Who do you hold accountable?

[tinker]

Smith did an amazing job in the championship but just wasn't prepared for the premier League. Recruitment is definitely an issue, I can't think of any of our new players who have done well, Louis has been ok but let's not forget he had some terrible games before lock down, lost us at least two games with him losing the ball in areas he shouldn't have .

Heaton was our biggest loss. Starting the season with one untested striker , wasn't Kodja injured? And Davies, who will be a good player but needs game time and was also injured or injury prone.

The one thing that stands out for me is our total lack of preparation for parts of the game that should be a given. Free kicks (and corners), players standing over the ball arguing their case to have a go, stinks of no preparation. Pick a player before the games starts and stick with them and get consistent deliveries so our players no where they have to be.

Our throw ins have been terrible all season. We lose possession time and time again,.work  some systems and stick with them. Practice and keep possession or attack the final 3rd.

The list goes on and on tbh, looks like there was a.complete breakdown in discipline or structured training. Our defence looked clueless , Engels not playing , when he was fit, was another one. He wasn't quick but his reading of the game was first class and this is an area that we seemed to be lacking in. 

 

[DaveAV1]

7 hours ago, Zatman said:

Liverpool owners work on statistics, same with Brentford

I think we should use statistics but not as an all defining measure. We need to look at all other characteristics of a player such as his personality etc. Perhaps we do, but for example I’m not sure what the stats are to measure the psychological effect of moving a young lad like Wesley to a new country and a new league and putting huge weight of expectation on his shoulders are? Particularly the white hot goldfish bowl of the Premier League.

At the end of the day we are dealing with humans with all their complex needs and concerns. We all go to work and on some days we know we’re not quite so on the ball as others because our mind is on stuff like moving house, the kids school, the bloody Villa! Perhaps we don’t get on with colleagues etc. Now that generally only effects a handful of people if any at all, but millions of people aren’t watching us and rarely a bad decision we make costs millions of pounds. 

Of course we have to have methods of measuring performance and we ignore statistics at our peril, but sometimes a little bit of old school intuition can make a huge difference. I don’t know, I’m not sitting in on the recruitment, we may look at all these things too. I’m just a football fan blathering on. 

[DaveAV1]

7 minutes ago, tinker said:

looks like there was a.complete breakdown in discipline or structured training

It’s a big leap from concerns about set pieces etc to a complete breakdown in discipline and structured training. I agree with most of what you said but there’s no evidence of ill discipline at all. I remember under Houllier there was a breakdown in discipline led by Dunn, Collins and Warnock which was, in my view, unforgivable.  

There are aspects of Deans management that deserve criticism, I’m sure privately he acknowledges to himself that he’s got things wrong. However the players don’t seem to be st odds with each other or the coaches. 2 or 3 players lining up to take a free kick is extremely common place for all teams. There should always be some element of players making decisions on the hoof and some variation to keep the opposition guessing. 

[DCJonah]

Teams promoted through the playoffs go straight down, I believe, just under 50% of the time. 

We had the added bonus of needing to rebuild the entire squad. We completely **** it up in both transfer windows. 

[Zatman]

40 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Teams promoted through the playoffs go straight down, I believe, just under 50% of the time. 

We had the added bonus of needing to rebuild the entire squad. We completely **** it up in both transfer windows. 

Only 11 play off winners have stayed up since the Premier League 

United have won 13 titles in that time

Edited July 12, 2020 by Zatman

[zab6359]

All of the above contributed. 

[Demitri_C]

1 hour ago, DCJonah said:

Teams promoted through the playoffs go straight down, I believe, just under 50% of the time. 

We had the added bonus of needing to rebuild the entire squad. We completely **** it up in both transfer windows. 

Although that statistic is correct, you cant defend the coaching aspect of our game. We are hopeless with the ball, hopeless at all set pieces, hopeless at attacking, hopless at breaking teams down, and hopeless at holding onto a lead.

That is all the coaching aspect if the game where smith has pretty much failed miserably. 

[dudevillaisnice]

41 minutes ago, zab6359 said:

All of the above contributed. 

