Dean Smith

[handsworthvilla]

 

8 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

He's not telling Hourihane to bottle tackles every time someone is within 5 yards of him.

This is pretty high in your list of reasons considering he's started 1 out of the 4 games we've lost this season. Scapegoat 

[tomav84]

1 hour ago, lexicon said:

I genuinely think some will never be happy, and for them it's not about that - supporting football is simply their cathartic way of venting their frustrations at life

got one or 2 on my group chat that love being miserable about villa. it feels normal and probably comforting to them. during our fantastic start and one or 2 of us were doing tongue in cheek 'what ifs' about europe they kept shooting us down rather than enjoying the moment. they go quiet after a win though, like many on here. there is just not the level of analysis after a win but a defeat is picked apart with minute detail. smith not good enough, trez is shite etc etc

think if you asked these people what they want, they couldn't tell you. because guaranteed if you offered them 10th at start of season they'd be just fine with that, which based on performances and results, is actually quite likely this season

[mykeyb]

13 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

Watching the trolls turn fans on Smith so easily it's no surprise the politics in this country is a mess. People are swayed so easily.

Where has any fan turned on Smith?

[sheepyvillian]

" Mommy, Mommy, it's the fickle people again. Aren't they funny, Mommy" ?

Edited December 2, 2020 by sheepyvillian

[DCJonah]

3 hours ago, Zatman said:

Dont think anybody was labelling anything at you. There is the notable posters that come on here after every loss to bring the neagtive spin

Yeah, I think this is why it seems defensive at times.

Let's not forget the main people moaning, wanted him sacked after only a couple of months in the job and wanted him sacked multiple times last year. 

 

[Tomaszk]

3 hours ago, TRO said:

We will be work in progress forever.......every team, is work in progress, that is the dynamics of football....some are just more advanced with a successful WIP than we are...Leeds have only just come up, but look at their performance against us....they are WIP too.

I think the main thrux of my comments have been why have we dipped to such a stark contrast in form in such a short space of time......and you have done nothing to give your explanation for it.....just quoting nebulous things like how lucky we are to be Villa Fans.....yeah we all know that.

We're above Leeds with a game in hand.

We battered West Ham and deserved no less than three points.

We deserved at least a point v Brighton and enough chances to win.

The performance has dipped from the 7-2 win v Liverpool, yes. I don't think the West Ham performance overall was that far off Arsenal to be honest. We just missed all our best chances Monday whereas as Arsenal we buried them all.

Genuine question. Have you ever seen us lose and thought we played well? Or if we lose do you just say ah well we were crap there.

[TRO]

15 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

We're above Leeds with a game in hand.

We battered West Ham and deserved no less than three points.

We deserved at least a point v Brighton and enough chances to win.

The performance has dipped from the 7-2 win v Liverpool, yes. I don't think the West Ham performance overall was that far off Arsenal to be honest. We just missed all our best chances Monday whereas as Arsenal we buried them all.

Genuine question. Have you ever seen us lose and thought we played well? Or if we lose do you just say ah well we were crap there.

You either don't read my posts properly, I don't explain myself well enough for you or you are attempting to insult my intelligence.

A lot of what you say is in the interpretation what is meant by playing well.....If you think we can play well, by recyling balls in midfield, unchallenged and then drop clangers in the boxes....then I struggle to say we played well.

errors are a part of the game.....good teams create less than bad teams.

We clearly see the game differently.....I thought the 5-5 against Forest was entertaining, but sloppy.....I thought the 1-0 win against Bayern Munich was an exhibition of resillience, togetherness, doggedness and sheer determination to succeed, some will say we was lucky and got battered.

I thought we played well initially against Leeds in the 2-3 last season.

I thought the games we lost so far have been poor play....against West Ham we were dozy.

conceding goals is a part of the game, its a part of playing well as is scoring goals....its much harder to score than deny the opposition from scoring.

I can't think off hand of a situation where we concede in excess of 2/3 goals and I find myself saying we played well.....if we score more, it usually tempers my thoughts....i.e 7-2

I also think it is easy to pass the ball around whan a team retreats like Sheff Utd and West ham in the second period, there is minor challenge to the passer of the ball...they can all do that unchallenged.

