Dean Smith

[DCJonah]

41 minutes ago, M_Afro said:

My points weren’t just about spells of bad form though. Also, our form has been poor for a very long time now. Does that still class as a “spell”?

If we have to wait until the summer to get the right person then I wouldn’t be totally against that but if we feel the right person is available now, then why wait? If we let a poor season drag out with Smith it will make our player retention/recruitment so much more difficult. 
 

Smith himself has stated that we have a top half squad. We really need a top half finish to be able to build. If we let the season drift under Smith and say finish 14th, we will have lost a load of revenue and the outside perception of the club will be that we are a relegation candidate. That will make it so much more difficult to attract players. It’s too great a risk.

Has it really?

We finished the season beating spurs and Chelsea. We've beaten Everton and Manchester United. 

The last few games have been very poor but I think this spell is an overreaction, like most things when it comes to the manager. 

Why wait? Because he's done a good job and doesn't deserve to be sacked right now. I don't get the desperation. 

Your last paragraph is this doomsday scenario we constantly hear when it comes to sacking Smith. If we don't act and finish 14th the world ends. We have ambitious, billionaire owners, finishing 14th instead of 11th won't make us less attractive for top managers. That's nonsense IMO. 

[DCJonah]

27 minutes ago, Blasterpocket68 said:

Correct Bailey brief spell changed a really poor performance against a weak Everton team on the day. 

So good in game management then. Also shows how important Bailey could potentially be for us and he's yet to start a game.

[DCJonah]

1 minute ago, MaVilla said:

i have other posts with graphs and table etc, but if we strip away all the surrounding noise for a while, i think one of my biggest concerns is style of play, or lack there of.

I dont remember the last time that i watched us and saw us have a defined style of play, a methodology, and this from a manager in Deano who was supposed to bring us the "beautiful game".

Deano has been here 3 years now, and my summary of the 20/21 season tactics were "punt it to Grealish" and let him work the magic, in the 21/22 season, it seems to be "punt it down either line and hope something happens", its really concerning that after 3 years and $350m spent, we have a team that regularly cant pass 5 yards and treats the ball like a ticking bomb.

If you look at this season passing stats, we are 18th with an avg. of 359 passes per game, with only Newcastle (339) and Burnley (333) behind us in passing table, read that again....only Newcastle and Burnely pass less than we do, and not by much. Now, i accept "passes" arent a catch all for good or beautiful football, but it does correctly reflect that we are a punt down the lines team, a back to forward asap style team, the exact style we all said we hated historically, and the exact opposite of what we all said we wanted when Deano came in, and the exact opposite of what Deano said he would bring, an "attractive, progressive, entertaining, beautiful" style of football.

As i say, i know this cant be viewed in isolation, as many other factors come in to play, but i will be honest and say that the fact we play how we do (or seem to fail to have any style of play), after how long Deano has been here, and the money invested in the playing squad, is quite disappointing to me.

That might be one of the most biased things I've read on this thread. 

[nick76]

16 minutes ago, PaulC said:

I thought that was cleared up as that only applies if the ref had blown the whistle for Half time before the VAR check which he hadnt. 

Are you sure? I thought he’d blown up for half time. Seems like others thought he’d blew up as well but I could be wrong.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/aubameyang-arsenals-second-goal-vs-21949742

Quote

The whistle for half-time was blown by Craig Pawson

 

Edited October 24, 2021 by nick76

[tonyh29]

1 minute ago, nick76 said:

Are you sure? I thought he’d blown up for half time.

Sky did a whole thing in it 

when the foul took place there were 8 seconds of the half left , that the ref blew for half time is irrelevant as the clock goes back to the point of the foul… so he had 8 seconds to score the rebound 

[PaulC]

2 minutes ago, nick76 said:

Are you sure? I thought he’d blown up for half time. Seems like others thought he’d blew up as well but I could be wrong.

No he hadn't he blew for a var check.  

[nick76]

4 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

Sky did a whole thing in it 

when the foul took place there were 8 seconds of the half left , that the ref blew for half time is irrelevant as the clock goes back to the point of the foul… so he had 8 seconds to score the rebound 

3 minutes ago, PaulC said:

No he hadn't he blew for a var check.  

Fair enough! The score line was the least they deserve at that point anyway

[Tommo_b]

Although we were horrendously bad in the first 45 against Arsenal (worst I’ve ever seen, just wow diabolical), it did get fixed to an extent in the second half and we looked more ourselves. 

We can take some comfort in knowing we are still only currently 5 points off 4th spot, so it’s not a bad position to be in still, we just need performances to improve again and I think with Bailey abs Troare coming back in, we will start getting some good wins again. 
 

Smith will be fully away it’s not been good enough and he will fix it, I have no doubt about that, he is it turns out a top class manager and long may he stay at our club. 

[M_Afro]

28 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Has it really?

We finished the season beating spurs and Chelsea. We've beaten Everton and Manchester United. 

The last few games have been very poor but I think this spell is an overreaction, like most things when it comes to the manager. 

Why wait? Because he's done a good job and doesn't deserve to be sacked right now. I don't get the desperation. 

Your last paragraph is this doomsday scenario we constantly hear when it comes to sacking Smith. If we don't act and finish 14th the world ends. We have ambitious, billionaire owners, finishing 14th instead of 11th won't make us less attractive for top managers. That's nonsense IMO. 

Our form has been poor all year in my view. We did play well against Spurs at the end of last season but we were incredibly lucky against Chelsea. We were poor against an Everton side missing their best players (the stats had it as the luckiest result of the weekend). We were good against Utd. That’s only 2 good performances. 
I also wasn’t talking about our attractiveness to managers. I agree that we are a very attractive prospect. I was talking about how our finish will affect our ability to retain our best players and attract new ones who are of a high enough quality to improve us. Our finishing position becomes incredibly important then.

