TimTort

2 minutes ago, regular_john said:

He's a young manager who needs to learn his trade. He should be given the time to do so at an appropriate club i.e. league one/championship level. He's just not ready for a job of this magnitude and it shows week in and week out.

When he was appointed I agreed with a post on here that expressed concern that we had appointed a novice manager to take the club not just forwards, but upwards. The post was disliked and criticised at the time, but I don’t think it was far wrong.

9 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

We sacked Smith to progress. He's got a lot of work to do in order to do that. 

Spot on. Smith was sacked because he wasn’t seen as someone who could take this club to the next level. If we’d been happy to sit in mid-table for another couple of years, Smith would have been the ideal choice to remain in charge. But those who take the decisions opted to make a change to ensure the step up would happen sooner rather than later.

At the moment, Gerrard looks like nothing the right choice. He’s got to turn this around quicker than rapid if his appointment is to be justified. Am I confident he can do that? After that second half, I’m not sure I am.

I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon, but he’s got to be in trouble. This is just so flat.

So frustrating. Gets in some good attacking positions, but disappoints almost every single time.

Just now, jimmygreaves said:

Do you think he can?

Well, he knows the Premier League well enough, so you’d hope so. But I do have some fears. He’s cut his managerial teeth in a league where, as I said, at a club like Rangers you’ve won half the games before you turn up. We’ve started several games really poorly and not been able to recover. I really want to see him stamp his mark on the team and I haven’t seen any signs of that so far.

Hate to say it, but coming from a league where you only have to turn up to win half the games, he needs to up his own game… and quickly.

Apologies if this has been discussed earlier in the thread, but I do wonder whether Richard O’Kelly’s departure on the eve of the season might have been related to the fact that Dean was planning to switch the formation? The two of them had been together for a long long time and I wonder whether O’Kelly, who was presumably a key figure in implementing things on the training ground,  just didn’t want to work with such a system?

Pure speculation,, but possible.

My brother in law is a big Brentford supporter and he said that Smith and O’Kelly worked really closely at Brentford, even sharing a house in the area. They’d had a similar working relationship at Walsall and so assuming that continued here, I can’t for a moment believe that it was Smith who wanted to propose the U23 role. 

I’ve said this before, but my brother in law is a Brentford supporter and I saw him this week (first time in months!). We were chatting about Smith and he said that there’s a massive difference at Brentford now in that their Head Coach Thomas Frank has a fantastic eye for detail and changes things quickly when necessary in games, whereas Smith rarely made changes other than the predictable ones. 

Having said that, he’s got a lot of time for Smith, as have most Brentford supporters, because he kept them ticking over and playing decent football, but he doesn’t believe Smith would have taken them to where they are now because he didn’t address defensive frailties nor did he react quickly enough to change the course of games. 

Most interestingly, he said that Thomas Frank’s tactical influence, even when he was the assistant coach, was crucial and he’s amazed Smith didn’t take Frank with him to Villa instead of agreeing to have John Terry in that role. Oh, and he also said that Richard O’Kelly is just Smith’s chauffeur!! lol

3 hours ago, TheStagMan said:

I'm friends with him on Facebook if you want me to ask....

Of course, I’d love to share some of the stories but I wouldn’t want to cause any work or run the risk he might be disappointed with my offerings! But, your call really... and thanks.

34 minutes ago, A'Villan said:

None of that surprises me really. But he is exactly what the OP is after.

@TimTort If you are interested in Australia as well, I can certainly give you some. Corruption was rife back then.

There's actually a TV series called Underbelly which will give you the story, more or less, and you can see for yourself. I'm good friends with a family who featured on the show.

If of interest, Google the Walsh Street police shootings to get a taste for how bitter the feud was back then, and how the police were basically their own criminal syndicate.

But I'm not sure any of this is what you're looking for. Hence why I suggested Towbar Tone. He's an ex-copper and I'm pretty confident would've been active then.

Thanks, appreciate that.

2 hours ago, ender4 said:

Would it be much different to now?

Obviously much less tech, probably less stabbings... but surely general crime and therefore police work doesn't really change.

It is very different. Police officers are viewed very differently and treated very differently. And that’s inside and outside the service. Some of the stories I’ve been given are remarkable. Nothing outrageous but the sort of things that would never happen nowadays.

1 hour ago, mjmooney said:

As a member of the public I'm struggling to think of any  memories of that era  that wouldn't be anti-police. 

Okay, fair enough.

In these tough times, my wife’s dad has been collecting and putting together some amusing stories about policing in the seventies and eighties. Times were so different back then it’s hard to comprehend. Some are good to post publicly, some might be better in private! But any interest in sharing a few? Or anyone able to contribute any to pass the time? Nothing anti-police, just a few smiles at things that happened.

I do like Dean Smith and I do think he’s the right man at this time, but we also need to be fully aware of what we are likely or not likely to see with his team. Since his defensive issues at Brentford have been pointed out to me, I have looked at their record a bit more closely and I read something very interesting this morning. When he left them they were leaking goals badly and in the next few games after he’d gone they were like a sieve. Scoring yes but conceding bucketfuls.

