Dean Smith

[Dr_Pangloss]

Smith has done brilliantly here. He picked up an awful mess of a team and has got us playing far higher up the pitch with more intensity and more quality on the ball. Unbelievable winning streak to get us into the playoffs and he has now delivered a final. Such was the mess he inherited I think he has already gone beyond expectation but here's hoping he can do one better and deliver the victory at Wembley. 

[VillaChris]

14 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

All banter aside his substitutions were very strange. If you are taking off a fullback for a striker why take off the one who can cross? Especially at this point where West Brom are absolutely sitting in and never going to come out.

Kodjia should have been on way earlier too. We needed some inspiration it was all in front of the 3 CBS.

I think if you're on about AEM there was only five minutes left and he just wanted as many penalty takers out there as possible. If that wasn't the situation I'm sure Tammy would've been hooked at some point.

We saw with WBA what happened when you just have defenders taking penalties, thankfully we had plenty of penalty takers out there and it gave us the edge.

[VillaChris]

34 minutes ago, rodders0223 said:

Got it wrong for me. I would have played Whelan.

Whelan was never going to start both legs in just under 80 hours.

Actually it's interesting what happens for Wembley. Starting likes of Whelan, Adomah etc would feel like an SB safety first selection.

[hippo]

Not a criticism but I wonder if DS and players over analysed this one. The overpassing, the short corners, the delayed subs, maybe hoping Albion were tired . We need to step back to basics a tad in the final.

[Dave-R]

The passing was great, the possession was excellent, however it's those final crosses which go way to far or shots that couldn't get through.

Credit to Albion they marked out our key players and again felt like Grealish was ineffective, as was Mcginn.

We have to do better at the final part of the build up, we threw alot at Albion and nothing landed home.

Between crosses, headers and shots something should of landed with the amount we had, yet one bad blunder nearly cost us it all and we cant afford that if we do get to the premier. 

Was a fantastic game however, I felt the ref was real bad, booked our player Mings for something that shouldn't of been a booking. There players were constantly taking the piss with fouls and took an amazing length of time for there first booking, ridiculous.

Steer was absoloute brilliant on those penaltys.

My son was laughing at me cus I were all emotional, if I wasn't shouting, my heart was ready to pop out my chest like some alien ready to burst out of me..

One game between us and the premier, Leeds or derby, here we come.

[Daweii]

22 minutes ago, hippo said:

Not a criticism but I wonder if DS and players over analysed this one. The overpassing, the short corners, the delayed subs, maybe hoping Albion were tired . We need to step back to basics a tad in the final.

We were trying too hard especially with the corners. We had 15 corners and I believe 12 of them were played short. How often in a game do clubs see a corner pinball off several players and somehow wind up in the net? It happens quite a lot and we had 15 chances to make that happen tonight, but didn't take most of them.

[MaVilla]

1 minute ago, Daweii said:

We were trying too hard especially with the corners. We had 15 corners and I believe 12 of them were played short. How often in a game do clubs see a corner pinball off several players and somehow wind up in the net? It happens quite a lot and we had 15 chances to make that happen tonight, but didn't take most of them.

Completely agree it should be more like 12 normal corners and 3 tricky ones.

All those short corners were stupid as hell considering the height we have in our team.

We have done this for a few matches now and it really needs to stop, doing a couple short and tricky corners is fine, but it needs to be an irregular thing, not all the time so the other team knows what we are doing.

But yeah completely agree we missed some basics tonight like just delivering the ball in to the box ......

I found the corner idiocy to be probably the single most infuriating thing tonight, and I had a few things to be infuriated about!

[Mark Albrighton]

 

[Dave-R]

I think it's something we can all agree on that the amount of short corners were way over the amount we should of played. As others have said it did look like Pinball machine time with Albion at times.

I don't know what Grealish was playing at either, he made some very bad calls on corners and free kicks. Don't know what's up with him the past couple of games, however i did notice he had a R.I.P nan on his under shirt, is that a recent passing in his family?? If so i can understand if hes been affected by things, as losing a loved one can affect anything in life, im still dealing with the loss of a mother from september last year, hope he's ok.

Smith is going to have to talk to our players again, because if we play like that and can't hit the final balls home, were not going up, it will be our own faults if we can't be more ruthless with that ball at the final header, kick. Tammy missed some chances one of which he should of hurled himself towards like a comet. Credit to Johnstone he kept them in the game to be honest, all the way to the penaltys anyhow.

I was even hoping Hourihane would of snuck one in as he can do that, but again every shot was just bouncing off there players as if they had 22 players on the pitch.

Movement was fast from us to a point, we just were not fast enough in breaking that defence down. I'm beginning to be nervous because I feel Leeds could set up similar just to get at us, because we struggled to break down at team we should of dealt with from all that we threw at them.

I am far from impressed with our players just for one thing and it's that final balls need to be much better, doing to much at times cost us. a few players had shots on goal and then ran it further towards the defence before letting shot off, by that time a defender had his block in.

