Dean Smith

[Vive_La_Villa]

29 minutes ago, Steero113 said:

I agree with you except Watford, first half against Watford was hateful...

Yeh that was shocking. Wasn’t he on about the last 4 games though?

[vreitti]

8 minutes ago, AvfcRigo82 said:

We should have won more than what we have, struggled would be one way of putting it.

Some of the results that seen us collect 0 pts when it should have been 3pts is one example.

I agree, e.g. I too would have liked to see us win more games. Fact is, we've largely been inconsistent, which is to be expected at this point, considering the massive overhaul, rebuild or whatever you wanna call it. Bottom line is, change takes time. Sure Dean's been here three years, but I still maintain this is the season that will finally reveal if he's up to the task or not.

I think we're all awaiting better results and more importantly, better performances. If it doesn't happen soon, he'll be history, and rightfully so.

Edited November 4, 2021 by vreitti

[Vive_La_Villa]

17 minutes ago, vreitti said:

I seriously doubt the owner or the board feel this way. We've obviously not won every game this calendar year, so I guess you could say we've "struggled".

We’ve picked up results but it’s hard to remember too many games where we’ve been really convincing like we were in the first 4 months of the season. Happy to be corrected.  

[Peter Griffin]

7 hours ago, HKP90 said:

We signed a number of our players in the Championship too, to play in the Championship. That they largely don’t look out of place in the Prem is improvement, no? 

Who did we sign in the Championship that doesn't look out of place in the PL? We had ElGhazi & Mings on loan and signed them permanently in the PL, also Mings was signed from another PL team and was our club record signing so hardly buying cheap players for the Championship and turning him into a PL player. ElGhazi can't get in our team. Trez looks okay but for a team int he lower half of the division and Hause is looking a bit better but again for a lower half team

[Vive_La_Villa]

I agree with Deans philosophy of get the performances right and the results will follow

. That’s why when we got beat by Southampton, Brighton and West Ham last season I wasn’t concerned because the performances were there and the results soon followed.  Can any one hand on heart say the performances have been there since the covid outbreak last January?

[Peter Griffin]

6 hours ago, macandally said:

Owners set a vision, Managers implement it and that’s the hard bit.  Look at Newcastle with their grand plans and inability to prosecute.

 

Dean has been manager for 3 years, Newcastle have had grand plans and new owners for about 3 weeks. I would suggest giving Newcastle a little more time before comparing their situation to ours

[vreitti]

1 minute ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

We’ve picked up results but it’s hard to remember too many games where we’ve been really convincing like we were in the first 4 months of the season. Happy to be corrected.  

I agree. It's simply a question of semantics, and I like I said, I do think we've been inconsistent, but not really struggled. Norwich are struggling. 

[villalad21]

1 hour ago, IrishVilla10 said:

This is frightening. 

Bordering delusion. 

[AvfcRigo82]

2 minutes ago, vreitti said:

I agree, e.g. I too would have liked to see us win more games. Fact is, we've largely been inconsistent, which is to be expected at this point, considering the massive overhaul, rebuild or whatever you wanna call it. Bottom line is, change takes time. Sure Dean's been here three years, but I still maintain this is the season that will finally reveal if he's up to the task or not.

I think we're all awaiting better results and more importantly, better performances. If it doesn't happen soon, he'll be history, and rightfully so.

Just out of interest, why was it expected for us to be inconsistent at this point?

I think you're right though, this season is the make or break season to see if Deano is up to the task or not, but it's not looking good at the minute for him it must be said and I am not sure it is going to get much better either, sadly.

[Peter Griffin]

5 hours ago, HKP90 said:

That is as much about how Lampard underachieved, their team under Lampard was light years ahead of ours.  

With his underachievement he still managed to finish 4th and integrate lots of youth into the 1st team as Chelsea had a transfer embargo for the window when Lampard took over Chelsea. He did a brilliant job to get Chelsea to where they were and it was not expected by media or pundits. The following season though he showed he didn't have the ability to take Chelsea to the next level and Chelsea saw this and replaced him

[Phil Silvers]

1 hour ago, Laughable Chimp said:

The problem is that the odds of us attracting a top manager whilst Dean has us as a consistent midtable club is minimal. Look at the teams that you expect to be midtable by years end, how many of them have managers that were considered top managers when first hired? Hell, Newcastle have all the money in the world and it looks like they're getting Eddie Howe. 

If we're waiting around for a top manager to become available to want to come to Villa, we'll be waiting forever. Its just not happening. And even if a top manager became available, this forum will throw a hissyfit if we sack Smith when he only has us at comfortably midtable. So 2 rare events have to coincide for it to be "acceptable" to sack Smith. Smith has to severely underperform and a top manager has to be available and want to come to Villa. Both events have to happen simultaneously. The idea that its only acceptable to sack a manager if and only if that exceedingly rare scenario happens is ridiculous. 

 

Nah.

[Peter Griffin]

2 hours ago, zab6359 said:

In the league currently I'd say only us, Brentford, Leeds, Watford and Norwich are in the rebuilding phase everyone else is an established PL team and out of those listed only us and Leeds have potential to reach a high level (consistant top 8 ) all the others could be consistent PL teams the same as teams like Crystal Palace and Brighton but will never seriously challenge as they have limited means. I'd say the rebuilding phase if you are out of the PL for 3 yrs is around 4/5 yrs.

