Dean Smith

[DaveAV1]

I think what we have to except is that we have an inexperienced coach at this level, with a relatively inexperienced squad. Add to that an inexperienced CEO, working for owners who despite all their business acumen have only owned an English football club for about 18 months. I think getting promoted sort of caught everyone on the hop. So is it really a surprise that everything isn’t going instantly swimmingly?

Right from the top, Wes and Nas, we are learning on the job and doing it in the glass bowl that is the English Premier League. Everyone, not just Dean Smith has been and will be making mistakes. They will learn with the experience, but there’s no quick fix, no golden bullet, time and painful mistakes are generally the building blocks of success. Teams and businesses that do well grow together, win and lose together and have the collective experiences that make them strong in the future. Ripping everything up and starting again every few months is never the answer. 

[Brentfordnylons]

Dean Smith is your head coach the same as he was at Brentford would think the blame game should be aimed at the people involved in recruitment as apart from Konsa and Engels I expect the other signings were not his.We are doing well since Dean left us and Thomas Frank replaced him as we still have kept our recruitment structure maybe you should replace yours.Does John Terry coach the defence out of interest?

[AntrimBlack]

1 hour ago, Robtaylor200 said:

there seems to be a lot more "better" teams than we thought there would be 

Yep. I am still waiting to see the `easier' teams we were expecting to be able to beat to avoid relegation.

[tomav84]

11 minutes ago, Brentfordnylons said:

Dean Smith is your head coach the same as he was at Brentford would think the blame game should be aimed at the people involved in recruitment as apart from Konsa and Engels I expect the other signings were not his.We are doing well since Dean left us and Thomas Frank replaced him as we still have kept our recruitment structure maybe you should replace yours.Does John Terry coach the defence out of interest?

he spends time with them on the training ground, not sure what 'coaching' is going on though!

[villalad21]

22 minutes ago, DaveAV1 said:

I think what we have to except is that we have an inexperienced coach at this level, with a relatively inexperienced squad. Add to that an inexperienced CEO, working for owners who despite all their business acumen have only owned an English football club for about 18 months. I think getting promoted sort of caught everyone on the hop. So is it really a surprise that everything isn’t going instantly swimmingly?

Right from the top, Wes and Nas, we are learning on the job and doing it in the glass bowl that is the English Premier League. Everyone, not just Dean Smith has been and will be making mistakes. They will learn with the experience, but there’s no quick fix, no golden bullet, time and painful mistakes are generally the building blocks of success. Teams and businesses that do well grow together, win and lose together and have the collective experiences that make them strong in the future. Ripping everything up and starting again every few months is never the answer. 

Are you saying fans should accept relegation?

Not a chance. My expectations will never be lowered. Survival is the very least i expect this season.

Most sensible fans won't agree and submit to this loser, acceptance mentality.

Edited December 24, 2019 by villalad21

[Jay.P.A]

53 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

I don't think Smith is the right man for a long term solution.

Tactically he is inept at this level. He's already been found out. Leicester and Southampton exploited us the same way and he doesn't react. He is reactive not pro active.

The way he handled the Mings AEG situation was poor. He appears to be too soft. There are signs suggesting he is losing the trust by his players. When things doesn't work he doesn't change. The persistence with Wesley is killing us.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOL all conjecture. 

[Jay.P.A]

2 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Are you saying fans should accept relegation?

Not a chance. My expectations will never be lowered. Survival is the very least i expect this season.

Most sensible fans won't agree and submit to this loser, acceptance mentality.

Survival is, and always has been the aim. We got half a season to go. 

[DaveAV1]

3 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

Are you saying fans should accept relegation?

Not a chance. My expectations will never be lowered. Survival is the very least i expect this season.

Most sensible fans won't agree and submit to this loser, acceptance mentality.

No. 

[MarkLillis]

We have been given a massive opportunity.

Promotion  wasn’t in the plan last year when DS took over....there is no way anyone at the club was expecting this year to be a PL season.

Now we have to give ourselves the best chance of staying here instead of the alternative which is fighting for promotion in the quicksand of the Championship.

That will require us as fans to get behind the team.

The team can do their part and start showing the fight that was missing from the last three performances.

Combine both points above with some shrewd January signings and all is not lost.

UTV

[Dale]

1 hour ago, villalad21 said:

He highly criticized our transfer business in the summer. Said it was way too many players in one window.

He would have most likely kept a bunch of the experienced players like Whelan, Jedinak and Adomah and make us hard to beat. And at the same time added 3-4 players with PL experience (Not a bunch of inexperienced players from abroad).

