Dean Smith

[VillaChris]

1 hour ago, sidcow said:

They need to do something about our ball retention. We just constantly give the ball away and often when not really under too much pressure. 

Very bad decision making, ignoring easy passes for unnecessary difficult balls.  Turning into trouble instead of an easy lay off running straight into opponents. 

We did it most of last season as well but had the quality to steamroller teams anyway, but we don't have that this season so the constantly losing possession is killing us. 

OK being without Jack and Engels and Targett is a loss for anyone but especially the first half we looked like a league 2 team playing Barcelona. Missing a couple of players shouldn't mean our performance drops off a cliff face. 

Why shouldn't it? We hardly won a game between December and March last year in a much weaker division when Grealish was out. This was despite having one of premier league top scorers and McGinn playing pretty much all the games in that period. Even when Mings came in we didn't win in his first 5-6 games I think.

We're struggling with injuries as we don't have many top level experienced players to come in to replace them. Fine buying young players from weaker leagues but not sure we got the balance of youth and experience right this summer, certainly not when you see us picking up injuries and games like today.

[Pimlico_Villa]

59 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said:

Smith never changes anything up. Same approach, same formation, same tactics all the time. It's a glaring weakness.

Yes, but we are constrained by not having an ounce of quality beyond the starting 11, aside from Lansbury. He probably could conceive of a Plan B, but we just don’t have the players to do anything differently. 
 

That is why Jan is massively important recruitment-wise. 

[markavfc40]

Really disappointed in how we played today as we showed a complete lack of effort and fight and really allowed Wolves to win without having to get out of second gear. I know we had injuries but we showed last week against Liverpool that even not at full strength by working our bollocks off we can give anyone a game.

I sometimes question why Smith doesn't try something different and why he sticks so rigidly to 4-3-3. I think the reason is though because we have 12 new players in the squad, many of them starting. He is trying to get them all to gel so I'd imagine swapping and changing formation is going to make it even harder for them to get some consistency as a team. 

The manager has to take his fair share of the blame when we don't perform as was the case today but listening to him after the game it is promising that he sees what we see and makes no excuses. You get the feeling with Smith he knows where we have gone wrong which at least gives the hope that he can therefore try to put things right.

I think we need to put today's result and performance in perspective. We are now pretty much a third of the way through the season and find ourselves 3 points outside the drop zone with a far superior goal difference to those in it. In the vast majority of games we have held our own and been really competitive. As much as today was a disappointment, and I fully expect a few more this season, it needs to be remembered this season was all about staying up and as things stand we are on target to achieve that. As a fan base we need to stay positive, keep believing in what Smith and the other coaches are doing and stay right behind them and the players.

[Blasterpocket68]

On ‎28‎/‎09‎/‎2019 at 16:53, villa4europe said:

The frustrating thing is he has us playing decent stuff but the lack of subs is baffling and blatantly killing us

Wesley was on for a good 20 mins longer than he should have been

I think Wesley had 90 minutes too much

[thabucks]

Needs to work hard this next two weeks and also look at himself and his decision making as it will cost us more points if he stubbornly refuses to deviate from his preferred 433 . Big fan of his but got it wrong today and needs to change tactics and be proactive .

[VillaChris]

The thing is though he did change things after Arsenal and we looked better for it. Moving Jack from midfield three into front 3 gives us better balance and the results showed that.

Ultimately though we're still at the stage when an injury to a key player in a certain area will totally hurt us.

It would be the same if Mings was out for 4-5 weeks. Yes we have other decent CBs but no one with his leadership or quality in the air.

Key after the next window is to sign 2-3 players who can either start and make a difference or at the very least be game changers off the bench as so far this season we haven't had many of them.

Edited November 10, 2019 by VillaChris

[MotoMkali]

To be honest I'm not really sure why our players are always so tired. We are so static as a team and this makes us lose the ball far too easily. 

[villalad21]

This is last season all over again.

Jack gets injured and we fall apart.

[screwdriver]

smith got it wrong today on so many levels.

We had a depleted squad therefore a cunning plan was needed to go to a strong team and get something.  ie. bus parking maneuvers.

We could of stolen a point if we were set up better to deal with wolfs big weapons.

Taylor should of started to deal with Traore. as I've mentioned on the Neil Taylor thread. Someone should have marked the zone by the D where Neves placed the ball into the back of the net. The stat came up on the telly that neves has score a high % of his goals outside the box so What are the hell are the data analysis boys doing all week? watching Xhamster?

Why is Luiz getting so much match time when he's half arsed every game? cos pep says so?

To make it worse Luiz and Morares are off to brazil on a jolly now for two weeks.

