Dean Smith

[MaVilla]

lovely to win our first 4, but now we have lost 3 out of the last 4....

[Brumstopdogs]

Listening to Dean Smith's interview he seemed angry about the way we gave away the goals so it's not like he doesn't notice it. We clearly need to make better decisions defensively to become harder to beat.

On the whole though he is doing a really good job IMO. All the games this season, with the exception of the Leeds game, I think we've deserved at least a point and not only that, typically, we've played good entertaining football in the process.

We're doing that playing the youngest average starting 11 in the league too so reason for optimism.

[paul514]

16 minutes ago, Brumstopdogs said:

Listening to Dean Smith's interview he seemed angry about the way we gave away the goals so it's not like he doesn't notice it. We clearly need to make better decisions defensively to become harder to beat.

On the whole though he is doing a really good job IMO. All the games this season, with the exception of the Leeds game, I think we've deserved at least a point and not only that, typically, we've played good entertaining football in the process.

We're doing that playing the youngest average starting 11 in the league too so reason for optimism.

People have got carried away our aim should be mid table and to get another 3/5 players next summer 

[Rightdm00]

26 minutes ago, Brumstopdogs said:

Listening to Dean Smith's interview he seemed angry about the way we gave away the goals so it's not like he doesn't notice it. We clearly need to make better decisions defensively to become harder to beat.

On the whole though he is doing a really good job IMO. All the games this season, with the exception of the Leeds game, I think we've deserved at least a point and not only that, typically, we've played good entertaining football in the process.

We're doing that playing the youngest average starting 11 in the league too so reason for optimism.

This is so key I just wanted to re-emphasize the point. Young teams will make mistakes, even egregious ones at times. 

The first goal, when both our CBs got lost ball upfield, is a perfect example. 

I listen to a couple of FPL and soccer podcast in general. Villa have been the talk of the town since we bonked Liverpool on the head 7-2. We are exciting to watch and have been attracting new fans from all over. 

If fans are noticing I promise you propective recruits are as well. Who wouldn't want to come play for an attacking team with a Head Coach who always backs his players. This season was so crucial to get right and currently Dean has us 5 points off of first with a quarter of the season played. Let's enjoy it!

[TrentVilla]

 

Smith has rightly got a lot of praise this season for our away form and the Liverpool thumping but today I think warrants criticism. We can talk about the penalty, the missed chances or whatever else but the reality was, for me at least, we were poor today and not for the first time.

That is three home defeats to Leeds, Southampton and Brighton and 9 goals conceded in those 3 games that is woeful and lessons don't appear to be being learned. At times our defensive positioning and line are suicidal, just look at the position of Mings and Luiz for Welbeck's goal today but we saw the same in the previous two home games. When it is a one off it can be attributed to players possibly but when it persists match after match it is down to the manager either by design or failure to correct.

I also think he got it wrong not making a change and starting with Hourihane or Nakamaba, both are limited but both were fresh and Jack, Luiz and McGinn clearly weren't.

We cannot keep defending the way we are at home and throwing games away because sooner or later our away form will dip.

Throughout last season I said we needed to be more pragmatic and I still level that criticism at Smith, we need to be more disciplined and more structured at the back, our CB's need to be in the right positions. 

He has been rightly praised this season but the home form and performances aren't good enough, he needs to sort out our defence and primarily for me that means sorting out Mings.

[Zatman]

6 hours ago, Demitri_C said:

People saying we wont go down.  0 points from the last 3 suggests over wise.

**** poor dean. Its no good beatkng arsenal then losing to Brighton at home. Pathetic result

pretty sure we beat Arsenal in our last game

[Demitri_C]

7 minutes ago, Zatman said:

pretty sure we beat Arsenal in our last game

3 home games

[HKP90]

2 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

3 home games

You can’t seriously think we’re in the mix to go down though, surely. We could have gone top tonight. We win our game in hand comfortably and get some favours we could be second. 

[AV82]

He's finally built a very strong 11. Can't wait to see what he can do with a strong 18.

[Johnnyp]

I dunno. Hockeyed by Leeds. Southampton were on the beach at half time. Laboured today. We can talk about the good stuff we've done but these are games we would of expected to get something from.

