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Dean Smith


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1 hour ago, Sam3773 said:

They said something on Soccer Saturday yesterday that resonated. I can't remember which team they were discussing now but it wasn't us. 

They were describing the tough turn around of results under a new manager and said 'When you've got players who have been so used to playing route 1 football for years, it's underestimated how hard it is to change that mentality'. And when you think about it, a lot of the squad have been playing a certain way for a couple of years now. 

This puts Smith in an awkward position in my mind. He will be well aware that the fans wanted him because of his trademark style of football. He will be well aware if this group of players can or can't play to that style. If they can't, what does he do? Stick with it and lose games as the players make mistakes, poor touches, poor awareness etc. Or change to one the players are more used to until summer: Bruce Ball. Either way, it's going to be a tough few months on the fans. 

With that in mind, I think there's a way this squad goes on a winning run. That way is getting in a good route 1 manager. But no one wants that. I honestly feel that any manager who plays this expansive football is doomed to fail unless they're given that preseason and summer window. 

It's a tough one mentally on the fans though. We just want performances and results. At the moment I think we have a manager incapable of managing the way the team plays, and a team incapable of playing the way the manager wants.

Makes me think of Houllier. Tried to change the way we played, plunged us into a relegation battle and got us out of it by reverting to an MON style of play. (Oh, and spending all the club’s money on Bent).

Sometimes a coach has to do what a coach has to do. I don’t agree that watching the current football Smith is producing is better than a route 1 approach. I like to see Villa winning and I don’t really care how they do it.

Edited by briny_ear
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Whether you're for Smith or against him, right now, our future is very uncertain as a football club. 

We will lose many players during the summer and the first team match day squad is probably going to have at least 9 or 10 new faces in it. Question is, how much money will the manager be given the spend to bring those players in? 

Smith has already spent a fair bit on the new keeper and right back. But, we still need a decent few new players in and unless we sell Grealish how on earth are they going to find the money to buy quality players to take us up? It's ok saying Smith shopped at Poundland for his previous club but, ultimately, he didn't take them up. 

So many new players will also need time to gel together. For all their good results and plaudits last season, Brentford only won 2 of their first 14 games of last season - against Bolton and Millwall. If we saw a similar start to next season, let's face it, we would be struggling to get promoted again. 

I would love to know our financial situation and the thought process regarding Smith's employment but, these days, we seem to hear very little from the club.

I suspect that the powers-that-be realised the situation we would find ourselves in next summer and went for a man that has achieved relative success (for Brentford) with younger, cheaper players and felt that the re-build was so big that funds would be limited and Smith would be more suitable to the task than say Brendan Rodgers. Maybe they see Smith as being able to recruit smartly and build for that long term journey back to the top flight. If that's the case, those fans venting their opinion that Smith isn't up to it are going to be in for one hell of a tough time supporting this club. 

Edited by villarocker
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3 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

Makes me think of Houllier. Tried to change the way we played, plunged us into a relegation battle and got us out of it by reverting to an MON style of play. (Oh, and spending all the club’s money on Bent).

Sometimes a coach has to do what a coach has to do. I don’t agree that watching the current football Smith is producing is better than a route 1 approach. I like to see Villa winning and I don’t really care how they do it.

Thing is, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. We can playDavis to enable a more direct approach whilst still slowing adapting the play and incorporating a high press. Total revolution is always going to require more staff turnover than evolution. Evolution is required until we can address the players. A good manager would recognise this and adapt.

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7 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

Makes me think of Houllier. Tried to change the way we played, plunged us into a relegation battle and got us out of it by reverting to an MON style of play. (Oh, and spending all the club’s money on Bent)

I was actually looking forward to the next season with Houllier in charge. I saw him field a team of youngsters that played Man United off the park. That was our future. Unfortunately the owners decided to replace him with Mcliesh. 

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48 minutes ago, PieFacE said:

I'm absolutely sick of us bouncing from one manager to the next looking for some kind of instant magic formula. That short sighted approach gets you absolutely no where and it's partly why we're in the position we are in. Being in this league is the perfect opportunity for us to have a complete re-think and rebuild, and integrate and actual football philosophy and recruit a certain set of players to fit into that like so many other teams have (Leicester, Southampton, Watford etc...)

It's absolutely obvious that the current squad we have are just incapable of playing the way Smith wants to play. This puts Smith in a tricky position, does he...

A) revert back to the style of football that the players were brought in for to see if it can get some momentum going?

B ) persist with trying to change the style with players who clearly aren't comfortable playing it?

C ) try again do a kind of hybrid approach which to me, looks like he's trying to do but it isn't working.

