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Author Topic: Dean Smith - Confirmed  (Read 1522561 times)

Offline JD

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11055 on: January 23, 2021, 05:20:05 AM »
I don't interpret it like that all.  To me Smith has accepted the FA charge against him that his remarks to Job Moss were abusive, but not in any way is he accepting that Rodri was not offside? 

 

That's how I interpreted it as well.

Offline TelfordVilla

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11056 on: January 23, 2021, 07:06:56 AM »
Deano has more important things to do than waste time and energy fighting this issue. He has accepted the charge so that he can move on and avoid all the negativity around this and focus on the positive of winning matches and signing players and moving this club up the table.

Offline BC Villain

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11057 on: January 24, 2021, 09:11:26 AM »
From the Irish Times.

Who was voted manager of the year after Manchester United completed the treble in 1999, from which club did the runner-up come?

Some might have thought that Harry Redknapp at West Ham (fifth/Europe) or Peter Reid at Sunderland (promotion/105 points) or Paul Jewell Bradford City (promotion to the top flight after 77 years away) might have provided the answer.

But, no. It was Walsall. There in 1998-99 manager Ray Graydon steered the lowest-budget club out of the third division and into what is now the Championship and the scale of the feat could be measured in his peers’ response. Only Ferguson, they thought, had performed better.

Under Graydon, Walsall finished above Manchester City. No wonder they called it Madchester.

He does not get mentioned a lot, Graydon; nor do Walsall. Graydon was a former Aston Villa winger; Walsall are currently 12th in League Two. They travel to Port Vale this afternoon, should you be interested.

Walsall continue to make an impact at other levels, though. The man sent off at City on Wednesday night, for example, is a former Walsall manager. It was Dean Smith’s first front of house job, bumped up from youth coach in January 2011 with Walsall floundering, nine points adrift in League One. Smith kept them up. He had to learn on his feet; he is still doing so at.

But for referee Jon Moss – and VAR – and their timid interpretation of the offside law, Villa may have left City with a point on Wednesday. It would have been a fine result in a season already studded with them – 1-0 at Leicester, 3-0 at Arsenal and of course the 7-2 victory over Liverpool. Considering where they were last January, third-bottom after a 6-1 home defeat by City, Villa’s improvement is one of the stories of the season.

Our tendency to simplify, plus the personality cult around managers, means that this can be marked down as Smith’s improvement. Ollie Watkins, for instance, was bought by Brentford while Smith was there and Watkins has followed Smith to Birmingham – well done, manager. But on neither occasion will the decision have been solely Smith’s. The reality at Brentford and Villa is rather more complex.

Aston Villa, since their takeover by Wes Edens and Nassef Sawiris in the summer of 2018, have had a significant turnover in personnel and massive investment in the squad – a net spend of about €250 million on transfer fees alone. As has been seen many times, though, merely acquiring lots of players does not form a successful team. It has to be moulded, just as a club has to be moulded. Those who know Villa comment that since this takeover there has been leadership and clarity from the top.

Smith is part of it. Perhaps it says as much about other managers as it does about Smith, but players who have experienced his coaching repeatedly use the word “clear”. He is a persuasive communicator as well as someone tactically astute and committed to the training ground.

Smith was brought in from Brentford in October 2018 to replace Steve Bruce. Villa, sitting 14th, were in danger of becoming a stalled Championship club, like Nottingham Forest.

By May 2019 Smith had Villa jolting upwards, beating Derby in the final of the Championship play-offs. Villa were back in the Premier League; takeover targets were ahead of schedule.

But there were loan players in the squad, plus several at the end of their contract. Villa spent a lot but they had to recruit, they needed bodies. Losing 6-1 to City raised questions about that recruitment, as did a 4-0 loss at Leicester just before lockdown last March. Villa were second-bottom. Smith was a worried manager.

What did he do? He spoke to his players.

It is remarkable that this should be remarkable – yet it is. Some managers do not do what Smith did. He pulled players together, spoke to each individually, then split them into groups and asked them to analyse games. There was not a revolution in results on the resumption of play, but there was an upturn, and some luck. Instead of 19th, Villa ended the season 17th.

What this has to do with Walsall may seem unclear, but Smith’s engagement with his squad brought back a line from Michael O’Neill about exactly what he learned from his first job as a manager, which was at Brechin City. “You learn how to deal with players,” was O’Neill’s reply, and you could tell he meant it.

The answer rang a bell with Walsall, the club where Smith began as a player in 1989, where he was made captain at 19 and where that first appointment came. Smith realised quickly: “If you don’t get a connection with them, players can easily decide they are not going to work for you.”

