Dean Smith

[markavfc40]

7 hours ago, villabromsgrove said:

Dean Smith got a response from our squad when he first came in. He's now got to deal with the reality of the default system of play that has been ingrained in our players for far to long.

Due to the number of matches over the Christmas period I'm guessing they've not been able to do much on the training pitch, so the 'default system' has crept back in.

 

It is not as though these players only know Bruce's way. Bolaise, Abraham, El Ghazi, McGinn only worked with him for a couple of months, Axel 6 months, Bree Hourihane, Lansbury, Hogan, Thor, Taylor for 18 months and the rest for a couple of years. I can't see how they can play Bruce's way and no other. I'd more make the argument that Bruce had great difficulty getting the best of the likes of Bolasie, El Ghazi, McGinn, Hourihane, Grealsih, Kodjia etc due to his negative overly defensive tactics and that those players should, and have at times, thrive in Smiths way of playing.

I do think recent performances are are a concern but a combination of a few things. Since the WBA game we have gone backwards and we have looked lethargic and lacklustre in every game. Losing Grealish has been a big loss but it goes deeper than that. We no longer press high up the pitch, we are allowing teams carte blanche to attack us in wide areas failing to close down and they seem to be able to stroll into our penalty box.

I don't know why we now fail to press as high as we did. It could be down to fitness, it could be down to not having that player in Grealish who when he is in the team the opposition seem to naturally sit deeper and when he is on the ball he instantly attracts 2 players around him which allows others space. He was also the one who drove us forward from midfield and set the whole tempo of how we play. Or it could be down to a change in tactics from the manager and he has told the players not to press so high. I certainly think it is tactical as to why our full backs play so narrow and we allow opposing teams space in wide areas as it doesn't matter who plays at full back be it Elmo, Bree, Hutton or Taylor they all do the same.

There are many things that need fixing at the moment and it won't all be fixed by bringing in new players. We have to look at how we are setting up and the tactics we employ. 

It has all gone a little flat around the place. That initial euphoria that Smith swept in under and that free flowing high press attacking football we played in his first couple of months seems a long time ago now even though it is only a month. I hope we can get back to those levels though and I see no reason why we can't and perhaps the fact the hectic Christmas schedule is out the way will help and Smith will tweak the way we play and get us back at it in terms of the intensity we show in games. He has shown in a couple of months what past managers failed to show in years and got us playing some cracking football. He is also the first manager I have heard in a long time who describes exactly the same game we have all seen. I am sure he will put things right.

Edited January 6, 2019 by markavfc40

[sheepyvillian]

14 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

Crap day.

Forget everything else, I'm so frustrated he's played McGinn for 90 mins. Can't believe it.

He's vital if we're to scrape anything from this season and he's shattered. Been doing the running for three men every game for about a month.

I too think he should of sat this one out, but such is the man's enthusiasm that you could picture him stomping his feet in a tantrum at being told he's not playing. 

[TimTort]

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!

[Villarocker]

Obviously, the big fear with Smith's approach to games is the amount of goals we concede. Well, so far, we've conceded 20 goals in 14 league games since he joined. Almost 1.5 goals per game. Over a 46 game season that equates to around 65-69 goals conceded. But, last season at Brentford, he conceded 58 league goals. Top scorer was Maupay with 12 league goals.

Those two stats fill me with the belief that once he gets his way we will concede less whilst scoring above average numbers of goals for this league. 

[Zatman]

5 hours ago, hippo said:

The recent defence selections of this - Steer/Kalanic Bree elphick  weren't much used by Bruce so shouldn't have the Bruce system en grained (if thats a thing) 

They have never played together before so obviously be defensively rusty but we all know you will have a go at Smith at every opportunity

[KenjiOgiwara]

Hope he gets the players he wants. That's all I can say. 

[hippo]

55 minutes ago, Zatman said:

They have never played together before so obviously be defensively rusty but we all know you will have a go at Smith at every opportunity

so saying Klanic/Steer/Bree/didnt play much under Bruce is somehow having a go at Dean Smith ? ....How do arrive at that conclusion?

[Chicken Field]

How long before Smith goes either fat, bald or fully grey haired? place your bets here. I believe he'll have fully grey hair before the end of the season.

There is something inherently wrong at this club, no manager will fix it in a couple of weeks or months, I remember even Bruce (as much as I dislike him) saying he wanted the team to press further up and we never did, I'm sure we aren't playing awful and stopped pressing because of the managers instructions. He has got a squad of awful overpaid players, implementing his style will take time, more than one transfer window. And honestly, if fans start turning on him already (like the decision to take of O'Hare), I believe we are right were we are supposed to be, I might even start believing that the toxicity might be starting with some fans. I don't think I remember a time where fans were content and positive about our team. Always seem to start booing and getting annoyed as soon as we aren't winning or not playing well. 

