Dean Smith

[Zatman]

2 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Merson saying we are a man team hard to argue on that on a attacking sense

But konsa Martinez  and mings cant be dismissed they have been exceptional keeping the clean sheets

He said a few weeks ago we should sign Barkley for 40 million as had been brilliant. No credibility Merse 

We aren't a one man team though, our defence is brilliant 

[AntrimBlack]

4 minutes ago, meregreen said:

I thought his after match comments were refreshingly honest. We should have won, but switched off after scoring. We’re still a work in progress. Our next close season will be crucial. If we are as astute with our recruitment as we were last season, then I’m very optimistic Dean will be leading us still higher.

I don't agree. The team should not be excused for that performance, and that is what that comment does. We played poorly the entire match against an equally poor team. Yes, thanks to a lucky goal we should have held on for all the points. And yes, we were as usual, profligate in front of goal, and should have put some of those chances away. But I would say that if anything, Newcastle should have won.

 

[VillanousOne]

It is hard to see clearly what has gone wrong, it feels like the Covid outbreak has led to a toxic mix of poor fitness and match sharpness which has slowly eroded performances which has in turn led to a growing lack of confidence. Add in key injuries and it is hard to truly judge where we are now and where we are heading.

It is strange, we went from narrowly missing out on relegation, to yearning for:

Better youth development - TICK: We have some amazing players who are already getting closer and closer to the first team and we are competing for some of Europe's top young talent again

Better/more consistent defence - TICK: Martinez has proven to be the missing link in one of the best defences we have ever had, Konsa and Targett have come on leaps and bounds, Cash has proved an inspired signing. Despite a few wobbles here and there Mings has been mostly solid. Even Hause gave us a few capable cameos. 

Better attacking options - SORT OF: Despite recent form, I think Watkins has greatly improved us, Traore has shown flashes of brilliance. El Ghazi has scored some important goals. Trez hasn't really kicked on. Not underestimating the importance of Grealish as he makes all of our attacking players better. But the lack of a convincing second striker option has really hurt us, having Davis for pointless cameos rather than loan him out makes little sense, Wes was clearly never going to be back in time to contribute anything this season (hope i'm wrong).

More consistent midfield - NEEDS TO BE BETTER: It is strange as McGinn and Luiz clearly have the talent but rarely show the form they are capable of, but Dean doesn't seem to have a clue what our best midfield three is. Barkley seemed an inspired signing on loan, but has been dreadful since he returned from injury and it's really hard to keep blaming lack of fitness/sharpness for that. Ramsey has shown promise but is not ready to start every week, Sanson has looked capable but he doesn't solve the lack of attacking composure in the final third. Nakamba does the defensive part right but isn't trusted to start weekly.

Mid-table - TICK: I don't think many fans wouldn't have chewed their arm off just to have a season safely in mid table without relegation to worry about. We're comfortably in that position. The trouble is we have seen some amazing performances where we showed we could hang with big boys so our expectations went higher and we genuinely thought we could finish in Europe. It's not too late to do that, but it feels like a stretch. 

We still have plenty of games left to turn things round and players coming back from injury like Cash and Grealish.

My worry is Grealish deserves to be in a team that wins things, I would be surprised if he is still here next season, for that to happen we would need to make 3 or 4 big signings in the summer, which with financial fair play I don't know we can do that. If we do that and kick on, then I think we would have one more season to really prove to Grealish and even Konsa that we can compete at the top.

If we get Cash, Grealish back and carry on our recent dreadful form, then we may need to question whether Dean can take us to the next level. I think he can and I think we can finish the season on a high, but we need a lot of luck and to get some strong wins to restore confidence.

[KenjiOgiwara]

The problem is two fold isn't it. Merson is partially right as well. 

1) Our squad depth is absolute shite, which means the replacements for Grealish, and to some extent Traore, aren't good enough. We gambled on Barkley, who has been a complete disaster.

