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Dean Smith


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2 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

If it don't change then unfortunately he cant be the man for us is the Premier League. You get punished playing wide open football in this league.

If he  manages to outscore the lesser sides he will still be fine for at least another 2 seasons.

These next 5 games will be very interesting.

Edited by villalad21
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Make or break period for Smith now. Apparently between now and March (I haven’t checked this) we only play 2 of the current top 6 (city and spurs, both at VP). 5/6 wins, especially getting a couple of early ones, from those and we should be fine. However lose the first few and the pressure really ramps up.

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2 minutes ago, mikeyp102 said:

Make or break period for Smith now. Apparently between now and March (I haven’t checked this) we only play 2 of the current top 6 (city and spurs, both at VP). 5/6 wins, especially getting a couple of early ones, from those and we should be fine. However lose the first few and the pressure really ramps up.

Don't think that's the case at all. Lets not pretend a few whiny VTs are representative of our fan base or club. 

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Just now, KenjiOgiwara said:

Don't think that's the case at all. Lets not pretend a few whiny VTs are representative of our fan base or club. 

The board are ambitious, I don’t think they’ll want to yo-yo as a club. There were definitely a few rumblings coming from the stands yesterday. There was a mass exodus after the fourth yesterday, and as I left at the end of the game there were many more questioning Smiths ability. 

 

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12 minutes ago, mikeyp102 said:

Make or break period for Smith now. Apparently between now and March (I haven’t checked this) we only play 2 of the current top 6 (city and spurs, both at VP). 5/6 wins, especially getting a couple of early ones, from those and we should be fine. However lose the first few and the pressure really ramps up.

December: Sheff U a,  Soton h, Norwich h, Watford a.

January: Burnley a, Man C h, Brighton a, Watford h.

February: Bournemouth a, Spurs h, Soton a, Sheff U hj

That's actually only 1 top 6 side (Man C) - Spurs are 7th.

By the end of that lot we will definitely know if we are in for a relegation fight or mid-table comfort.

Edited by briny_ear
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8 minutes ago, KenjiOgiwara said:

Don't think that's the case at all. Lets not pretend a few whiny VTs are representative of our fan base or club. 

It won't be us chap. I guarantee you, the board will not want us to be relegated. It will lose them a whole lot of money and it'll be back to square one. I really don't think either, like some on here they will be throwing a party if we finish just above relegation places. 

Edited by foreveryoung
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Seen lots of "we have played the top 6 in 7 of our last games"  2 of them are only in the top 6 because they beat us..

Sure wolves & utd are no mugs but 5 games ago when we played wolves they were 11th, 2 points in front of us, 3 games ago utd were 9th, 3 points better off than us.

I don't doubt that we have had a tough run and it isn't really these games that will decide our fate. On paper at least we probably have the easiest set of fixtures we could possible wish for over chiristmas and following on right up until the beginning of march really, Our next 12 games are below (now-end of feb) We simply have to win as many of these games as possible. Anything less than 5 wins and i think we will be done for, Ideally we need 6/7 because looking at march, april & may i can't see us getting much at all

Sheff Utd (a)

Southampton (h)

Norwich (H)

Watford (a)

Burnley (a)

Man City (h)

Brighton (a)

Watford (h)

Bournemouth (a)

Spurs (h)

Southampton (a)

Sheff Utd (h)

Edited by LakotaDakota
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I've convinced myself Watford are really going to trouble us.

Southampton is a must must win. As big as Newcastle was. Anything other than a win against them and the team will be so nervous v Watford.

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If we can actually get in a decent striker I'm ok with this attack is the best form of defense DS is going for. We would outscore most teams around us.

Don't care how we win as long as we win. They score 2 we score 4. I can get behind that.

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33 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

It won't be us chap. I guarantee you, the board will not want us to be relegated. It will lose them a whole lot of money and it'll be back to square one. I really don't think either, like some on here they will be throwing a party if we finish just above relegation places. 

I agree with this. I believe the board buy into the Villa man in charge thing and will also realise that from where we were 12 months ago, he’s done pretty well. However they will expect him to carry on doing well, they are extremely  ambitious and I think their expectations are probably mid table this season. They’ll give him time and I think he’ll finish this season provided we’re not going rapidly backwards and not showing signs of knowing how to turn things around.  

However there will be a full appraisal of the management/coaching team early on in the summer. Dean Smith will only keep his job if they think that he has the ability to move us forward the following season.  Mitigating circumstances, major injuries etc will be taken into account but sentimentality will play no part in the decision making and neither should it. 

I hope we finish the season strongly and that Dean can carry us forward and be a successful manager for us for years to come, but if not then AVFC comes first and there will be a change. I’m pretty sure Dean is very aware of this and whilst to be successful at any job you have to back your own ability, I doubt he’ll kid himself if he’s not able to match the ambitions of the club. 

