Dean Smith

[villalad21]

Can easily see us sliding down the table and finish 13th-14th ish.

Looking at our fixture list and it isn't very kind.

Even with Jack back teams will do like West Ham did and start to double up on him. Especially now after seeing how average we are looking without him.

I think it's a good time to replace Smith in the summer honestly. He has  build a really good foundation for the next man. We have a decent squad now and are ready to go to the next level. The right manager needs to be available though. You don't just replace him for the sake of it.

[dubbs]

Even a 13th-14th finish is progress,  and that's what the club is looking for.   We initially progressed quicker than planned by gaining promotion. Then we stayed in the PL.  This year we should finish higher than last year.

Dean is going to make mistakes but looking at this club long term,  it's come on so much we sometimes forget where we've come from.

[mykeyb]

7 hours ago, DCJonah said:

Well we'll see if Smith gets sacked in the summer then. 

We stayed up, we improved in most areas and we finished higher in the league. That's success in my book at this part of our plan.

Without a doubt you are probably one our managers staunchest supporters on here so will ask you this question. Despite knowing our form without Jack is so poor why has Dean continued to play the same formation as if Jack was in the team. We are here with 6 games played without Jack and against some fairly average teams and we have won just once and looked very very average. 

Should Jack decide he wants to leave in the summer Dean has got work out how we can be competitive, yes he can bring in better players but if we wanted Tammy is he going to look at us without Jack and think we won't be competing in the league where he wants to be?

I don't suppose cat the end of last season anyone would have thought Sheffield United would be bottom and a certainty to be relegated with 9 games to go. Our form without Jack isn't great and while I am not suggesting we would follow their path, it's not a stretch to see we would be competing at the wrong end of the table if Jack goes.

[a-k]

In shocking news, team missing the most creative player in the league struggles to create chances. Meanwhile, in a microcosm of many of our games, opposition team creates one chance (from a poor mistake) and scores two goals.

[villalad21]

It isn't enough progress.

You really think we can keep hold of Jack if we're not playing in Europe?

He is entering his prime and i wouldn't count on him wasting his time in mid table for too long.

[mykeyb]

1 hour ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

I think those people on here who continue to defend Smith unconditionally only see that he is a nice guy (which he is) and a Villa man. They continue to look past his deficiencies.

 

It's almost like they want this romantic ideal of him leading us into the future regardless of what's happening on and off the pitch because he's a fan and he supposedly gets the club.

 

What gets thrown around is we're on course to have our best season in a decade in what has been one of Villa's worst decades in their history. That isn't a good benchmark to set for this club. 

 

Every season Smith has been with us we have had long periods of bad form. Usually this occurs when Jack is out because Smith is so damn reliant on him.

 

Season 18/19 (his first with us), Jack gets injured early December. We then win 2 out of 13, failing to beat Stoke (twice), Reading, Preston, QPR and Hull in that time – the finishing places of those teams in order were 16^th, 20^th, 14^th, 19^th, 13^th.  

 

Last season Jack luckily didn’t get any lengthy period of time out. We were generally pretty awful all of last season but that period before the lockdown started we were losing to the likes of Bournemouth and Southampton without so much of a fight and without the season freezing I’m certain we’d have gone down.

 

This season our form tailed off as soon as 2021 hit in my opinion, but since Jack’s last game to now we’ve played Brighton (draw), Leicester (loss), Leeds (win), Sheff U (loss), Wolves (draw), Newcastle (draw), Spurs (loss). The position in the table of those teams are as follows: 16^th, 3^rd, 11^th, 20^th, 13^th, 17^th, and 6^th. So five of the seven are bottom half.

 

Now for all the Smith lovers who say it’s because our players aren’t good enough, of the last seven games, apart from Tottenham and Leicester, and possibly Wolves, can you honestly say the other teams had better players than us? I can’t. Especially when Newcastle were without four key first team players, rock bottom Sheff U had basically a patched up defence, Wolves were missing one of the best strikers in the league in Jimenez. Even Spurs and Leicester had played midweek and were clearly pretty knackered when we played them.

 

I could have taken yesterday’s defeat a bit more humbly if we had beaten the likes of Sheff U, Newcastle and Brighton. Spurs were knackered and without Son, we gifted them the first goal by a catalogue of errors from our goalkeeper and defenders, but they do have better players than us. But when we fail to beat shite teams near the bottom and get told it’s because Smith still needs more quality, that’s where I think what a load of bollocks. We should have with the players we have, even with Jack missing, enough to beat the likes of Sheff U and Newcastle.

