Dean Smith

[Jareth]

Just now, foreveryoung said:

I'm so bored of brining this up, but I will say it once more just for you.

The losses we can accept. West Ham are a better team yes, but, (and here is the fact) it's the manner of the losses. Discipline today, nearly 2 sending offs, lazy players, hardly tackling, slow starts yet again, no real system, messy play, Buendia straight down the tunnel. 

Really don't look.like a team at there best, it's half arsed out there.

And I'll repeat too - how did we all feel at the end of September? That we feel the opposite at the end of October is reason to sack the manager? How will we feel at the end of November after Saints, Brighton and Palace? 

[foreveryoung]

2 minutes ago, GingerCollins29 said:

Why do you say that out of interest?

Fell apart since him an Dank's came in. They have changed the system, which everyone was used too, gotta be frustrating for the players, an Shaky was also big reason why Ranieri got sacked after winning the title. Leicester wanted Ranieri back after they sacked shakespere.

Just don't think the players are happy with the change.

 

[Peter Griffin]

2 minutes ago, Jareth said:

And I'll repeat too - how did we all feel at the end of September?

I don't know how others felt but I expected an improvement on last season and a very significant improvement on the results from the 2nd half of last season. I believed we had the players to do it and I had hoped DS would deliver this improvement. 

[ozvilla28]

We look disjointed ,  unorganised not playing as team players reacting being dragged confidence is a real low.

[foreveryoung]

5 minutes ago, Jareth said:

And I'll repeat too - how did we all feel at the end of September? That we feel the opposite at the end of October is reason to sack the manager? How will we feel at the end of November after Saints, Brighton and Palace? 

I'm not saying sack him now. But he has probably 3 games to turn it around, an this present time, it's not looking likely.

I hate to say, but he is proving he doesn't really have the ability to manage in this League and more than depends on his coaches. It's unfortunate last season, Terry, O'Kelly and obviously Grealish were hiding this fact.

I'm happy over the next 3 games to be proved wrong.

[Harry]

One game to save his job.

[Risso]

Has he gone yet?

[Jareth]

4 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

I'm not saying sack him now. But he has probably 3 games to turn it around

I agree, I get the trajectory of it, but there were elements in today's game that did not resemble the great Villa melt downs of previous seasons - not least hitting the bar with 10 men, almost equalising, followed by other attempts until the ref screwed us bottling their red. I didn't see a team where the manager has (cliche alert) 'lost the dressing room' - but a team that had lost confidence, and started without their captain. Things are not peachy at present, but I honestly don't think it is doomsday - but we will see after the next 3. 

[Giro]

Lose against Southampton and he’s gone I think 

[useless]

Me surprised more hasn't been made of Percy writing an article claiming that Smith coming under pressure to improve our form otherwise risk losing his job. It doesn't tell us anything we don't don't already know, but it struck me as perhaps the club using Percy to prepare the fans for the possibility of Smith leaving, if stories start apparing in the media then if Smith does leave then it will be less of a shock, or there will be less anger if people have been slowly prepared for it via trusted sources.

'NSWE will not accept the club standing still, and will reasonably expect an improvement on 11th place. Regularly competing in Europe remains the ultimate goal.'

[doaflip]

I would thank him for what he's done and move him on now. I can't see it happening though, something always seems to come to his rescue. That isn't particularly bad for us but we will be back here again next season. 

Needed lockdown to keep us up, and then Martinez form last season did a lot of the heavy lifting in allowing us to finish where we did.

[gwi1890]

47 minutes ago, HeyAnty said:

Did anyone else think the young substitute was very odd?  Ive don’t think ive ever remembered him playing that position in his career.  Ever!  We had proper midfielders on the bench.  Still don’t understand what Smith was thinking 

He did against Brentford 

[foreveryoung]

6 minutes ago, doaflip said:

I would thank him for what he's done and move him on now. I can't see it happening though, something always seems to come to his rescue. That isn't particularly bad for us but we will be back here again next season. 

Needed lockdown to keep us up, and then Martinez form last season did a lot of the heavy lifting in allowing us to finish where we did.

It was called Grealish. But he ain't gonna be the saviour this season.

[Brumstopdogs]

After the defeats against Wolves, Spurs and Arsenal you'd think we'd be bang up for the West Ham game in front of a sell out home crowd.

No, in Smith's own words we lacked intensity from the start.

Why? How, as the home team and after the previous disasters have we failed to be up for the challenge from the off.

We're not good enough to give the initiative to the other team as we get punished. 

Smith has to take the blame for this and the players too.

[MaVilla]

1 hour ago, HeyAnty said:

Did anyone else think the young substitute was very odd?  Ive don’t think ive ever remembered him playing that position in his career.  Ever!  We had proper midfielders on the bench.  Still don’t understand what Smith was thinking 

i found it extremely odd.

To bring on Young for Ramsey, and to play Young centrally, just made zero sense to me...at all.

Then added to that, when we went down to 10 men, he brought Buendia off, who works his socks off, and keeps Young on, who is 36 and not renowned for his work ethic.

The whole scenario totally boggled my mind.

