Dean Smith - Confirmed

[Matt C]

Several big injuries all arriving at once has set us back, we’ve lost the fluidity of play (albeit with defensive frailties) and momentum that was with us.

[footyskillz]

Not finishing in the top 6 would be a failure.

If people were asking this of SB when he first took over in 16/17 it certainly should be asked for now.

yep I would agree,
Bruce didn't exactly take over a smooth running engine of a side and I said he should make the play offs at least in his first season
Smith had taken over a mish mash if a squad but I still feel he should be making the play offs

the reason being we arn't playing in some top quality league here, we are in the championship
QPR, Middlesbrough and fucking Birmingham City are above us
the sides above and around us are no better than us, we might have a toothless midfield without Grealish but it's still better than most

the general quality is poor, you don't have to be great to make it in the top 6,
 you just have to get yourselves organised  have a go and play with confidence, and we have enough players who can do that even if most of them were bought by Bruce and will not make the grade long term

so I agree with PWS im not giving him a bye for the rest of the season I want to see us play with that swagger again and get into those top 6 places

Commentary on sky sports of Villa Preston said on new years day 2018 all the  teams occupying the play off position  did not finish in the play offs (Cardiff promoted, all the others dropped off)

[footyskillz]

Bristol City 3rd (Cardiff City)Leeds United 5th Sheffield United 6th were the play off teams before new years day matches last year .

None made to season end
Sheffield Utd 10th . 5 points off play offs
Bristol city 11th . 8 points off
Leeds 13th . 15 points off

[PeterWithesShin]

Before the NYD games we were 7th, outside the top 6 on goal difference so it's a correct stat, after the NYD games we were 5th which also makes it incorrect.

[SoccerHQ]

Will be different this time, all of Sheffield United, Derby, Norwich/WBA and one other will be top 6 I think, let's hope it's us.

Being greedy I'd like Boro in there as we always do well against them.

As well as QPR and SHA have done I'd be amazed if either got 70 + points. Way we're going we won't either but there's still 20 games left and we need to win 10 of them so 50% win ratio for rest of season is not panic stations.

[PeterWithesShin]

Hull have somehow become the form team, W8 D3 L1, including 5 wins on the spin.

[paul_e]

Not finishing in the top 6 would be a failure.

If people were asking this of SB when he first took over in 16/17 it certainly should be asked for now.

yep I would agree,
Bruce didn't exactly take over a smooth running engine of a side and I said he should make the play offs at least in his first season
Smith had taken over a mish mash if a squad but I still feel he should be making the play offs

the reason being we arn't playing in some top quality league here, we are in the championship
QPR, Middlesbrough and fucking Birmingham City are above us
the sides above and around us are no better than us, we might have a toothless midfield without Grealish but it's still better than most

the general quality is poor, you don't have to be great to make it in the top 6,
 you just have to get yourselves organised  have a go and play with confidence, and we have enough players who can do that even if most of them were bought by Bruce and will not make the grade long term

so I agree with PWS im not giving him a bye for the rest of the season I want to see us play with that swagger again and get into those top 6 places 

Bruce took on a squad of players that were either signed that summer from the top of championship and bottom of the prem or who had come down with us but, in many cases, weren't as bad as they'd looked the year before. Where we had real problems was our central midfield was pedestrian and we couldn't stop teams running through us. 2 years on Smith has taken on a team that, despite numerous signings, still has the same weakness through midfield but also has no cover for 3 of the 4 defensive positions, leaving us in a shocking state to deal with injuries. Both inherited a decent set of attacking players, Bruce struggled to get a tune from any of them in any consistent way, Smith is getting loads of goals but just can't get a functional defence in place.

I have a lot more faith in Smith getting an improvement out of the defence (with a few signings) than I ever had with Bruce creating a consistent attacking platform for the forwards to build from. I've seen enough from us going forward to think we could break 100 goals in the league this year (about 2.5 a game for the rest of the season) so if we can get even a small improvement at the back we'll start to really frighten teams again, like we were a few weeks back.

