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Dean Smith


Demitri_C

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4 hours ago, HKP90 said:

Do you not think that players with both technical aptitude and psychological resilience will be playing for top sides? When you drop down the leagues you may have to prioritise one or the other, as players are more limited. We’ve not been a draw for top talent for years. Couple that with the fact that being without technical ability in a league as strong as the Prem, you will be found out, and I can see why our recruitment has prioritised technical ability.

FA 4 corner model!! For any league...

Always apply this when recruiting players or analysing players in all the 4 corners as player with all the skill-sets are much more likely to improve further.

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Edited by Villan4Life
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4 hours ago, tinker said:

Eventually they will, but they have to start somewhere and this is the sweet spot for buying them. However, as Sheffield utd have shown,(and many other teams, Leicester for one) character counts for far more than its been credited for by many club scouts, fans and the media .

Picking players with technical ability is relatively easy , picking players with character is harder and players with the right balance between cost , technical ability and character is where we need to be and we, for me,  have missed the boat with too many of our current crop.

Great post @tinker

Edited by Villan4Life
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Character is important, but I wouldn't say Villa have overlooked this at all. It's Dean Smith's biggest obsession as a manager - the number one thing he talks about when he discusses his management style.

For sensible FFP reasons, we've signed very young, foreign players who have yet to fully find their feet as pros at this level, with a view to building up a bigger transfer budget in future windows. Someone like Douglas Luiz will undoubtedly grow into a leadership figure, but it's a process that will take time. Have the scouts made a mistake there? No.

Sheffield Utd have mature senior pros forming the spine of the side - Basham (31), Fleck (28), Norwood (28), Sharp (34), McGoldrick (32). It's a much more mature group of players than ours, and all those senior players were there last season.

We've brought in Heaton and Reina, but apart from that we've a very young group, unless you count fringe players like Elmo and Taylor.

I'm convinced that Samatta will help to kick us on over the next few months. He just strikes me as a more serious, more grown up personality. I think he's got the bit between his teeth, and will be a good influence on the other players.

The only players I'd question for bottling it on occasion are Targett and AEG. Pretty happy with the attitude and application of every other player in the squad, from what I've seen as a fan. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors, but they seem like a good group to me.

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15 hours ago, tinker said:

Eventually they will, but they have to start somewhere and this is the sweet spot for buying them. However, as Sheffield utd have shown,(and many other teams, Leicester for one) character counts for far more than its been credited for by many club scouts, fans and the media .

Picking players with technical ability is relatively easy , picking players with character is harder and players with the right balance between cost , technical ability and character is where we need to be and we, for me,  have missed the boat with too many of our current crop.

I think your comments are right on the button.

I too think character is underrated and dismissed far too easily.....its crucial to success.

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1 hour ago, terrytini said:

Nice to see that as well as getting to a Cup Final we also have only Liverpool, City, Everton and Southampton above us in the Form Table.

Not a bad few weeks considering.

The form table is really important......thats encouraging

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10 hours ago, KentVillan said:

Character is important, but I wouldn't say Villa have overlooked this at all. It's Dean Smith's biggest obsession as a manager - the number one thing he talks about when he discusses his management style.

For sensible FFP reasons, we've signed very young, foreign players who have yet to fully find their feet as pros at this level, with a view to building up a bigger transfer budget in future windows. Someone like Douglas Luiz will undoubtedly grow into a leadership figure, but it's a process that will take time. Have the scouts made a mistake there? No.

Sheffield Utd have mature senior pros forming the spine of the side - Basham (31), Fleck (28), Norwood (28), Sharp (34), McGoldrick (32). It's a much more mature group of players than ours, and all those senior players were there last season.

We've brought in Heaton and Reina, but apart from that we've a very young group, unless you count fringe players like Elmo and Taylor.

I'm convinced that Samatta will help to kick us on over the next few months. He just strikes me as a more serious, more grown up personality. I think he's got the bit between his teeth, and will be a good influence on the other players.