We need Tuanzebe back, we need Jack back. Just having 2 players comfortable on the ball will make a huge difference, afterall it's 20% of the outfield players. It's no shock we've looked worse since they have been out. 

I said when DS was appointed that it needed to get worse before it gets better, and was very shocked at how well he started. But I still maintain that, things do need to be shit for a while before we can start looking like an actual team and with so many players out of contact this summer, it's the perfect opportunity for a rebuild.

I'm kinda rambling now so... It's going to be shit, this season is a write off, I've accepted that now and look forward to seeing what happens over the summer/pre-season. I think we will be in a much better position best year. 

 

 

Totally with you on the benefits of managerial stability. Changing managers frequently can just make things worse, especially if, like Villa in recent years, you do it with no plan about building a squad.

(There are of course other models that can bring success - look at Leeds - but it’s disruptive and painful for fans.)

Where I part company with the argument is the thought that Smith is the right manager to back as part of a long term plan. Nothing in his past career suggests he can get us where we want to be. And his present struggles just tend to confirm it.

So I think I would sack him in the summer and try to get a better candidate in.

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3 minutes ago, villarocker said:

Whether you're for Smith or against him, right now, our future is very uncertain as a football club. 

At the moment we are very fortunate to have very rich owners along with a top CEO. If they decided to cut their losses we’d be f**ked.  At the moment we’re ok. 

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The worry is, there's a limit to 'his kind of players', Brentford is proof of that. You want to get promoted playing pass an move Smith type football, you are gonna be looking at £40 million plus type players out our league, or another 3 seasons coaching them to reach the play offs.

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5 minutes ago, M_Afro said:

Thing is, it doesn’t have to be one or the other. We can playDavis to enable a more direct approach whilst still slowing adapting the play and incorporating a high press. Total revolution is always going to require more staff turnover than evolution. Evolution is required until we can address the players. A good manager would recognise this and adapt.

The thing is Smith is trying to create a way of playing. A different mindset at the club. He can’t train with a direct approach all week just because half the team won’t be here next season.  

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1 minute ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

I was actually looking forward to the next season with Houllier in charge. I saw him field a team of youngsters that played Man United off the park. That was our future. Unfortunately the owners decided to replace him with Mcliesh. 

Well they had to replace him, didn’t they, for health reasons, they didn't exactly “choose” to replace him.

It remains a matter of completely unverifiable speculation whether his second season would have been any less poor than his first if he hadn’t had his heart problems. Personally I thought he was pretty useless, and a very poor man-manager.

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12 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

Makes me think of Houllier. Tried to change the way we played, plunged us into a relegation battle and got us out of it by reverting to an MON style of play. (Oh, and spending all the club’s money on Bent).

Sometimes a coach has to do what a coach has to do. I don’t agree that watching the current football Smith is producing is better than a route 1 approach. I like to see Villa winning and I don’t really care how they do it.

I think there's more to the poor start under Houllier. We had lost Milner and had a CM midfield of Hogg and Bannan for plenty of games. I found it frustrating at the time how some fans quickly fell into pretty vitriolic criticism of him and who knows how that affected his health. I think we as a fanbase and probably most other fanbases love to find a scapegoat. Same with Lambert for me—totally screwed over by Lerner he did well keeping us up yet we fans demanded a head on a spike, just like now. We have no divine right to win football games and we were badly run in the Prem and we've been even more terribly run in the Championship by Xia. The madness has to end. Smith has proven he is capable of performances far beyond what we're seeing now. Let him rebuild—he's mentioned bringing the age down of the squad. At the very worst, if he got us to Brentford levels of performance with a young team (I've said before the ceiling with Villa is obvs much higher) then we'd have an actual sustainable base to build from. We wouldn't be hemorrhaging money on shit players and therefore we'd be able to invest our superior resources where it can make a difference. Looks like that'll begin next season. 

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3 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

The worry is, there's a limit to 'his kind of players', Brentford is proof of that. You want to get promoted playing pass an move Smith type football, you are gonna be looking at £40 million plus type players out our league, or another 3 seasons coaching them to reach the play offs.

Eddie Howe managed it.

A lot of young players can play the game the way Smith wants. We don’t have to break the bank to find these players. Most will want to play for Aston Villa. Who wants to play for Brentford?

I’m hoping our new right back is evidence of that. 

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6 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

The worry is, there's a limit to 'his kind of players', Brentford is proof of that. You want to get promoted playing pass an move Smith type football, you are gonna be looking at £40 million plus type players out our league, or another 3 seasons coaching them to reach the play offs.