However, I will say this.....I always answer your questions with back up reasoning, even if I am wrong......you rarely answer my questions back.....you just bombard me with more challenges to my reasoning.

one question back......Q

Accepting that 3 points is the objective of every game we play.....do you ever look back on games at the activities in the box to determine why you think we lost or won.......is it just a case of oh we won we lost, lets move on to the next game?.....can you enlighten me, as I may understand your thinking.

Edited December 3, 2020 by TRO

[sheepyvillian]

Some on here were saying Smith should show more passion, but that's not his way. Like he says, when we win he doesn't get carried away and when we lose he doesn't get too down. Sometimes passion and emotion can cause you to say the wrong thing or make the wrong choice. I like the fact that he's calm and measured in his thoughts .

I don't recall Ron Saunders being emotional or vividly passionate, in fact, quite the opposite ,he was a man of few words who kept his emotions in check. The players were told their jobs and all he demanded was 110% effort when they put on that shirt. Very simple, but it worked. Everyone knew where they stood and what was required of them and that's pretty much how I see the way the club is now. The manager has built a happy workplace and that in itself is some achievement when you consider some of the in house dramas we have had throughout the bad times. It's a pleasure to see this club in such a healthy way, I accept we are still a long way from where we want to be, but at least it feels like we can get there and we have two wonderful owners to thank for that. 

[villa4europe]

Another stat which suggests an improvement 

Last season we were 17th in the league for touches in the opponents box averaging 19.1 per game

This year we're second in the league averaging 32.2

 

[Tomaszk]

8 minutes ago, TRO said:

We clearly see the game differently

I agree

8 minutes ago, TRO said:

I thought the 5-5 against Forest was entertaining, but sloppy

Incredible entertainment yes, a crazy game. I don't think we were "concede five goals sloppy", I think we had a horrendous keeper chucking in two or three of the five.

8 minutes ago, TRO said:

I thought the 1-0 win against Bayern Munich was an exhibition of resillience, togetherness, doggedness and sheer determination to succeed, some will say we was lucky and got battered.

We were second best and fortunate. Don't care, that's football, European Champions.

8 minutes ago, TRO said:

I thought we played well against Leeds in the 2-3 last season.

Surprising. Thought we were poor to average and got dominated from the second we went 2-0 up early on.

8 minutes ago, TRO said:

I thought the games we lost so far have been poor play....against West Ham we were dozy.

All of them? No chance. Sweeping generalisation.

Leeds deserved to beat us, West Ham did not.

Moyes said as much after that they were lucky. Should have scored at least three. That's football.

8 minutes ago, TRO said:

Accepting that 3 points is the objective of every game we play.....do you ever look back on games at the activities in the box to determine why you think we lost or won.......is it just a case of oh we won we lost, lets move on to the next game?.....can you enlighten me, as I may understand your thinking.

Yes I will look at performance and see if I think we deserved the result we got. From the activity in and out of the box, wherever.

[villalad21]

55 minutes ago, villa4europe said:

Another stat which suggests an improvement 

Last season we were 17th in the league for touches in the opponents box averaging 19.1 per game

This year we're second in the league averaging 32.2

 

But it will all go to waste if we keep defending like schoolboys..

If you have to score 2 every game just to draw it will always be a struggle. 

You need to be strong in both boxes. But your own box is the most important, it's what gives you a foundation.

[DaveAV1]

1 hour ago, villalad21 said:

But it will all go to waste if we keep defending like schoolboys..

If you have to score 2 every game just to draw it will always be a struggle. 

You need to be strong in both boxes. But your own box is the most important, it's what gives you a foundation.

We lost our first away game and conceded our first away goals against West Ham. So although we defended badly twice on Monday evening, that would appear to be the exception rather than the norm. 

[villalad21]

9 hours ago, DaveAV1 said:

We lost our first away game and conceded our first away goals against West Ham. So although we defended badly twice on Monday evening, that would appear to be the exception rather than the norm. 

Home and Away games really makes no difference this season

[MrBlack]

11 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Home and Away games really makes no difference this season

Our form suggests otherwise.  Just because there are no fans, it doesnt mean it makes no difference.

Also,  improving our attacking this season,  whilst still having a defence as bad as last year would be an improvement and see us higher in the table.  No issue with that. If we can improve in both areas, which we have so far with season long stats that back it up, will see us even further up. 