[ciggiesnbeer]

2 minutes ago, Brumstopdogs said:

After the defeats against Wolves, Spurs and Arsenal you'd think we'd be bang up for the West Ham game in front of a sell out home crowd.

No, in Smith's own words we lacked intensity from the start.

Why? How, as the home team and after the previous disasters have we failed to be up for the challenge from the off.

We're not good enough to give the initiative to the other team as we get punished. 

Smith has to take the blame for this and the players too.

I want to underline this. Villa fans have done a GREAT job supporting this team and manager and coaching staff. There can be zero excuses about the support they have received after 4 straight losses. Fans have done their job, now the CEO and board will have to do theirs.

[turvontour]

9 minutes ago, Brumstopdogs said:

After the defeats against Wolves, Spurs and Arsenal you'd think we'd be bang up for the West Ham game in front of a sell out home crowd.

No, in Smith's own words we lacked intensity from the start.

Why? How, as the home team and after the previous disasters have we failed to be up for the challenge from the off.

We're not good enough to give the initiative to the other team as we get punished. 

Smith has to take the blame for this and the players too.

We're so ponderous, it feels also that we deliberately slow the game down whenever we win a free kick, throw in. Its annoying that long throws are now our tactic. I always thought that teams using long throws were essentially accepting that they were the inferior team. 

[MaVilla]

watching us tonight was infuriating.

We didnt have midfielders who can hold, retain and pass the ball properly etc, but we kept taking goal kicks to Hause 5 yards from Goal, we passed it back and forth once or twice, then lumped it up the pitch to bailey or watkins, all the time, literally so many times, and it kept coming back.

Our tactics just seem to be "lump it down the lines, lump it upfield", when we have Nakamba (5ft 6), McGinn (5ft 7), Bailey (5ft 10?), watkins (maybe 6ft?), Buendia (maybe 5ft 5?), this long ball nonsense is just mental, it seems to be our only tactic recently, get the ball deep, look to pass out, realise we arent capable of it, punt the ball up field to our small players, and it keeps coming back, just pure madness.

Seriously, i have no idea what our tactics are, i could literally come up with "launch it up field fella's".

We dont seem to have any style of play or tactics outside of pump it down the lines, its shocking tbh.

Edited October 31, 2021 by MaVilla

[KentVillan]

4 minutes ago, doaflip said:

I would thank him for what he's done and move him on now. I can't see it happening though, something always seems to come to his rescue. That isn't particularly bad for us but we will be back here again next season. 

Needed lockdown to keep us up, and then Martinez form last season did a lot of the heavy lifting in allowing us to finish where we did.

Any successful season or spell of good results will hinge on individual performances. I don’t think Smith has fluked his way through the last 3 seasons.

I think something else has gone wrong tbh - my guess is the senior hierarchy want to bring in an elite coach (someone who has won trophies in a major league / Europe) and have started building around him, and we get into a “dead man walking” scenario.

That would also explain why we didn’t spend anything on top of the Grealish money - because they want a bigger war chest for an incoming manager. Perhaps that’s what triggered ROK and Terry to go.

I’m just speculating. But I think one of the great myths put forward by Smith’s critics is that he has been backed by the board who have spent loads of money. That spend when we came up was spread so thin, and was needed to just have the numbers to last a season.

Last season we signed well - Martinez, Cash, Watkins, Traore all excellent additions, but hardly big name superstars. (You’d think at least Cash and Watkins were driven by Smith btw.)

But this summer we lost one of the best players in world football and only reinvested the money to break even. I have my doubts about whether that’s Smith’s fault - surely he wants a better option than Nakamba at holding mid, and has asked the board for one?

Fans will bay for the manager’s blood, and the board will give us what we ask for if we demand it for long enough. But it might not be the silver bullet if there are deeper problems with how things are being run, and how committed the owners really are to spending the money needed to push us on to that next level.

If we replace Smith it has to be for a really top manager who is going to be backed with a budget. If it’s just another flavour of the month character being given the same budget, he’ll go the same way eventually.

[TomC]

Despite all the complaining about how we look in attack, despite all the complaining about Ings and Buendia not settling in and about Watkins regressing, despite Bailey and Traore spending significant amounts of time injured, we have more goals than any other team in the bottom half of the table and three teams in the top half. Scoring would be a hard problem to fix, especially if the squad were lacking. It isn't.

However, we've given up more goals than any other team except Norwich (20th) and Newcastle (19th). On the positive side, this is something that can be fixed. I've dissected almost every goal against us as the season has progressed. Stupid mistakes have cost us...but they can also be stopped. The same back 4 was much better last year. They should be able to get things sorted out.

5 at the back didn't work. Deano reverted to 4 this week but left Mings out. Next week Konsa will be suspended unless the red card is rescinded, so we may have one more week of instability, but then Deano has the international break to sort things out. Maybe Deano will get some time with them. Mings may not get called up based on recent performances, though I would guess that Cash will play for Poland.

Most of all, he has to get Targett sorted out. He is certainly the one who has regressed the most.

What concerns me is that, despite all the young stars we have in the youth setup, none of them (at least that I'm aware of) are defenders.

The situation can be salvaged. If, and this is a big if, Deano still has the players' confidence.