 

If Smith fails to get to 50 points this season, I personally feel that we need to explore new manager options in the summer. People will think I’m being overly dramatic but the fall off in form is too much (we had 26 points from our first 14 games, if he fails to take at the minimum a mere 24 points from the next 24 games then clearly that is nowhere near good enough). I believe he should get to that, but right now you wouldn’t bet on it.

 

We go into the summer needing to strengthen again and with Smith I just have no clue which players we will end up with. We need players of real proven calibre that can take the pressure off Jack, but my worry is he won’t be able to attract players of the quality a manager like Rodgers or Ancelotti could and we’ll once again bring players in who aren’t going to elevate us to Everton, West Ham, Wolves level, let alone Spurs or Leicester level.  

 

I’ve wanted Smith to succeed all along, but I just think there are too many flaws in his management for him to be the answer long term for us. How many years are we going to keep saying he’s still learning and he needs better players (incidentally virtually every player in the squad are his own buys btw), we can’t keep using that as an excuse for these dire runs every season.

 

I honestly don't care what's gone before, and how crap we were under Lerner, and how we should be grateful for where we are now. I couldn't care less about the past, Villa is still a big club regardless of Lerner and Xia nearly ending us. I look at the potential of what the club can achieve now, we haven't had owners like we have now for a long time (probably ever), I believe with them our potential is huge and with a manager who knows what he is doing we could very well find ourselves as one of the big clubs of this country again. With Smith we'll only ever be an also ran.

Pretty much my thoughts sort from getting rid of Smith if we don't reach 50 points.

It is hard to fathom though that Dean, John and Craig have not thought we need to change something during this run as the number of chances we have created has reduced considerably even before Jack was injured, infact in many games we have looked toothless.

[mykeyb]

1 minute ago, a-k said:

In shocking news, team missing the most creative player in the league struggles to create chances. Meanwhile, in a microcosm of many of our games, opposition team creates one chance (from a poor mistake) and scores two goals.

We started to struggle before Jack was injured.

[villalad21]

5 minutes ago, a-k said:

In shocking news, team missing the most creative player in the league struggles to create chances. Meanwhile, in a microcosm of many of our games, opposition team creates one chance (from a poor mistake) and scores two goals.

Yeah of course we'll struggle without him.

But i don't think anyone would expect or accept we'd be a relegation fighting team without him.

And dear me. I dread to think where we would actually be without him. 

[DCJonah]

1 hour ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

I think those people on here who continue to defend Smith unconditionally only see that he is a nice guy (which he is) and a Villa man. They continue to look past his deficiencies.

 

It's almost like they want this romantic ideal of him leading us into the future regardless of what's happening on and off the pitch because he's a fan and he supposedly gets the club.

 

What gets thrown around is we're on course to have our best season in a decade in what has been one of Villa's worst decades in their history. That isn't a good benchmark to set for this club. 

 

Every season Smith has been with us we have had long periods of bad form. Usually this occurs when Jack is out because Smith is so damn reliant on him.

 

Season 18/19 (his first with us), Jack gets injured early December. We then win 2 out of 13, failing to beat Stoke (twice), Reading, Preston, QPR and Hull in that time – the finishing places of those teams in order were 16^th, 20^th, 14^th, 19^th, 13^th.  

 

Last season Jack luckily didn’t get any lengthy period of time out. We were generally pretty awful all of last season but that period before the lockdown started we were losing to the likes of Bournemouth and Southampton without so much of a fight and without the season freezing I’m certain we’d have gone down.

 

This season our form tailed off as soon as 2021 hit in my opinion, but since Jack’s last game to now we’ve played Brighton (draw), Leicester (loss), Leeds (win), Sheff U (loss), Wolves (draw), Newcastle (draw), Spurs (loss). The position in the table of those teams are as follows: 16^th, 3^rd, 11^th, 20^th, 13^th, 17^th, and 6^th. So five of the seven are bottom half.

 

Now for all the Smith lovers who say it’s because our players aren’t good enough, of the last seven games, apart from Tottenham and Leicester, and possibly Wolves, can you honestly say the other teams had better players than us? I can’t. Especially when Newcastle were without four key first team players, rock bottom Sheff U had basically a patched up defence, Wolves were missing one of the best strikers in the league in Jimenez. Even Spurs and Leicester had played midweek and were clearly pretty knackered when we played them.