[foreveryoung]

35 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Has it really?

We finished the season beating spurs and Chelsea. We've beaten Everton and Manchester United. 

The last few games have been very poor but I think this spell is an overreaction, like most things when it comes to the manager. 

Why wait? Because he's done a good job and doesn't deserve to be sacked right now. I don't get the desperation. 

Your last paragraph is this doomsday scenario we constantly hear when it comes to sacking Smith. If we don't act and finish 14th the world ends. We have ambitious, billionaire owners, finishing 14th instead of 11th won't make us less attractive for top managers. That's nonsense IMO. 

It'll make us less attractive to top players though. An the players we have may start looking elsewhere. Part of the project is to progress each year an be able to keep our best players.

14th will not be good enough.

[Zhan_Zhuang]

10 hours ago, OutByEaster? said:

Or Smith was never remotely under threat and the board are happy with progress on a long term project - we have no idea how the club felt about Smith before lockdown, no matter how many times we repeat whatever a bloke on twitter said.

There are rumours for everything, you're picking the ones you like and running with them.

Every Premier league manager is maybe six games from the sack - that's the nature of the job. Every person that says a manager will go will be right eventually; they last not much more than a season on average - but there's nothing to suggest that Dean Smith is on the verge of being relieved of his duties - if he loses the next three I'm sure he'll be worried, but today? Or after the West Ham game? No. 

The combination of the Wolves collapse which came with a huge emotional hit, and the first half no show against Arsenal has got elements of the fanbase is in a terrible state. After the Wolves game, Villa fans called for leadership, for courage, for calm heads, for character and for grit - then almost immediately cried that the manager needed to go, the captain should be dropped, the record signing was shit, we should dump last season's top scorer and the formation should be changed as we were clearly on a death slide to relegation. If the fans were a 20's movie starlet, a man in a bow tie would have shaken our shoulders and slapped us by now.

It's nonsense. No one else in the football world, or in so far as I can see at the football club, sees this as an earth shattering crisis - we've had a run of three defeats, a couple of which have come with painful passages of play. It's not good and it needs to be addressed by the manager - but sacking him, at this point? We'd be a laughing stock.

 

 

Yes and I don't disagree but we are here yet again. I never said we are at 'crisis' point but we were before lockdown hence why Smith was gone after the Leicester game...

You acknowledge the situation yourself, practically every other manager is under pressure.

However Villa currently seem to have hit a wall and are struggling for consistency so questions arise and rumours abound.

None of us really know what is going on. I for one like Smith and hope he turns it around but NSWE perhaps have a different outlook.

It's a message board, none of us are right and we discuss our thoughts.

[Mark Albrighton]

1 minute ago, foreveryoung said:

It'll make us less attractive to top players though. An the players we have may start looking elsewhere. Part of the project is to progress each year an be able to keep our best players.

14th will not be good enough.

I think it would depend on who was brought in as a replacement manager. You bring in a “name” and I reckon. players like Bailey, Martinez would be prepared to stay especially if there’s the promise of team reinforcements (which there presumably would be if a top name had been persuaded to come in).

I think Villa will finish higher than 14th. 

[OutByEaster?]

5 minutes ago, Zhan_Zhuang said:

Yes and I don't disagree but we are here yet again.

Where is here?

When were we here before?

 

[nick76]

9 minutes ago, Zhan_Zhuang said:

hence why Smith was gone after the Leicester game...

Can you prove that? I don’t think Smith was under threat, there are always rumours about managers of which 95% aren’t true.

 

[Peter Griffin]

3 hours ago, DCJonah said:

I don't think panicking and sacking him would be a smart decision, even if we did go onto lose the next few. 

Unless we are in serious danger of relegation

If we lose our next few we will be well and truly in the relegation battle,.

[VillaChris]

9 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

FWIW if we lose the mext three I would expect he will be sacked, not least because we will probably be in the bottom 3 at that point.

I don't think we'll be bottom 3 as Burnley and Newcastle still six points off us (Newcastle have Chelsea next) but yeah we wouldn't be far off. Pretty sobering if Southampton had won yesterday they'd have been above us in the table. They only won their first game of the season last weekend!

Still at least the table is fairly tight. Grind out a draw v West Ham and win at Southampton and we'd remain mid table and probably only be a point or two off 8th-9th which is what I want us to be challenging for so up to DS as he obviously knows he's going to be very very lucky to remain in a job if he loses five or six straight games.

[Peter Griffin]

1 hour ago, Phil Silvers said:

Deano is going through another squad rebuild

That isn't true though. 

We have sold Jack and released Heaton, Taylor and Elmo and loaned out Engels, Wes and Fred. Jack was the only first team starter and only Elmo got a look in on the bench. We have added more quality across the team but that is not a squad rebuild

[villalad21]

Unless we're in a relegation scrap Smith should get till May to turn it around. 

Never been a fan of sacking managers mid season. 

We'll assess at the end of the season. 

[DCJonah]

3 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Unless we're in a relegation scrap Smith should get till May to turn it around. 

Never been a fan of sacking managers mid season. 

We'll assess at the end of the season. 

Wow. Complete and utter sense. 

[calcifer]

25 minutes ago, Peter Griffin said:

If we lose our next few we will be well and truly in the relegation battle,.

After Palace we have Man City and Leicester at VP then Liverpool. Let's be honest the way we are playing can't see us picking anything up. So it is so important we pick up at least 6-8 points from our next 4 games, after the pool game we will be gifting Norwich their 1st win of the season as an early Xmas present lol!