2) Teams tend to struggle when you remove their attacking talisman. This goes for all teams. We simply haven't been forced to practise enough on how to attack as a team without Grealish. It's that simplet

We look a bit naive attacking at times, cause it seems we think we can just float around and keep on attacking without Grealish as we can with Grealish. Which simply isn't the case. Trez and AEG aren't even in the same universe football wise.

The positive side of this is that it's easily solved buy buying better players to replace, Barkley, Trez, AEG, Wesley, etc. And put in the work at BMH to include a more simplified tactic for the matches Grealish can't play. 

[Tomaszk]

People won't want to hear it but midtable next season won't be bad either.

I hope we can get out of lockdown soon and people can get back to the games. Fan reactions will improve if that happens.

[useless]

If there's such a thing as a one man team then we're probably as close to it as you can get, in the last three seasons we've taken just twenty-one points from the twenty-two league games that Grealish has missed, that's relegation form. But I think it says more about our attack than our team as an whole, in the summer it's an area we need to work on so we're not as reliant on Grealish for creativity.

[GENTLEMAN]

2 hours ago, AntrimBlack said:

I don't agree. The team should not be excused for that performance, and that is what that comment does. We played poorly the entire match against an equally poor team. Yes, thanks to a lucky goal we should have held on for all the points. And yes, we were as usual, profligate in front of goal, and should have put some of those chances away. But I would say that if anything, Newcastle should have won.

Smith actually said we shouldn’t have won or rather didn’t deserve to win over the whole game.

“We didn’t deserve to win the game over the 94 minutes. It wasn’t a game for the purists, it was a bit of an ugly game with not many completed passes and not many clear-cut chances.

“They probably had the better chances, but when you score a goal like we did in the 90^th minute you should go and see it out.

Edited March 13, 2021 by GENTLEMAN

[Sam-AVFC]

18 hours ago, thejoker said:

Why he keeps bringing Barkley on I will never know. So poor again all round. We’ve spent the best part of £200m since promotion and we’re still awful without Grealish. We’ve made big strides since last season, but the last month has been nowhere near good enough. 

Because it was literally a final resort to add some creativity. Who would you have brought on instead at the time?

[Zatman]

Without Jack we still have one of the best defences in the league, we wouldnt be pretty to watch but we would be Crystal Palace level

One man team is just another tired cliche when an attacking player goes down. United, Barcelona, Bayern Munich are all toothless when the best attacker doesn't play. They arent one man teams

[DCJonah]

6 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

People won't want to hear it but midtable next season won't be bad either.

I hope we can get out of lockdown soon and people can get back to the games. Fan reactions will improve if that happens.

You're right. You'd hope our visit to the championship would humble us a little. 

Nothing wrong with consolidating. Top half next year would still be good. It's been a long time since we were a consistent top half type of team. 

[Sam-AVFC]

I really don't get this widely held view that a professional footballer can't play 60 hours of competitive football in a year without being worked to exhaustion.

I could understand if we were playing every few days week after week or had no breaks, but it simply isn't the case.

[Tomaszk]

Just now, DCJonah said:

You're right. You'd hope our visit to the championship would humble us a little. 

Nothing wrong with consolidating. Top half next year would still be good. It's been a long time since we were a consistent top half type of team. 

If you were to put us behind...City, Liverpool, Utd, Chelsea, Spurs, Arsenal, Leicester & Everton that's 9th.

Anything above that is going to be a seriously good season next year.

We're currently...9th. And people are losing their mind on some social media. Genuinely having a fit because they think they can play FIFA better than Villa play in real life.

I'm really excited for the future. We'll improve at the end of this season and then it's all about summer recruits.

We can have the aforementioned seriously good season if we get a top DM and RW into the starting XI. No reason we can't hop West Ham, Everton and stay above Arsenal, putting us in 6th.

Keeping Jack the one.

[DCJonah]

Just now, Tomaszk said:

If you were to put us behind...City, Liverpool, Utd, Chelsea, Spurs, Arsenal, Leicester & Everton that's 9th.

Anything above that is going to be a seriously good season next year.

We're currently...9th. And people are losing their mind on some social media. Genuinely having a fit because they think they can play FIFA better than Villa play in real life.