I hope that finally for the first time we will have a firesale and get rid of majority of the players, honestly of our non-loan players, I'd only miss Grealish and McGinn, the rest can go. And hopefully we start buying players with long term goals in mind, even if we only buy players to sell for a profit. Except for Benteke, I dont think we've made a profit on a signing since the 11/12 season, it's embarrasing. 

Edited January 7, 2019 by Chicken Field

[A'Villan]

2 hours ago, Chicken Field said:

How long before Smith goes either fat, bald or fully grey haired? place your bets here. I believe he'll have fully grey hair before the end of the season.

There is something inherently wrong at this club, no manager will fix it in a couple of weeks or months, I remember even Bruce (as much as I dislike him) saying he wanted the team to press further up and we never did, I'm sure we aren't playing awful and stopped pressing because of the managers instructions. He has got a squad of awful overpaid players, implementing his style will take time, more than one transfer window. And honestly, if fans start turning on him already (like the decision to take of O'Hare), I believe we are right were we are supposed to be, I might even start believing that the toxicity might be starting with some fans. I don't think I remember a time where fans were content and positive about our team. Always seem to start booing and getting annoyed as soon as we aren't winning or not playing well. 

I hope that finally for the first time we will have a firesale and get rid of majority of the players, honestly of our non-loan players, I'd only miss Grealish and McGinn, the rest can go. And hopefully we start buying players with long term goals in mind, even if we only buy players to sell for a profit. Except for Benteke, I dont think we've made a profit on a signing since the 11/12 season, it's embarrasing. 

We made a profit on Delph, on paper. If you consider the inflation of market value in the time between his signing and his sale than probably not. We made pittance either way.

[Dr_Pangloss]

I'm still a big advocate but  unhappy with what I've seen of late. The desire, tempo and intensity has been sapped out of the side and this has little to do with Grealish's absence. This to me points to a more systemic rot at the club, players at a relatively low level getting paid extremely large amounts of money being a major issue. Only a clear out can correct this IMO. 

What I do find annoying about Smith is what I see as a lack of innovation so far. He has fallen into the same tramp of Bruce when he had Grealish on the side lines, which is retaining the same 4-5-1 formation to a dramatically diminished effect. Without a creative player in that midfield three it just doesn't work and IMO Smith has gone on too long with it. The solution is to either (a) bring in a player who can go someway to replicating what Grealish can do - either by giving O'Hare more opportunities or signing someone or (b) abandoning the formation and trying something completely different - for instance a 3-5-2 type formation, this would remove our disgraceful fullbacks and we have enough forwards at the club to go with two up top.

So far, a lot of the extremely good work that has been achieved is being undone by the last 4 matches and we need to find solutions fast. The January window is a good starting point...

 

 

Edited January 7, 2019 by Dr_Pangloss

[blandy]

On 06/01/2019 at 16:07, markavfc40 said:

Losing Grealish has been a big loss but it goes deeper than that. We no longer press high up the pitch, we are allowing teams carte blanche to attack us in wide areas failing to close down and they seem to be able to stroll into our penalty box.

I don't know why we now fail to press as high as we did. It could be down to fitness, it could be down to not having that player in Grealish who when he is in the team the opposition seem to naturally sit deeper and when he is on the ball he instantly attracts 2 players around him which allows others space. He was also the one who drove us forward from midfield and set the whole tempo of how we play. Or it could be down to a change in tactics from the manager and he has told the players not to press so high. I certainly think it is tactical as to why our full backs play so narrow and we allow opposing teams space in wide areas as it doesn't matter who plays at full back be it Elmo, Bree, Hutton or Taylor they all do the same.

There's a lot in that. I think an additional factor is losing Axel. Bruce left us with a totally unbalanced set of defenders and goalkeepers. Whoever was manager would struggle with that situation. Initially Smith was able to at least put square pegs in square holes, but then injuries...So we ended up again with round pegs and square holes. Add in exhaustion from the number of games AND change in tempo, plus then a knock to confidence from the Leeds and Albion game endings. I (on perhaps having not seen as many games as you) am not entirely convinced by the full backs being narrow point. Maybe I just haven't noticed it to the degree you have. We had a weakness (all season) with balls over the top and I suspect one effort to counter that flaw was to ask the FBs to slightly tuck in at times to bolster cover down the middle a tad, and give the FBs more of a chance to cover if the CBs get a man in behind. But I don't see them as kind of permanently being too narrow. I'd see the wide midfield players as being inept at tracking back and covering (Albert does it very well, but not Bolasie and definitely not El Ghazi).

