Andy Gray regrets missed opportunity

They're doing alright in Qatar now, although I wouldn't be surprised to see them make a return at some point now Neville has left for Villarreal.

Fair play to Gary Neville for taking it on. He's put his arse on the line, and hope he does alright.

Neville has shown desire and guts which he always had as a player – he just needs to show he can manage players now and I hope he succeeds.

Anyone who hates the RS as much as he does is ok by me!!

Good luck to him, hated as player but almost universally respected as a pundit. I'll miss him on MNF.

Gray will always wonder, "What if?"

Gray never gave an impression that he saw us as anything but an also-ran and clearly favoured the Sky 4 (Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea and the RS).

I suspect, with Neville taking the plunge, Gray sees some unfinished business. Glad it's not with us.

I'm pretty sure Gray himself was resentful of the way he was discarded (though I don't recall him ever being critical of the fanbase). At the time, HK was clearly trying to evolve the style though, something which we saw the season after Lineker, when we regained the league with a brand of football many saw as less exciting than in 85.

In 84/85 I was 24/25 and Andy Gray scoring for Everton was as thrilling as it got.

Simple too. Bang – GOAL!! We went mad, he went mad, one big love in – with trophies.

I was gutted when he left – loved him.

But..that was then.

Now I'm 56 and even with the leeway, he's someone I'm 99.9% sure I wouldn't like.

Having heard some of his (Sky) workplace 'banter' (banter = the word that launched and excused a thousand unfunny, hurtful digs) I'm fairly sure much of the stuff we didn't hear would make your hair curl.

My guess is, expressions along the lines 'You see the thing is, most of them don't want to work' and/or 'Well the problem is they won't assimilate into our ways' (stated while drinking a pint of bitter in the Beefeater bar, Dubai) are probably never far from his lips.

And my... er... 'point': I also think he bottled it. ('Do wot, Arfur!')

He talks (and talked) a good fight, but when push came to shove, Sky was safe, Everton was scary – he chose safe.

(By the way, for anyone violently disagreeing with my opinion – 'Tut, it's only a bit of banter...')

For a start, they always want to begin their careers by managing a Premier League club. Nobody wants to start at the bottom and work their way up. But if you want to learn the fundamentals of football management you have to start at smaller clubs.

Just because you were a fans' favourite at a big club doesn't mean you can manage them. Look what happened to Shearer at the Barcodes. Put him off management for life. He discovered it's not as easy at it looks.

Personally I think he just used Everton to get a big pay rise out of Sky and never had any serious intention of going into management at Everton or anywhere else.

Probably would have shit a brick if we had took him up on it.

He may be a shit pundit but a pundit for SKY he was. It was his job to suck up to their favoured teams. For what it's worth I don't think he would've made a good manager and maybe he did bottle it and settle for the safety of SKY punditry.

He never ever bottled it whilst wearing an Everton shirt. I've been watching Everton for nearly 40 years and my favourite game of all time was Bayern at Goodison. A game where Andy Gray physically tore apart their back four. I wish a few of our current players would give half the effort Andy did in his time at Everton.

Ron went into a Keeganesque tirade about Gray taking the easy way out by quitting as his coach to sit and talk glib bullshit in the Sky Sports studio.

Now I wonder who the dissenter might have been. Eh, Bill?

As for the man himself, he'd been an AM at Villa but never top dog, coming to us at that time as a new manager would have been boom or bust for both of us. In hindsight it was probably the right decision.

I asked Kendall about both decisions and he said it was the right call. I still disagree but, at the same time, only he could make the 83 team trophy winners. At the end of day his opinion carries far more weight than mine.

I also asked him about the Beardsley sale and he also thought that was the correct decision (which I again vehemently disagree).