allani

Yeah but those calls aren't based on one poor second half. They are based on the fact that the opposition manager saw his team being outplayed, worked out a solution, made the change and reaped the rewards. Meanwhile he get outplayed, Smith changes nothing, we fall behind and with 4 minutes left he throws on 2 strikers. Not the first time that this has happened. He deserves credit when we play well (like in the first 20 minutes) but when things aren't working he very, very rarely does something that turns it around. That is the frustration. He's just far too passive.

Great finish for the goal and good work for the second. But defensively he just stops his man, then sticks his ar$e out and lets him past. He's been a big reason for us getting to where we are but he's now a big reason why we aren't going to go any further with him in the starting XI. Still like him to be on the bench and around the team though. A 20 minute McGinn cameo might work well.

Luiz spent 40 minutes trying to cover 3 midfielders. Ramsay and McGinn both hold their man up, wait for him to lay the ball off and then just let him run straight past them into space. Doug can only cover so much ground.

McGinn and Ramsay completely over run - Smith changes nothing until the game is already done. Roy showed him what a proper manager does. Saw a problem. Fixed it. Turned the match on its head.

It is possible to play well and win games despite a manager. I think it is fair to say we've turned fewer games around than we have lost the other way. Which is the issue - Plan A is good (sometimes very, very good) but there is no Plan B. Roy has won this game by spotting why we were dominating in the first 30, changing their set-up to address it and has reaped the rewards. For 40 minutes we were second best and Smith has tried nothing until we go behind. When was the last time Smith did the same?

All down to Smith. Ramsay and McGinn have been walked over all half and he has done NOTHING to change it up. FFS what the f*** is he doing?

Once again Smith doing nothing to try and win back control of the match.

Why do Ramsay and McGinn stand their man up, wait for him to lay the ball off and then just let him run straight past them?

Oh yes he is! (Is it panto season yet?) I think McGinn has also reached his ceiling. I'd be very happy if Man City bought McGinn rather than taking Luiz back. But they won't. Still think that with a decent partner Luiz will come good. At the moment he is having to cover McGinn too much both when we have the ball and when we don't. Still a decent option on the bench but if we want to seriously challenge the European places then McGinn can't be playing every minute of every game (regardless of how badly he is playing).

Yeah the stats with about 15 - 20 minutes to go had us as having 71% of possession in the second half to that point. Admittedly a fair amount of that was in our own half but it was a pretty dominant performance.

Best we have played for months this evening. That's much more like it. At 75 minutes I was even at the point where if we'd lost I would have been happier than for a while because at least we'd played well and looked decent. Great finish for the winner.

Exactly even 6 points from those potential 18 is poor - especially as we probably ended up with more points than our performances deserved. I don't think anyone genuinely thinks that we should have expected to pick up all 18 points. But you'd definitely expect to be into double figures and maybe pointing to one or two key instances as to why it wasn't more.

The trouble is that it has been a long, long time now since we have looked like world beaters. If we were in the exact same position as we are now (same games, same points) but we'd been brilliant one match, crap the next, OK the one after - then I would agree with your point (almost) completely. However, we were amazing for 10 - 12 matches and then largely awful for 20. So its less about performance variance as described above. Again age still plays a part in why we seem to play in waves but it probably isn't the primary issue. I like the current recruitment approach and hopefully this summer we will see a genuine increase in the quality of our recruits but without our average age increasing significantly.