If we were playing Whelan and Jedinak people would be walking through the midfield. 

We had to make signings. Because Xia, Di Matteo, Round, Wyness and Bruce had no long term plan except bet it all on promotion, largely made up of ageing and declining personnel along with loans we couldn't hold onto when their loans were up. I have no doubt Sam Allardyce would have made the same gamble. 

That we're even in this league is an achievement given where Dean picked us up. We need a little perspective. 

Most of my non Villa friends think that performance wise we should be above where we are, if things even themselves out, we will be. 

Edited December 24, 2019 by Dale

[Guest av1]

1 minute ago, MarkLillis said:

 

That will require us as fans to get behind the team.

 

Agreed, but it won't happen. 

There are fans on here that didn't want Smith to start with, about 4 of our players have songs, and as soon as something goes wrong the moaning around VP is ridiculous. 

Are fans are shit sometimes. 

[TRO]

8 hours ago, Chicken Field said:

Somehow this tells me that you may be out of touch of modern football.

He is, as most clubs are run today, head coach not manager, this means that he is most likely involved, but is no by any means the main man when signing players, this is the job of the scouts and director of football, so you really can't blame him solely on the signings.

He took us from 15th to promotion last season, I think everyone would agree that this was a fantastic achievement, we lost our main right sided center back and one of our most important player in Tuanzebe, also, probably more significant, we lost our topscorer and one of the premer leagues highest scorers this season in Tammy. Add to that we basically lost our entire rotational squad. FFS we had only 9 senior outfield players left at the club after last season, and this is including a broken Chester and players like Elmo, Taylor, Kodija, Lansbury and Davis. Also there are no decent youth players available, which could have made filling the squad up an easier task.

Also, there are two types of expenditures in football, net transfer spent, where we addmittely have spend a bit (though apart from Wesley and Mings, I'd argue that our players are very very cheap in todays market) and contract expenditure, where I'm willing to bet our majority of our players are very cheap. Not to forget that all the players apart from Heaton, Jota and Mings are 25 or below, meaning that they have been signed with the long term in mind, players that can and most likely will improve. 

When have you ever seen a club having to buy a new 9 out of starting 11 and be successfull?? we miracly finished 5th in the championship last season FFS and are arguably weaker as we lost so many players !! 

Things arent going great but people really need to be realistic.. 

So whats the plan after sacking Smith? go for Mark Hughes, Harry Redknapp or another dinosaur, play hoofball again and sign players above the age of 28 on high contracts? I feel like we have tried that a few times. 

For the first time since I was old enough to follow football, we are actually a club that tries to play football the right way and that are trying to buy players that dont bankrupt us and have sell on value, for the first time we are actually trying to be smart and modern about it. Give it time for crying out loud, success doesnt happen overnight. 

You tell Chris Wilder and Daniel Farke that our players are cheap, you might get a laugh.

the rendition you present is very noble and yes Dean deserves credit for last year.....the sort of football you champion is also shred by us all, but sadly it has turned in to naive football and that is certainly not very attractive....in short the prince has turned in to a frog.

Every team goes through a difficult patch, this is where Dean earns his corn and takes effective action to rid the team of these alarming errors thats dragging us down.

Dean had a difficult situation in terms of personnel to take over from, but equally he was left with such gems as MCGinn, Grealish,Abraham to work with....£130 million is no snip in anyones language, not top quality, but nevertheless, some managers would be envious.

Dean done a good job last season......now he had to earn his spurs in a league, we all craved for....he now has to prove he has got what it takes to sit at the top table.

 

[TRO]

43 minutes ago, DaveAV1 said:

I think what we have to except is that we have an inexperienced coach at this level, with a relatively inexperienced squad. Add to that an inexperienced CEO, working for owners who despite all their business acumen have only owned an English football club for about 18 months. I think getting promoted sort of caught everyone on the hop. So is it really a surprise that everything isn’t going instantly swimmingly?

Right from the top, Wes and Nas, we are learning on the job and doing it in the glass bowl that is the English Premier League. Everyone, not just Dean Smith has been and will be making mistakes. They will learn with the experience, but there’s no quick fix, no golden bullet, time and painful mistakes are generally the building blocks of success. Teams and businesses that do well grow together, win and lose together and have the collective experiences that make them strong in the future. Ripping everything up and starting again every few months is never the answer. 

I think that is reasonable Dave.......but he cannot hide behind a team that shows such a poor and at times incompetent defence.....i'm talking team here not just the back four.

