Dean Smith

[OLDVILLAIN]

Gotta love the owls

[Dave-R]

1 minute ago, OLDVILLAIN said:

Gotta love the owls

Well they are called the pigs up here in yorkshire.

[Zatman]

1 hour ago, kieranavfc said:

This is a good point really, in our last 5 league games we haven't even conceded in the first 84 minutes, only the late goals at Everton and West Ham (fluke). Considering we conceded 65 in the first 34 games of last season it's hard to not give him credit for that

the Everton goal if I remember was a bit of a fluke as well. no way Walcott scores another Premier League goal in his career  

[KenjiOgiwara]

7 hours ago, Rolta said:

This isn't what happened at all. Do you even watch the games?

Yes,  and it’s exactly what happened.

We needed to up the tempo on the ball, keep it on the pitch, wait for an opening, but we did nothing but smash it into the box against 3 huge centre backs. 

And to continue your infantile argumentative techniques, do you even watch the games? 

Edited September 22, 2020 by KenjiOgiwara

[DCJonah]

2 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Yes,  and it’s exactly what happened.

We needed to up the tempo on the ball, keep it on the pitch, wait for an opening, but we did nothing but smash it into the box against 3 huge centre backs. 

And to continue your infantile argumentative techniques, do you even watch the games? 

It wasn't at all. 

And this is the arrogance you get on the dean smith thread. Like its that easy to create chances against a well disciplined team with everyone back defending. Just wait for the opening. Tactical genius  

The space was out wide, so we utilised it. There were occasions we found the opening. Watkins nearly scored a great goal and grealish should have hit the target on at least one of his shots. 

We dominated, we won the game, we kept a clean sheet and subs and tweaks made my the manager made the difference and we still get shit like this. 

Money on the first dean smith out post when we lose our first game? I've got 2 candidates I know will be eager. 1 was close in the match thread at half time

 

[Rolta]

4 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Yes,  and it’s exactly what happened.

We needed to up the tempo on the ball, keep it on the pitch, wait for an opening, but we did nothing but smash it into the box against 3 huge centre backs. 

And to continue your infantile argumentative techniques, do you even watch the games? 

I said that because I did watch the game and saw us playing it around not smashing it into their CBs constantly. They had about eight players in the actual box at times. Plenty of times we moved it about doing exactly what you say. We passed it into the box, made some nice potential openings but came up against this entire team in a box. Here's a thought, United are a good team who work hard and who defended well.

Anyway, you do you, and I think everyone on here has worked out what that means already.

[NurembergVillan]

11 hours ago, markavfc40 said:

Unbeaten in our last 6 games five of which have been in the league where we have conceded just 2 goals. He has over seen quite the turnaround defensively.

Attacking wise we are way too pedestrian at times but the injection of pace with Traore will help and hopefully we bring in a least one more attacking player with either pace or who can move the ball quicker.

I am hopeful this season Smith can do what he has over the last couple of years and we can continue to improve and progress under him. He has clearly learned lessons from his first three quarters of last season as a top flight manager and reflected on them/acted on them during lockdown. I am hopeful he/we won't be as naive this season.

 

Further to that, it's the first time we've won 3 consecutive home PL games since 2007.

I was a huge advocate of getting rid pre-lockdown but defensively we look stronger, Douglas Luiz looks better than at any point in his short career so far, the new signings looks promising, and the faults we're calling out (need for pace and trickery) are or have been addressed.

Add the addition of Craig Shakespeare into the mix and I hold my hands up to say the board were right to keep with Dean when the going was getting tough.

[Kiwivillan]

34 minutes ago, Rolta said:

I said that because I did watch the game and saw us playing it around not smashing it into their CBs constantly. They had about eight players in the actual box at times. Plenty of times we moved it about doing exactly what you say. We passed it into the box, made some nice potential openings but came up against this entire team in a box. Here's a thought, United are a good team who work hard and who defended well.

Anyway, you do you, and I think everyone on here has worked out what that means already.

Exactly why they achieved what they did last season. Football spoilers but it worked

[KenjiOgiwara]

4 hours ago, DCJonah said:

It wasn't at all. 

And this is the arrogance you get on the dean smith thread. Like its that easy to create chances against a well disciplined team with everyone back defending. Just wait for the opening. Tactical genius  

The space was out wide, so we utilised it. There were occasions we found the opening. Watkins nearly scored a great goal and grealish should have hit the target on at least one of his shots. 