The "debate" continues to rage strong on this. I've tried to take a step back from my frustration yesterday to articulate my concerns about Smith. At the start of the season I would absolutely have been happy to be looking at finishing in the top half of the bottom half of the table. I wasn't caught up in our amazing start to the season thinking that we could challenge the Top 6. I'm not an "entitled" fan who thinks that Villa deserve to be a top half club just because we are Aston Villa. On paper I think we should be finishing around 14th (I believe we have a better starting XI than Sheffield Utd, West Brom, Fulham, Brighton, Burnley and Palace). So in theory we are ahead of target. However, if you take our last 20 matches (which includes a cup match) we are: W5 D5 L10. Which would get us 20 points. Now if we followed that "form" across a whole season we'd get 38 points. Or at this point in the season we'd be Played 32, Points 32. Which would have us 17th, two points below Brighton with a game in hand, four points adrift of Newcastle, Southampton and Burnley. Still better than where we were last season but not as much as the actual table suggests. It just feels like in each of the last three seasons we've had one amazing run of results (admittedly quite a long one in two of those three seasons) that has saved us. So either you can look at this as - "hey we're 11th / 12th that is amazing" or you can say "hey for the last 2/3rds of the season our return is concerning". My worry is that we are still massively inconsistent - we'll be amazing for some of the time and awful at others. But we're not inconsistent for odd games - we seem to have a cycle of being awful / amazing in waves. This is when the manager / coaching staff have to find ways of reversing a cycle / wave and proactively change the pattern. When we are doing well - Smith's non-tinkering approach works well (although I am worried that it means that key players are more likely to get injured because they are playing so much). However, he's always so late making subs and so often just makes like for like changes. Sometimes these work but for every Fulham recently there have been 3 or 4 times when nothing changed. I think we have underperformed in the last 20 matches as much as we overperformed in the first 15. I'd be much, much happier if we were sat here at P 32 Pts 45 - if those points had been spread fairly evenly through the season. Indeed I'd probably be sat here writing about how it is ridiculous that Smith's position is being questioned. However, 20 matches is a seriously long time to have gone with form that places us 17th in the league. So my worry is - what happens if we start next season poorly? Will Smith get us consistently picking up enough points or will we be relying on another golden spell to keep us out of danger? For me I just don't see him learning lessons and fixing (or even trying to fix) them. He's picked the same formation and same tactics for most of this 20 game run - which feels like he is "hoping" that something will click rather than "trying" to make it click. All teams / managers have good and bad runs and it is undeniably difficult to break a "losing" habit - you also don't want to be chopping and changing tactics the whole time. But surely it is not too much to ask that when we have tried the same thing over and over without it working that we at least try something a little different. I appreciate that had this form been season long then 32 points would still only have us 4 points behind my "paper target" of 14th. But it is also only 5 points ahead of the relegation places (with a game in hand). Yes for some / most of that run we have been without our best player but other teams have suffered injury issues too and you can't rely on your best player(s) being fit and on form all season. I don't think we can sit back and just say that everything is OK. I don't think that most of this season has been as big a progression as the table suggests. Defensively, we look much stronger. Ollie is by far more threatening than any of our strikers last season but still gets too isolated. But the basic problems of our midfield getting over-run, not creating enough chances, hitting too many aimless crosses into the box with no-one attacking them - etc remain. Yes, we have had to rebuild a team (twice) from the team that Bruce "built" and yes FFP has meant that we've not been able to strengthen as much as Smith and the Board would have wanted. But everything is not rosy. Maybe it is not as bleak as maybe I felt after 85 minutes last night either. Should Smith be sacked now? No. But should his position be under review? I think it should. I'd want him to answer questions about why our form since January has been so poor, why we've stuck with the same system, why our subs tend to be introduced well after our opponents, etc. Hopefully, he can give good responses to all of those and explain exactly what he needs moving forwards. Hopefully, with the right investment of the summer, this time next year, we'll all be sitting here, with Villa probably sitting in a similar position in the table but having had a more consistent season that has us (or me!) looking forward to the following season with more optimism than concern, laughing about how ridiculous it was to doubt Deano!! I appreciate that not everyone will share my views and that there are several "what ifs" in any discussion. But please be assured my frustration with Smith is not born out of a misguided notion that we are a top half team. He deserves plenty of credit for the last 3 seasons and the start of this season. But equally those 3 seasons do not give him a "get out of jail free card" to ignore some of the very evident concerns that our performances over the last four months have raised. UTV

That is the main issue - FFP meant that our owners were unable to build one team, we've had to build two and we still need at least one more new team to get to where they want to be. Without FFP we'd have spent less because we'd have been able to target better players first time around. Still would have been tough to persuade good players to sign for a team that has just been promoted / just avoided relegation - but I think we have a really good vision to sell and some excellent people to sell it.

Our keeper is comfortably man of the match and we're unlucky not to win. I genuinely can't see how those two stack up...

Martinez man of the match - kept us in it (again). Not sure that suggests that we deserved all 3 points...

The goal only puts more question marks on Smith. Why not make those changes 10, 15 or 20 minutes earlier? Suddenly put pressure on the WBA defence and things start to happen. Why does he always leave it so late? Why does he continue with the same formation / tactics that haven't really worked since mid-December?

I'm done with Smith. DLLLWLWLWDLWLDDLWLL and on course for another L. So that will be 20 matches and 19 points. Lost against two of the bottom three and we only avoided losing to the other one because we played well for 10 minutes at the end. Just can't see how he influences the team to improve. We keep playing the same formation and the same tactic - even though it hasn't worked since the middle of December. The 13 games at the start of the season look more like the exception than the rule. We need to be bringing in at least 4 or 5 players in this summer (plus a couple of backups). Not sure that I trust Smith to be targeting the players we need to be aiming at the top of the bottom half of the table next season.

DLLLWLWLWDLWLDDLWLL and on course for another L. So that will be 20 matches and 19 points. But apparently we are making progress. Looking more and more like the first 13 matches were the exception not the rule.

Lost to Sheffied Utd, losing to WBA and were failing against Fulham until we had a purple 10 minutes. We can't keep playing this badly and making excuses - otherwise next season we will be back fighting relegation.

The longer this goes on the more I think Smith has to go. You can argue that he doesn't have the players. But this formation and these tactics haven't worked since December. Yet he keeps on persisting with the same approach. Hopefully the boys will turn it round now but it is all so horribly predictable at the moment.

Anyone still think we are doing well?

Kick the ball down the flanks for Ollie to chase and then cross to our centre forward who is ...... oh **** there seems to be a problem with the plan.

To be fair I think people are justified in being frustrated that we are second best to a team that are 10 points off safety.