Dean Smith

[VillaChris]

On 14/12/2018 at 16:08, Zatman said:

Just reading a 442 preview magazine for start of season and we were tipped for 13th with our key player Mile Jedinak. How times have changed

Brentford incidentally were picked for 3rd

They might not have been far off that if he'd stayed there.

Plummeted since he left which makes a mockery of a few (and also the Brentford fan) who said whoever managed them didn't really matter with their stats department. Oops.......

[VillaChris]

2 hours ago, villalad21 said:

Agreed.

I honestly don't understand what he see in Whelan

I think he was pretty worried Stoke's 3 man midfield would've gobbled up our two if we'd gone for that particularly with Ryan Woods starting who DS knows so well.

As it happens Joe Allen was superb in the box to box role and they dominated our three anyway.

I'd have started with Kodjia tbh as Stoke's back 4 is weak and they'd have struggled to handle four out and out attacking players. Certainly should've put him on earlier than 65 minutes.

I agree we we were below par and moved the ball too slowly on the counter attack (Grealish not being around obvious miss here).

Difference is a poor performance under DS still has us scoring two while we'd have struggled to get two shots on target with a similar level under Steve Bruce.

[TRO]

I think the stance by some fans to revert back to Steve Bruce every time we get a reversal or  drop points is sad.....Its almost a comment can't be made about Dean Smith without a reference to Steve Bruce.

He's gone.....Dean Smith is our manager.

Personally, I have embraced the signing of Dean Smith, and its only Dean Smith I want to talk about......some who have no favour of Steve Bruce, you would naturally think would be the last name they would want to mention.

funny old world.

Ps I walked in my local and some said " We would have lost that under Steve Bruce" I said "**** me that makes me feel better"....I want to win all our games not make excuses every time we drop points, about past managers....I had no intention of blaming Dean Smith, so why mention it?

Edited December 15, 2018 by TRO

[VillaChris]

31 minutes ago, mikeyp102 said:

Of course he’ll make mistakes, never said he wouldn’t. Doesn’t mean I can’t comment when does make them.

As for Bruce, why even bring him up, he’s gone and today is nothin about him.

Well plenty of posters on here (including me) still think there's an outside shot of top 2 IF we can string another good run after Leeds game. So any dropped points and it's inevitable to look back to a period when we couldn't beat bottom of the table Ipswich (who had ten men for half the game), Blackburn, Sheffield Weds who have hardly won a game since they beat us, Bristol City, PNE etc.

We'll comfortably qualify for play offs with the points ratio we've collected since October 20th.

[kiltorken]

5 minutes ago, TRO said:

Its the first time under Dean Smith, that I felt we done well to get a point.

The conditions clearly suited their "Out muscling" game which they did very well to be fair.

We had too many 5/10 performances to expect much more, but I am still concerned about our physical involvement in a game....they closed us down and nullified our play, whilst in contrast Joe Allen ran the show....We were not able to exhibit our technical superiority, but what bit they had was left unattended.

We have to get more players than just McGinn who are willing to get touch close and get their foot in or dare I even say track back.

Their 4 yellows ( despite the illegalness about them) showed where the commitment lay today.

Pleased we were able to come back from what looked like to me, a defeat.....but not pleased that we landed ourselves in that situation in the first place.

The main concern for me with this defence of ours is.....The ease and simplicity that they concede.....We have to work hard for what goals we get and then hand the opposition ones on a plate.

I wouldn't blame the manager for much today, it just highlights the shortfall for some weaponary in the squad.

Great Post, agree with most of that. Just on the last point about blame, I personally think when you play expansive football as we are trying to do at the moment, you are naturally going to leave yourself more exposed and that's the sacrifice with playing this type of football as I'm starting to realise. Even if you have the best players in the league when you're playing offensive front foot football you have to allow for soft goals going against as the team is more exposed, we still only have 11 players afterall. Its easy to have a go at our starting 11 when things don't go right but that back 4 are good by championship standards at least. 

Stoke have good quality players for this league and they played well stifling us and that's what they did today and fair play to them. teams in general will also figure a way to stifle us and  we need to rise to that. 

I think Smith will hopefully get around this. I wouldn't want anyone other the Smith to navigate this season to be honest. 

[TRO]

3 minutes ago, VillaChris said:

I think he was pretty worried Stoke's 3 man midfield would've gobbled up our two if we'd gone for that particularly with Ryan Woods starting who DS knows so well.

As it happens Joe Allen was superb in the box to box role and they dominated our three anyway.