 

I could have taken yesterday’s defeat a bit more humbly if we had beaten the likes of Sheff U, Newcastle and Brighton. Spurs were knackered and without Son, we gifted them the first goal by a catalogue of errors from our goalkeeper and defenders, but they do have better players than us. But when we fail to beat shite teams near the bottom and get told it’s because Smith still needs more quality, that’s where I think what a load of bollocks. We should have with the players we have, even with Jack missing, enough to beat the likes of Sheff U and Newcastle.

 

If Smith fails to get to 50 points this season, I personally feel that we need to explore new manager options in the summer. People will think I’m being overly dramatic but the fall off in form is too much (we had 26 points from our first 14 games, if he fails to take at the minimum a mere 24 points from the next 24 games then clearly that is nowhere near good enough). I believe he should get to that, but right now you wouldn’t bet on it.

 

We go into the summer needing to strengthen again and with Smith I just have no clue which players we will end up with. We need players of real proven calibre that can take the pressure off Jack, but my worry is he won’t be able to attract players of the quality a manager like Rodgers or Ancelotti could and we’ll once again bring players in who aren’t going to elevate us to Everton, West Ham, Wolves level, let alone Spurs or Leicester level.  

 

I’ve wanted Smith to succeed all along, but I just think there are too many flaws in his management for him to be the answer long term for us. How many years are we going to keep saying he’s still learning and he needs better players (incidentally virtually every player in the squad are his own buys btw), we can’t keep using that as an excuse for these dire runs every season.

 

I honestly don't care what's gone before, and how crap we were under Lerner, and how we should be grateful for where we are now. I couldn't care less about the past, Villa is still a big club regardless of Lerner and Xia nearly ending us. I look at the potential of what the club can achieve now, we haven't had owners like we have now for a long time (probably ever), I believe with them our potential is huge and with a manager who knows what he is doing we could very well find ourselves as one of the big clubs of this country again. With Smith we'll only ever be an also ran.

[DCJonah]

22 minutes ago, mykeyb said:

Without a doubt you are probably one our managers staunchest supporters on here so will ask you this question. Despite knowing our form without Jack is so poor why has Dean continued to play the same formation as if Jack was in the team. We are here with 6 games played without Jack and against some fairly average teams and we have won just once and looked very very average. 

Should Jack decide he wants to leave in the summer Dean has got work out how we can be competitive, yes he can bring in better players but if we wanted Tammy is he going to look at us without Jack and think we won't be competing in the league where he wants to be?

I don't suppose cat the end of last season anyone would have thought Sheffield United would be bottom and a certainty to be relegated with 9 games to go. Our form without Jack isn't great and while I am not suggesting we would follow their path, it's not a stretch to see we would be competing at the wrong end of the table if Jack goes.

I'm not sure changing the formation makes a massive difference with the players we have but I'd imagine it's all about consistency. This is how he wants to play and he's made slight tactical changes but isn't going to completely revamp the line up because of one player. 

He spoke last season about being consistent in his attitude and approach to the players if we win or lose. There are no dramatic responses from Dean. I think long term that's a positive. 

The worry about Jack going and us getting relegated is strange. If he does go we will have over £100 million to invest in a few quality players. If we still struggle then Smith will rightly get sacked. But I'd be surprised if we did.

[Lerner's Driver]

3 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

U ok hun?

[AvfcRigo82]

17 minutes ago, a-k said:

In shocking news, team missing the most creative player in the league struggles to create chances. Meanwhile, in a microcosm of many of our games, opposition team creates one chance (from a poor mistake) and scores two goals.

Are you saying we're a one man team?

[tom_avfc]

4 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Yeah of course we'll struggle without him.

But i don't think anyone would expect or accept we'd be a relegation fighting team without him.

And dear me. I dread to think where we would actually be without him. 

Why wouldn’t we be a relegation fighting team without him? We were a relegation fighting team with him last season. We’ve added a very good goalkeeper and a good striker and right back to the starting eleven. 

Grealish is one of the best players in the entire league. If he goes it’ll be for £100m plus. Any team is going to miss that calibre of player.

If he goes then that’s two additional £50m players we can go out and get. Obviously you’ve got to get those right but it’s a bit obvious to say if you take £100m worth of talent out of almost any team in the league they’re going to struggle with the squad they have left.

