Naaaaarch

Yeah, Hassenhuttl would be perfect if we had the cash and he had less of an ego. Too big for Southampton isn't he? No chance, sadly.

Tim Walter is the name doing the rounds today. Youngish manager at Hamburg, has done well in all of his jobs thus far. No idea what his style of play looks like but it seems far more a Webber hire than Wilder or Bruce.

Unless Webber is sabotaging there's no way we'd take Bruce. Even more than the Wagner link this one stinks of the bookies manipulating the market.

One of the few managers about that would have us saying that we should have just stuck with Smith.

I remember them coming to Carrow Road and looking great, it's possible they were in a hot streak at that point and I'm remembering them as more than they were. That being said if we can have that level of intensity and tactical understanding here I'll take it in a heartbeat.

Schalke were a basket case around the time he was there and I believe he did better than the coaches before and after. I'd be more sceptical of the most recent role he had at Young Boys Bern.

I have no doubt there are better targets out there but I don't currently trust Webber to unearthone. I think Wagner is a safe bet and will get us into the playoffs at a minimum. 

2 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

To be fair though, no one here cares what he did at Norwich.

I'm sure you wouldn't be interested if I insisted Dean Smith is a very good manager.

He was great under Gerrard because there was no tactics. He could be creative with his movement and make things happen. He regularly shone as everyone else stunk.

He's struggled so far for the ultra 'system-based' Emery. I think it's restricting him, but he's got to buck up and figure it out because the team looks 10x better. I think he will eventually.

That's fair, probably wouldn't have even posted in this thread if I didn't see him being called a flop alongside the likes of Ross McCormack. 

I will say that Daniel Farke was a very system based manager too so it's not that alone. Obviously it's a different sort of system though.

I've not watched a lot of him recently but he was a bargain for you.

For us he was heart of our team though so if he's more peripheral here you might not be seeing his full potential. He's one of those players that needs to be touching the ball regularly and knitting things together. He was almost as effective defensively as he was offensively in his time here.

I remember Wagner's Huddersfield being a pretty interesting team in the Championship. After that, not so much. I'd still take him over a majority of the 'realistic' bookies favs and the version of Dean Smith we had.

Hasenhuttl is just one of those in the bookies list that doesn't make us cry at the thought of it. Not many actually thought a man with that ego would drop to the Championship though. Similar with th Bodo/Glimt guy who we were apparently after before Smith became available.

As of the last few hours David Wagner is the bookies favourite. Makes sense for a lot of reasons.

3 hours ago, VillaChris said:

Think Idah getting injured was a big blow. He's been on the fringes at Norwich for ages but I remember watching you smash Watford 3-0 this time last year and he was excellent all game and scored IIRC. Must be DS best performance anyway in his year in charge.

Absolutely. In general we looked more joined up when we played with one of the bigger men up top, be it in that 442 or his natural 433. If he had the chance to do it all over again I wonder if he'd have been braver with the Pukki call as he obviously doesn't fit Smith's game too well.

3 hours ago, VillaChris said:

DS randomly going to 3-5-2 more just to get Ings and Watkins in same 11 was his downfall.

Wonder who Norwich will look at now. I actually think Wilder will be a decent fit but after getting sacked by Boro his stock probably isn't that high.

Him and DS are very similar managers when you think about it. Both did excellent work cutting their teeth at Walsall and Northampton respectively. Both then got a promotion at "their club" and both on face of it were unlucky to get sacked. Loads scratching their heads on here at why he got sacked with Norwich when they're in play offs and Wilder was only at Boro about 10 months and in that time knocked out Spurs and Man. United in the cup and got them to 7th from mid table but a poor run at start of this season and that was it.

Next job for both is huge now so logical to take six months off and look again in the summer when they'll be decent jobs available. 

Coincidentally Dean Smith went 352 in his final game here. Ironically he probably stumbled on a formation that would have worked had he worked on it a lot earlier. We have 2 very good attacking wing backs in Giannoulis and Aarons and it would mean that Sargent could play his natural position alongside Pukki instead of being shunted out wide.  He was extremely married to 433 which never made a lot of sense to me considering most of our wing options (Dowell, Cantwell, Sinani, Ramsey when he was forced out there) aren't really  built for that. 

In terms of next manager I don't think it'll be any of the early 'obvious' early bookies favs.

Parker - His style was not liked by fans of Bournemouth or Fulham and he wanted big budgets. He openly criticised clubs and our SD doesn't take criticism well.
Martin - Not actually achieved anything yet. A glance at Swans forum suggests they wouldn't be bothered if he left. That's a sign it's probably not time.
Dyche - Think he's recently said he wants a Premier League job. My gut feeling is we'll be aiming for a brand of football closer to Farke's anyway.
Robins - Probably more than happy to stay where he is. He plays good football at Coventry but without the Norwich nostalgia he wouldn't be getting linked.
Gerrard - lol, well some of you lot would enjoy that I'm sure.
Wilder - Possibly too similar to Smith with falling stock.

Hassenhuttl and Knutsun are next on that list and whilst I'd absolutely take them I would think they're beyond us.

I think it'll be a name from the left of field. We've moved a lot of out recruitment out to South America so perhaps a coach leaning that way would make sense. Or at least Spanish/Portuguese speaking with an eye on helping these guys settle in. 

5 hours ago, KentVillan said:

Does anyone know why they had such a quiet summer transfer window by their standards? I don't know loads about Norwich, but it always felt to me like they didn't replace Buendia, who was their star man in 2020/21.

Will there be budget available in Jan for the new coach? If not, I think they'll struggle to push much beyond 5th. Just a strange situation all round. Smith and Norwich have both dropped off, and both damaged their chances of progressing.

I think we tried to be a bit to clever for our own good when it came to replacing Emi. Farke wanted 3 quality players that summer, a CB and replacements for Buendia and Skipp. Webber gave him about 10 players that were minor upgrades on players in our squad. I think he was trying to recreate Emi's numbers through about 6 different players.

We're in a tough position when we get promoted as players that will genuinely improve our team are hard to attract without blowing the wage structure and they obviously don't want the relegation wage drops that we need to secure ourselves. We also lost a key recruitment guy going into our last Premier League season so we were panicking.

Without sales I doubt we have a lot to spend in January,  even less now we've had to pay off Smith and his coaches. A part of the reason we couldn't do as much this summer was because we didn't get the offer we were expecting for Max Aarons. We focussed heavily on midfield this summer which made sense for how Smith wanted to play but he's been unlucky. Hayden has been injured most of the time and Sara and Nunez whilst looking very good at times are clearly still in there settling in phase (signed straight out of Brazil and Chile). Ramsey was pretty decent though so there's that!

It'll be interesting to see what style of coach we go for next that's for sure. Hell, it'll be interesting to see if the interim team ditch the 433.

Been reading and enjoying the 'Dean Smith' thread over the last few months and thought I'd pop in to give some thoughts/answer questions.