Dean Smith - Confirmed

[CT]

I am completely happy to concede that it takes a manager time to get his players playing the way he wants, and to recruit players to do the job the way he likes it done. Particularly when it appears the old vs new styles are SO different. The thing I really DON'T understand is that the team seemed to improve SO quickly, and the style changed so rapidly when Smith first took over, that the current form and performances just feel like it's all gone backwards again.

How were the players able to implement Smith's way of playing so successfully against Bolton, Derby, Small Heath, Forest and Boro - all within a few short weeks of him taking over - and now after a few months they let the performances drop off and revert to something akin to the Bruce days?  Surely to God it can't ALL be down to losing Jack and Axel?

The Boro performance for me, especially looked very impressive. Against a Tony Pulis team, we absolutely dominated. We literally toyed with them a times, we were that good.

The stuff served up in 2019 has been completely different. I would say it won't help having certain players who seemed to have downed tools already mind you.

[Villa75]

Not the "pre season" excuse again, please!?

We've got top professionals, with many years in the game, training our fit athletes. The overweight Steve Bruce would not have been in charge of their training regime any more than he would have been responsible for their dietary needs - thank god.

What I'm seeing on the pitch is not a team playing fantastic, flowing football for 75 minutes before, unfortunately, running out of steam and letting the opposition back into games. In Fact, from the word go in most matches, it looks more like a team that is confused and unsure of exactly what they should be doing with all of their energy.

Of course Bruce would have been in charge of the training regime.  Are you seriously suggesting that these fitness coaches make it up as they go along or focus on what they want to without consulting Bruce?

You've posted some absolute crap on here over the past few weeks - Presumably to provoke reactions but the above nonsense is your most ridiculous yet.

You're talking shit.

Steve Bruce wouldn't know a modern training regime if it hit him in his ugly mug.

Bruce was, and is, an old fashioned 'Manager' with a coaching team in charge off fitness.

Guardiola/Pochettino he is not!

[footyskillz]

Not the "pre season" excuse again, please!?

We've got top professionals, with many years in the game, training our fit athletes. The overweight Steve Bruce would not have been in charge of their training regime any more than he would have been responsible for their dietary needs - thank god.

What I'm seeing on the pitch is not a team playing fantastic, flowing football for 75 minutes before, unfortunately, running out of steam and letting the opposition back into games. In Fact, from the word go in most matches, it looks more like a team that is confused and unsure of exactly what they should be doing with all of their energy.

Of course Bruce would have been in charge of the training regime.  Are you seriously suggesting that these fitness coaches make it up as they go along or focus on what they want to without consulting Bruce?

You've posted some absolute crap on here over the past few weeks - Presumably to provoke reactions but the above nonsense is your most ridiculous yet.

I don't know about the 'villa75' other posts ? ( I'm sure it's as valid as next person - just because you don't agree no need to disparage his comments, dismissing is bad enough )

But he's spot on with this .
How you see it villa 75 looks quite  accurate .
The confusion = sloppy play.
A team is in transition and getting to terms with things .
Smith often mentions tactical switches in matches which then helps the players .


What 'our guy 75 ' said matches my thought in some of my perception and wisdom on villas play.
However I question that it's phases of matches where we have looked decidedly poor rather than 75 minutes
Sheffield utd was exceptionally weak though a few phases and cycles where villa on top.

Smith did question attitude when going 2 down and Whelan coming on was a master stroke as the experience head was cajoling and getting the play moving and just showing spirit and doing things right

Regards fitness, conditioning and diet Bruce has specialists so again villa 75 is accurate .

Btw if that's the posters age show the elder some respect ! He obviously been watching football for a long time !
(Show respect anyway!)

[pauliewalnuts]

I don't blame the club for not doing more in the January window, it was always going to be difficult.

I think we did OK - Certainly better than most.  If Fer had signed, most of us would be pretty satisfied with the window.  We addressed the GK & central defence.  We have a couple of options to make loans permanent and a new RB for next season.

Utter, utter bollocks. We needed a right back, a left back and decent midfielder immediately. We got none of those.

Have to agree, comparing what we thought we needed before the window and what we got, it's hard to be particularly happy about our business.