I'd have started with Kodjia tbh as Stoke's back 4 is weak and they'd have struggled to handle four out and out attacking players. Certainly should've put him on earlier than 65 minutes.

I agree we we were below par and moved the ball too slowly on the counter attack (Grealish not being around obvious miss here).

Difference is a poor performance under DS still has us scoring two while we'd have struggled to get two shots on target with a similar level under Steve Bruce.

but we might not have conceded in the first place under Steve Bruce as we had most of the team deployed to defending under him that's why we thought the defence was ok and its not......but its a duff argument.

0-0 could so easily have been the result.

but its all bollox ,he's gone.

We can now score more freely....but need defenders who can cope on their own in a back 4 with a competent goal keeper.

[VillaChris]

12 minutes ago, TRO said:

but we might not have conceded in the first place under Steve Bruce as we had most of the team deployed to defending under him that's why we thought the defence was ok and its not......but its a duff argument.

0-0 could so easily have been the result.

but its all bollox ,he's gone.

We can now score more freely....but need defenders who can cope on their own in a back 4 with a competent goal keeper.

No I meant more in the sense for those desperate to get top 2....every dropped point now feels like a knife to the heart (particularly with Norwich not actually winning tonight) but the reason we're 10 points off them is how poor we were in first 3 months of the season when we failed to beat some very poor teams.

It's inevitable with that P.O.V you'd look back to the games this season under SB as our point collection under Dean has been fine against largely top 10 opposition. Think Bolton at home has been our only game against a bottom 8 team since he took over and we won that comfortable enough.

[Tomaszk]

14 minutes ago, TRO said:

I think the stance by some fans to revert back to Steve Bruce every time we get a reversal or a drop points is sad.....Its almost a comment can't be made about Dean Smith without a reference to Steve Bruce.

He's gone.....Dean Smith is our manager.

Personally, I have embraced the signing of Dean Smith, and its only Dean Smith I want to talk about......some who have no favour of Steve Bruce, you would naturally think would be the last name they would want to mention.

funny old world.

Ps I walked in my local and some said " We would have lost that under Steve Bruce" I said "**** me that makes me feel better....I want to win all our games not make excuses every time we drop points, about past managers....I had no intention of blaming Dean Smith, so why mention it?

Well you were a fan for much of his time here so probably less affected by his disgraceful management TRO.

I heard fans after saying exactly that walking out the ground today "We'd have lost that under Bruce". And a guy I bought some tickets off before the match said he's found himself drinking less because he doesn't need to when watching us now! 

It's one of those almost sarcastic lines like "at least it isn't raining". After we've had a bad result, I think many will be thinking/saying "at least Bruce isn't still here" for years I'm afraid.

Smith got a few bits wrong today I thought but I cannot believe how brilliant he's been so far. And he hasn't had a pop at the fans yet.

[TRO]

1 hour ago, Tomaszk said:

Well you were a fan for much of his time here so probably less affected by his disgraceful management TRO.

I heard fans after saying exactly that walking out the ground today "We'd have lost that under Bruce". And a guy I bought some tickets off before the match said he's found himself drinking less because he doesn't need to when watching us now! 

It's one of those almost sarcastic lines like "at least it isn't raining". After we've had a bad result, I think many will be thinking/saying "at least Bruce isn't still here" for years I'm afraid.

Smith got a few bits wrong today I thought but I cannot believe how brilliant he's been so far. And he hasn't had a pop at the fans yet.

Wrong....I was a fan who defended some of his work, when I felt the claims were unfair.......That is different from being an unconditional fan of him...lets at least get it right.

As for disgraceful management....there again, I disagree.....failed management is quite different from Disgraceful management....or do you mean his failed management was disgraceful to you?, in which case I have no comment....I would hazard a guess  that Dean himself would disagree with you too.

well you know what they say about sarcasm, but hey ho.

Dean hasn't had any criticism from the fans yet and I hope he doesn't have to....just remember, more than one negative don't make a positive.

Edited December 15, 2018 by TRO

[bobzy]

10 minutes ago, TRO said:

Wrong....I was a fan who defended some of his work, when I felt the claims were unfair.......That is different from being an unconditional fan of him...lets at least get it right.

If you didn't lambast Bruce at every opportunity and blame him for absolutely everything bad in life, you were automatically a "defender of" and "fan of" Bruce.  Them were the rules.

 

OT, I don't think today was really that bad overall.  We didn't play well, but we didn't play terribly (apart from defensively at times).  A draw against a relatively in-form Stoke isn't a bad result either.

