Same here John, agree with every word.
Quote from: exigo on July 31, 2019, 09:20:03 PMQuote from: john e on July 31, 2019, 08:09:22 PMMcGinn is the only thing he did that deserves credit "McGinn is the type of player the owners wanted" said Bruce in his press conference, trying to shift the blame away from himself.Quite a bizarre quote.
Quote from: john e on July 31, 2019, 08:09:22 PMMcGinn is the only thing he did that deserves credit "McGinn is the type of player the owners wanted" said Bruce in his press conference, trying to shift the blame away from himself.
McGinn is the only thing he did that deserves credit
Aston Villa boss Dean Smith admits he can't even walk his dog at 6.30am without being stopped for a photo ahead of Premier League bowDean Smith will take charge of his childhood club in Premier League opener The 48-year-old was at the helm as Aston Villa returned to the top flight The Villa boss admitted his everyday routine changed after promotion By IAN LADYMAN FOR THE DAILY MAIL PUBLISHED: 17:33 EDT, 8 August 2019 | UPDATED: 17:33 EDT, 8 August 2019When he was 16, Dean Smith used to cycle past Villa Park on his way to work at a paint factory. During the 6am early shift, he would mull over his chances of ever playing for his favourite football club.'It was a full-time job but I only ever saw it as temporary,' he said. 'I just wanted to be a footballer and to play for Aston Villa.'They were big dreams, too big as it happened. Smith never did pull on the claret and blue.'I wasn't good enough, simple as that,' he said.But last season he achieved the next best thing. He became manager of a club whose famous colours run like a river through his family and on Saturday he will stand on the touchline as Villa face Tottenham as a Premier League side once again.'With my family and my mates I am what I always was, a fan,' Smith told Sportsmail on Thursday. 'But at work I have to park that. I just have to.'So there will be an awful lot of emotional control going on at Tottenham, even if I know deep down it will get the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.'Etched in the window of Smith's office at the club's training ground is an ornate Villa crest. In frames on the stairs are photographs of the club's League and European Cup successes of the early 1980s. His walls were white when he got the job in October 2018, but are claret and blue now.Some managers run from a club's past when they arrive. This one was never likely to.Smith's father was a steward in the Trinity Road Stand for 25 years. He used to show chairman Doug Ellis to his seat. Smith's neighbour as a kid was Pat Heard, a substitute when Villa won the European Cup final against Bayern Munich in 1982. Smith's dad would not let him go to that game but Heard made sure he was on the bus as it paraded the trophy through Birmingham the next day.'I saw the life that Pat had and I always wanted that,' Smith recalled. 'I like to think I have worked very hard to get it and I want my players here to embrace it like I try to.'You realise quickly that this club means a lot. The history will always be there but I told these players last season they could make themselves legends by getting promoted. Our job now is to create more history.'Villa will tackle the top division with a squad bolstered by eight signings. It has been a bold, ambitious approach by Smith and Villa's Spanish sporting director Jesus Garcia Pitarch.From a distance, it looks a little risky. Too much change can take as much from a squad as it gives. Smith does not concur.'Two days after the play-off final we all sat down and agreed it was key that the players integral to getting us promoted and who had mended that disconnect with the supporters stayed and were made to feel important,' he said.'We have done that. We still have that Villa heartbeat in the dressing room, absolutely.'Smith was, by his own admission, a modest footballer during 16 years as a central defender at Walsall, Hereford, Orient, Sheffield Wednesday and Port Vale. Tellingly, though, he was captain at every club he played for.'Sometimes people see things in you that you don't see in yourself,' he mused.Skipper at Walsall at the age of 19, Smith was still the designated driver for Tuesday afternoon drinking sessions that included Midlands football figures such as Villa European legends Gary Shaw and Dennis Mortimer — both playing with Smith at the time — and West Bromwich's Cyrille Regis.'Gary Shaw had many injuries but what a player,' Smith recalled. 'We trained in the car park on a Friday. It was an up-and-down shale surface but his touch was unbelievable. We would have a drink and I was captain, but on those occasions I was the one doing all the listening to lads like Cyrille and Ally Robertson and Derek Statham. I spent a lot of time with Cyrille. A sad loss when he died. Such a genuine person.'Mind you, I played against him for Orient against Chester and he was like, "Whack!" Straight in my stomach. Nice to see you too, Cyrille.'NOW THEY HAVE ALL BASES COVERED...Aston Villa have signed 12 new players this summer, covering enough positions to field an entirely new team and room for another substitute... GOALKEEPER Tom Heaton (£8m, Burnley) DEFENDERS Tyrone Mings (26.5m, Bournemouth) Ezri Konsa (£12m, Brentford) Bjorn Engels (£7m, Stade Reims) Kortney Hause (£3m, Wolves) MIDFIELDERS Matt Targett (£15m, Southampton) Douglas Luiz (£12.5m, Man City) Marvelous Nakamba (£10.75m, Bruges) Trezeguet (£8.75m, Kasimpasa) Jota (£4m + Gary Gardner, Birmingham) Anwar El Ghazi (undisclosed, Lille) FORWARD Wesley Moraes (£22m, Bruges)Smith's first taste of coaching was as assistant manager to Martin Ling at Orient in 2005. When they were sacked after four years, he felt it 'like a death in the family'.These days he sits on the League Managers Association committee alongside the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson, David Moyes, Sam Allardyce, Chris Hughton and Howard Wilkinson as the only one still working.'My motivation has always been to prove people wrong,' he said. 