Dean Smith

[Nabby]

3 minutes ago, useless said:

I remember at the start of the season and people saying how poor the premier league was and outside the top six or seven teams the quality wasn't that much better than the top end of the championship. Certainly I can't remember anyone saying that we'd need a miracle to stay up, can remember most getting excited by our signings and praising Suso for how well he'd done with that £140m.

 

It is a poor league , which makes it worse that we are where we are 

[PaulC]

14 minutes ago, Rolta said:

Getting promoted last year from where we began was a big achievement. I'm willing to stick by him. This year, with the lack of quality in the squad bar 2/3 players, we were always up against it. Watford, as I said above, have quality up front that we could dream of. They could easily not have beaten Norwich without Welbeck's overhead kick. Sarr, £30million, scored two against Liverpool, and Deeney, a proven performer in the prem got one with Welbeck on the bench. We are a makeshift team, but that's a direct consequence of Tony Xia.

Yes but we spent £145 mil on players I would expect more than this. We would have been better spending that money on fewer but better quality players and filled the gaps with loans and youth. 

[Rolta]

Just now, PaulC said:

Yes but we spent £145 mil on players I would expect more than this. We would have been better spending that money on fewer but better quality players and filled the gaps with loans and youth. 

It's so easy to write this but it doesn't make it true. 

[Nabby]

Just now, rbcuk said:

If he wasn’t a villa fan can guarantee a lot more would want him sacked, I wanted him gone after that Southampton game at Xmas 

If this was Bruce 

1)Terry or any assistant manager /coach would not be taking the abuse Terry is at the moment 

2)Suso may be critized but as many would be saying the players are poorly coached by Bruce

3)100% No on would be saying stick with Bruce he knows the championship he will bring us back up 

 

 

[VillaCas]

2 minutes ago, Sulberto21 said:

If you look closely we actually spent less. Those clubs had vastly higher revenues from player sales though.

Two things I said were that Dean Smith should be given a golden handshake the day we got promoted. And we should stick a finger up at ffp and buy big i.e spend around £200 million that's just to account for the fact we've been away from the Premier League for 3 seasons and the game has advanced at an accelerated rate. Not bringing in an experienced (in the PL) head to help the players on the pitch has proven to be a huge mistake.

I agree with much of this. Purslows “no loanees” rule was what did us I feel - a couple of older heads would have made the difference

As for Smith, the nastiness on here is not warranted - when he had a competitive squad in the championship he did well (record breaking well), many of us realised that we wouldn’t be competitive in the PL

I don’t think he will be sacked, I think that we will rectify the squad problems in the close season and do well next time round

Ive never seen such ridiculous criticisms of a manager in my life. A 100 reasons from press conferences to drinks breaks have been cited as proof Smith is not up to the job. The truth is that he is an inexperienced manager with an uncompetitive squad. 

[Demitri_C]

1 minute ago, Rolta said:

In another post you said we still spent **** all? Building a squad from scratch in two months to compete with 19 teams with established squads is not easy. Everyone else was in a better position than us when we were promoted by an insane margin. How many times has it happened like it happened to us this pre season? We had about eight players.

I said we spent eff all? Where was that? Dont remember saying taht if you can direct me to it.

Im aorry but 150m i expect better when you consider how bad watford bournmouth norwich and even west ham at parts.

We went down the stupid route. Inexperienced players from abroad hoping we could mustle a tsam toegther and sell them on for profit (worked so well last time we were relegated) de ja vu anyone?

But there is no denying for me smith has been a large part of the problem.he looks so lost and oyt of his depth its incredible. 

Another clueless sherwood at premier league level

[PaulC]

1 minute ago, Rolta said:

It's so easy to write this but it doesn't make it true. 

Yes of course but depends how low you want to set your level of expectations. No manager in the history of this football club has escaped dismissal after taking the club down. 

[jacketspuds]

West Ham and Watford demonstrating the positive impact a change of manager can have. Us and Bournemouth sticking with what we have, and it seems to have failed.

Smith should be sacked the minute we are down.

[VillaCas]

14 minutes ago, useless said:

I remember at the start of the season and people saying how poor the premier league was and outside the top six or seven teams the quality wasn't that much better than the top end of the championship. Certainly I can't remember anyone saying that we'd need a miracle to stay up, can remember most getting excited by our signings and praising Suso for how well he'd done with that £140m.

 

A number of people said exactly that. 

On 12/07/2019 at 20:35, VillaCas said:

I hope you’re right about Jota I really do - I’d got him earmarked as a squad player at best

On your other point, My original response was to someone who felt that our midfield was “immense” and the we could be challenging nearer the top than the bottom

like you I’ll be happy with 17th this time round

 

[NSmith22]

20 minutes ago, jacketspuds said:

West Ham and Watford demonstrating the positive impact a change of manager can have. Us and Bournemouth sticking with what we have, and it seems to have failed.

Smith should be sacked the minute we are down.

I take your point on Pearson but Moyes has been an abject failure for 5+ years. West Ham never should’ve been in the position they are and that has more to do with mentality than anything. They coasted through the season and used their quality at the last possible moment to gain safety. 

