particularly easy on the eye and you’re starting to pare back in interviews and lose the lustre…
“The problem for Gerrard as a manager and others like him is that people refuse to separate him from ‘Stevie G’, the player. He’s not that person anymore, his playing career is academic now, it’s for the birds, and people will use his reputation now as a stick to beat him with.
“But I don’t think he will get too many more opportunities to manage in the Premier League again in the near future. And if he doesn’t come back in [the management] relatively soon, irrespective of his name, he starts to become part of the past.”
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