Dean Smith's Aston Villa 1-0 Swansea City Post Match Thread

[Toronto Villa]

Just watched the highlights again and it really does show how we should have been a mile ahead of Swansea long before it got nervy at the end. Tammy should have had a hattrick and there were a number of good chances for Albert and Jack. We ran out of steam at around the 80th minute but we kept at it. The whole thing was hugely encouraging.

A lot has been made of Swansea chances but if we had turned our first half  total domination into goals  Swansea would have gone in about 3-0 down an totally demoralised. In the first half they offered nothing other than the one save from Nyland in the 40th minute. It was the 1-0 scoreline that offered them encouragement to keep going. Swansea are a good team much much better than Preston and Millwall our last two opponents.

No doubt. We completely dominated the game and their first real chance of note was just before HT. But yes by then they should have been buried. The encouraging bit is the fact we created so many good chances. Our forwards and midfielders won’t be that wasteful in the future. For me, what I am looking forward to is now every game the coaching give us a chance to score multiple times. That with greater defensive discipline will give us a better than even chance to win every game.

[GarTomas]

I was unhappy with the line up with Albert, Taylor and Elmo in there, but fair play, well done on the result and clean sheet.  One of the posters said the players will get blamed for not playing for Bruce?  I think they were confused and disorganised with him in charge.  Under Smith, this won't be the case and therefore, I was completely wrong about the line up and with more consistency, Taylor and Albert may come back to some sort of form.  Clean sheets need to become the norm.  It's so tight in the top half of the table.

I made ththink Bruce comment - but more in jest as to what our improved performance would be put down to by some of the uninformed media.

[dcdavecollett]

If we want to play 'energy' football, we could probably do with Elmo at right-back. We need a progressive left-back, and JM will need some help in the middle -a chance for O'Hare, perhaps?

[achilles]

Some really good observations on the game:

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