FWIW I think a great part of our struggle at the moment is confidence. At numerous points during the Sheffield United match, we would have the ball and genuinely not know what to do with it, our players looked frozen. There was also even less movement off the ball than we have seen for several years (and it has been a problem for years on and off at Villa).

To a certain degree, the fragility of the defence must be contributing to that lack of confidence.

I also have to say, certain players look unarsed. Kodjia is the worst offender - he seems to be only interested in attempting to wriggle free when he's surrounded by three defenders - rather than give the ball to a team mate. If Darren Bent's main criticism was that he wasn't a team player, then Kodjia is even worse.

El Ghazi looks overweight to me and hardly breaks into anything beyond a trot, and when he has featured recently, Adomah also looks like he doesn't give that much of a shit.

Those are all failings which the manager can work on. It's disappointing he didn't strengthen his hand in defence in the window, but I honestly can't see any excuse for players not breaking sweat, or not knowing what they are supposed to be doing.

[footyskillz]

Not the "pre season" excuse again, please!?

We've got top professionals, with many years in the game, training our fit athletes. The overweight Steve Bruce would not have been in charge of their training regime any more than he would have been responsible for their dietary needs - thank god.

What I'm seeing on the pitch is not a team playing fantastic, flowing football for 75 minutes before, unfortunately, running out of steam and letting the opposition back into games. In Fact, from the word go in most matches, it looks more like a team that is confused and unsure of exactly what they should be doing with all of their energy.

Of course Bruce would have been in charge of the training regime.  Are you seriously suggesting that these fitness coaches make it up as they go along or focus on what they want to without consulting Bruce?

You've posted some absolute crap on here over the past few weeks - Presumably to provoke reactions but the above nonsense is your most ridiculous yet.

You're talking shit.

Steve Bruce wouldn't know a modern training regime if it hit him in his ugly mug.

Bruce was, and is, an old fashioned 'Manager' with a coaching team in charge off fitness.

Guardiola/Pochettino he is not!

Villa 75 you don't sound 75!

[Villa75]

Not the "pre season" excuse again, please!?

We've got top professionals, with many years in the game, training our fit athletes. The overweight Steve Bruce would not have been in charge of their training regime any more than he would have been responsible for their dietary needs - thank god.

What I'm seeing on the pitch is not a team playing fantastic, flowing football for 75 minutes before, unfortunately, running out of steam and letting the opposition back into games. In Fact, from the word go in most matches, it looks more like a team that is confused and unsure of exactly what they should be doing with all of their energy.

Of course Bruce would have been in charge of the training regime.  Are you seriously suggesting that these fitness coaches make it up as they go along or focus on what they want to without consulting Bruce?

You've posted some absolute crap on here over the past few weeks - Presumably to provoke reactions but the above nonsense is your most ridiculous yet.

You're talking shit.

Steve Bruce wouldn't know a modern training regime if it hit him in his ugly mug.

Bruce was, and is, an old fashioned 'Manager' with a coaching team in charge off fitness.

Guardiola/Pochettino he is not!

Villa 75 you don't sound 75!

Not quite  😂 But not as far away as I would like! 😉

[AV82EC]

You do have to wonder if the down turn in confidence/attitude was down to players being told their futures during the Jan transfer window. I realise why it needed to be done but I think it may have backfired slightly. Hopefully the professional pride is starting to kick back in with Fridays February fantasy comeback the start.

[Ads]

There's a myriad of reasons.

Looking at pre-season, Wagnar took over at Huddersfield in 19th, they finished in 19th. Spent the summer doing double training, took them on some bizarre special forces type selection training week in the Swedish wilderness and they came back running everybody off the park. Promoted.

Warnock took over another limited side, probably did better to get then 12th and then drilled a work ethic into them. Promoted too.

Farke has had 4 windows now and they're going up.

There's certainly something in it when you're going from one style to another. The whole "they're professionals" and should be able to get on with it smacks of naivety and somebody whose never managed. Managing is like trying to herd cats.

Look at Snoddy last season and look at him now. He's probably a stone lighter at least. Bruce clearly had a laissez faire attitude to preparation; fitness, tactics and squad building.

We saw significant improvement; men hitting the box, quick movement of the ball and some dominating displays.