Those teams are not rebuilding. That is just natural development. They each retain the bulk of the teams they had last season. Getting a few players in is not rebuilding, every club does it every transfer window. The only club in the PL that is rebuilding is Crystal Palace. 

[Peter Griffin]

2 hours ago, HKP90 said:

I've been looking at some studies online about whether to stick or twist with a manager, and found this article, which I found interesting. 

 

'In 2013 a Dutch Economist did a study on exactly this. He analysed managerial turnover across 18 seasons (1986-2004) of the Dutch premier division, the Eredivisie. As well as looking at what happened to teams who sacked their manager when the going got tough, he looked at those who had faced a similar slump in form but who stood by their boss to ride out the crisis.

"Changing a manager during a crisis in the season does improve the results in the short term," he says. "But this is a misleading statistic because not changing the manager would have had the same result."

 

He found that both groups faced a similar pattern of declines and improvements in form.

Chart compares relative performance of teams over time. At point "t", the manager is sacked or voluntarily departs. The analysis is based on 81 sackings, 103 voluntary departures and 212 performance dips in the Dutch football league from 1986-2004

While the research focused on Dutch football, he argues that this finding is not specific to the Netherlands. Major football leagues in Europe, including England, Germany, Italy and Spain also bore out the same conclusion - teams suffering an uncharacteristic slump in form will bounce back and return to their normal long-term position in the league, regardless of whether they replace their manager or not.

So how can this be explained? It's an age-old statistical phenomenon known as regression to the mean.

"In the same way that water seeks its own level, numbers and series of numbers will move towards the average, move towards the ordinary," David Sally, co-author of the football statistics book The Numbers Game, explains.

"The extraordinary, numbers-wise, is followed by the ordinary; the ordinary is followed by the ordinary; the ordinary is what happens. The average is what happens more often than not."

 "a short term decline in performance is not a good reason to be firing your manager".

"Managers and players sort in such a way that the best end up at the best clubs and the worst at the worst clubs. It is not a coincidence that Mourinho is with Chelsea and Guardiola with Bayern Munich. These clubs only attract the best managers. However, changing managers does not seem to improve the result. After releasing Villas-Boas [in March 2012] the performance of Chelsea did not improve."

According to Sally [the economist], football clubs can be seen as any other business or company. Business research suggests that structural factors - such as how long it has been operating and which industry it is part of - are much more important than who the chief executive is. In money terms, around 15% profitability can be determined by the quality of the man or woman in charge and the same can be said for football managers, Sally estimates.'

 

The data in the graph suggests that sacking the manager is the best option as it returns the biggest increase in performance. Also, regression to the mean is a statistical term to describe how random numbers return to the mean following an extreme result or shew. Football performances are not random, they are influenced by the manager, players and other factors from the club. If football results showed regression to the mean tendencies then the clubs like Sunderland would have returned to the PL

[Guest av1]

3 hours ago, Zatman said:

but we have to blame somebody. Whelan and Hourihane are gone so we need some sort of scapegoat

Mate since the Arsenal defeat everyone has got it. If it was up to some on here, Smith, Lange, Mings and Sanson would have all been fired out of a cannon Saturday night 

[foreveryoung]

3 hours ago, zab6359 said:

In the league currently I'd say only us, Brentford, Leeds, Watford and Norwich are in the rebuilding phase everyone else is an established PL team and out of those listed only us and Leeds have potential to reach a high level (consistant top 8 ) all the others could be consistent PL teams the same as teams like Crystal Palace and Brighton but will never seriously challenge as they have limited means. I'd say the rebuilding phase if you are out of the PL for 3 yrs is around 4/5 yrs.

What a load of Boll****s! 

[vreitti]

26 minutes ago, AvfcRigo82 said:

Just out of interest, why was it expected for us to be inconsistent at this point?

Well the fact that we had to buy a completely new squad upon coming up and barely scraping survival. Last season we already saw glimpses of what we're capable of. Then we lost our star player and talisman, which we leaned on too heavily imo. Now though, there can be no more excuses.

[Mister_a]

3 hours ago, bose said:

There is a middle ground

Get out of here with that communist talk

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

9 minutes ago, av1 said:

Mate since the Arsenal defeat everyone has got it. If it was up to some on here, Smith, Lange, Mings and Sanson would have all been fired out of a cannon Saturday night 

Our distance covered stats have been pretty poor this season to be fair. SOLUTION FOUND!!!

[Phil Silvers]

1 hour ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

I’d actually agree. I only think we’ve shockingly bad first half against Arsenal. Other games haven’t been good enough but hasn’t been shambolic like some would believe. 

I also think he may be playing with the media to try get all the focus on himself, which is working because hardly anyone is talking about shit individual performances, which of course there have been.

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

2 minutes ago, Phil Silvers said:

I also think he may be playing with the media to try get all the focus on himself, which is working because hardly anyone is talking about shit individual performances, which of course there have been.

Another way of looking at it to be fair.