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Dean Smith


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6 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Your sarcasm detector must be off mate.

Again I spend too much time of Facebook fan groups, those are suggestions I've seen seriously made.

Ha ha! Sorry JM. We probably all need a break from this antisocial media nonsense 😎  

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7 minutes ago, JAMAICAN-VILLAN said:

Your sarcasm detector must be off mate.

Again I spend too much time of Facebook fan groups, those are suggestions I've seen seriously made.

They'll rot your brain mate. Can't even imagine the tripe that must be on there. Presume it's just the usual extremes of if we win everyone is great, and crap if we lose.

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Just now, Tomaszk said:

They'll rot your brain mate. Can't even imagine the tripe that must be on there. Presume it's just the usual extremes of if we win everyone is great, and crap if we lose.

Probably one of the reasons I've been so worked up on here for the past couple of weeks to be fair  🤣

Keep getting worked up over there then taking it out on VT.

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16 hours ago, vandaq said:

There is just no way we are getting 9 points in the next three matches. I have felt pretty pessimistic this season but it is hard not too when we are not getting the results. 17 games with 4 wins so far. Top goal scorer has 4- Jack and Wesley. Mcginn seems gone and our defense does not seem as strong anymore. I do think we have good enough players to stay up but we should get something this January. The next three are crucial

A win next game could help jumpstart the side and propel them to another two wins. 

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22 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

They'll rot your brain mate. Can't even imagine the tripe that must be on there. Presume it's just the usual extremes of if we win everyone is great, and crap if we lose.

Funnily enough they made me quit FB. I've never liked FB. Just a shitty place to show off your life or spy on "friends" (whom you have no interest in meeting).  

In the end I only used it to read newspapers and Villa fan pages. Then I got into a thread post match during our bad run last year and that was it. The amount of illiterate **** cockwombles was outstanding. 

Edited by KenjiOgiwara
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4 hours ago, KHV said:

The one thing I have noticed that is making my piss boil is the antics of everyone when we lose possession going forward. If you notice, when AEG, Trez, McGinn, Luiz, Wesley and especially Grealish lose the ball in the attacking third when there is a bit of contact not one of them gets up and chases back. They sit on their arse waving there arms about like a toddler in swimming pool. Not only that, everyone briefly stops and puts their arms in the air and looks at the ref. By the time they have clocked the ref is playing on, the opposition have moved the ball forward 30 yards and everyone has run forward meaning all our players go tearing back but it’s too late.

It happens all the time if you watch closely, I had never clocked before it was pointed out to me the other day, it’s embarrassing.

Or they will wave offside and stand still when it's not. This has happened since we started the season. Do you think Wilder would put up with it, proves a severe lack of discipline to me.

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One of the thing that annoys me most is we sometimes defend as a team but we don't attack as a team, no one ever seems to be in the box with Wes when we get forward. El Ghazi tries but that's about it. Even if someone can cross or pass into the box there won't be anyone in there. Sheffield Utd attacked as a team and defended as a team, closing us down in numbers that made it look like they had an extra player.

 

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46 minutes ago, VillanousOne said:

One of the thing that annoys me most is we sometimes defend as a team but we don't attack as a team, no one ever seems to be in the box with Wes when we get forward. El Ghazi tries but that's about it. Even if someone can cross or pass into the box there won't be anyone in there. Sheffield Utd attacked as a team and defended as a team, closing us down in numbers that made it look like they had an extra player.

 

That's so true.

Crosses if they manage to go in end up flying over, going to opposition because there's never anyone there.

Passes are becoming like our crosses, no one seems to be thinking before releasing the ball. Yesterday was so shameful that our lads at this rate do not deserve to be a premier league team.

Fans raving about performance's have generally been good, I'd agree but we are not winning any games. We can put in spectacular performances but if the results are not happening then those performances are for nothing.

At this rate we need an extra defender because no matter the four we put out, opposition is picking us apart and making everything count. I'd drop this 4-3-3 and go 5-4-1, get rid of the wingers and the idea that wingers are somehow the way forward. Until we have the right quality we won't ever get this winger stuff right, I'd rather have our wingers be more closer to Wesley or whoever us up front.

We still have tons of work to do but when are our existing players really going to knuckle down and start to make life more easier for themselves  it's about time they sorted this mess out.

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59 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

My fear in the summer was fans ridiculous expectations and turning on the manager and players. This season nothing matters but finishing 17th. It doesn't matter how ugly we play. How shit some of our performances are and if we only manage to stay up on the last day. 

17th. Accept it and let's keep together. Just because some fools thought we were going to do a wolves shouldn't change a thing. 

In a nutshell. 

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1 hour ago, DCJonah said:

My fear in the summer was fans ridiculous expectations and turning on the manager and players. This season nothing matters but finishing 17th. It doesn't matter how ugly we play. How shit some of our performances are and if we only manage to stay up on the last day. 

17th. Accept it and let's keep together. Just because some fools thought we were going to do a wolves shouldn't change a thing. 

I get the point, we definitely need to be realistic, you mention playing ugly, at the moment we don't play ugly at all, we don't see out games and we are not difficult to beat.

