KentVillan

The assumption here is that a physical, defensive-minded midfielder is also "limited" - fair enough, in our current squad, it's true. Surely we're a big enough club to attract a midfielder who can do both? It's not like we haven't had players like this in the recent past - Delph, Milner, Petrov, Barry, Townsend, etc. could all mix it as well as being good technically. I know Premier League clubs stockpile players like this, but it must be possible to find someone willing to do a season in the Championship. Look at the last few clubs to win the Championship - they've all had one combative midfielder who plays most matches, and who isn't unusually gifted on the ball (possible exception of Shelvey, who can be unbelievable on his day): 2015/16 Barton (Burnley) 2016/17 Shelvey (Newcastle) 2017/18 Saiss (Wolves) 2018/19* Tettey (Norwich), Philips (Leeds) I think these players are critical to winning titles. At one point it looked like Hourihane would be this player (more at Barnsley than at Villa), but I just don't think he's tenacious enough, much as I like other aspects of his game. So getting back to Carroll - I liked him when he was breaking through at Spurs, and I'm willing to give him a chance. But he'll do a lot better if he has the freedom to play his natural game. A good DM would give him that freedom.

I thought we were talking about Carroll's physique and general ability to mix it physically? Mascherano is short, but well built and has always been a physical player. Also, while there are some exceptions like Mascherano, Puyol and Cannavaro, the vast majority of top centre halves are tall. It's not as if height is totally irrelevant to football, given how much time the ball spends in the air.

I'll do it for you. Messi is strong as an ox, and Xavi and Iniesta had players like Busquets, Yaya Toure, and Mascherano supporting them. They played in Spain where referees blow for everything. And they're some of the most gifted footballers of all time. We're in the English Championship, and soft players get bullied unless they have some support. It's a fair point about Carroll's physique - I don't see him working alongside Hourihane. Whether you're playing 4-1-4-1 or 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 or whatever, you need at least one of your centre mids to be a physical, tackling midfielder who senses danger and holds the team together. I can't think of a single successful team that doesn't have a player like this.

Part of the problem (and this isn't just a Villa thing) is that a lot of people who go to football matches know **** all about football. People who boo backward / sideways passes are the worst. People who shout at nervous youth team players who've barely broken into the squad. Or people whose only tactical shout is to lump it into the box. Or to shout foul throw. All these people belong in hell. Hate this attitude that you buy your ticket and have paid for the right to be a whinging word removed. Those whinging words removed who sit and moan all game and then leave on 80 minutes ruin the experience for everyone sitting around them, who've also bought tickets. Also don't buy that it doesn't affect the players. Players are human beings. They want to be loved. If you're a player who's ended up mid-table in the Championship after playing top tier football, you've probably fallen out of love with the game a bit and see it more like a job... that's where the fans can come in and turn it around. The young players breaking through need all the support they can get, before they become cynical like the old pros. The noise and passion of the fans is why some players step up a level for derby games. We need to give them that experience more often.

If it wasn't for Nyland being a **** clown, DS would comfortably have had 7 wins on the bounce, from Bolton on 2nd Nov through to Stoke on 15th Dec. He's since lost his star player, and the wheels have come off a bit. He has also been woefully short of options in the key positions in the spine of the team (GK, CB, CM) - the positions that most successful managers build their team around. He's not doing great (yet), but equally he's not doing bad (yet). It's still too early to tell. You can't judge any manager on half a season, unless he's losing every single game or publicly lost the dressing room. DS is nowhere near that. If he still can't win games when he's got Jedinak, Carroll and Grealish in the middle then I'll start to worry.

Hard to follow the full backs on TV, because so much of the work they do is off the ball, so I'm interested to know from people who've been to more games than me what Taylor's workrate has been like up and down the wing. Does he look like he gives a shit?

