50-year-old says he asked about becoming the manager of Aston Villa before Gerrard was appointed

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Speaking to Sky Sports, Dwight Yorke has claimed that he asked Wes Edens about becoming the manager of Aston Villa, but he didn’t get a response.

Yorke is a bit of a Villa legend, he was a star for the Midlands club throughout the 1990s, before earning a move to Manchester United.

However, despite his strong ties to the club, Yorke wasn’t able to convince Edens to hear his case upon applying to become Dean Smith’s replacement.

What’s been said?

Yorke says that he has a fantastic relationship with Villa’s owners, but he still hasn’t been able to get a response on his job application.

“I have to say at this point in time, although I have a fantastic relationship with Wes [Edens] (Aston Villa co-owner), I still haven’t been able to get a response,” Yorke told Sky Sports.

“So even with the connection I’ve got, you would still like to at least say ‘well, it’s not possible, we have other options but maybe another time when the job probably does come available again’.

“But you would just like to be acknowledged, but you’re not even getting that.”

Too late

There are plenty of arguments to be made against Yorke being considered for the Villa job.

For a start, the Trinidadian has never managed a club side before, so that does work against him, and sadly, it may be too late for him to get a job of this calibre at this time.

We’ve seen plenty of recently-retired players propelled into top jobs without much experience, just look at Mikel Arteta and Frank Lampard as examples, but they moved into coaching almost as soon as they retired.

Yorke is 50 now and he’s been retired for 12 years. The game has moved on and sadly he may have left it too late to get into management, at least at this level.

Perhaps Yorke should look at a smaller job to get himself on the managerial ladder.