[ozvilla28]

For the good start we had , been very poor in games we lost need to develop some consistency.

[Keyblade]

48 minutes ago, ozvilla28 said:

For the good start we had , been very poor in games we lost need to develop some consistency.

I'd much rather be in this position where we're looking for consistency than not even playing well at all like a lot of teams in this league. It's promising.

[briny_ear]

We had no discernible game plan today. (Maybe losing Barkley so early threw him?) This is 100% down to the coaching staff and it needs to be sorted quickly.

[Tomaszk]

Ah good, plenty of the same faces expecting to win every game. They'll learn at some point.

Fatigue throughout the squad. Barkley injured after 2 mins. Mings a suicidal carcrash. McGinn and Watkins miles off it. Jack as bad as I can remember him ever in the last four years.

And we still should have won.

I'm not even a huge fan of Smith but not winning today is definitely nothing to do with coaching or tactics. We should have scored six.

[DCJonah]

3 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

Ah good, plenty of the same faces expecting to win every game. They'll learn at some point.

Fatigue throughout the squad. Barkley injured after 2 mins. Mings a suicidal carcrash. McGinn and Watkins miles off it. Jack as bad as I can remember him ever in the last four years.

And we still should have won.

I'm not even a huge fan of Smith but not winning today is definitely nothing to do with coaching or tactics. We should have scored six.

Its mad isn't it?

A win would have taken us top of the league and Dean Smith needs to learn quickly and sort it out. 

After a game, where we created more than enough chances to win.

We didn't even have a striker on the bench and lost Barkley after 1 minute.

Some people just don't think. 

Edited November 22, 2020 by DCJonah

[KenjiOgiwara]

3 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

Ah good, plenty of the same faces expecting to win every game. They'll learn at some point.

Fatigue throughout the squad. Barkley injured after 2 mins. Mings a suicidal carcrash. McGinn and Watkins miles off it. Jack as bad as I can remember him ever in the last four years.

And we still should have won.

I'm not even a huge fan of Smith but not winning today is definitely nothing to do with coaching or tactics. We should have scored six.

Well I am a huge fan of Smith, but I have a bone to pick with him when it comes to rotations. 

There's no point having a squad if you don't use it. There's no chance that a fit Nakamba and Horihane wouldn't have been better than a shattered Luiz and McGinn.

Getting this right is his job. I would probably have even started Traore over Grealish.

Now we lost, got a bunch of displeased players in the squad that realise they won't get a look in no matter what. And McGinn, Luiz and Grealish are even more exhausted.

This is straight up poor management. Our bench might be poor, but it's a squad game unfortunately.

[villalad21]

16 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Its mad isn't it?

A win would have taken us top of the league and Dean Smith needs to learn quickly and sort it out. 

After a game, where we created more than enough chances to win.

We didn't even have a striker on the bench and lost Barkley after 1 minute.

Some people just don't think. 

So we are not entitled to criticize when we see the same defensive mistakes to last season?

I thought we played a way too high line and counter attacking teams will expose us for it.

[villalad21]

1 minute ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Now we lost, got a bunch of displeased players in the squad that realise they won't get a look in no matter what.

They lost to Bristol's B team.

Shame on them. They deserve nothing.

[DCJonah]

7 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

So we are not entitled to criticize when we see the same defensive mistakes to last season?

I thought we played a way too high line and counter attacking teams will expose us for it.

If you want. But we aren't going to win every game so there will always be something to criticise with some of you. 

We did enough to win the game yesterday 

[TrentVilla]

4 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

Ah good, plenty of the same faces expecting to win every game. They'll learn at some point.

Fatigue throughout the squad. Barkley injured after 2 mins. Mings a suicidal carcrash. McGinn and Watkins miles off it. Jack as bad as I can remember him ever in the last four years.

And we still should have won.

I'm not even a huge fan of Smith but not winning today is definitely nothing to do with coaching or tactics. We should have scored six.

Nobody expects us to win every game. I hate still false arguments like this made to make other people’s valid criticism seem unreasonable.

We could and probably should have won but that we would have needed to score three to do so was in part down to our defence and their ridiculous positioning. That was either down to coaching or the players ignoring Smith and doing their own thing.