[holteend1982]

17 minutes ago, a-k said:

In shocking news, team missing the most creative player in the league struggles to create chances. Meanwhile, in a microcosm of many of our games, opposition team creates one chance (from a poor mistake) and scores two goals.

We are not creating anything though that's the issue, we have been awful for 4 games in a row and it's very frustrating to watch. Even without grealish we shouldn't be as bad as we have been! 

[VillaFaninLondon]

46 minutes ago, dubbs said:

Even a 13th-14th finish is progress,  and that's what the club is looking for.   We initially progressed quicker than planned by gaining promotion. Then we stayed in the PL.  This year we should finish higher than last year.

Dean is going to make mistakes but looking at this club long term,  it's come on so much we sometimes forget where we've come from.

I think 12th or better has to be the minimum or there doesn't seem to be much point in keeping him on. There have to be standards at our club, of course progression is key but the way in which that progression is achieved is vital imo. To be top 6 standard for a third of the season and bottom 3 standard for the remaining two-thirds of the season (and ending the season on a sour note) is not acceptable for a club that is supposed to be ambitious.

 

Of course standards will drop off to a degree but to the degree it has is astonishing.

 

If he can't take a minimum of 9/10 points from the final 10 games (I still hope we can surpass that tbh) then that really isn't on and if we are able to get better in the summer then it has to be a serious consideration. 

Edited March 22, 2021 by VillaFaninLondon

[DCJonah]

8 minutes ago, Lerner's Driver said:

U ok hun?

Yeah, I'll be ok. Just got a bit emotional reading that. 

[DCJonah]

1 minute ago, VillaFaninLondon said:

I think 12th or better has to be the minimum or there doesn't seem to be much point in keeping him on. There have to be standards at our club, of course progression is key but the way in which that progression is achieved is vital imo. To be top 6 standard for a third of the season and bottom 3 standard for the remaining two-thirds of the season (and ending the season on a sour note) is not acceptable for a club that is supposed to be ambitious.

 

Of course standards will drop off to a degree but to the degree it has is astonishing.

 

If he can't take 9/10 points from the final 10 games then that really isn't on and if we are able to get better in the summer then it has to be a serious consideration. 

So you're going to use the tremendous first half of the season, which no one expected,  against him. Seems fair. 

[bobzy]

7 minutes ago, holteend1982 said:

We are not creating anything though that's the issue, we have been awful for 4 games in a row and it's very frustrating to watch. Even without grealish we shouldn't be as bad as we have been! 

That’s not true though - for example, we should’ve been at least 2-0 up at half time against Wolves.

It’s a mix of being out of form, having injuries and missing our best player. 

I think people have completely erased last season from their minds and are comparing where we “should be” to the, frankly ridiculous, start of the season we’ve had. The goals drying up is an issue that needs resolving, but talk of sacking the manager is ludicrous. We’re 10th in a league that we barely survived in last season.

Elements of our fan base are just so shit sometimes. 

Edited March 22, 2021 by bobzy

[AvfcRigo82]

9 minutes ago, holteend1982 said:

We are not creating anything though that's the issue, we have been awful for 4 games in a row and it's very frustrating to watch. Even without grealish we shouldn't be as bad as we have been! 

We've been largely poor and it started even before Grealish got injured.

I'll be honest, I have stuck by Smith for large parts but I am now starting to feel pissed off.

He has had nearly £200m to work with in the last two windows, he has a solid coaching team around him, he has probably two of the best players in world football (Martinez & Grealish) and yet we still look like a Championship team and have done since January.

Many might not agree with me here but if we finish outside the top 10 this season - from the start we've had and the position we've been in for most of it - then for me I would like to see Smith replaced at the end of the season.

Edited March 22, 2021 by AvfcRigo82

[DCJonah]

Just now, bobzy said:

That’s not true though - for example, we should’ve been at least 2-0 up at half time against Wolves.

It’s a mix of being out of form, having injuries and missing our best player. 

I think people have completely erased last season from their minds and are comparing where we “should be” to the, frankly ridiculous, start of the season we’ve had. The goals drying up is an issue that needs resolving, but talk of sacking the manager is ludicrous. We’re 10th in a league that we barely survived in last season.

Elements of our fan base is just so shit sometimes. 

Lots of people predicted it at the time. We were never going to maintain those levels and with Covid and Jack out, we've dropped more than I thought we would. But that start to the season can't be used as a reason to sack him. I mean, that's just utter nonsense.