What other clubs has this generally been positive for? I get the impression from stuff I have seen and heard in the media, and from a little bit of inside knowledge of the football industry, that the following clubs have done this: Man City: brought in a whole load of Barcelona backroom staff well before Guardiola arrived, and already had a lot of his training and youth development philosophies in place. Yes they have infinite money for transfers, but there was a clear focus on an intense, possession style from Pellegrini -> Guardiola Liverpool: Purslow arrived at Liverpool in 2009, and excluding the disastrous Hodgson experiment, there seems to have been some continuity from Dalglish -> Rodgers -> Klopp, not so much in playing style, but in transfer strategy (looking for underpriced younger players, selling world class talent like Suarez, Coutinho to raise funds, rather than chasing marquee signings) Leicester: this one involved a lot of luck, rather than a clear strategy, but clearly the foundations were laid down by Pearson and Ranieri continued the project. Southampton: have a read of this on Southampton's sustainable youth development and transfer policy, which has been going for years (Bale, Walcott, ... all the way through to Van Dijk) - https://www.footballwhispers.com/blog/analysing-southamptons-successful-transfer-policy Swansea - the current owners have ballsed it up, but from around 2007-16 they were the model of a club with a long-term vision. Martinez -> Rodgers -> Laudrup again brought a consistent playing style, and really until the club plateaued under Laudrup, they were one of the biggest success stories in club football Huddersfield - let's see how the new manager does, but they look to be another club overachieving because of sensible leadership Brentford - great moneyball approach to transfers and analytics has helped them punch above their weight - but moneyball works best if you know what type of players suit your system... so you need a consistent system Other clubs have achieved a long-term plan under a single manager - Spurs, Wolves, Bournemouth, Burnley, Brighton - so of course in an ideal world, we could do that too, with Smith seeing it right through to Champions League success. Of course a long-term plan can mean lots of things. It can be a stupidly ambitious aim to win Champions League in 5 years, or it can be a bunch of specific policies that are executed properly by competent people. A "long-term transfer policy" just means you buy low and sell high, so that in future you can keep reinvesting those profits in better players. That means signing and developing youth, and selling players in their late 20s / early 30s while they still have some transfer value. A "long-term investment strategy" means investing in good training facilities behind the scenes, investing in players' long-term mental and physical health, etc. All the small stuff that you can't see on matchday, but adds up over time to a successful team. Contrast this with teams like Villa, Man Utd, Newcastle, West Ham. What do you see with all of these teams? Lots of players with attitude problems, underperforming, no consistent style, lots of managerial changes, lots of rumours about problems behind the scenes. My point is that in a well-run club, the long-term plan and the manager don't necessarily have to go hand-in-hand. This is why you quoting statistics about average tenure of managers only proves my point. When you have a good plan for a club, it is set it up so that you can review the manager's job at the end of the season, with minimal disruption to the club - rather than having some huge panic sacking and then bringing in Tony Pulis. What actually is it that we have done that suggests some long term strategy is in place? Purslow arrival, director of football appointment, bigger focus on youth, clear playing philosophy... all the stuff that Purslow has been saying in interviews about why they brought Smith in, and what is happening behind the scenes at the club, e.g. Purslow at the AGM... this sounds like "long-term strategy" to me: “It was a huge priority of the new owners to clean up the financial position of the club. The first stage had been to remove the debt from the balance sheet. This has been achieved with the significant equity investment by Sawiris and Edens. The second stage is to reduce the operating losses, this was now being addressed with the aim of dramatically reducing the average age and average cost of the playing squad.” Is that enough evidence? I can keep going, but this is turning into an essay. And as I said, I'm not trying to defend Smith - I just think he deserves time. Sensible time to get rid of him would be summer 2020 if we underperform next season. Then he'll have no excuses.

Think about Smith in the context of the club as a whole. Purslow is trying to transform Villa into a club with a long-term strategy - a recruitment strategy built around youth and a specific playing style, which means the next time we change coach, we won't have the same upheaval across the club. It also means players will feel more confident coming here because they'll know what sort of setup they're coming into, and it means clubs will be more confident loaning youth players for the same reason. Dean Smith might not be the man who's going to win the Premier League, or even get us promoted, but what he will do is work in line with the club's long-term strategy, not go to the press complaining about lack of resources, and not change his tactics every week out of desperation for results. The results for other clubs that have followed this approach have generally been positive. Changing your philosophy every season is expensive, it damages the progression of young players, and it hurts the morale of established pros. At the moment, unfortunately, we're going through that process out of necessity. Criticise DS for poor substitutions, in-game mistakes, by all means. Call him out if he says something stupid in the press. But if he's doing broadly sensible things and results aren't going our way in the short term, try to stay positive. We're trying to turn around two decades of mismanagement.

Anyone attacking Dean Smith before he gets a full pre-season and summer transfer window is jumping the gun. This is still a salvage job at the moment.

Full backs getting forward is a big part of the job, surely? I can't think of a single top full back who is known purely for his defensive skills. For us right now, with one of the best attacking lineups in the league, playing possession football, and regularly facing a parked bus, then the only way to break the deadlock is to rely on a bit of magic (currently injured...), go route one, or overload their defence (e.g. with an overlapping full back). When you go "back to basics" you invariably cause yourself new problems - giving opposition full backs too much time on the ball, or allowing weaker teams to grow into the game. I think DS's philosophy is right, but it will just take time for everything to come together. Eddie Howe has proved that you don't have to play defensive percentage football to go up and stay up. Let's stick with DS and give him a chance.