The only players I'd question for bottling it on occasion are Targett and AEG. Pretty happy with the attitude and application of every other player in the squad, from what I've seen as a fan. Who knows what goes on behind closed doors, but they seem like a good group to me.

Fair comment

I hope you are right.

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15 hours ago, KentVillan said:

If you're in the relegation zone it's either because you aren't scoring enough (Watford) or you're conceding too many (West Ham)... or both (Norwich).

There's nothing inherently better about conceding fewer goals, if you're achieving it by sticking 10 men behind the ball, and have no attacking threat.

There's this enduring myth that a good defensive record will keep you up, but just as an example, in 2017-18, Swansea and West Brom went down after conceding only 56 goals. FIVE of the teams who survived conceded more goals, including Everton in eighth place!

I think a lot of people are confusing "defensive quality" with "defensive style". Clearly we play high full backs, and, until recently, only one out-and-out holding midfielder - so it's an attacking style, and that means we'll concede more goals. We were also conceding a lot of set piece goals, which is a defensive quality issue.

But in recent weeks we've (mostly) dealt with the set piece problems, which suggests to me that Smith is improving things, not just in terms of style but also quality.

Personally, I'd say Smith is a good coach of a defence (he's managed to win Premier League games with NEIL TAYLOR in the starting 11 FFS!), but his attacking style can look naive against better teams. That's not the same as what some people are accusing him of, which is that he doesn't know how to coach a defence. The Brentford example is very misleading, and a proper analysis of his time there suggests his defensive record was pretty reasonable for the style he was playing, and the players he had at his disposal. (Indeed, Brentford fans have come on here and made much the same point.)

Also, I'm puzzled by the idea that it's courageous to keep saying Smith is shit in the same (often factually wrong) way, over and over again, for weeks on end. As @terrytini says, we all see flaws in Smith's approach and have concerns about weaknesses he might have at this level, but people get defensive when it feels like a campaign, and the same points being repeated ad nauseam.

But that happened with the previous manager too, even though they had  quite different playing styles, interestingly they both had similar win ratio's.....Dean smith is not the only one to attract criticism, but I would like to wager a few wins to get us out of the danger zone, would suffice.....but No, I agree, it doesn't make it right...but in many cases folk just react to other folks posts.

I think you selected an exceptional season, most teams who concede the most goals occupy the relegation spots.....we are equal with Norwich, it has to change to survive....we need a few clean sheets.

I think our defensive issue is a team issue as opposed to just the back line.

but remember its much harder to score a goal than concede one and we have scored in nearly every game.......it is not ground breaking changes we need, it could so easily be different....being hard to beat is a pre requisite in my book and something we would do well to work towards.

 

Edited by TRO
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I’m in the middle on the “ goals against” debate.

It’s not usually overly important how many you score or concede, it’s the difference between the two. 
Our goal difference is currently at a rate ( -0.6) which would see us end on Minus 22.

This would be in the bottom 6, a tight relegation fight, every season.

So in that respect, it’s bad !

On the other hand, in the last 5 years the 15 relegation sides have, in all but 2 cases, needed a worse goal difference than that to go down.

In other words, Minus 22 should, just, be ok.

Wouldnt do any harm for it to be below Minus 20 though.

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6 hours ago, TRO said:

I think your comments are right on the button.

I too think character is underrated and dismissed far too easily.....its crucial to success.

I am not a rugby fan but the reason New Zealand have consistently the best performing team in almost any sport is that they pick their squads from a young age totally on character and back themselves to coach the rugby ability... extreme example but I agree with you completely.

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45 minutes ago, Adam2003 said:

I am not a rugby fan but the reason New Zealand have consistently the best performing team in almost any sport is that they pick their squads from a young age totally on character and back themselves to coach the rugby ability... extreme example but I agree with you completely.

I think it relates to most sports.

It was a huge feature of Fergie and Shankly's philosophies.

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7 hours ago, TRO said:

I think your comments are right on the button.

I too think character is underrated and dismissed far too easily.....its crucial to success.