'I was told by one of my managers as a 17-year-old that I would never be able to stand up in front of a group and speak. That stayed with me. I wanted to show him.'I am all about being consistent. I learned more from the coaches I didn't like than from the ones I did as I identified the stuff they did that I needed to chuck away. I want to be the manager I would have wanted to be managed by.'For example, I don't want to be high when we win and low when we lose. Players don't want to see that. They want to see consistency from me if I am to get it back from them. After a game, my view is that I can't change anything so I am not in the dressing room talking for 20 minutes. With me, it's one minute. Well done, hard luck and then I am off.'As an assistant I didn't have the best emotional control. At Orient, I was more irate with players and I learned you can't be like that because you need them the next game. Don't get into an argument that you don't need to. Trouble will always find you as a manager, so don't go looking for it.'Smith has a reputation for being affable and certainly seemed that way on Thursday. He says his favourite environment is the training ground but believes that a coach's responsibility should not start and end on the grass.'I don't care what job you are in — football or a factory — these people are all humans with different emotions, sensitivities and lives away from work,' he said. 'It's my job to get the best out of them, so I need to know this stuff. I see the job as the whole spectrum.'I love coaching, being out there making people better. But it's the mental side that pushes these lads and if you don't get a connection with them, players can easily decide they are not going to work for you.' Smith eventually made his reputation as a manager at Walsall and then Brentford. Still, last year's move to Villa was a significant step and one that was only taken after consultation with his family.The 48-year-old knew his modest, relatively quiet life was going to change and he was ready for it. But he worried, for example, about how his daughter would cope at school if Villa weren't winning.'I know how many Villa fans there are around and I knew that my family's life was about to come under the spotlight,' he said.'I had to make sure they were OK with that. They were all, "Yes!" My daughter said she could handle it and we had my son on FaceTime from America and he was the same.'He came over for the play-off game and flew home very drunk. So it has worked out so far!'Smith has previously spoken at length and with courage about his father Ron's dementia. Smith Snr resides in a care home and, despite the Villa manager's regular visits, does not know that his son is in charge of the football club that means so much to him.Central to Smith's thoughts these days is his mother, Hilary. Mrs Smith was recently interviewed on her local high street in Great Barr by a TV crew. Looking for reaction to Villa's success, the reporter didn't know he was talking to the manager's mum.'She was just out shopping,' laughed Smith. 'Apparently that clip has had 90,000 viewings but she won't know what that means.'My mum and dad and brother were as proud of me at Hereford as they are now.'My dad has never driven, so mum would drive us to away games in a yellow Vauxhall Viva when I was a kid. She's handled my dad's illness well on the whole.'She didn't want to accept it at first. She said he had always been forgetful. In the end I said he had to go to the doctors. I had a drink with him in the Admiral — our old local — a few years back and he went to the loo and just didn't come back. He had got confused and just gone home without me. Heartbreaking.'After the diagnosis, she wanted to look after him and always said she was coping. But eventually she broke down on me and I said, "Right, that's it".'That was hard for mum, admitting he had to go into a home. Nobody ever wants to do that, do they? But he has been happy there and it's where he needs to be. It also gives my mum her life back.'As for Smith's life, it has changed wholesale in the last 10 months, as he knew it would. Even walks with his dog Charlie — looked after by Hilary on match days — are not the same.'I realised the size of the club before I came because I know it, but when you are filling up with petrol and people want a photo it becomes different,' he smiled.'I try to be a normal bloke. I walk the dog at half six but then another dog walker wants a photo. That's incredible really, isn't it? I always liked a pint with my mates but that's a logistical nightmare now.'It all comes with the territory, of course, and it's a territory that Smith knows well. He is where he wants to be, at the club that has always been front and central to the family.'Just walking into this place is enough for me,' he said, casting his eyes out of the window.'I smile as soon as I see that club badge on the gate.'
He's ace, isn't he?
Quote from: not3bad on August 01, 2019, 11:31:41 AMQuote from: exigo on July 31, 2019, 09:20:03 PMQuote from: john e on July 31, 2019, 08:09:22 PMMcGinn is the only thing he did that deserves credit "McGinn is the type of player the owners wanted" said Bruce in his press conference, trying to shift the blame away from himself.Quite a bizarre quote.From August 2018.https://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/sport/16412471.steve-bruce-reveals-new-aston-villa-owners-were-key-to-hijacking-celtics-john-mcginn-move/
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Topic: Dean Smith - Confirmed (Read 1536810 times)
