M_Afro

Is this clown in charge of defending set pieces?

People still think we didn’t need to sort the midfield out in the summer? Thought not!

Pleased for the kid. One highlight from an utterly dark night. Even though he is not ready to be playing as often as he is.

Nobody can defend Smith after that. Watching that first half unfold and do absolutely nothing is indefensible. Anybody who tries is blindly defending the blind. Dead man walking 

9 minutes ago, ferguson1 said:

Some overreacting as usual but Deano is on thin ice, no question.

 

I genuinely don’t think it is possible to over react to that. I really don’t.

1 minute ago, nick76 said:

That’s true and I defend that statement but this 45 mins was dogshit!  

No, it was the flies that love dogshit, eating the shit and then shitting themselves.

This is the point. It was so bad and Smith did nothing. He just watched it unfold. Unforgivable 

We will lose tonight obviously. We will lose or draw our next match. Pressure will be on then. I do really love Dean the man. I do and it hurts to say it but Dean the manager is proving to be  out of his depth. Lost 5 of 9. Awful stat that.

1 minute ago, Phil Silvers said:

Look at what VAR chose to show the ref though, fixed, other way round and the other view is used, games gone.

I actually thought it was a 50:50 decision and thus the ref should not have changed his mind. Arsenal though should have been at least 3 or 4 up so it’s not that unjust 

Just now, Dale said:

Your Dad hasn't got a promotion and a cup final on his CV at the club mind. 

How do you know?

Just now, mrchnry said:

If we come out for the second half the same then Smith is done for me. 

Need to go 4-3-3. Axel, Targett (worst performance I have ever seen) and Ollie off. Young to left back. Bailey left forward. Ramsey into midfield and Emi right forward. 
I am done with Smith. Love the man but I love my dad and he would also be a rubbish manager.

Worst I have seen for a while. What do we do all week? This game is over already. Smith and his bunch of morons looking on cluelessly doing absolutely nothing. Pathetic and utterly predictable. This man will be gone before Christmas 

They will totally dominate the middle of the park with those selections. It’s looking likely to be a long evening. Lots of last ditch defending, isolated strikers and long balls straight to the Arsenal defence coming up! I suspect a regulation 2-0 home victory incoming!

Just over an hour away from the team announcement. Almost certainly going to be 5 at the back again but hoping for a 4-3-3. 

Ollie really hurt Arsenal when he played against them last season. I would revert to 4-3-3 and have Ollie as the striker. Arsenal won’t be expecting that and we could really hurt them early doors.

28 minutes ago, useless said:

I think Arsenal will win, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's a unmistakably emphatic victory. The terrible outcome already feels palpable.

They really are quite average now. I don’t think they could emphatically beat us unless we are utterly awful. I suspect a tight game probably settled by a single goal. Hopefully in our favour.
One thing is certain. Lose our next two and Dean will be under massive pressure. I suspect he will be very cautious with this in mind and we won’t be anywhere near as charitable as we have been so far this season.

38 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Whilst I get your point I think Smith was saying it was random in the sense that they wernt creating chance after chance. The chances they created they scored. Also it was very uncharacteristic of us. We have become a team that keeps clean sheets and holds out  leads so it was also random in that sense.

Maybe random is the wrong word to use.

Is that bit still true? That was certainly the case in the first half of last season but it feels less so since the second half of last season.

1 hour ago, nick76 said:

I honestly never look at Villa or football like that I look over at least slightly longer periods because anything can happen in one or two games. 

We do have a habit of taking results against the 'considered' bigger teams and slip up occasionally against smaller teams.  So even if we smash both Arsenal and West Ham I will still try and be calm and look at the bigger picture that while that may happen we'll probably still end up around midtable.  Likewise if we lose to Arsenal and West Ham I will be bitterly disappointed and likely keep away from this site but still think we'll end up midtable. 

Obviously 5 minutes before the game I will be saying to my family this is a must win game and will be jumping for joy or about to kill somebody during the 90 minutes and for the rest of the night depending on the result but that's in the heat of the moment.

I just look over a period and assess, I dont know why I do that and I know some people do that and some people dont, I've had many discussions about that on here....

I really hope we backlash against Arsenal to be honest and give them a kicking like we have done recently over the last year or so....we'll see.  

I think the bold bit above is right. The thing is, if we lose at least one of the next two matches, we will have lost at least half of our first ten matches. That is a reasonable period to assess form and that is not a good stat. Lose both and Smith will be under massive pressure.

I have said before that I love smith and desperately want him to succeed but he has never truly managed to convince me. I think our recruitment in the summer has unbalanced our team and I really think he is struggling to get to grips with it.

I hope that he soon reverts to 4-3-3. I hope that he strengthens our midfield soon (although it may be worth waiting until the summer now). Even he acknowledges that we are a top half squad but we haven’t really played like that yet this season. Our losses to Watford, Wolves and Spurs were all really poor performances and although we played well in creating chances against Chelsea, our defending and finishing were awful and thus you can’t really call it a good performance.

Much to ponder. Hopefully we will respond with a few wins on the bounce. I know we won the last two of last season but we have really struggled to get a run of wins together. Three or four wins on the bounce would make the world of difference.

Doucoure seems to be doing well for Lens, who are currently second in league 1. I wonder if we will renew our interest in him? 

3 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

Wonder if Newcastle will let Willock go. ideal for us, although did he just sign a contract?

I have not seen that much of him but he seems to be a bit of a Hourihane midfield player to me. He seems to score a few but not offer much else. We need midfielders who can control a game. I have never seen that from him.

52 minutes ago, blandy said:

But not in a back 5. I think that matters to an extent - they are not slotting into long familiar roles and tactics.

The defensive problems we’ve witnessed so far this season are not system related, they are individual errors. It’s been infuriating because it seems to have gone back to the way it was at the start of our first season back. Teams don’t need to build pressure or create chances through quality play, they just need to wait for the individual errors to occur.

I do wonder whether we are missing JT. He used to spend lots of time working with each defender looking at their individual responsibilities. Until we cut out the multiple errors we won’t see the best of any formation.

1 hour ago, TRO said:

dropping Danny Ings would be suicide, right now.

Why would it? He has done ok. Not brilliant. If we switch to 4-3-3 we can only play him or Watkins in my view. Watkins is far better suited to the role

I’m slowly coming around to the idea that we should sign nobody in January. I have been desperate for us to sign a centre midfielder for what seems like ages but now I think that we should hang fire. From the outside looking in, it looks as though Smith is quite unclear as to what our best formation(s)/personnel are. He needs to work that out before deciding what we need to improve upon.

I still think 4-3-3 is our best option but for that I think we need a more physical DCM, we probably need to drop Ings and we may also need a specialist 10.

If Dean wants to stick with 5-3-2 then we need proper wing backs and a ball playing centre back, plus maybe a 10.

Dean needs to decide what we are and then buy players based on whatever that is. At the moment it feels as though we don’t quite have the players to fit either system perfectly.

1 hour ago, thabucks said:

Troll question… Would anyone give a fit Jack wilshere a 18month pay as you play contract ?

I would give a fit Jack Wilshire a 4 year deal. Sadly there’s no such thing as a fit Jack Wilshire!

37 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

He is just not having this formation. 

Play him alone up top in 4-3-3 and we see a different Ollie, I'm sure. 

I agree with this. Arsenal have really struggled against him in recent fixtures, playing as a lone striker. Let’s revert to that on Friday and give it to them.

Mings is one of our best players. People give him way too much stick. There are at least 5 other positions that I would like to improve before we get to him.