We dominated, we won the game, we kept a clean sheet and subs and tweaks made my the manager made the difference and we still get shit like this. 

Money on the first dean smith out post when we lose our first game? I've got 2 candidates I know will be eager. 1 was close in the match thread at half time

 

I don't think there's too much arrogance on this thread, but maybe you define that in your own way. 

It's perfectly fine we utilized the space out wide, but there's a distinction between that and pinging crosses for an entire match against a 3 man backline and a single striker. 

It's pretty common tactics to utilize the entire pitch, increase movement offball and tire the opponent. It's a lot more efficient than the lump/hoof/cross tactic we did for most of the match. 

When we also got Grealish it makes that case even harder to fathom. 

I'm a big fan of Deano, but stuff like this and in-game management is something he has to improve on. 

We were quite lucky we won that match considering their penalty miss. Had that gone in I don't think people would have been so understanding on here. 

[Greenfly]

5 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

It's pretty common tactics to utilize the entire pitch, increase movement offball and tire the opponent.

It looked to me like that was the plan. It's hard to do that though when the opponent is holding such a rigid shape.

[mole86]

25 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

 

It's perfectly fine we utilized the space out wide, but there's a distinction between that and pinging crosses for an entire match against a 3 man backline and a single striker. 

 

You keep repeating '3 man backline', they changed to 4-4-1 when they made the sub at the half an hour mark

[PussEKatt]

It would have been nice to score more than one goal against a team that is down to 10 men BUT the thing to remember is.

If a team performs well and wins,then that is what you expect.

If a team performs not so well but still wins then you cant ask for better than that.Can you ?!

[KenjiOgiwara]

1 hour ago, mole86 said:

You keep repeating '3 man backline', they changed to 4-4-1 when they made the sub at the half an hour mark

Fair enough. 45 mint then. Practically speaking it was probably more like a 8 man backline considering how deep they were. Which makes it even more ridiculous to pump crosses. 

Edited September 22, 2020 by KenjiOgiwara

[KenjiOgiwara]

1 hour ago, Greenfly said:

It looked to me like that was the plan. It's hard to do that though when the opponent is holding such a rigid shape.

If so they need to work on it. No wonder we are always crap against 10 men when we are so incredibly slow with the ball. We needed way more urgency and tempo. 

I have nothing against using width against 10 men, men it's what you then do with that wide movement that's important. 

[TrentVilla]

 

The way I see it, there were two games last night, the one before the sending off and the one after.

Before the sending off Sheff United were pressing high and we were playing deep and tying to draw them onto us so we could use Watkins behind them and that is what led to the red card.

After the red card it was an entirely different game against two banks of 4 and players not leaving their positions, playing against 10 is often tricky for this reason and even more so when against a side as well organised as Sheff United who are content with a point.

We were very fortunate (if you can call it that when you buy a £20m keeper) that Martinez saved the penalty otherwise we really would have been up against it.

The rest of the first half was frustrating and at times the players got frustrated and made poor choices. At times the delivery wasn't good enough (Hourihane) and at times we were too slow getting balls in but they were trying to create or exploit space that just wasn't there.

We were trying to pull people out of shape but Sheff United were extremely well organised and disciplined.

Smith was barking at them throughout and in the second half I think we were better, certainly more patient and as the game went on you could sense a goal coming.

I've seen people say we lack pace and we do but pace wouldn't have particularly helped us last night.

It was a big three points for Smith and a very good start against a side that are perhaps a little ahead of us for match sharpness.

Far from perfect, we are still probably in need of 3-4 players but it was a good win and I think Smith got pretty much everything right.

[LondonLax]

My only real criticism of the game last night is that Davis should have come on sooner. Other than that I think the manager got it spot on. 

[maqroll]

Baffling refusal to use all his subs when the players started looking gassed. He does this a lot. 

Also still struggling when we have a man advantage.

[mjmooney]

4 hours ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Fair enough. 45 mint then. Practically speaking it was probably more like a 8 man backline considering how deep they were. Which makes it even more ridiculous to pump crosses. 

And yet the goal came from a cross (corner). 

[villalad21]

13 minutes ago, maqroll said:

Baffling refusal to use all his subs when the players started looking gassed. He does this a lot. 

Also still struggling when we have a man advantage.

He doesn't trust his subs.

That would be my guess.

[KenjiOgiwara]

7 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

And yet the goal came from a cross (corner). 

Not really the point. We should have scored several more with a more fitting tactic. 

There's a reason why we are always shite against 10 men.