But mainly I just think losing Jack and then Axel has cost us dynamism and confidence which was the thing that allowed us to flourish in an attacking sense.

Smith picked an odd side at the the weekend and messed about unnecessarily, I think. Hutton isn't  a CB, yet Bree has done decently there. No one gets it right all the time, and it was probably the game to get it it wrong in, if there had to be one.

[DaveAV1]

13 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

I'm still a big advocate but  unhappy with what I've seen of late. The desire, tempo and intensity has been sapped out of the side and this has little to do with Grealish's absence. This to me points to a more systemic rot at the club, players at a relatively low level getting paid extremely large amounts of money being a major issue. Only a clear out can correct this IMO. 

What I do find annoying about Smith is what I see as a lack of innovation so far. He has fallen into the same tramp of Bruce when he had Grealish on the side lines, which is retaining the same 4-5-1 formation to a dramatically diminished effect. Without a creative player in that midfield three it just doesn't work and IMO Smith has gone on too long with it. The solution is to either (a) bring in a player who can go someway to replicating what Grealish can do - either by giving O'Hare more opportunities or signing someone or (b) abandoning the formation and trying something completely different - for instance a 3-5-2 type formation, this would remove our disgraceful fullbacks and we have enough forwards at the club to go with two up top.

So far, a lot of the extremely good work that has been achieved is being undone by the last 4 matches and we need to find solutions fast. The January window is a good starting point...

 

 

The first paragraph is worryingly accurate I’m afraid. Whatever other problems we have with regards to tactics, squad balance, injuries etc, will in the main only be resolved once we have resolved this problem. For me this is the club’s biggest task. 

We appear to be in the process of losing a loan player who was apparently on £42,500 a week but he is off to Wolves for a reported almost triple that! I know Wolves seem to be flavour of the month with some parts of the media but I would say if this is an example of their blue print for success, then they’ll need to succeed quickly or they’ll find themselves in a similar boat to us. Those sorts of wages for an unproven, at PL level, loanee are even by today’s standards pretty eye watering. 

I’m not suggesting we can get away with not paying the going rate and try to live in some sort of Corinthian utopia, but we need footballers who at least think this great game isn’t just about the money. 

We've been run so badly for so long and been taken as total mugs. The hope is that this is no longer the case, but it won’t be resolved over night. The next three weeks or so might give us some hints as to the future direction we’re heading in. 

[markavfc40]

15 minutes ago, blandy said:

There's a lot in that. I think an additional factor is losing Axel. Bruce left us with a totally unbalanced set of defenders and goalkeepers. Whoever was manager would struggle with that situation. Initially Smith was able to at least put square pegs in square holes, but then injuries...So we ended up again with round pegs and square holes. Add in exhaustion from the number of games AND change in tempo, plus then a knock to confidence from the Leeds and Albion game endings. I (on perhaps having not seen as many games as you) am not entirely convinced by the full backs being narrow point. Maybe I just haven't noticed it to the degree you have. We had a weakness (all season) with balls over the top and I suspect one effort to counter that flaw was to ask the FBs to slightly tuck in at times to bolster cover down the middle a tad, and give the FBs more of a chance to cover if the CBs get a man in behind. But I don't see them as kind of permanently being too narrow. I'd see the wide midfield players as being inept at tracking back and covering (Albert does it very well, but not Bolasie and definitely not El Ghazi).

But mainly I just think losing Jack and then Axel has cost us dynamism and confidence which was the thing that allowed us to flourish in an attacking sense.

I think at the games it is noticeable how much space we continually leave in wide areas. I think you make a good point about our wide midfielders not tracking back and it often means that the fullbacks find themselves 2 on 1 and get caught not knowing whether to go and close down the man on the ball or track the overlapping runner and end up doing neither. I know we give the fullbacks a lot of stick as fans and some of it is justified but I think the way we set up and the lack of help from those in front leaves them badly exposed at times.

There is no doubt that teams are targeting our wide areas now and it has really been noticeable since we played Stoke for me. I have a feeling Smiths way of countering this is for our own wide players to pin the opposing teams FB back and have the opposing sides wide midfielder have to spend more time going backwards than forwards. I think again with Grealish in the side we are able to do that more easily as he will often pick the ball up out wide and teams are far more scared of committing too many forward against us when he plays. He has been a big loss.