What's changed is how the wide play has dropped. We're slow to transition wide and we've slowed down how quick we move the game on.

We've also dropped deeper to accomodate Whelan. This happened during the good run. Think chalk and cheese of the first 30 odd minutes against the Noses.

Grealish and Tuanzebe contributed to moving it wide or out of defence and in the former, taking players away to create space. Our movement looks poor because our midfield doesn't switch it or move it on.

We've seen flashes during this run. Second half against Swansea we got Hourihane further forward and really deserved to win. We spent 15 minutes battering Sheffield. 25 good minutes against QPR.

It's not enough at the moment though.

[paul_e]

Ads - exactly. When you're changing from 1 style to another and it's a dramatic shift it's very rare for a manager to do that for more than a short 8-10 game run without a pre-season to fall back on.

You can't coach a team to cover every possibility so even the best coaching and fitness team will take guidance from the manager of how they're wanting to play and will build around that.

We saw exactly the same issue when Houllier took over a MoN team that had trained around solid defence and quick counter attacks and tried to get them to play higher up the pitch, the physical requirements aren't the same and it's really hard to fix that during the season.


At no point have I said this is the only thing though, but I think there's quite clearly a problem with the team delivering the performances that you'd expect from Watching Brentford when he was there and this, along with the style and age of the squad is a big part of it.

[Brassneck]

I don't blame the club for not doing more in the January window, it was always going to be difficult.

I think we did OK - Certainly better than most.  If Fer had signed, most of us would be pretty satisfied with the window.  We addressed the GK & central defence.  We have a couple of options to make loans permanent and a new RB for next season.

Utter, utter bollocks. We needed a right back, a left back and decent midfielder immediately. We got none of those.

Wrong again.  We needed (in this order):

1: GK - got
2. Left sided central defender - got (we actually got 2 so one could fill in at LB)
3: LB - failed to sign
4: Defensive midfielder - failed to sign but brought in Carroll who could play the Woods role a la Brentford
5: RB - Not urgent as we had 3 so signing one now for next season was a bonus.

You are being silly if you think GK & left sided central defender weren't priority & even sillier to expect 5 positions to be filled in the January window.

[Brassneck]

Not the "pre season" excuse again, please!?

We've got top professionals, with many years in the game, training our fit athletes. The overweight Steve Bruce would not have been in charge of their training regime any more than he would have been responsible for their dietary needs - thank god.

What I'm seeing on the pitch is not a team playing fantastic, flowing football for 75 minutes before, unfortunately, running out of steam and letting the opposition back into games. In Fact, from the word go in most matches, it looks more like a team that is confused and unsure of exactly what they should be doing with all of their energy.

Of course Bruce would have been in charge of the training regime.  Are you seriously suggesting that these fitness coaches make it up as they go along or focus on what they want to without consulting Bruce?

You've posted some absolute crap on here over the past few weeks - Presumably to provoke reactions but the above nonsense is your most ridiculous yet.

You're talking shit.

Steve Bruce wouldn't know a modern training regime if it hit him in his ugly mug.

Bruce was, and is, an old fashioned 'Manager' with a coaching team in charge off fitness.

Guardiola/Pochettino he is not!

So you concede that Bruce doesn't know modern training regimes yet claim that the wasted summer (under the previous "old fashioned" manager is not a valid reason for our lack of energy and that just because they are professional footballers, they should be able to run for extraordinary lengths of time.  Oh and despite being "top professionals" you claim they don't know what they're doing.

Priceless.

[Ads]

Bruce would have defined the training regime and decided what they would do.

How much input he would have had on executing what went on would be a different matter. I doubt he did any coaching. Much like O'Neill and our endless 5-aside football Monday-Friday.

[olaftab]

Utter, utter bollocks. We needed a right back, a left back and decent midfielder immediately. We got none of those.

That's a bit unfair. It's not easy to get real quality players for those key positions. There was no point in buying with haste and ending up with more waste.

[TonyD]

Correct.  We have too many sub standard players.

We don’t really have a defence or a midfield. 

[Risso]

So Smith hasn’t had 4 months to work on their fitness, if it’s as suspect as people claim.

And the fitness prior to him arriving was that bad he played the oldest member of the squad in every game over the hectic Christmas period.