[Mister_a]

Re: the amount spent. 

I think some people on here are not realising what 140 mil can buy you these days, especially when we needed around 10 players to stand still. 

Their reaction to seeing that number reminds me of my nan asking me to go to the chippy and get fish and chips for everyone and giving me 50p, which was clearly not enough for the task at hand.

Not absolving DS mind, the only one player who seems to have improved this season is Luiz, and that appears to be a reflection of his own drive and motivation. All the rest have regressed. 

[DaveAV1]

23 minutes ago, PaulC said:

Yes of course but depends how low you want to set your level of expectations. No manager in the history of this football club has escaped dismissal after taking the club down. 

Vic Crowe kept his job when we were relegated to division 3. He’d only taken over from Tommy Docherty with a few games to go and we finished the season strongly. 

Dean’s situation is different though. We are not finishing the season strongly at all. I have a lot of sympathy for him. The whole recruitment policy is flawed and the person running it isn’t doing a very good job either. He’s also had bad luck with injuries to key players. 

Never the less the head coach can’t not be held responsible for a big chunk of the blame, regardless of the amount of influence he has or doesn’t have on recruitment. If he didn’t have much influence then he should have made sure he did.
 

Overall he hasn’t matched the standard required at this level, mitigating circumstances or not. I’m gutted for him as I’m sure he is but I’m sure his payoff will soften the blow in a week or two when things are less raw. I wish him the very best for the future but football is an unforgiving business and for the club he undoubtably loves its time for someone else to try. 

[Killeen30]

Even taking in account the new contract earlier in the season I really think he might have been sacked by now had COVID19 not have happened. The crowd at Villa Park would have turned long ago.

I am  romantic so personally I would give him the start of next season and see how it goes. I do love the fact that we have a supporter managing us. In my opinion the players that were signed were not his first choice, maybe not even second choice. I’m always of the opinion that if you trust the manager to do a good job you let him choose who he signs. I think if we were to give Smith the start of next season we’d start well. We would simply have to. If he is given that time he’ll know that the team will have to hit the ground running. 

[villanmac]

On 22/12/2019 at 11:12, villanmac said:

Regardless of tactics our team is basically Mings, Grealish and Mcginn. We need all 3 to be on it to win games. The rest of the team are just periphery players, airy fairy...good when the going is good but not good enough or with enough character to affect the game themselves. Passengers.

The level of pressure on those 3 is ridiculous and it was never sustainable. It's why we'll go down imo. It's so disappointing because with them and Heaton we had an incredible core and even if we couldn't get the quality in this summer we just needed some solid burnley style players around them to stay safe this season. 

That was my view half way through the season and cant say its changed, the squad is just shit. Fair play Luiz has stepped up but as i say it was never sustainable relying on so few players carrying us all the time. I honestly think the drop off in form of Mings,  Mcginn and Jack was inevitable with so little support. With such a low opinion of the quality of our players i just cant get on Smiths back too much. Wouldnt be gutted if he was sacked but i cant call for it. 

Edited July 11, 2020 by villanmac

[Laughable Chimp]

52 minutes ago, VillaCas said:

A number of people said exactly that. 

 

The average expectation according to that poll back then for where we would finish was 14th place. The fact that you had different expectations doesn't mean everyone else did too.

[Zhan_Zhuang]

Just now, Laughable Chimp said:

The average expectation according to that poll back then for where we would finish was 14th place. The fact that you had different expectations doesn't mean everyone else did too.

All ifs and buts aside if we had kept Heaton and Wesley fit and hadn't been robbed seven points by VAR it wasn't impossible.

 

[VillaCas]

22 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

The average expectation according to that poll back then for where we would finish was 14th place. The fact that you had different expectations doesn't mean everyone else did too.

They were wrong

According to many, our midfield was immense and Jota was going to tear the PL a new a*hole

Edited July 11, 2020 by VillaCas

[DCJonah]

1 hour ago, jacketspuds said:

West Ham and Watford demonstrating the positive impact a change of manager can have. Us and Bournemouth sticking with what we have, and it seems to have failed.

Smith should be sacked the minute we are down.

They both have the better squads down there. 

I highly doubt moyes or Pearson would have kept this lot up. 

[VillaCas]

25 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

The average expectation according to that poll back then for where we would finish was 14th place. The fact that you had different expectations doesn't mean everyone else did too.

These are the same experts who are now calling for Smiths head

[VillaChris]

1 hour ago, Rolta said:

It's so easy to write this but it doesn't make it true. 

We should've got some season long loans in, surely you can see that? It worked for us getting promoted.

You get a couple in either as squad options or ones who can actually improve first 11. End of season they help us stay up and we sign them permanently or we don't and then with extra year of prem money re-invest in squad to hopefully improve further.

We spent over 50m this season on Wesley, Trez, Konsa, Targett. I can't believe there wasn't at least two loans available who'd be better thant that. Leicester for example signed Ryan Bennett on loan in January from Wolves who's better than Konsa (and Hause).