I don’t know if their new manager (I can’t remember his name) took over straightaway or whether they had a caretaker in charge but the article this morning said the new guy has “completely turned around their poor defensive record and they’ve only conceded twice in the last five games in which they’ve been unbeaten.” That’s presumably with the same players that Dean Smith had, so it can be done.

All I’m saying is that it might be unrealistic to expect any Dean Smith team to have a watertight defence.

But hopefully we’ll see lots of goals at the other end!

30 minutes ago, TRO said:

Dean has to find a way of defending better, without inhibiting the offensive style.

 

I don’t post often but my sister is married to a Brentford supporter and when Dean Smith was appointed, he said exactly that to me - almost word for word. Although he was not happy when Smith left them he also made a few comments that I thought maybe were just an indication of his disappointment and they may well prove to be, but he said that whilst the open attacking style of Brentford was the best he had ever seen in his time supporting them, the defensive frailties of the team as a whole were never really solved. The defensive players who were signed kept getting better in terms of their footballing qualities but the defensive organisational side of their game never improved. I found this a really odd thing to say about a man who had been a central defender himself but my brother-in-law’s response was that when Smith joined Brentford, a Walsall fan came onto their forum and said they would see some fantastic attacking football because Dean Smith’s teams loved having the ball up top because they didn’t know how to defend.

I'm not decrying Smith at all and I think he’s a fantastic appointment in comparison to recent managers, but it does worry me a tad.

There was a topic on another site about the drawbacks to letting a strange use your toilet or how often you’ve been asked by someone you don’t know if they can use your loo. One of the comical replies is copied below. How amusing! And intriguing!

——————————-

Many years ago I remember my mum making tea or coffee for some policemen. Right opposite our house there was an alleyway and one day someone got attacked down there. It was quite serious and the place was swarming with police for ages and they put up tape to stop people walking past. My mum took them out trays of hot drinks and I was only a young teenager at the time but I remember that one of the police officers came over and asked my mum if he could use our toilet. He actually took his shoes off at the front door which probably wouldn't happen nowadays and he also left his police helmet on the table in the hall so being the inquisitive teenager and went and had a look inside it. There were straps so that it could rest on his head!

Anyway, a while later I heard some more noise in the hall and when I went out there were three policeman standing waiting outside our downstairs toilet. They all seemed to be chatting quite calmly but one was gently but quite noticeably bobbing up and down. Suddenly, one of them called my mum and the next thing I knew was that the one who had been jigging around was being ushered upstairs by my mum, going in front of her and she followed right behind him. He was quite young, around mid-twenties I should imagine, and he was in his socks too.

I never knew any visitors who used our bathroom upstairs rather than the downstairs toilet, even visiting family members, but this young policeman was up there ages. Eventually the others who had used the downstairs loo were back outside waiting by their van and my mum had gone up and down the stairs a few times whilst she also took the young officer's shoes upstairs to him, which I've never managed to fathom out why. There was a lot of too-ing and fro-ing and the conversation exchanges seemed quite serious but finally this policeman came back down the stairs and went straight out to the van and they all went, never to be seen again.

When my dad got home from work, the moment he stepped in the door my mum took him upstairs and I remember going halfway up the staircase to see what was going on and he and my mum were standing outside the bathroom door, which was open and they were looking and pointing and talking for some time. It was as if she was telling him what had happened. Later that evening, my mum did some washing which was unusual because we had a lady who actually used to come in and clean the house and she always did the washing during the day so it was rare to hear the washing machine going in the evenings.

Whether she was washing clothes or the bathroom mats or whether it was entirely unrelated, I don't have any idea unfortunately but it was a very strange incident and both my parents seemed very engaged in spending time in the bathroom dealing with something that evening. 

I didn't really think too much about it at the time but when I look back now I do wonder what happened. Did the ones who were  queuing for the downstairs toilet call my mum to ask her to assist the one who went upstairs? Why did she go with him, walking behind him? Why was he up there so long? And why did she take his shoes up to him? When my dad came home, why did my mum whisk him upstairs to look at the bathroom so quickly? And what did she wash that night? Or did my dad do some cleaning upstairs?

I'll never know, of course, but it's open to guessing  I suppose. Who knows? It's a long, long time ago now. But I guess my mum might have regretted letting the police officers in that day?

Maybe the play-off disaster should have been a thread of its own!!

8 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

There's always 'things that cheer you up' . . . 

Okay then!

17 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

You have a higher estimation of the standard of discussion on here than I do!

What I meant was that it's not worthy of it's own thread and although I could post it here I don't want to hijack the topic.

I went to a wedding last Saturday and heard one of the funniest Villa-related play-off final stories I've heard in ages, told by the best man.

But a) I didn't record it for sharing and b) can't post it here. It was lavatorial in nature and involved a broken zip fly.

Why do the best stories get told in the wrong places?

Is he likely to be first-choice though?