To tread enough water that we stay up we have to be able to play differently.

I feel that Dean has the same ridiculous expectations of the players as the fan does, as he tries to get us to play open attacking football against teams that can do that a thousand times better.

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The way we've been playing we'll be lucky to get seventeenth the only time we've had less points than we have now after seventeen games was the season we were relegated, people are well within their right to express concern, we've just lost six games out of eight and only won one of them, and people can talk about it being a tough run all they like, but I bet most other teams if not all of them will get more points from the same set of fixtures, other teams are showing that they can get results against top half teams, something that we're going to have to do if we want to stay up.

This idea that fans can't question things just because of the idea that we should be happy to finish seventeenth or because we're not as big of a club as we used to be is just as ridiculous as fans calling for Smith to be sacked.

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1 hour ago, DCJonah said:

My fear in the summer was fans ridiculous expectations and turning on the manager and players. This season nothing matters but finishing 17th. It doesn't matter how ugly we play. How shit some of our performances are and if we only manage to stay up on the last day. 

17th. Accept it and let's keep together. Just because some fools thought we were going to do a wolves shouldn't change a thing. 

**** word. Preach it. Hear hear. Amen. 

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He should try 4231. Back 5 as is .. With Nakamba & Luiz .. then Trez, Grealish, El Ghazi & finally Wesley ... McGinn needs a rest with the festive period fast approaching and feel we should tweak our approach to stop the rot and hopefully get a tune out of Wesley . 

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8 hours ago, KHV said:

Who is wide in the 5, Targett and Guilbert?

That would clearly mean the end of Trezeguet and El Ghazi then if we go that way. 

Yep

El Ghazi could play in the 2.....you could try both up front and drop Wes.

Sheff Utd had centre backs playing on the wing yesterday..........we are too rigid in our thinking.

what have we got to lose?.....we're losing anyway.

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I'm a big fan of Smith and I want him to stay here for the next season or two at least, but we are starting to see some weaknesses in his style.

The big areas of concern for me are:

  • Adapting to the level of opposition - we play high full backs against everyone, home and away. It's great at home against a bottom half team, but against Leicester it was ruthlessly exposed over and over again.
  • Defensive shape from the midfield - we don't seem to have that urgency to get into a compact shape when we lose the ball. The best teams, as soon as they lose the ball, everyone knows where they need to sprint to. As someone else mentioned on here, a lot of our players lose the ball and just walk back with their hands on their hips. That's a sign I think that they aren't being drilled on the importance of getting into shape quickly.
  • Mid-game tactical changes - I'm struggling to think of a single mid-game tactical change Smith has made since he arrived here that has changed a game. Maybe introducing Hourihane late in the play-off semi-final. That's about it.
  • Set pieces - we don't look drilled on attacking or defending set pieces. He seems to rely on the players to come up with ideas. That's inexcusable really. It's the one area of the game where you can plan it thoroughly in advance.
  • Fitness - are we over / under conditioning our players? Is it just because they're adapting to the step up? Is it just that the players we've signed are less naturally gifted in this respect? Does he seriously think McGinn wouldn't benefit from a rest?

He's still a relatively inexperienced manager - especially at this level. So hopefully these are things he can learn to improve over time.

And he does have a lot of strengths. Good temperament, seems to have a happy dressing room, uses the squad depth well, gets us playing some very decent attacking football. He seems to be an excellent man manager, which is important when you have a young, inexperienced squad. He plays the media game well, and doesn't pass the buck to his players or the board.

It's also not necessarily his fault that we might have made a couple of mistakes in the transfer window. Surely Suso and Purslow take more blame for that? They're the ones who have top flight experience, and should have known what was required in terms of investment and player quality. I'm very surprised that anyone thought Wesley, Kodjia and Davis would be enough, even if Wesley had hit the level expected of him.

Anyway, good luck to him. Really hope the fans don't turn on him if the next few games are a struggle.

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People are right saying some shouldn't get carried away with some bad performances against good teams.

However, the issue of formation is a long standing issue with Smith. I don't think he has belief in any other system. We've played maximum 90 mins that isn't 433 since he joined over a year ago and 45 mins of that was at Swansea last season. We played it every game without Jack and had one win in 10 or something terrible.

The system needs dominance, and thus, good players to work. We've seen flashes of it in this league when Grealish is on fire, but when it doesn't work, our whole game falls apart. I don't think we've had many average performances so far, it's been good or bad.

There could be a future just forging this path, but we'll need lots more good players. We aren't going to get these in January, I expect it'll be maximum two players.

If we don't get a striker, we aren't going to get enough wins and we'll be relegated.

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Everyone remembers the 10 in a row & promotion from last season but seems to forget that we were shit for much of the 3 months between the end of November to the end of Feb, 2 wins in 14 games (15 including fa cup) conceding nearly 2 goals every game turning being in a winning position into a loss/draw in 1/3 of those. Sure it came right in the end with an incredible run but the deficiencies were there for all to see. one of our next 2 games needs to be the equivalent of that 4-0 Derby game to try and get something started this season

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