Some concerning momentary lapses the last few games,  a couple of unlucky results, but not a regular issue that we need to panic about yet.  You're expecting the impossible; permanent perfect performances. 

[useless]

Our forms is less to do with homeanway and more to do with the quality of the teams we're losing to and the quality of the that teams we've beat.

We've been beating the leagues better sides and losing to the ones that might be perceived as the weaker ones.

So I think it's a mental issue, maybe we try harder against the better teams and less against the others.

In other words we aren't losing to Southy, Leeds and Brighton because they were home games...

But more because we (maybe subconsciously) underrated them.

Or at least that state of mind played a part.

 

[sparrow1988]

15 minutes ago, useless said:

Our forms is less to do with homeanway and more to do with the quality of the teams we're losing to and the quality of the that teams we've beat.

We've been beating the leagues better sides and losing to the ones that might be perceived as the weaker ones.

So I think it's a mental issue, maybe we try harder against the better teams and less against the others.

In other words we aren't losing to Southy, Leeds and Brighton because they were home games...

But more because we (maybe subconsciously) underrated them.

Or at least that state of mind played a part.

 

There's a bit of this in it, but there is also the fact that the better teams do more of the attacking, allowing us space to break in to and play in when we get the ball. Whereas the perceived weaker teams sit back, reduce the space in the danger areas, allow us to attack and then have acres of space when they break. It's finding that balance against the perceived weaker teams which is the key to us beating them more often.

Perceived weaker teams is also key. There's not a whole lot of difference in quality between say 6th (maybe even 4th) and 15th in this league.

[TRO]

19 minutes ago, sparrow1988 said:

There's a bit of this in it, but there is also the fact that the better teams do more of the attacking, allowing us space to break in to and play in when we get the ball. Whereas the perceived weaker teams sit back, reduce the space in the danger areas, allow us to attack and then have acres of space when they break. It's finding that balance against the perceived weaker teams which is the key to us beating them more often.

Perceived weaker teams is also key. There's not a whole lot of difference in quality between say 6th (maybe even 4th) and 15th in this league.

Spot on.

[OxfordVillan]

2 minutes ago, useless said:

Our forms is less to do with homeanway and more to do with the quality of the teams we're losing to and the quality of the that teams we've beat.

We've been beating the leagues better sides and losing to the ones that might be perceived as the weaker ones.

So I think it's a mental issue, maybe we try harder against the better teams and less against the others.

In other words we aren't losing to Southy, Leeds and Brighton because they were home games...

But more because we (maybe subconsciously) underrated them.

Or at least that state of mind played a part.

 

Spot on. Hopefully it’s a part of the learning curve and  is a temporary bump in the road, but the team definitely look like they have expected to score against the perceived lesser clubs. And that has resulted in defensive mistakes that have handed those teams some simple goals. So I believe it’s a mindset issue that should iron itself out with a bit of time. 

[Vive_La_Villa]

1 hour ago, sparrow1988 said:

Perceived weaker teams is also key. There's not a whole lot of difference in quality between say 6th (maybe even 4th) and 15th in this league.

Spot on. It’s fine margins against the majority of teams.

Which is why we really need to be beating Burnley and Albion. They are two games if we don’t get 6 points from It will be very disappointing and I’ll argue we’ll be in the relegation scrap. 

[KenjiOgiwara]

1 hour ago, sparrow1988 said:

There's a bit of this in it, but there is also the fact that the better teams do more of the attacking, allowing us space to break in to and play in when we get the ball. Whereas the perceived weaker teams sit back, reduce the space in the danger areas, allow us to attack and then have acres of space when they break. It's finding that balance against the perceived weaker teams which is the key to us beating them more often.

Perceived weaker teams is also key. There's not a whole lot of difference in quality between say 6th (maybe even 4th) and 15th in this league.

Definitely. But we are a work in progress. On our day we can beat anyone, but we are such a raw side. We make mistakes, we aren't switched on, we struggle on basic defending, we aren't clinical enough, and much more. But we also have a stupidly high level when we get it right. Finding that consistency needs to be a point of focus going forward.

But in terms of teams inviting us to attack, i.e. they sit deep etc. I think that more easily shows the inexperience, or maybe even naivety, in our team. 

We play exciting football and I love watching the Villa now, and it's a long time since I felt that.