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What's worrying about us tactically is we can't play through the middle because wesley is dog shit. Currently 90% of our attacks involve either jack or McGinn picking up the ball on the corner of the box, waiting for targett/elmo/guilbert to over lap before they drill a cross in low and two of wesley/el ghazi/mcginn/Jack go for it. Its not exactly unpredictable 

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We've already been outscoring most teams around us but we've conceded two or more goals in ten of the games we've played, we could sign Kane, Abraham, Agüero or any other top striker but would still struggle to outscore the oppo if we don't improve our defensive play. Even Smith himself has said we need to improve defensively and to stop allowing teams to have so many shots at our goal, it's naive to think we just need to sign another striker and all our problems will be solved, especially when you bear in mind we're unlikey to able to find a forward who give us a much better strike rate of one in every three or four games unless we get lucky.

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18 minutes ago, VillaJ100 said:

What's worrying about us tactically is we can't play through the middle because wesley is dog shit. Currently 90% of our attacks involve either jack or McGinn picking up the ball on the corner of the box, waiting for targett/elmo/guilbert to over lap before they drill a cross in low and two of wesley/el ghazi/mcginn/Jack go for it. Its not exactly unpredictable 

Opens teams up though and we score a lot of goals.

I think we'd score top 6 levels if we had a striker who could play football.

Keeping them out I think is going to be an issue.

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1 hour ago, useless said:

We've already been outscoring most teams around us but we've conceded two or more goals in ten of the games we've played, we could sign Kane, Abraham, Agüero or any other top striker but would still struggle to outscore the oppo if we don't improve our defensive play. Even Smith himself has said we need to improve defensively and to stop allowing teams to have so many shots at our goal, it's naive to think we just need to sign another striker and all our problems will be solved, especially when you bear in mind we're unlikey to able to find a forward who give us a much better strike rate of one in every three or four games unless we get lucky.

I think some of the problem is that by now most teams will know that wesley is shit and offers no real threat so there is little chance they will be punished by him if they chuck an extra man forwards whenever they see fit, especially towards the end of games where we have shown multiple times that our players run out of gas after 60-70 minutes. Having nothing on the bench to worry about teams can just do as they please. A dangerous striker like vardy/kane/aguero etc will make teams approach things differently as they know there is a good chance they will be punished for the simplest of mistakes.

Hell even Andy Carroll can make a massive difference coming off the bench as teams know he is more that capable of playing up front on his own and keeping the ball until others bomb forwards so have to adapt their mindset or what happened to Southampton at the weekend can easily happen to anyone.

Wesley's lack of goals isn't really a huge problem at the moment but his general uselessness is.  I think El Ghazi up front on his own would offer far more of a threat at the moment. He's quick, tricky, good at beating players & holding on to the ball and knows where the net is

Edited by LakotaDakota
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51 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

I think we'd score top 6 levels if we had a striker who could play football.

The shocking thing really is that we already are, or at least not far off. Arsenal have just gone ahead tonight but before that only 6 teams had scored more goals than us all season. 50% of teams are on 20 or less goals scored.

Palace & sheff utd are both 7 points better off than us, we have scored 4 more than Sheffield & incredibly 9 more than palace have managed

Edited by LakotaDakota
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7 hours ago, Tomaszk said:

To his detriment, so does Dean Smith! 

We play the aggressive same shape v Liverpool and we do v Dog & Duck FC.

We know when it clicks, it's great. The hope I suppose, is that it starts to click v better sides as well.

If we stay up, I am confident of three or four starting players being signed next Summer. It'll be great. Whether we stay up or not feels 55/45 at the moment.

Aggressive?.....there is no aggression in our play.....sorry.

passive you mean.

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6 hours ago, New_Hope said:

What cracks.....we are not a top 6 team under-achieving here....we are a newly promoted team vying for survival in a new league....beating the bottom clubs is exactly our standard at the minute

If you can't see them, I'm not going to encourage you.

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1 hour ago, Tomaszk said:

Opens teams up though and we score a lot of goals.

I think we'd score top 6 levels if we had a striker who could play football.

Keeping them out I think is going to be an issue.

It bloody well is.

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2 hours ago, LakotaDakota said:

Seen lots of "we have played the top 6 in 7 of our last games"  2 of them are only in the top 6 because they beat us..

Sure wolves & utd are no mugs but 5 games ago when we played wolves they were 11th, 2 points in front of us, 3 games ago utd were 9th, 3 points better off than us.

I don't doubt that we have had a tough run and it isn't really these games that will decide our fate. On paper at least we probably have the easiest set of fixtures we could possible wish for over chiristmas and following on right up until the beginning of march really, Our next 12 games are below (now-end of feb) We simply have to win as many of these games as possible. Anything less than 5 wins and i think we will be done for, Ideally we need 6/7 because looking at march, april & may i can't see us getting much at all

Sheff Utd (a)

Southampton (h)

Norwich (H)

Watford (a)

Burnley (a)

Man City (h)

Brighton (a)

Watford (h)

Bournemouth (a)

Spurs (h)

Southampton (a)

Sheff Utd (h)

I don't look at the fixtures....I look at how we play......its about us, not everybody else.

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