 

Edited May 15, 2019 by Dave-R

[TRO]

I'm with Dean......I am really annoyed we lost the game.....we should have buried them, with better application and control.

Once again the same old players carrying us and the same ones like lemmings.

I hope he is looking at these games long and hard and it should be obvious where the weak links are, for us to remedy in the closed season.

He needs to get players in, so he can play how he wants.....This is still not him IMO

We all like winning......but had we of lost out it would have been an entirely different mood.....some of our players are simply not good enough and living off the backs of the others.

Edited May 15, 2019 by TRO

[Dave-R]

11 minutes ago, Shropshire Lad said:

 

That's hilarious, I'm really annoyed we lost that game, fantastic Dean.

If that was anyone else from our previous managers they wouldn't of said that, they would of made it sound all peaches and cream. It's good that Smith isn't pleased with that defeat, it shows that he knows we still have many areas to work on which we do but it's getting better.

If Bruce had of said something it would of been (well we lost that match but won the war, we will do it all again in the final), never thinking that anything needs correcting within our teams performance.

[Farlz]

Just like everyone else in here. the one thing I'll nitpick was the amount of short corners we done. Not sure why we've done that the past 2 games but it really doesn't work. Hourihane is a set piece specialist, stick him on the corners and whip the bloody ball in.

Maybe 1 or 2 short ones fair enough but it was near enough all of them tonight. 

[JAMAICAN-VILLAN]

35 minutes ago, Dave-R said:

I think it's something we can all agree on that the amount of short corners were way over the amount we should of played. As others have said it did look like Pinball machine time with Albion at times.

I don't know what Grealish was playing at either, he made some very bad calls on corners and free kicks. Don't know what's up with him the past couple of games, however i did notice he had a R.I.P nan on his under shirt, is that a recent passing in his family?? If so i can understand if hes been affected by things, as losing a loved one can affect anything in life, im still dealing with the loss of a mother from september last year, hope he's ok.

Smith is going to have to talk to our players again, because if we play like that and can't hit the final balls home, were not going up, it will be our own faults if we can't be more ruthless with that ball at the final header, kick. Tammy missed some chances one of which he should of hurled himself towards like a comet. Credit to Johnstone he kept them in the game to be honest, all the way to the penaltys anyhow.

I was even hoping Hourihane would of snuck one in as he can do that, but again every shot was just bouncing off there players as if they had 22 players on the pitch.

Movement was fast from us to a point, we just were not fast enough in breaking that defence down. I'm beginning to be nervous because I feel Leeds could set up similar just to get at us, because we struggled to break down at team we should of dealt with from all that we threw at them.

I am far from impressed with our players just for one thing and it's that final balls need to be much better, doing to much at times cost us. a few players had shots on goal and then ran it further towards the defence before letting shot off, by that time a defender had his block in.

 

Yes his Grandmother did pass away recently.

I think within the past 10 days or so if i'm not mistaken,

[Dave-R]

Been on a few baggies sites just, most are quiet,  yet one many say they should have won which I don't agree with, especially with the possession, passing, corners, shots we had.

One thing that is very funny is that some say they are our equals, if not better. I thought that was hilarious considering this season is a season they have had the better of us no doubt but that doesn't make them our equals or them better than us, tonight proved that.

[Keyblade]

3 hours ago, rodders0223 said:

All banter aside his substitutions were very strange. If you are taking off a fullback for a striker why take off the one who can cross? Especially at this point where West Brom are absolutely sitting in and never going to come out.

Kodjia should have been on way earlier too. We needed some inspiration it was all in front of the 3 CBS.

Because Adomah is a good penalty taker (I know, but I would have done the same given his excellent record for us before that kick).

[Skruff]

He's made us better at pressing, defending, attacking, retaining the ball. Play out of defence and cope with pressure.Next step would be to make us more effective and dangerous against teams that park the bus, we struggle here, albeit its one of the most difficult things to master. Our movements seem to be lacking vs a well established and drilled defence. 

[Junxs]

4 hours ago, villalad21 said:

Another Play Off final, well done you've exceeded my expectations.

Now let's see if you're better than bruce in this last game.

No, just no.

This is Dean Smiths first season, he picked up in an almost identical position to what Bruce picked up in his first season.

If you want to compare, then Smith has taken us to the playoff final where Bruce only managed 13th! 

[Demitri_C]

What a partyLove this

 

Edited May 15, 2019 by Demitri_C

[Villarocker]

The short corners was obviously a ply and no doubt because of Albion's strength in the air. The problem for Villa was simple - we just didn't execute them well enough, just like the rest of our play. We showed a real weakness last night against a really tired and poor Albion team.

[QldVilla]

I was of the feeling that the team had a bit of stage fright against WBA. 2-1 win first leg, only need a draw, players not wanting to miss the final with cards etc... It's one game now, everything on the line, last game of the season. We may just see the best of Villa with the shackles, mentally, off.