Personally I think ability will get someone to a 6 or 7 out of 10 (roughly speaking), to get above that a player needs the right mentality, character, ethic ot whatever you want to call it.

You only need to see all the talent in football (and other sports), that have fallen by the wayside for no other reason than their lack of character, application etc etc.

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On another note, in my line of work when I am recruiting someone, i use that example.

I did a recruitment day recently with 20- 30 people, they did numerous group tasks and had an interview.

I told them all at the start, "in honestly I can teach any of you to do the job, that's not what interests me, what interests me is finding the right mentality, the right level of dedication and professionalism, and the reason for this is I can teach any of you to do the job, but what I cant teach (or I would struggle to teach or change), is you and who you are at a base level".

Its critical imo.

Edited by MaVilla
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6 hours ago, terrytini said:

I’m in the middle on the “ goals against” debate.

It’s not usually overly important how many you score or concede, it’s the difference between the two. 
Our goal difference is currently at a rate ( -0.6) which would see us end on Minus 22.

This would be in the bottom 6, a tight relegation fight, every season.

So in that respect, it’s bad !

On the other hand, in the last 5 years the 15 relegation sides have, in all but 2 cases, needed a worse goal difference than that to go down.

In other words, Minus 22 should, just, be ok.

Wouldnt do any harm for it to be below Minus 20 though.

Technically you are right, just score more....but goal scoring is harder than stopping. We have actually scored in most games...but we have conceded 49 that is a lot of goals to eclipse.

the other thing is, about general play, conceding encourages the opposition back in to the game and that has far reaching consequences.when we spend so much time fending them off, its hard to have time to score.

Edited by TRO
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7 minutes ago, MaVilla said:

On another note, in my line of work when I am recruiting someone, i use that example.

I did a recruitment day recently with 20- 30people, they did numerous group tasks and had an interview.

I told them all at the start, "in honestly I can teach any of you to do the job, that's not what interests me, what interests me is finding the right mentality, the right level of dedication and professionalism, and the reason for this is I can teach any of you to do the job, but what I cant teach (or I would struggle to teach or change), is you and who you are at a base level".

Its critical imo.

You are spot on.

The other thing that interests me is this.

I was a sales manager, when i was working, i,m retired now.

I remember my first sales management meeting which was an eye opener. i made my presentation in front of my bosses and proceeded to tell them in that presentation, how well i was doing, as I was, at the end one of my bosses took me to one side and said we know all about the good things you do, thats why you are still here......what we want to know is the things that will make yours and ours performance better.....you don't need to tell us what we all ready know.

Maybe that lesson prompts me to talk about what Dean could do better.....knowing already what he's good at...we all do.

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1 hour ago, TRO said:

I think it relates to most sports.

It was a huge feature of Fergie and Shankly's philosophies.

It took those managers quite a while to achieve the standards they aimed for, and I don't think it's remiss of me to say that luck also played it's part. I'm thinking of that Neil Webb goal that probably saved Fergie from the sack, such are the fine margins when it comes to success and failure. 

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Think if we had better quality in certain positions then under Smith even though we are conceding more, we may just concede less and stop such big leaks.

If we had no wingers or at least had our Wingers float through the center then go out wide should give the midfield more of a presence to contain the opposition, pressure them and relieve them of the ball. I just feel that if our wingers were central most of the game and occasionally went out wide mixing it up, then we'd at least have a proper working midfield where in turn less stress would be put on the defence and keeper.

 

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5 hours ago, MaVilla said:

On another note, in my line of work when I am recruiting someone, i use that example.

I did a recruitment day recently with 20- 30 people, they did numerous group tasks and had an interview.

I told them all at the start, "in honestly I can teach any of you to do the job, that's not what interests me, what interests me is finding the right mentality, the right level of dedication and professionalism, and the reason for this is I can teach any of you to do the job, but what I cant teach (or I would struggle to teach or change), is you and who you are at a base level".

Its critical imo.

That's alot of Teaching the word Teach right there.

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