Agree that we should already be prepared for when Grealish isn't available, and not fear it. But I also understand why people are worried - we don't have a like-for-like replacement, so given his key role in the middle of the park, we are going to have to play a slightly different system. Even if the formation looks the same on paper, it will feel different to all 11 players, because Jack is their link up man who can receive the ball under pressure and keep the play ticking over. Allows us to play proper possession football and control the pace of the game. Now I think we might want to spread the play more and try and focus the attacks through Bolasie and El Ghazi, maybe play a bit more direct. Dean Smith is a good manager who's used to working with weakened squads, so I'm pretty confident he has this covered. But fingers crossed Jack will be fit soon.

We have a reputation for having a decent youth system that has brought a lot of players through. Here's a question: Is it actually any good for a club of our size, status and catchment area? Successes I see a few definite success stories over the last 20 years: Jack, Gabby, Steven Davis, Darius Vassell, Lee Hendrie, Jlloyd (RIP)... I would say Gareth Barry, who was pick of the bunch, but we picked him up age 16, so not sure what that says about the youth setup. The ones who got away We then have a couple of top quality, title-winning players who broke into the first team, but didn't really show their class until they left: Gary Cahill, Marc Albrighton. I've always thought those two players reflect very badly on the setup at Villa. Losing a talented, hardworking, popular Villa fan in Albrighton on the cheap was the kind of thing only a badly run club can do. The squad players Then we have some players who are / were low PL / high Championship regulars: Ciaran Clark, DJ Campbell, Barry Bannan, Andi Weimann, Craig Gardner, Boaz Myhill, Agent Ridgewell, maybe Nathan Baker. None of these lads achieved anything at Villa. The wasted talent And then we have loads of disappointments... who remembers how good Nathan Delfouneso was meant to be? Or Gary Gardner? The Moore brothers, Samir Carruthers... We were top half Premier League and talking about this talent coming through. Look at the clubs we used to compare ourselves with... Everton aren't even the main club in their city and they've produced Rooney, Barkley, Tom Davies, Rodwell, Richard Dunne, Franny Jeffers, Tony Hibbert, Leon Osman over the same period. I can't even bring myself to do the same research on Spurs. Or even Southampton, who we used to look down upon. Is this really a story of a big, well financed club with a great youth system? Or does the following story ring true: that we found a lot of decent prospects, didn't have a system for them to grow up in, didn't develop players well technically, didn't develop them as well-rounded people... that they didn't enjoy being here, and unless they moved on (usually underpriced) they didn't fulfil their potential? Even our successes haven't been the best at looking after themselves (fancy a night out with Hendrie, Gabby and Jack?). I wonder if our reputation for developing youth has more to do with players like Young, Milner, Delph, Barry, Hitzlsperger who signed young and made their names here (now Tammy, Tuanzebe, etc. in similar boat). The future The good news is Christian Purslow seems to have a long-term plan. I hope it doesn't involve bitter old dinosaurs calling young boys c***s twenty times a day and toughening them up with two footers. The game isn't played like that anymore!

it was opposite end of the park, and Hutton had the ball under control in between the pass and the goal, and there was still a cross to deal with after that, and loads for the striker to do. Just watched it again, and it's 15 seconds from his flick to their goal, which is a long time for a single passage of play? You can comfortably run the length of the pitch in that time... Abraham is getting blame in proportion to the outcome, not to the act itself. It was a very minor mistake.

... one pass, Hutton wins the ball back easily, has the ball, falls over, Tuanzebe isn't covering... you're making out like the pitch has just opened up for them. Blaming Tammy for that goal is the mentality that has hindered English football for years, and makes your attacking talent play low-ambition football to avoid abuse.

Not sure he deserves any blame there. Was ages before their goal, and defence should have dealt with it. I'm happy to let talented attacking players try things like that around the opposition penalty area - it's not as if he did a no-look back heel towards our own goal.

You're trying to say Tammy is equally / more responsible for the result. He's made a mistake, but otherwise had a decent game, and brings something to the team, and instils confidence in his teammates. Nyland is making these kinds of mistakes in most games. It gets in the heads of your own players, and gives the oppo confidence. You can't say Tammy is more culpable just because he's messed up a shot. Even a world class striker will miss as many as he tucks away. The job of goalkeeper is different. Keepers don't go sprinting around the pitch for 90 mins. They don't link up the play, work the channels, drag defenders out of position, or make unnoticed runs in behind. Their fundamental job is to concentrate, not be a p*ssy, and do the basics right - Nyland fails on every count.