[Tomaszk]

15 minutes ago, TRO said:

I was a fan who defended some of his work, when I felt the claims were unfair.......That is different from being an unconditional fan of him...lets at least get it right.

Didn't say unconditional. Said fan, which I thought you were. Wouldn't blame you if not, horrendous manager. Finished.

Dean Smith has shown him up.

[Tomaszk]

One thing I noticed with Smith and the bench today is that they love having a real conference down there don't they! Him, O'Kelly, Terry and Cutler all stood chatting and pointing for minutes at a time. I like it to be honest. Making a decision on what they see, what they want, discussing options. But I do think some earlier subs would have helped us today.

Plus we were a bit of a slap dash shape after the Hogan sub. He was obviously primed and ready before the 2-2 goal. Then we went ahead and made the change anyway.

McGinn and Hourihane were both strictly staying deep in the knowledge they were now sharing midfield with a striker in Tammy and didn't want us to get caught. We lost a bit there because movement from those two was opening a lot of doors for us throughout the match.

[TRO]

2 hours ago, VillaChris said:

No I meant more in the sense for those desperate to get top 2....every dropped point now feels like a knife to the heart (particularly with Norwich not actually winning tonight) but the reason we're 10 points off them is how poor we were in first 3 months of the season when we failed to beat some very poor teams.

It's inevitable with that P.O.V you'd look back to the games this season under SB as our point collection under Dean has been fine against largely top 10 opposition. Think Bolton at home has been our only game against a bottom 8 team since he took over and we won that comfortable enough.

Well,

• In 2017/2018 season we had 3 wins in the first 10 games accumulating 13 points......we finished 4th with 24 wins & 83 points....accumulating 21 wins & 70 points in 36 games.
• In 2018/2019 season we had 3 wins in the first 10 games accumulating 14 points
• Dean Smith has had 5 wins in his first 10 games accumulating 17 points.

We have 24 games to play and 8 wins on the board to just get 24 we need another 16 wins in those games left.

We are going to have to go on one hell of a run just to equal last season.....its doable, but we have to stop conceding defendable goals whilst still playing our attractive football.

We are Rob Snodgrass ,John Terry, Lewis Grabban and Sam Johnstone missing....I think just JT and SJ are the real misses, with the 2 over 30 full backs a year older.

It will in the main point to what we do in January as to whether a good run is possible.

I think anyone can glean what they want from it.

For me so far, The performances are much better, the football spectacle is far better, the atmosphere and the gates are more encouraging....The points are marginally better,than the first 10, thats all....but if you compare the second ten games this season with last, we are slightly worse.

I am not trying to make any profound statement at all, not even comparing managers....but we do have to stop conceding to have any hope of promotion.

I hope and pray this IS addressed with vigour in January 2019.

 

Edited December 15, 2018 by TRO

[VillaChris]

51 minutes ago, bobzy said:

If you didn't lambast Bruce at every opportunity and blame him for absolutely everything bad in life, you were automatically a "defender of" and "fan of" Bruce.  Them were the rules.

 

OT, I don't think today was really that bad overall.  We didn't play well, but we didn't play terribly (apart from defensively at times).  A draw against a relatively in-form Stoke isn't a bad result either.

Oh some certainly did blame SB for everything going wrong at the club.

One argument I had with TRO last season in which we agreed to disagree was his belief the core of players we had simply weren't good enough to play the progressive forward thinking football likes of Wolves and Fulham were capable of and no work on the training pitch by SB and his three assistants could get them to that level.

With a similar standard squad (albeit weaker at the back which I can't argue with) it is night and day in the final third compared to last season and he's only been in charge of 7 weeks.

I didn't mind SB all that much. Would've let him go after the play off final but that's all gone now. My main criticism was simply not being a manager capable of coaching players on the training pitch or employing people who could as we'd have seen more evidence of it on the pitch.

[VillaChris]

38 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

One thing I noticed with Smith and the bench today is that they love having a real conference down there don't they! Him, O'Kelly, Terry and Cutler all stood chatting and pointing for minutes at a time. I like it to be honest. Making a decision on what they see, what they want, discussing options. But I do think some earlier subs would have helped us today.

Plus we were a bit of a slap dash shape after the Hogan sub. He was obviously primed and ready before the 2-2 goal. Then we went ahead and made the change anyway.

McGinn and Hourihane were both strictly staying deep in the knowledge they were now sharing midfield with a striker in Tammy and didn't want us to get caught. We lost a bit there because movement from those two was opening a lot of doors for us throughout the match.