Smith would speak of a young player he saw walking into training eating a sausage sandwich one day. Smith had previously warned the boy about his behaviour and this did not look like healthy refuelling. The teenager had not told Walsall he had left home, however, or that he was living at an aunt’s and did not want to ask for breakfast when she had a family of her own. This news made Smith think again about the player and how he managed him. Some time after, Smith saw the lad pick up litter at the training ground and smiled. Both parties had come through.

It is funny when you hear managers in a super-hyped, superannuated business such as modern English football set such store by these things, but presumably Marcelo Bielsa does so for a reason. Ray Graydon made players wear shirt and tie.

Smith – and O’Neill – speak of culture and its importance. As individuals they are sufficiently grounded for it not to sound pretentious. Their determination is to construct healthy dressing rooms full of good colleagues as well as good footballers – because it yields results. Those views chimed with the lockdown theatre of Ferguson and Kenny Dalglish last week. Each of them spoke of dressing room unity as being essential to success, in fact impossible without it. Their emphasis on this was, to use a word, remarkable.

It was clearly part of Graydon’s Walsall. Maybe it is the kind of thing you learn down there, at East Stirling or Brechin, and take with you.

So if the question concerns Villa’s rise, the answer rests on modern management and serious investment. Then there is Smith’s coaching. But also worth a mention is Smith’s humanity and understanding and a little bit of Walsall.

Offline olaftab

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11058 on: January 24, 2021, 09:27:26 AM »
Thank you for posting BC Villain. Very good insightful article.

Offline dave shelley

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11059 on: January 24, 2021, 09:29:21 AM »
A good piece, thanks for posting.

Offline Ian.

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11060 on: January 24, 2021, 09:32:50 AM »
Thank you BC, that’s a great read and insight.

Offline Hookeysmith

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11061 on: January 24, 2021, 09:35:56 AM »
And to think there were many on here, me included, who questioned the owners when they handed him a new 4 year contract.
I now question if it was long enough.
Listening to him speak i would not want any othrr manager at our club

Offline Astnor

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11062 on: January 24, 2021, 09:36:37 AM »
From the article above from BC V... :
" “If you don’t get a connection with them, players can easily decide they are not going to work for you.” ...also worth a mention is Smith’s humanity and understanding and a little bit of Walsall"

I like this man and its easy to understand that the footballers want to work for him.

Offline manic-road

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11063 on: January 24, 2021, 09:45:04 AM »
And to think there were many on here, me included, who questioned the owners when they handed him a new 4 year contract.
I now question if it was long enough.
Listening to him speak i would not want any othrr manager at our club
Totally agree, the club has been on the up and up from the first day he walked through the doors at Villa Park.

Offline Rigadon

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11064 on: January 24, 2021, 10:01:56 AM »
How long before he gets the Ingerlund job...

Offline olaftab

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11065 on: January 24, 2021, 10:06:34 AM »
How long before he gets the Ingerlund job...
No. Totally unsuitable for England job.

Offline john e

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11066 on: January 24, 2021, 10:12:30 AM »
Ingredients for a sustained top four finish club

Big club with large fan base  ✅

Loads of money. ✅

Top class manager and back room staff  ✅  (hopefully)

Ambition ✅

I haven’t put players Because if you have the right manager and a bit of money they come automatically

we have all the ingredients to be what we’ve always wanted to be
The biggest slice of luck we ever had wasn’t the goal line technology No goal but the new owners  that wobbled into Villa Park a couple Of seasons ago

it really is all there probably for the first time since the Premier League started,  The stars have aligned we’ve got to start believing it

It’s a great time to be a villa fan (we’ve waited long enough)

Offline colin69

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11067 on: January 24, 2021, 10:39:08 AM »
And to think there were many on here, me included, who questioned the owners when they handed him a new 4 year contract.
I now question if it was long enough.
Listening to him speak i would not want any othrr manager at our club
Totally agree. I thought he was a goner and that the first lockdown saved his job.
Thank God our owners didn’t feel the same.
Now with the recruitment we’ve made and the players improving beyond recognition I truly hope Delano (and his back room staff) are here for many years to come.

Offline Rigadon

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11068 on: January 24, 2021, 11:22:01 AM »
How long before he gets the Ingerlund job...
No. Totally unsuitable for England job.

If he gets us to where I think he might, he will be a shoe-in I reckon.

Offline TelfordVilla

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #11069 on: January 24, 2021, 11:25:36 AM »
I hope he tells england to do one. He can achieve fergie/Wenger status if he stays with Villa

 


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