tom_avfc

Calls atmosphere “decent” but not great based on tv audio and then goes on to criticise a portion of the fan base for not taking to a new manager based on absolutely nothing. Keep up the hard work villalad21. Must be difficult when we’re winning games but there’s always something isn’t there.

Give the place back like any normal F1 driver would. He’s not supposed to make it difficult for him - he’s supposed to give the place back.

How does anybody support Max Verstappen? Has to be the most petulant F1 driver in history.

The defending from corners has been much improved the last couple of games too.

Don’t the winners of the Italy game play the winners of the Portugal game so only one of those teams are going?

As above I was replying to a post that suggested the situation was “more serious than people realised”. For me the situation was that we were likely to finish lower mid table which given losing our best player and a negative net spend in the summer is probably what I’d have expected going into the season. For what it’s worth I think we’ll finish around 12th-14th and I think we’d have done the same without sacking the manager. Anything above this would be a good achievement from Gerrard although obviously we have a January transfer window to change this.

Oh I completely agree. To say the situation was “more serious than people realise”, as the comment I was replying to did, suggest that we’d have gone down with Dean Smith. Personally I think we’d have ended up around mid table once players came back/ settled in. Off topic but I’d also say that if the board expect much more than mid table then they probably shouldn’t be aiming to have negative net spends in summer transfer windows.

We’d just lost 5 in a row albeit 3 of those were games we’d be expected to lose. Even after losing 5 in a row we were 1 point below the point per game average that would keep you up 9 times out of 10. We hadn’t been able to name our first choice 11 once all season, had numerous players to come back from injury and a number of high quality signings who were always going to take a bit of time to bed in. Our squad is considerably better than at least 5 other teams in the league and when our first team players began to come back we were always going to improve. I’d have backed us to stay up with or without sacking the manager. Had we not managed to throw away the most comfortable lead in the most ridiculous fashion against Wolves this thread would never even have been opened.

I’m not sure what changed for him to take the job but he should really have stuck with his initial decision not to. Not even close to the right squad for him to get playing how he likes to.

He also was completely isolated when he received the ball 9 times out of 10. It’s hardly a surprise that a player who is out on the wing on his own with 3 defenders around him gives the ball away more often than not. Ings didn’t look very fit to me with the overhit touch when played through and his general pressing not being there. Playing in not your natural position when the striker isn’t offering much help isn’t easy. For me Watkins up front should be one of the first names on the team sheet. He’d get enough goals and he leads the press so well. The signing of Ings for the money he cost is one that I struggle to get my head around when Watkins showed the consistency he had last season.

I think there’s games where we would be more suited to having a defensive midfielder like Nakamba (obviously a better one) rather than Douglas Luiz. The first signing I’d be making would be a better ball winning defensive midfielder to give us this option. Even if that means playing this new defensive midfielder alongside Luiz it just gives us so much more flexibility with what we do in midfield.

He got a win based on the improvements made to our defence. In reality a lot of our success last year was due to the defence being tight. If we keep a clean sheet we’ll win most games as it’s rare that the attacking talent we have won’t get a goal against most teams in the league. Makes the decision to mess around with a back 3 and to drop Mings seem all the more bizarre. Our regular back 5 from last season is up there with the best in the league and if we can build from that then I don’t think we’ll go far wrong.

I don’t think it’s about having favourites to be honest. He’s just far better than the alternative options in our squad. Our midfield has no strength in depth so whoever the manager is, McGinn is likely to be in the starting eleven in almost every game.

I’m not sure my holiday from an office job is equatable to a professional footballer with seemingly bad fitness/injury issues with a couple of weeks in between games. I’m only questioning whether it’s a great look to the new manager to see a player who’s season hasn’t really even began because of injuries etc. choosing to spend his time out of the country rather than be around the club. I think DDID put it better than me above to be fair but I’m more comparing it to the stuff that was seen with players like Trezeguet and Wesley who regularly had videos/photos with Villa fitness staff putting in the hard work to get fit. Now maybe Sanson is doing his utmost to get (and stay) fit and this trip to Disneyland was the best use of these couple of weeks but the impression it gives isn’t great in my opinion.

Given that he chose to go to Disneyland rather than be around the club knowing that a new manager was going to be in I’m starting to question his attitude to be honest. Surely making a good impression whilst players were out on international duty would have been in his best interests if he was seriously bothered about making it at Villa. For me he’s either the most unlucky player with injuries or he’s just not motivated. I would add that he also seems to be a beneficiary of the classic “player not playing gets better” thing. He didn’t really show a great deal in his limited minutes on the pitch but to some people he’s the saviour of our midfield issues. Not to write the guy off obviously but it’s hardly been a success story so far for him.

FIA frantically looking for another rule to hand the GP to Verstappen? Must be something surely!

How can that not be a penalty? Hamilton was clearly ahead and without steering sharply to the right they’d both be out of the race now.

So he’s like a younger version of Dean Smith?

That 2 point swing to finish above a wonderful Brentford side would be the most exceptional achievement any Villa manager has accomplished in my lifetime. Lets be honest we’ll probably finish somewhere around the 11th-14th place that I’d have backed us to finish in with Smith when players are back from injuries and bed in. Anything in the top half would represent a very good 27 games for Gerrard but to me is unlikely with the squad we have.

We need midfielders as it is without shipping out one of our only competent ones. I’d be looking to add more strength into midfield to allow McGinn to play his game more effectively. I think McGinn more than anybody (bar Dean Smith) has suffered from our lack of investment in the midfield over the summer. Missing Douglas Luiz means that we just don’t have the players to field a Premier League level midfield at the moment.

I mean on current form (last 5 games) we’d get 0 points from the remaining games. If you go back 5 games we had 10 points from 6 games and were on track for 63 points over the season. It’s amazing how quickly a bit of a shift in form can change the outlook of a season. With the players we have to come back from injury I’d back us to get a few more than 28 points from the remaining 26 games and make this thread look a bit silly come the end of the season. I’d have backed us to do this under Smith and pretty much any manager to be honest. If the new man can’t achieve this then we’ve got the appointment and the decision to get rid of Smith terribly wrong.

I don’t see this to be honest. People keep referring to them as ruthless. If they had qualms about Smith then the Summer was the time to get rid of him with £100m coming in to add to the transfer funds for the new man.

We’ve just lost 5 matches in a row. Take it back to after the Man United game and your 2021 stats read played 30 matches: won 11 drawn 6, lost 13 - near identical to 2020. Smith has been sacked for his form over the last 5 matches. I think it’s not absurd to suggest that, given we’ve been unable to field two centre midfielders at times in this 5 game run, he may have been able to turn this form around if he was able to play anything close to his first eleven.

It’s just modern football though isn’t it. Success has to be immediate. 3 years of constant progress is ignored because of 5 games of dreadful form( with half our team having fitness/injury problems). People start wheeling out stats on calendar year losses ignoring that we’ve spent a total of 0 weeks in the relegation zone in that time. He over achieved massively last season and wasn’t really backed in the summer (anyone could have told you the midfield was 1 or 2 bodies light going into the season). Smith will be the fall guy for the mess ups in coaching and playing staff recruitment since Grealish left. How much input he had on these changes would be interesting to know. I’d imagine he wasn’t the one suggesting breaking up his back room staff from a successful period but you never know I guess.

Depends who gets the job I guess. As much as people wanted to slate Smith for starting training later I highly doubt he’s the only manager in the world that holds training sessions later in the day.