[mikeyp102]

1 hour ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

I'm still a big advocate but  unhappy with what I've seen of late. The desire, tempo and intensity has been sapped out of the side and this has little to do with Grealish's absence. This to me points to a more systemic rot at the club, players at a relatively low level getting paid extremely large amounts of money being a major issue. Only a clear out can correct this IMO. 

What I do find annoying about Smith is what I see as a lack of innovation so far. He has fallen into the same tramp of Bruce when he had Grealish on the side lines, which is retaining the same 4-5-1 formation to a dramatically diminished effect. Without a creative player in that midfield three it just doesn't work and IMO Smith has gone on too long with it. The solution is to either (a) bring in a player who can go someway to replicating what Grealish can do - either by giving O'Hare more opportunities or signing someone or (b) abandoning the formation and trying something completely different - for instance a 3-5-2 type formation, this would remove our disgraceful fullbacks and we have enough forwards at the club to go with two up top.

So far, a lot of the extremely good work that has been achieved is being undone by the last 4 matches and we need to find solutions fast. The January window is a good starting point...

 

 

We didn’t have 3 cbs so couldn’t have played that formation 

[LakotaDakota]

22 hours ago, villarocker said:

Obviously, the big fear with Smith's approach to games is the amount of goals we concede. Well, so far, we've conceded 20 goals in 14 league games since he joined. Almost 1.5 goals per game. Over a 46 game season that equates to around 65-69 goals conceded. But, last season at Brentford, he conceded 58 league goals. Top scorer was Maupay with 12 league goals.

Those two stats fill me with the belief that once he gets his way we will concede less whilst scoring above average numbers of goals for this league. 

What makes it worse is that we have 5 clean sheets in those 14 games meaning that the 20 goals against have been conceded in 9 games.

Include Saturday and we are averaging 2.3 goals per game conceded in games where we fail to keep a clean sheet

Edited January 7, 2019 by LakotaDakota

[Vive_La_Villa]

30 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

I think at the games it is noticeable how much space we continually leave in wide areas. I think you make a good point about our wide midfielders not tracking back and it often means that the fullbacks find themselves 2 on 1 and get caught not knowing whether to go and close down the man on the ball or track the overlapping runner and end up doing neither. I know we give the fullbacks a lot of stick as fans and some of it is justified but I think the way we set up and the lack of help from those in front leaves them badly exposed at times.

There is no doubt that teams are targeting our wide areas now and it has really been noticeable since we played Stoke for me. I have a feeling Smiths way of countering this is for our own wide players to pin the opposing teams FB back and have the opposing sides wide midfielder have to spend more time going backwards than forwards. I think again with Grealish in the side we are able to do that more easily as he will often pick the ball up out wide and teams are far more scared of committing too many forward against us when he plays. He has been a big loss.

Regarding wide areas do you think a defensive midfield that can get around the pitch can help counter this? It’s painful watching the likes of Whelan,  Hourihane and even Thor trying to scramble back during the many counter attacks we seem to be exposed too. 

[dudevillaisnice]

Promising manager comes in, promising manager initially lifts the place with some results and performances. Looks to have aged at least 20 years after spending time with the squad, starts making strange decisions, the performances and results drop drastically and then eventually loses it completely. The life of recent Aston Villa Managers. Let’s hope this time it’s different. 

[markavfc40]

5 minutes ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

Regarding wide areas do you think a defensive midfield that can get around the pitch can help counter this? It’s painful watching the likes of Whelan,  Hourihane and even Thor trying to scramble back during the many counter attacks we seem to be exposed too. 

Possibly and I think a good defensive midfielder should be able to help out in wide areas although will be primarily covering the centre. I think the main issue though is we have gone from under Bruce where Adomah and Elmo pretty much played as second full backs to now under Smith El Ghazi and Bolasie offering next to no cover. There has to be a balance and now teams are definitely targeting us out wide we have to tighten up.

Edited January 7, 2019 by markavfc40

[Stevo985]

21 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Hope he gets the players he wants. That's all I can say. 

"Head Coach"

Do we know how much say Dean has in transfers?

[bobzy]

1 hour ago, LakotaDakota said:

What makes it worse is that we have 5 clean sheets in those 14 games meaning that the 20 goals against have been conceded in 9 games.

Include Saturday and we are averaging 2.3 goals per game conceded in games where we fail to keep a clean sheet

We’ve also played some of the better attacking sides in the league during that time. In the three league games against weaker teams that have just gone, we’ve conceded three goals - including an own goal and a screamer. 

The bigger problem is missing Grealish.