Yeah would've got on Kodjia much earlier (infact I'd have started him but guess DS was worried about losing the midfield with just two in there). I can fully understand him putting Hogan on. Stoke just seemed to come out firing after conceding. It was the same after 1-1 as they got their own penalty three minutes later.

[TRO]

34 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

Didn't say unconditional. Said fan, which I thought you were. Wouldn't blame you if not, horrendous manager. Finished.

Dean Smith has shown him up.

I have tried to explain forgive me if you don't understand my reasoning.

A fan in my understanding means can do no wrong.....That was never my stance with Steve Bruce, I just defended what I thought was unfair criticisms.

some criticism was fair, of which I refrained from defending.

I was less fond of his work this season than last and made my comments known on here....after the Preston game he had to go IMO.

Dean Smith is working with Steve Bruce's players at present and done a fine job in one sense of playing attractive football, but the trade off is conceding too many soft goals.

Steve Bruce, left him with a very questionable defence IMO, particularly the goal keeper, Hence one of the reasons why he went.....Lets see what Dean can do with his own players when he gets them in...hoping its even better.

[TRO]

12 hours ago, VillaChris said:

Oh some certainly did blame SB for everything going wrong at the club.

One argument I had with TRO last season in which we agreed to disagree was his belief the core of players we had simply weren't good enough to play the progressive forward thinking football likes of Wolves and Fulham were capable of and no work on the training pitch by SB and his three assistants could get them to that level.

With a similar standard squad (albeit weaker at the back which I can't argue with) it is night and day in the final third compared to last season and he's only been in charge of 7 weeks.

I didn't mind SB all that much. Would've let him go after the play off final but that's all gone now. My main criticism was simply not being a manager capable of coaching players on the training pitch or employing people who could as we'd have seen more evidence of it on the pitch.

Yes, we did have that discussion Chris and I concede and say Dean Has done a fine job in making the spectacle attractive....and it does seem his coaching has made a difference to the players I thought was unattainable.....It seems the behind closed doors with Bruce was not all what it should have been.

The football is much more believable and the fluidity lends itself to scoring more goals.

However....It cannot be dismissed we are conceding more goals in general and more worryingly goals that look, fairly easily defended against.

Our offensive players in the main are bailing us out as opposed to romping away with points.

We do not have so many players deployed in such a cautious mode, but the trade off is ( with the players we have) they seem unable to stop the opposition in their shorter numbers....Imo the quality is not there in some of them....it had been masked over by SB's style.

I am not prepared to shout for Pulis to reverse this trend....just kidding.....but hoping we can fix it in Jan.

Edited December 16, 2018 by TRO

[Spoony]

4 minutes ago, TRO said:

Yes, we did have that discussion Chris and I concede and say Dean Has done a fine job in making the spectacle attractive....and it does seem his coaching has made a difference to the players I thought was unattainable.....It seems the behind closed doors with Bruce was not all what it should have been.

The football is much more believable and the fluidity lends itself to scoring more goals.

However....It cannot be dismissed we are conceding more goals in general and more worryingly goals that look, fairly easily defended against.

Our offensive players in the main are bailing us out as opposed to romping away with points.

We do not have so many players deployed in such a cautious mode, but the trade off is ( with the players we have) they seem unable to stop the opposition in their shorter numbers....Imo the quality is not there in some of them....it had been masked over by SB's style.

I am not prepared to shout for Pulis to reverse this trend....just kidding.....but hoping can fix it in Jan.

This for me is just a players point rather than the manager. Our defenders are awful. 

[VillaChris]

It's just a chaos league to me. One where if teams like us and WBA can loan in and assembled a forward line of two good strikers and wing players that pretty much guarentees a play off place. If you could defend o.k you're in for top 2. It's pretty simplistic when you think about it.

On Quest Colin Murray actually referenced Norwich fans worried by how dodgy their defence is but they've played Millwall, Bolton and Bristol City so can get away with conceding 2 or 3 goals.

Forest are one of the better defensive units down here and they could've conceded 8 against us.

West Brom have ONE clean sheet in the league all season and they have very experienced back 4 (and Johnstone).

Personally I'd rather be a more free flowing and enterprising team than grinding out the 1-0s as we did last season as ultimately that didn't get us up in the end.

It should level out when we play the bottom half teams regularly as Norwich and Leeds seem to be doing currently. They shouldn't have the quality to open us up as some of the better teams down here have done recently.

[Zatman]

23 goals in 10 games is mighty impressive and some of these games we could have scored more