This is the correct answer. Suso failed in the market, Smith failed as a manager to show any improvement and has looked woefully out of depth at this level (especially when opposition change tactics mid game he is far too slow to respond), Purslow gave Smith a new contract at the worst possible time and the players have downed tools and have probably spoke to their agents to get them out ASAP. 

[DCJonah]

35 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Although that statistic is correct, you cant defend the coaching aspect of our game. We are hopeless with the ball, hopeless at all set pieces, hopeless at attacking, hopless at breaking teams down, and hopeless at holding onto a lead.

That is all the coaching aspect if the game where smith has pretty much failed miserably. 

There is no way I could argue the coaching has been successful. 

For me though, we've made it incredibly difficult to get the coaching right because of how poor the quality of players we have are. 

Ole is a great example. Look at his two spells, has he become an amazing coach since his Cardiff days or does he have much better players?

Pretty much our entire recruitment was wrong. If there were a few more successes I'd be more inclined to blame smiths coaching but with how poor we did it and with the injuries we've had, I think they're both bigger issues than the coaching. 

[sharkyvilla]

1 hour ago, DCJonah said:

Teams promoted through the playoffs go straight down, I believe, just under 50% of the time. 

We had the added bonus of needing to rebuild the entire squad. We completely **** it up in both transfer windows. 

Exactly, if I take Villa out of the equation I wouldn't really give any other team much of a prayer of creating a PL team in a couple of months.  To be fair the owners gave us all the money possible and if anyone had a chance of doing it, it should have been us.  I wonder how Leeds will go, they will have a more settled team and manager when they go up but from what I can tell they are committed to buying a couple of loan players for a lot of money so they might not have much wriggle room in the market.

[villalad21]

West Ham finished mid table under Big Sam after getting promoted through the play offs didn't they?

[YLN]

Getting promoted after finishing 5th thanks to a mid season purple patch. Dismantling the promotion squad by some necessity and some design. Losing McGinn Heaton and Wesley to long term injuries. The 5 sub rule allowing teams with huge squads to eviscerate us with 60 minute substitutions. Probably some naivete from Smith, but he was at a disadvantage. Successful promoted squads always have settled teams. We were a victim of our success.

I would not sack Smith

[DCJonah]

5 minutes ago, villalad21 said:

West Ham finished mid table under Big Sam after getting promoted through the play offs didn't they?

Whats the point?

[tinker]

2 hours ago, DaveAV1 said:

 

Somevariation to keep the opposition guessing. 

We should not have our own players guessing what we are doing 

[DaveAV1]

10 minutes ago, tinker said:

We should not have our own players guessing what we are doing 

Players must be able to make game time decisions. You can’t coach every single thing. It’s what intelligent players do. Perhaps you can encourage them to think more for themselves, but once they’ve crossed the line it’s down to them. I think clever, savvy footballers are something we’ve lacked for years. 

[Rob182]

16 hours ago, rbcuk said:

All 4 are accountable for this mess of a season

Yeah, why is there not an ‘all 4’ option?

I didn’t realise blame always fell with one party and one party only.

[calcifer]

Tough one but sadly the buck stops with the manager, his ability (or lack of) to make a change when it is required. He waits until it is too late! Suso signed some garbage but I think a higher caliber manager would have picked a formation to utilise these players. I worry for next season, we will lose the core of the team and left with the crap that no one wants. Suso should be sacked that is for sure but I would be hesitant to let Smith manage the team, he struggle last season until Jack came back and single handedly pulled us up the table. 

[tinker]

54 minutes ago, DaveAV1 said:

Players must be able to make game time decisions. You can’t coach every single thing. It’s what intelligent players do. Perhaps you can encourage them to think more for themselves, but once they’ve crossed the line it’s down to them. I think clever, savvy footballers are something we’ve lacked for years. 

Maybe it is the players fault. For me it's a clear sign, when simple set plays are ineffective game after game , of things not going right on the training pitch or the players are not following their training routines on the pitch.

If you watch our throw ins ( my pet hate) we lose possession time after time , delay them and allow the opposition to regroup then  throw them high into a non dangerous area , 50/50 situations. If your going to do that then do it in the oppositions box were winning possession offers a goal scoring opportunity. 

Our wingers are the same, they hardly ever cross the ball early, Man u was an exception, especially early on.