Nyland is consistently toilet. Abraham is 4th highest scorer in the Championship.

I get all of that (and mentioned that Chester / Hourihane to blame for the break) but I don't think Taylor is doing anything to prevent the pass to Grabban - that's Axel who blocks that pass. When you have a 4 v 3, the 3 defenders have to try and split 2 attackers each, something like: A - A - A - A - D -- D -- D You also want that back 3 to be fairly flat, just to make the attackers check their runs, or to possibly catch them offside. So Taylor should be in position to deal with either Lolley or Carvalho, Axel has Carvalho and Grabban, and Hutton should have Grabban and whoever is driving down the left (Cash maybe). It's still an overload, and obviously once you're in that position, there's a high chance of conceding, but Taylor and Hutton made it easy for them, whereas Axel (in my opinion) did the right thing in the circumstances.

Taylor's positioning on the first goal is questionable. We have a 4 on 3 because Hourihane and Chester have wiped each other out. So Axel has decided to come out and meet Carvalho, who has the ball (they're both inside the circle where the Sky Player button is). Axel actually does a great job of cutting off the immediate pass inside to Grabban (Carvalho fakes to do it, and then spreads it wide to Lolley). Taylor can't do anything about Grabban, so his only thought should be to step towards Joe Lolley who is high on Forest's right wing, bringing our offside line up and giving Lolley less space. He just hangs there deep, leaving a huge pocket behind Axel, which Grabban is able to charge into AND leaving acres of space for Lolley. In my opinion, he should be standing much closer to the top of the Sky Player circle in the screenshot - giving us a higher line, but also giving him enough room to deal with Lolley. I get that (a) Chester has gone missing, which creates the 4 on 3 in the first place, and (b) Taylor might have been expecting Axel to stay deeper and pick up Grabban, with Taylor splitting Carvalho and Lolley. But once Axel has made that decision (which Taylor can see immediately), Taylor should step out to his left and cut the distance to Lolley.

By the way, a few people saying the first Forest goal was offside - I paused it a few times, and I think Grabban was just on. Also a few people saying Lolley's goal was bad defending / goalkeeping. Not sure that's fair re: defending, as he was so far out, you usually don't mind letting a player shoot from there. Re goalkeeping, I'd need to see another angle, but if it was an easy save that just reinforces the point that DS has inherited a terrible keeper. Other comments about us needing a defensive midfielder - yes, that would definitely help, but a good defensive midfielder who can also play good passing football is a rarity at this level. I think much more urgent is to sort out the back 4. Hutton doesn't seem to be able to play back-to-back weekend / mid-week games. Taylor is fine in possession, but he can't defend. Chester is usually solid defensively, but he gets caught out in possession, and he panics when the ball is turned over in midfield. Axel is amazing in possession, and has all the attributes to be a great defender, but he needs to grow tactically, and he also panics when we lose the ball in midfield. I suspect DS's biggest weakness is that he wants to control games from 1st to 90th minute, and he probably doesn't spend enough time on the 'worst-case scenario'. I had hoped that JT might bring some of Mourinho's training ground routines on set pieces and defensive transitions, but maybe he doesn't have that much influence yet, or maybe the players just haven't grasped it properly. Look at Axel's body position on the Carvalho goal (should be much more open) and look at Taylor's position on the first Grabban goal, and you'll see two very basic defensive mistakes that we should be able to iron out. In Axel's case, I don't think he'll be making those mistakes in 5 years' time, but Taylor should know better. New goalkeeper and left-back in January, please.

