Remi Garde was the right man at the wrong time for Aston Villa - now he should walk away

It may come as news to Manchester City, but they are not the first Premier League club to appoint Pep Guardiola this season. “Remi is our Guardiola,” said Bernard Lacombe, the consigliere to Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas. Then Remi Garde became Aston Villa’s Guardiola. And then, within three months, he was transformed into their Paul Jewell.

Garde was the futuristic choice who left Upton Park on Monday refusing to discuss his future. He was the proof of long-term planning at a club that patently did not recognise that the imperative had to be the short term. He is a one-man manifestation of football clubs’ confusion, of their capacity to imagine they are engaged in visionary forms of strategic thinking while being unable to secure wins in a business where the cliché states that you are only as good as your last game.

Which, in Villa’s case, is often dreadful. Garde’s record of one win in 13 league games shows as much. It indicates a grand club utterly failed to realise the scale of their predicament when choosing him. They required a firefighter and appointed an architect.

Garde’s record at Lyon suggests he is not a bad manager. Far from it. Recording finishes of fourth, third and fifth while the wage bill was slashed and established players sold amounts to quite a feat. He produced a promising team, spearheaded by the emerging Alexandre Lacazette. There were reasons to choose him: but in a summer, not a November, and at a club, like Lyon, where relegation was less of a possibility.

If Villa underestimated their plight, so did Garde. Perhaps that is typical. Unlike his histrionic predecessor Tim Sherwood, he is a voice of moderation in times of hysterical overreaction. Even his criticisms and complaints are couched in restraint. There is something old-fashioned about the understated Garde. He seems parachuted in from more dignified days. He finds himself in a horrific situation and merely looks mildly perplexed.

Because this is shaping up to be the worst season in Villa’s 142-year history. They have 13 points from 24 games. Their club record low is 18, but that was secured in era of two points per win and when they only played 22 league games. They have never managed fewer than seven league wins in a season. Now they have just two.

It is little wonder the club seem to have given up. Newcastle spent £29 million in January, Norwich £25 million, Bournemouth £16 million and Sunderland £15 million. Villa spent nothing. The Birmingham Mail compiled an entire team, in formation, of Garde’s transfer targets. Villa did not land one.

It is understandable if Garde is frustrated. It is equally explicable that the club did not want to commit. It would be throwing good money after bad. Villa spent more than £50m last summer and, if much of that was funded by selling Christian Benteke and Fabian Delph, it amounts to a colossal waste nonetheless.

The winter window came too late. Villa’s last chance came in the managerial market. They had four points from 10 games when they appointed Garde, four from 11 when he actually took charge. It was a desperate position, but not impossible. Two years ago, Crystal Palace had three from 10 when they plumped for Tony Pulis. They finished 11th. In 2008, Blackburn had 13 points from 17 games when they sacked Paul Ince. They were five points from safety. They took 28 points from 21 games under Sam Allardyce and stayed up by seven points.

Allardyce and Pulis can serve as a form of shorthand for abandoning principles and adopting pragmatism. They are the faces of a policy of survival at all odds. It is one Villa have never espoused. Perhaps history and size condition them against it. Perhaps they clung to a feeling that long-term aims were required. Their squad features a Moneyball-esque group recruited for supposed potential, rather than the collection of battle-hardened relegation Red Adairs, strapping six-footers, set-piece specialists and ageing players with declining resale value that Allardyce and Pulis can assemble.

Their recent past offers a series of near-misses. Villa sacked Paul Lambert six weeks after West Bromwich Albion appointed Pulis. They fired Tim Sherwood 16 days after Sunderland named Allardyce manager.

Now there is no guarantee Allardyce will keep the Black Cats up. There is dissent in the Black Country about Pulis’ brand of football. Neither is an idealistic appointment. They are the last resort, but Villa, in imagining they were getting ahead of the game, are left looking behind the curve. Ambition is often admirable, but if Villa’s was not misguided, it was at least mistimed.

The time to opt for Garde might have been in a close-season, with the chance to reshape the squad and plan for an entire campaign. Instead, he finds himself emulating Jewell, who joined Derby in November 2007 and discovered he had leapt aboard a sinking ship. The former Wigan and Bradford manager’s reputation was tarnished by his involvement in officially the worst ever Premier League season. His career never quite recovered.

Garde’s standing should remain high in his native France. If he has hopes of future employment in England, they must be diminishing and his best bet may be to leave Villa as soon as possible to try and be tainted as little as possible. Because, increasingly, it looks as though everyone made a mistake. Garde looks an innocent abroad. Villa didn’t need Pep as much as Pulis.