I could go on for ever about simple parts of the game that we are getting wrong time after time. Teams like Sheffield UTd have built their success on keeping things simple and effective, playing early 50/50 balls when the opportunity arises and never lose possession from throw ins unless their thrown into the opposition's box.

[KenjiOgiwara]

I've given it some thought now and then lately. I've gotten kinda numb from it all, but I'm by nature a relatively stubborn and competitive person, and I don't mind fighting for something a long time to achieve what I want. I think we got to have patience and rally behind what the club's trying to do now. It's a highly competitive league and we came up as the runt of of the litter, coming up through play off with an aged squad with exceptional loaned players. The promotion was a big deal for the club, but it left us with a quite impossible task of building a new team over one summer. Most people understood quite early it would be close to impossible to get it right in the space of 2 months. We had to spread  £ 127 million relatively thin, to fill all gaps in the squad. And even then we were stuck with championship quality players like Hourihane. Unfortunately our scouts missed with our big signings, like Wes. 

It's obvious the recruitment was the big fuckup on our part. I'm a fan of Deano, but I won't disagree with anyone saying he should have done better either. It's been a collective learning curve.

Ultimately the project the club set forward with Deano, Suso etc. involved rebuilding the club. From the academy, style of football, general philosophy, bringing kids through, making the club profitable, bringing the club into the 21st century in all aspects. It will be bumps in the road, and it does mean we need to have some longterm goggles on. Maybe we need to rebuild in the championship for another season of three. 

But personally I just don't see the point of the blame game at this point. I'm a pretty vocal critic of Wesley, but I'll leave that alone now and just hope he comes out banging with more confidence against worse teams. Maybe even Davis will relish a season with more pitch time. 

I'd like us to keep Deano and let him continue. Hopefully add some more fight into the team and develop further. 

The only thing I'll be clear about is that I want us to sign more English high quality young players from the championship. Players that knows what it's about. Players that can develop into PL players. Players with fight and a bit of drive. I'm a firm believer in that an English core is pretty essential in whatever division you're in. 

Edited July 12, 2020 by KenjiOgiwara

[Rob182]

The blame falls with everyone. But that also doesn’t mean you get rid of everyone.

Players: Some players have performed well enough (for a 12th-16th acceptable finish). In my opinion, Heaton, Mings, Guilbert, Targett, McGinn & Grealish.

A few players have performed badly, and fallen well short of what we need. In my opinion, Trezeguet, El Ghazi and Davis (harsh on Davis as I really rate him).

Then the rest have had spells of looking good, and spells of looking bad.

This falls down to the quality of player we have available. So the next thing to look at is the transfers...

Transfers: From what I’ve read, all transfers were decided by Smith, Suso and Purslow. Together.

You can’t solely blame Suso for signing Trezeguet, but then ignore the fact that he was also involved in plucking Mings (who everyone thought was a crocked left-back) from Bournemouth last January or Guilbert out of nowhere.

I think the rebuild job last summer was incredibly difficult. Teams in the Prem spend £20m on players that flop all the time. So to put together a squad with £130m is ridiculous. £32m of that was spent on Mings, El Ghazi and Hause, so already you’ve roughly spent 1/4 of the money and you have a worse team than got promoted (because of having no Tuanzebe or Tammy).

The only alteration to our rebuild strategy that I can think of, is for us to have kept a couple of last seasons players as bodies that we hope we never have to use, or to bring in a couple of free transfers or loans. In doing that, we could avoid a couple of extra signings (eg: Konsa £12m & Nakamba £10m) and spend that on someone else. But, had we done that, and we’d brought in a Drinkwater instead of a Cahill, people would be moaning that it was a waste of money and that we should have signed someone else. Also, had we still got relegated, we’d lose our best players PLUS the loan players, and have another big rebuild on our hands. When (if) we get relegated this season, our rebuild will be fairly small - something that we’ve dreamt of for about 6 years!

Unless Purslow can pinpoint that some of our worst signings were wanted by one party and not by another, then I honestly would get rid of any of them.

I think Suso will go, and I think he’ll be this season’s scapegoat, just to appease the fans. Just like Paddy Reilly was after signing Veretout, Gueye, Amavi and Traore. What we wouldn’t give for those players right now.