If Dean is the man, we all want him to be....He needs to show that he can deal with our defensive frailities.

I do share the view that the recruitment is the most questionable element of it all.

[TRO]

44 minutes ago, AntrimBlack said:

Yep. I am still waiting to see the `easier' teams we were expecting to be able to beat to avoid relegation.

Do you know?that reference really tickled me...."easier teams"

Even the tea lady knows we have a soft under belly in the team and these "easier teams" know exactly how to exploit us.

[villalad21]

34 minutes ago, Dale said:

If we were playing Whelan and Jedinak people would be walking through the midfield. 

We had to make signings. Because Xia, Di Matteo, Round, Wyness and Bruce had no long term plan except bet it all on promotion, largely made up of ageing and declining personnel along with loans we couldn't hold onto when their loans were up. I have no doubt Sam Allardyce would have made the same gamble. 

That we're even in this league is an achievement given where Dean picked us up. We need a little perspective. 

Most of my non Villa friends think that performance wise we should be above where we are, if things even themselves out, we will be. 

Whelan and Jedinak would 100 % have worked under Allardyce.

Can guarantee you that we wouldn't be anywhere near the bottom 3 with Allardyce in charge.

Smith is inexperienced at this level and it's showing. But then again so is Wilder, but Wilder's style of play is much more effective as a promoted team.

Edited December 24, 2019 by villalad21

[cbr600rr]

25 minutes ago, MarkLillis said:

We have been given a massive opportunity.

Promotion  wasn’t in the plan last year when DS took over....there is no way anyone at the club was expecting this year to be a PL season.

Now we have to give ourselves the best chance of staying here instead of the alternative which is fighting for promotion in the quicksand of the Championship.

That will require us as fans to get behind the team.

The team can do their part and start showing the fight that was missing from the last three performances.

Combine both points above with some shrewd January signings and all is not lost.

UTV

promotion was the aim from the start, villa is a genuine prem club ie fan base/stadium etc,

the fans back the team & DS however the feel good "were back" balloon is deflating, were sitting on 15 points from 18 games ,

if you can honestly see villa staying up or the DS project working,raise your beer aloft .

DS WILL take us down, with or with out mcginn back in the side,

DS is playing a forward who looks like he never played higher than d3,

the brighton game at home papered over the cracks for me, we won with the last kick, we was out played for a hour when they had 10. 

if we can not win the next two games , im sorry but.. 

 

[Laughable Chimp]

Our wage bill really isn't that cheap lol. There's some people we don't know their wages of, but just by finding the average of all the wages of the players whose wages we do know of and just assuming these guys earned somewhere around that level, we're actually 17th or 16th in the table(can't remember precisely, I did this calculation yesterday but I neglected to post it). However, our approximate wage bill if I remember correctly was actually around the level of the bottom 7 clubs on the wage bill table anyway, its not significantly lower than their's.I distinctly remember it was higher than Brighton's and way higher than the other 2 promoted clubs.

Edit: Yeah, I checked it again. We have a higher approximate wage bill than Sheffield, Norwich, Wolves and Brighton and only slightly lower than the likes of Newcastle, Bournemouth and Burnley.

Edited December 24, 2019 by Laughable Chimp

[cbr600rr]

2 minutes ago, Laughable Chimp said:

Our wage bill really isn't that cheap lol. There's some people we don't know their wages of, but just by finding the average of all the wages of the players before and just assuming these guys earned somewhere around that level, we're actually 17th or 16th in the table(can't remember precisely, I did this calculation yesterday but I neglected to post it). However, our approximate wage bill if I remember correctly was actually around the level of the bottom 7 clubs on the wage bill table anyway, its not significantly lower than their's.I distinctly remember it was higher than Brighton's and way higher than the other 2 promoted clubs.

i would guess if your signing for villa you will be on decent doe, thats  because the revenue /backing is more than brighton , however i would take their players & simple football over ours at the present time,

[TRO]

48 minutes ago, Jay.P.A said:

Survival is, and always has been the aim. We got half a season to go. 

Yes.....and if the same problems exist, we are in trouble.

there is no evidence to date to suggest, it will change.....just hope.

we have half a season and we must use it productively.

[villalad21]

8 minutes ago, cbr600rr said:

DS WILL take us down, with or with out mcginn back in the side,

Yep. The style of play is simply too naive.

Farke's style will cause relegation. Smith's style will cause relegation, Wilder's won't.

As a promoted team what is the best way getting results? Bombing forward when you come up against better players in every position every week, leaving yourself exposed at the back. Or stay organized, making yourself hard to beat?