Smith is turning into a hands in pockets  shoulder shrugging manager like evertons silva "I told the players to go out and play they're not doing it!"

you can't expect a depleted team to go to wolverhampton, build from the back and pass them off the park. it's not happening any time soon

Edited November 10, 2019 by screwdriver
typo

[A'Villan]

Dean has to wear this loss in my opinion. It can't all be about desire, you have to have a functional game plan that allows you to compete.

[Villarocker]

Only thing different I would have done is change Nakamba for Hourihane instead of Lansbury. 

He played the correct players today but, unfortunately, they seemed to cave in when our keeper and left back had to go off. 

If those players had applied themselves in the first half as they did the second half we may well have gotten something out of the game. 

Only thing Smith can be blamed for is maybe not bringing in a other striker and wide man in the summer as we do look short of cover in both positions. 

[TRO]

7 hours ago, rodders0223 said:

Having questions now about the calibre of training. We are awful in retaining the ball. Lack of movement all over all season.Absolutely awful.

I was having similar thoughts......some things are just the same every match.

our heading ability alone is very,very weak.

[AV82]

Between tactics, man management, injuries and us having an off day I'm not entirely sure where to pin the tail on the donkey but it really does seem like fitness is an issue. 8 of the Wolves starting 11 played 100 minutes on Thursday and they still looked twice as fit and twice as hungry as we did. That is unacceptable.

[TRO]

3 hours ago, markavfc40 said:

Really disappointed in how we played today as we showed a complete lack of effort and fight and really allowed Wolves to win without having to get out of second gear. I know we had injuries but we showed last week against Liverpool that even not at full strength by working our bollocks off we can give anyone a game.

I sometimes question why Smith doesn't try something different and why he sticks so rigidly to 4-3-3. I think the reason is though because we have 12 new players in the squad, many of them starting. He is trying to get them all to gel so I'd imagine swapping and changing formation is going to make it even harder for them to get some consistency as a team. 

The manager has to take his fair share of the blame when we don't perform as was the case today but listening to him after the game it is promising that he sees what we see and makes no excuses. You get the feeling with Smith he knows where we have gone wrong which at least gives the hope that he can therefore try to put things right.

I think we need to put today's result and performance in perspective. We are now pretty much a third of the way through the season and find ourselves 3 points outside the drop zone with a far superior goal difference to those in it. In the vast majority of games we have held our own and been really competitive. As much as today was a disappointment, and I fully expect a few more this season, it needs to be remembered this season was all about staying up and as things stand we are on target to achieve that. As a fan base we need to stay positive, keep believing in what Smith and the other coaches are doing and stay right behind them and the players.

Good post mark

However, some of the issues i saw today, i see in some of the better games....like our persistence to give the ball away cheaply, Dean himself has commented on it ,often...so he is well aware.

its an improvement i am anxious to see.

[Tomaszk]

40 minutes ago, TRO said:

I was having similar thoughts......some things are just the same every match.

our heading ability alone is very,very weak.

Did you ever bring this up with Brucie? 

[Zatman]

1 hour ago, TRO said:

Good post mark

However, some of the issues i saw today, i see in some of the better games....like our persistence to give the ball away cheaply, Dean himself has commented on it ,often...so he is well aware.

its an improvement i am anxious to see.

You can only coach so much, the part in bold is the least I would expect from a professional footballer in League 2 never mind Premier League

[TRO]

1 hour ago, Tomaszk said:

Did you ever bring this up with Brucie? 

I think it was much the same.....haven't seen us play with any competency in that area for some time.....I think it comes with being physically adept and aggressive and that's been missing for some time now.

Edited November 11, 2019 by TRO

[Demitri_C]

Didn't get the lansbury sub. Surely Conor would have been a better option from the bench. From what I could see lansbury was playing up top behind Wesley.

Henri was getting in some good position to be fair to him. But his lack of pace made it hard when we were going forward. 

[KenjiOgiwara]

8 hours ago, TRO said:

I was having similar thoughts......some things are just the same every match.

our heading ability alone is very,very weak.

I think this has very little to do with what we do in training. 

Our pressing intensity is lower than it could be cause we clearly don't have the fitness levels we want yet. That takes time. And since there are a lot of sides that are better than us we will be losing possession a lot, and we all know you get more tired without the ball than with the ball. I think they basically are careful about chasing so we don't collapse completely. 

Thirdly heading ability isn't really coached at this level methinks. You might coach set piece tactics, but the ability to head the ball is something they should have. Unfortunately a lot of our players are small and/or from nations that keeps the ball on the ground so this isn't a strong trait they got. I think the only player I am annoyed with in that department is Wes. He should be good at it. But I guess in reality only Mings and Engels are good at this. Grealish is surprisingly weak at it for being English. 

Edited November 11, 2019 by KenjiOgiwara

[cbr600rr]

when your talisman is not in the team you need grafters who close down & press the game.