So you're saying there are only bargains that won't get you anywhere and £40 million players and nothing inbetweeen? The resources at VIlla are on another level to Brentford—therefore there is every reason to expect we would surpass their level considerably.

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2 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

Well they had to replace him, didn’t they, for health reasons, they didn't exactly “choose” to replace him.

It remains a matter of completely unverifiable speculation whether his second season would have been any less poor than his first if he hadn’t had his heart problems. Personally I thought he was pretty useless, and a very poor man-manager.

Ok they had to replace him. But the next appointment was the beginning of the end for me. 

Whatever Houllier was trying to implement went out the window. 

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43 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

One that I do scratch my head with is why we have so many youngsters are out on loan whilst at the same time having made a number of players aware they have no future here. I think yesterday showed with the reaction Ramsey got that fans would be far more forgiving and behind younger players knowing there was an eye on the future rather than seeing the same old players producing the same old crap. 

Might be looking at this simply, but I think this is because -

• Play offs while increasingly unlikely, are possible (yes it’s remote) and as he’s been able to get performances out of these players before, he’s trying to return to that. Maybe with Ramsey we’re seeing the start of looking towards next season.

• As well as doing that, he’s still ascertaining whether any of these players can fit his system. It worked for a couple of months, maybe he thinks it can work again.

• A lot of these players are going, a lot of them out of contract, but a few of them may still have some monetary value - Hourihane, Adomah, Kodjia....if he bins them off for the youth and creates another bomb squad, we’ll potentially lose out on a few quid which we could very well need for the rebuild.

Edited by Shropshire Lad
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1 hour ago, hippo said:

Really not sure. The defence is all his players now...bar hutton.

I think that’s a little unfair and misleading. Elphick is not his player - he is a discarded existing player who Smith turned to when without other options. 

Hause is a loanee who has been slotted in out of position to provide cover and who may or may not become a permanent fixture

We don’t know the clubs financial and strategic Position in January but given time most will expect Smith to bring in younger, quicker players than those available to him at the moment

Its worth noting that the two players he has added to the defence were 1 and 2 in the MOTM rankings

As an aside, I wanted Wagner when Bruce was appointed and would love to see him here now, but in fairness we must give Smith much more time to turn around what has become a long term demise - admittedly to be allowed that time Smith needs to steady the ship before the end of the season

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I know Farke has been mentioned as a name who was given time to turn things around where he built an identity.

Here are another few:-

Jokanovic did really well first season but missed out in playoff semi finals.  First 4-5 months at Fulham last season were terrible, and some fans were calling for his head (he never got the players he wanted in). Come January he brought those players in and Fulham surged up the table and got promoted, they had an identity.

Lee Johnson joined Bristol City three years ago, kept them up comfortably for his first half season. His first full season with Tammy firing in the goals they only just survived getting relegated. Bristol City kept the faith, and the following season Bristol City started strong. They were in the top 8 for much of the season, and reached the semi finals of the League Cup. They then collapsed and finished the season terribly, many fans were calling for Johnson to leave. The start of this season Bristol City started poorly again, they were languishing in the bottom half of the table and again there were calls for Johnsons head. Here now in February Bristol City have won (9 games I think) in a row and are verging in on the playoffs again. They had an identity.

David Wagner less so, he came in did what was expected and in his first summer bought in 15 players (according to Wikipedia) and guess what they got promoted. But again he built his team.

Of course none of those clubs are a club the size of our own, where there is less patience and more expectation. However we are now a club who has underachieved year after year for arguably the past 9-10 years. Something needs to change drastically and I feel we need to give Smith time as others have supported too.

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59 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

One that I do scratch my head with is why we have so many youngsters are out on loan whilst at the same time having made a number of players aware they have no future here. I think yesterday showed with the reaction Ramsey got that fans would be far more forgiving and behind younger players knowing there was an eye on the future rather than seeing the same old players producing the same old crap. 

Can only think because at that stage we still had a chance for promotion and the youngsters weren't ready to improve us. Hence loan them out so they get some regular game time. 

Had playoff chances already been over I suspect a few of them would have stayed.

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5 minutes ago, VillaAlex said:

Of course none of those clubs are a club the size of our own, where there is less patience and more expectation. However we are now a club who has underachieved year after year for arguably the past 9-10 years. Something needs to change drastically and I feel we need to give Smith time as others have supported too.

Speak to Leeds fans. They’ll tell you it’s only after about 10 years in this league or worse that pressure and expectation dropped and players could handle the weight of playing for Leeds.  

Ironically our size and status will make it harder to get out this league than other clubs. 

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