Of course he is, but that means accountability for results over an extended period, not just one-off freak matches like this. Alex Ferguson once lost 6-3 to Southampton. It happens. No need to worry about one game in isolation. (Man Utd won the Premier League that year.) If you don't think this was a freak result, look at the match stats - nearly 4 times as many shots on goal, twice as many shots on target, twice as much possession. I rewatched all 5 goals we conceded and with lots of pausing and replaying, this is who I think was to blame for each one: Goal 1 (Grabban): Looks like very poor defending, but it starts with an individual mistake by Hourihane in the middle of the park with a lunge which takes out Chester and creates a slightly fortunate 4 on 3 for Forest. Grabban makes a smart run into the gap left by Axel, who is forced to sprint out to the left and meet Carvalho, who is driving forward with the ball. Neil Taylor is too deep here, and makes it too easy for Grabban to stay onside in the undefended pocket behind Axel. Responsibility: Manager should take some responsibility for this one - defenders should be drilled in dealing with this kind of transition, Hourihane should know to foul Grabban to stop him following the break (would have been a straightforward 3 on 3 with all defenders goal side), and offside trap needs coordinating (including when defence is out of shape). This stuff all takes time to teach, though, and you need intelligent players. Goal 2 (Carvalho): Hourihane has let his man go again, but I think it's mainly Axel's fault - his body is facing the wrong way, and he doesn't step when Chester does. Carvalho finds space through combination of Hourihane not tracking his runner, and Axel focusing too much on Grabban (who would be miles offside if Axel had stepped). It's then a very good finish by Carvalho. Responsibility: again, manager shoulders some blame here - the players seem to panic when the opposition break quickly through the middle, and we don't seem to have a well-drilled offside trap, with different players doing different things. But Axel is a very young, inexperienced player, and he will make these kinds of mistakes. Goal 3 (Cash): Third goal is a superb pass by Lolly and a very well taken finish, but Alan Hutton should have dealt with it - he had nobody else to worry about but the runner. This is an individual mistake, perhaps the consequence of a 33-year-old playing 2 matches in 4 days. Responsibility: Alan Hutton. Can't really blame manager here, unless you want us to play a much more negative style of football, with the midfielders sitting much deeper. Goal 4 (Lolley): This is just a wonder goal. You can't do anything about these. Responsibility: nobody. Goal 5 (Grabban): Another lovely pass by Lolley, but the defensive shape is fine here. It's just an absolute howler from the keeper. Responsibility: Nyland. Edit: should point out that Forest had 8 shots on goal, and 5 shots on target - every single shot on target went in. This is not normal. Clearly our defence is too leaky, and DS takes some of the blame, especially for the first 2 goals. But goals 3, 4, and 5 are down to Lolley being on fire, and a couple of individual mistakes from players that DS has inherited, and can't easily rotate. I also think DS has made a conscious, sensible decision for us to try and blast teams away with our attacking talent, and accept that we're going to be exposed at the back occasionally. We don't have the squad for grinding out 1-0s every week. So yes, DS takes some responsibility, but it's not as simple as you say. P.S. I'm not attacking the manager or the players (except maybe Nyland, who is well out of his depth). Playing a Wednesday evening game after a Sunday derby must be mentally and physically exhausting. The game moves at such a fast pace at this level, and a lot of the mistakes were only obvious to me after I'd replayed the goals several times and paused all the key moments.

To be honest, the only benefit of man marking at corners is that referees ignore all the shirt pulling and wrestling, so if you're man-to-man you can take all the attacking threats out of the game. As soon as VAR comes in, zonal will become the norm.

Yeah, not saying this is definitely the case with Bolasie, but there's a huge financial incentive for a crocked pro in his late 20s to drag out his career for another few years, picking up good pay checks because of his old abilities, and occasionally managing a run of games. The problem is that after an ACL and knee reconstruction, you're not getting the same player. The player you do get depends a lot on their ability to adapt. Players who rely on explosive pace are affected the most. There are some reassuring examples like Pires, Overmars or van Nistelrooy, who all dribbled at speed, and came back from mid-career ACL injuries as similar players. But there are a lot of players who had to stop trying to beat men and rely on other skills - worked fine for Shearer, Xavi and del Pieiro, but destroyed Michael Owen's game (in fairness, he had loads of other problems besides ACL). So I reckon we can either enjoy occasional bursts of Bolasie as a lightning fast winger who is clearly Top 10 PL standard, but he will be playing on borrowed time. Or we can get a more conservative ball-playing midfielder, who can last 90 mins and play a full season - but not sure how useful Bolasie will be in that role? Could still be a strong Championship player... hard to tell without seeing him try it.

He is influencing matches. There's a reason why other teams try to mark him out of the game, why opposition players take it in turns to collect bookings for fouling him. These opposition managers aren't all idiots seduced by the Grealish hype. This man-marking *should* be creating extra space for all the other players in the team, but we don't seem to be taking advantage of it...

Can't believe Jack is taking so much stick for this performance. He was one of our best players tonight. A lot of armchair generals who don't know much about football are stringing words together like a monkey at a typewriter. He is so much better technically than 99% of players in the Championship. Even when he plays below par, Jack passes the ball with more zip, beats more men, finds better angles, tries more difficult ideas than anyone else in the team. Yes he blasts his free kicks into the wall too often, but you can only do that if you're the one entrusted with the task. It's easy to avoid taking risks if you want to avoid criticism, but he never shirks his responsibilities. I'd understand all the criticism if he had an attitude problem, but I see a good work rate and plenty of commitment to the cause, even in the dying minutes of a game. If you want to hound him out of the club, trust me he will perform at a higher level for another club with better teammates.