I'm really excited for the future. We'll improve at the end of this season and then it's all about summer recruits.

We can have the aforementioned seriously good season if we get a top DM and RW into the starting XI. No reason we can't hop West Ham, Everton and stay above Arsenal, putting us in 6th.

Keeping Jack the one.

I've seen people calling for him to be sacked on twitter. How on Earth people can look at those teams above us and demand we finish higher is mind blowing. We haven't finished in the top half since we scraped it on the last day under Houllier. And somehow this current season isn't enough for some. Unfortunately, we will always be plagued with entitled fans, based on nothing but their own impatience. 

 

[sharkyvilla]

11 minutes ago, Sam-AVFC said:

I really don't get this widely held view that a professional footballer can't play 60 hours of competitive football in a year without being worked to exhaustion.

I could understand if we were playing every few days week after week or had no breaks, but it simply isn't the case.

I'm not sure it's exhaustion as such, at PL level you probably only have to be 5-10% off your best level to give an advantage to the opposition, hence why being able to rotate a bit really helps and imo the biggest reason we have had a drop off in results as we couldn't sustain the early season form.  Whether covid had an impact as well is hard to tell but I suspect we would have fallen back to midtable anyway.  

[useless]

I see Smith's little pets are out in force again, Smith has hardly performed a miracle, had one of the strongest squads ever in the championship, and has spent £200m plus since promotion and in addition to that already had in Grealish a £100m plus player to work with. And yet despite the money spent we're still just not very good without captain Grealish, which whether people like or not the stats bear out.

[Tomaszk]

1 minute ago, DCJonah said:

I've seen people calling for him to be sacked on twitter. How on Earth people can look at those teams above us and demand we finish higher is mind blowing. We haven't finished in the top half since we scraped it on the last day under Houllier. And somehow this current season isn't enough for some. Unfortunately, we will always be plagued with entitled fans, based on nothing but their own impatience. 

We were crap against Sheff Utd and Newcastle. With very little different in the world we might have held on last night and got the pen we should have against Blades. Two sloppy 1-0 wins.

We'd be on cusp of the top 4 with the same useless performances.

The extreme negativity is very strange indeed.

[Sam-AVFC]

1 minute ago, useless said:

I see Smith's little pets are out in force again, Smith has hardly performed a miracle, had one of the strongest squads ever in the championship, and has spent £200m plus since promotion and in addition to that already had in Grealish a £100m plus player to work with. And yet despite the money spent we're still just not very good without captain Grealish, which whether people like or not the stats bear out.

Christ mate, calm down.

[useless]

We've had a drop off in results because of Grealish's injury, if he'd have been fit it's no exaggertion to suggest that we could have easily won the last three games and posssibly have got something from the Leicester game as well, hopefully we improve on his return, should give the whole team a psychological lift.

[Sam-AVFC]

3 minutes ago, sharkyvilla said:

I'm not sure it's exhaustion as such, at PL level you probably only have to be 5-10% off your best level to give an advantage to the opposition, hence why being able to rotate a bit really helps and imo the biggest reason we have had a drop off in results as we couldn't sustain the early season form.  Whether covid had an impact as well is hard to tell but I suspect we would have fallen back to midtable anyway.  

I agree we need to be able to rotate for form, but that's a completely different argument altogether as it's no longer a question of running players into the ground so much as whether or not we have better options. Sanson is looking promising, but bringing Ross Barkley on of all people as a last resort sub and him not being able to connect a 5 yard pass shows we have some more work to do.

[Tomaszk]

1 minute ago, useless said:

I see Smith's little pets are out in force again, Smith has hardly performed a miracle, had one of the strongest squads ever in the championship, and has spent £200m plus since promotion and in addition to that already had in Grealish a £100m plus player to work with. And yet despite the money spent we're still just not very good without captain Grealish, which whether people like or not the stats bear out.

Remarkable.

Looking forward to seeing how far you'll push this.

Which of City, Liverpool, Utd, Chelsea, Spurs, Arsenal, Leicester & Everton should we be finishing ahead of? Just so I know.