AvfcRigo82 Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 13 hours ago, Keyblade said: I don't see where the better Villa are? Since the return 4 games played, 2 pts from a possible 12 (3 of those games were at Villa Park). We look no different to what we did before the cut off. 17 hours ago, AvfcRigo82 said: • Dean Smith's side are enduring the longest current winless run in the division, with two draws and six defeats in eight games. • Villa's only two victories in their past 34 top-flight away fixtures came against Norwich in October and Burnley in January (D6, L26). • They have only managed two points from 15 Premier League away fixtures against the side starting the day top of the table since beating Leeds 2-1 in January 2000. • The Villans are on a club Premier League record run of 23 consecutive away fixtures without a clean sheet. • They are winless in all 15 league fixtures this season against the teams who begin this matchround in the top nine of the table (D2, L13). • Jack Grealish has gone nine league appearances without a goal and only contributed one assist in those matches. "There will be a better Villa next year". There needs to be. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foreveryoung Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 57 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said: 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. Problem is with Smith we can't have both. Him saying the defence is now much better, may be, (I don't think so) but now we have sacrificed the attack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 6 minutes ago, foreveryoung said: Problem is with Smith we can't have both. Him saying the defence is now much better, may be, (I don't think so) but now we have sacrificed the attack. We haven't sacrificed the attack. Its not like we were a free flowing attacking team and we've cut that out. Our attack is poor because we have 1 good attacking player. Nothing to do with sacrificing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomaszk Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 3 hours 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. Because he has a director of football that signs all the players. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 1 hour ago, TreeVillan said: What context is that? You think Steve bruce had the 12th best squad in the championship? You think smiths squad is better than the 17th best in the PL? 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomaszk Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 11 minutes ago, villa4europe said: You think smiths squad is better than the 17th best in the PL? It's a great question this, it really is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 4 minutes ago, Tomaszk said: It's a great question this, it really is. I've got us about 15th maybe at a push The get out is of course Sheffield utd don't have the 8th best or whatever they are Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PussEKatt Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 40 minutes ago, AvfcRigo82 said: I don't see where the better Villa are? Since the return 4 games played, 2 pts from a possible 12 (3 of those games were at Villa Park). We look no different to what we did before the cut off. "There will be a better Villa next year". There needs to be. Look on the bright side.There cant possibly be a worse Villa,can there ?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveAV1 Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 45 minutes ago, KentVillan said: 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. Spot on. We need a mix of experience and good young developing players at varying stages of their development. The experienced players would help both the team and the younger players develop and grow as a group. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCJonah Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 5 minutes ago, villa4europe said: I've got us about 15th maybe at a push The get out is of course Sheffield utd don't have the 8th best or whatever they are I'd say, everyone fit and healthy and performing well, probably 15th/16th at a push like you say. Current squad is probably around 19th best. I don't see many of our players who would get into many other teams in this league. Sheff United have massively over achieved. There is no way their squad would consistently finish up there. Wilder has done a superb job this year. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveAV1 Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 3 minutes ago, PussEKatt said: Look on the bright side.There cant possibly be a worse Villa,can there ?! You don’t have to have an encyclopaedic or long memory to know that unfortunately there most definitely can! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PussEKatt Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 17 minutes ago, DaveAV1 said: You don’t have to have an encyclopaedic or long memory to know that unfortunately there most definitely can! Thanks for that.I feel a lot better now ?! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TreeVillan Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 (edited) 1 hour ago, villa4europe said: You think Steve bruce had the 12th best squad in the championship? You think smiths squad is better than the 17th best in the PL? Yes I do, the start of the season tells you that. Do you think Newcastle's squad is the 13th best and therefore better than ours? Edited July 4, 2020 by TreeVillan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaCas Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 1 hour ago, KentVillan said: 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. Good post I believe that main culpability for transfers sits with Purslow (for the strategy) and Suso (for the execution) - potentially Smith could be charged with being too passive in accepting Suso’s recommendations but I have a little sympathy as I guess Smith agreed to work within the existing structure which so far has let us down I agree in general with the concept of signing and developing young players and of avoiding loans which only develop players for other clubs, but I don’t think we were in a position to follow Purslows approach as slavishly as we have - in particular two or three Cahill-type signings would have made a world of difference Trez, Wesley, Nakamba and Samatta have all been disappointments (Wesley incredibly so). Luiz is only just showing signs that he can function in the PL. I believe that they were all Suso signings. It’s a moot point whether these players will eventually come good because we needed signings who came good from the off, not in two or three years time In short we do not, in my opinion, yet have a PL quality squad. So far the owners have found the right man to get us up and have found the money to build the club - I’m now trusting them to make the right decisions around Purslow, Suso and Smith 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VillaCas Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 8 minutes ago, TreeVillan said: Yes I do, the start of the season tells you that. Do you think Newcastle's squad is the 13th best and therefore better than ours? Some clubs will always exceed or confound expectations and/or have the rub of the green. This season SheffU for example are over achieving, West Ham are under achieving. I don’t know whether Newcastle are the 13th best or not but I do believe that they are markedly better than us at the moment 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
M_Afro Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 1 hour ago, Tomaszk said: Because he has a director of football that signs all the players. Suso does the deals maybe but it’s largely on Smith’s direction Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomaszk Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 6 minutes ago, M_Afro said: Suso does the deals maybe but it’s largely on Smith’s direction Incorrect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villa4europe Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 (edited) 31 minutes ago, TreeVillan said: Yes I do, the start of the season tells you that. Do you think Newcastle's squad is the 13th best and therefore better than ours? Yes I think their squad is better than ours but only just More importantly how many players in Newcastles squad are in their 1st PL season? How many in ours? That also gets factored in contributing towards making them "better", Newcastle have rode the shit season better than we have Edited July 4, 2020 by villa4europe Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TreeVillan Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 15 minutes ago, VillaCas said: Some clubs will always exceed or confound expectations and/or have the rub of the green. This season SheffU for example are over achieving, West Ham are under achieving. I don’t know whether Newcastle are the 13th best or not but I do believe that they are markedly better than us at the moment He brought up the idea of Smith having the 17th worst squad in the league, if that's all that mattered then replacing a manager halfway through a season would never work, for any team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villalad21 Posted July 4, 2020 Share Posted July 4, 2020 Just now, Tomaszk said: Incorrect. Smith made many of the transfers. Heaton, Targett, El Ghazi, Mings, Hause, Konsa, Jota. Also he's had his mind on Engels when he was at Brentford, so i figure that was also his signing. The rest then: Nakamba. Not been good enough Luiz. One of our better players this season. Guilbert. Also one of our better players Wesley. I think he is crap but apparently some on here rates him. Trezeguet. Crap Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts