Dean Smith

[Zatman]

6 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

In hindsight probably yes.

Y'all keep saying it was too early for us to get promoted and that we ain't ready.

But who knows? Bruce could still have ended up getting us promoted. We were 2 points off 6th. It's a very tight league.

Bloody hell. Credibility crashed but thanks for the laughs

Nearly as bad as when rated Nyland over Heaton

[VillaJ100]

29 minutes ago, Villarocker said:

Dean Smith is one of us, no denying. He's going to do his all to keep this club in the Premier League. But, if the players aren't good enough there's not much he can do. 

Could another manager with more experience have done better, possibly. But, in my opinion, the lack of experience everywhere across the club has resulted in this struggle for survival. 

I have no doubts in my mind that if we go down the player recruitment will include a few more older/wiser heads in the team/squad. Also, if the owners decide to stay with Deano, I think that he will want more of a say in player recruitment both next season and if we were to go back up. 

I have been considering that. If he's had little say in recruitment he's going to be completely hamstrung with the batch of duff players

[Mjvilla]

3 minutes ago, av1 said:

Block him life is easier . 

I tried that but in every bloody thread I'd see his posts quoted or 'youve chosen to ignore villalads posts' every time I came on. Blocking him is pointless. I'm reminded of him constantly!

[M_Afro]

Why are people still absolving Smith of blame for our summer transfers? He himself has admitted that he was central to who we bought in. The evidence also backs that up. Konsa and Jota played for him at Brentford. Mings, Hause, AEG all played for him at a Villa before we signed them. I don’t imagine Heaton was a Suso signing. Smith admitted he had been scouting Engels since he was boss at Brentford. On signing Nakamba he talked about how his style and attributes would perfectly suit our style of play (whatever that is). 
Who else is there? Luiz, Wesley and Trez? Out of those 3 I would say that 2 are still likely to prove excellent signings.

Whatever you think of the signings, which I think some will stand us in good stead over the years to come, Smith was central to all that we did.

[Mjvilla]

12 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Bloody hell. Credibility crashed but thanks for the laughs

Nearly as bad as when rated Nyland over Heaton

Credibility? He had some?

[cheltenham_villa]

17 minutes ago, M_Afro said:

Why are people still absolving Smith of blame for our summer transfers? He himself has admitted that he was central to who we bought in. The evidence also backs that up. Konsa and Jota played for him at Brentford. Mings, Hause, AEG all played for him at a Villa before we signed them. I don’t imagine Heaton was a Suso signing. Smith admitted he had been scouting Engels since he was boss at Brentford. On signing Nakamba he talked about how his style and attributes would perfectly suit our style of play (whatever that is). 
Who else is there? Luiz, Wesley and Trez? Out of those 3 I would say that 2 are still likely to prove excellent signings.

Whatever you think of the signings, which I think some will stand us in good stead over the years to come, Smith was central to all that we did.

I wondered this, I'm sure something like 70% of our signings either played for him previously or hed admitted scouting. 

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

1 hour ago, Zatman said:

I wouldnt be surprised if Smith quit at the end of the season regardless of what we did, think he might want spend time with his family after what happened to his Dad during lockdown

He doesn't strike me as a quitter to be fair.

However, losing his Dad must be a huge blow, combined with the pressure of management.

Thing is, Management might be the one things which takes his mind off it all.

[villalad21]

3 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

He doesn't strike me as a quitter to be fair.

However, losing his Dad must be a huge blow, combined with the pressure of management.

Thing is, Management might be the one things which takes his mind off it all.

Hardly any managers quits from own free will.

MON comes to mind. But those occurrences are rare.

[TreeVillan]

He has a point when you say we should stick with Smith during this poor run and bring up that it was the right thing to do sacking Bruce during his poor run. 

He's also right in saying that a new manager might have the same bounce that Smith had when he joined.  

[villa4europe]

53 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

In hindsight probably yes.

Y'all keep saying it was too early for us to get promoted and that we ain't ready.

But who knows? Bruce could still have ended up getting us promoted. We were 2 points off 6th. It's a very tight league.

Bruce was 2 points off 6th we should have kept him

Smith is 1 point off PL safety get him the **** out of our club

[foreveryoung]

11 hours ago, Keyblade said:

I believe this too. Hope he can pull off another miracle this year. Things were similarly crucial this time last year and he pulled a rabbit out of the hat.

That he believes we have been playing better after the break is all very Lambert-esk. I personally think he he fighting to keep his job and needs results,  he won't be with us next season if we go down.

[hippo]

2 hours ago, Mjvilla said:

So, if villa stay up this season and next year at this stage of the season we sit 1 point above the relegation zone you would call this 'fantastic progress'.

RUBBISH

Not sure of your point. ?

Staying up this season would be an achievement- but we looked to have failed on that.

Right now if you told me with 6 games remaining of the 20/21 season we would be a prem club and outside of the RZ - yes I would be ok with that.

 

[TreeVillan]

44 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Bruce was 2 points off 6th we should have kept him

Smith is 1 point off PL safety get him the **** out of our club.

It works both ways. 

 

[villa4europe]

14 minutes ago, TreeVillan said:

It works both ways. 

 

It does at headline level, both should have done better

when you apply context though smith is nowhere near as bad

[DaveAV1]

20 hours ago, villanmac said:

It just hit me that we actually went into a premier league season with this as our attack (strikers, wingers):

Davis

Wesley

Kodija

El Ghazi

Trezeguet

Jota

Jesus Christ, thats horrific.  

Jesus Christ could be handy. Not so good on crosses but if we need a miracle, he’s the man. 

[TreeVillan]

27 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

It does at headline level, both should have done better

when you apply context though smith is nowhere near as bad

What context is that? 

[Laughable Chimp]

20 hours ago, villanmac said:

It just hit me that we actually went into a premier league season with this as our attack (strikers, wingers):

Davis

Wesley

Kodija

El Ghazi

Trezeguet

Jota

Jesus Christ, thats horrific.  

I mean, it really isn't that bad tbh. Prior to the restart we never had a problem scoring goals. Even now we're midtable in terms of goals.

Its our defence that's horrific to which we're joint bottom atm.

Edited July 4, 2020 by Laughable Chimp

[AvfcRigo82]

26 minutes ago, DaveAV1 said:

Jesus Christ could be handy. Not so good on crosses but if we need a miracle, he’s the man. 

I hope he would do a better job than the current Jesus!

[briny_ear]

48 minutes ago, DaveAV1 said:

Jesus Christ could be handy. Not so good on crosses but if we need a miracle, he’s the man. 

Disagree about the crosses. I think he’s nailed on for them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Humble apologies if this offends any devout Xians)

 

 

[KentVillan]

I think transfer policy was a strategic failure, rather than a case of individual transfers being a disaster.

A lot of our signings look like decent value squad players who you’d slowly integrate into a side and probably get a good return on.

The mistake - which I think came from Purslow, Suso and Smith collectively - was to undervalue the importance of hitting the ground running.

Wesley should have been learning his trade off the bench or as junior partner in a front 2. Similar for Luiz. Mings would have benefited from an older head next to him.

We just needed a bit more proven experience, and that probably meant breaking Purslow’s rules on loans and players aged 30+, just for a season, while the squad found its feet.

Had we done that, I think we would be about 10 points further up the table, and looking forward to watching players like Wesley and Luiz kick on next season.

Hard to say from the outside exactly how much blame Smith deserves. He had never managed in the PL before and was probably a bit optimistic about what level of player he needed to compete. Maybe he was too subservient to Purslow. Maybe he didn’t explain his ideas properly to Suso. I imagine it’ll be a while before we really find out, if ever.