[Ad@m]

Hull have somehow become the form team, W8 D3 L1, including 5 wins on the spin.

Just in time to play us!

[Matt Collins]

The thought of jarrod bowen against Hutton isn't worth thinking about

Maybe he'd decide to stick in his position though

[old man villa fan]

Good grief. Give the bloke a break. He’s less than three months into the job , hasn’t yet had a transfer window, injuries to key players and we are still in with a good shout of the playoffs. How many of the critical posters above would feel happy being criticised in their jobs with similar constraints after that period of time , I wonder?

Think people who are giving a 3 month appraisal are perfectly right and healthy to on performance so far .

Injuries and unbalanced squad are taken into consideration by all , I believe , which comment here as we are all aware .

However it feels like some have head in clouds and that posters who even ' dare' give a critical performance observation and question are just told
" he hasn't been here long "
"It's not his squad"
"We have injuries"

I admire dean Smith as he doesn't use this as an excuse and I don't think ever would .
That's a massive plus about this coach.

He's working with what he's got and we are commenting on how he's working with what he's got.

Straightforward really.

I think we should be really critical of Dean Smith for allowing Grealish, Axel and Taylor to get injured.  In allowing this, the momentum, fluidity and confidence was stopped in its tracks because we hadn't got like for like players to bring in and, in some cases, players he should have brought in were injured or short of match fitness following injury.

The squad is paper thin in players that can influence games in the right way and drastically short of pace in midfield and defence.  To he'll with it, Smith is to blame for that too.

Now, I need to trawl the web ....... architect, Rome....

[sickbeggar]

I just think sections of our support have unrealistic expectations and have done since we came down, We dumped RDM because he hadn't turned round the worst villa side in 40+ years in 3 months. Fine, so we got Bruce to get us up pronto. He didn't 1st season but fair enough give him time. 2nd season he built a play-off side by bringing in pl quality on loan and free transfers. We failed, they all went back to the PL or retired so we're stuck with an even worse side than the one he took over. Bruce tries the same trick again, it fails, he gets dumped. Now 2 months in on Smith arriving, people are moaning because we're not in a play-off position with a squad full of hasbeens and never will be's. Time to get in a promotion specialist in I reckon...……..

[SoccerHQ]

Not finishing in the top 6 would be a failure.

If people were asking this of SB when he first took over in 16/17 it certainly should be asked for now.

yep I would agree,
Bruce didn't exactly take over a smooth running engine of a side and I said he should make the play offs at least in his first season
Smith had taken over a mish mash if a squad but I still feel he should be making the play offs

the reason being we arn't playing in some top quality league here, we are in the championship
QPR, Middlesbrough and fucking Birmingham City are above us
the sides above and around us are no better than us, we might have a toothless midfield without Grealish but it's still better than most

the general quality is poor, you don't have to be great to make it in the top 6,
 you just have to get yourselves organised  have a go and play with confidence, and we have enough players who can do that even if most of them were bought by Bruce and will not make the grade long term

so I agree with PWS im not giving him a bye for the rest of the season I want to see us play with that swagger again and get into those top 6 places 

Bruce took on a squad of players that were either signed that summer from the top of championship and bottom of the prem or who had come down with us but, in many cases, weren't as bad as they'd looked the year before. Where we had real problems was our central midfield was pedestrian and we couldn't stop teams running through us. 2 years on Smith has taken on a team that, despite numerous signings, still has the same weakness through midfield but also has no cover for 3 of the 4 defensive positions, leaving us in a shocking state to deal with injuries. Both inherited a decent set of attacking players, Bruce struggled to get a tune from any of them in any consistent way, Smith is getting loads of goals but just can't get a functional defence in place.

I have a lot more faith in Smith getting an improvement out of the defence (with a few signings) than I ever had with Bruce creating a consistent attacking platform for the forwards to build from. I've seen enough from us going forward to think we could break 100 goals in the league this year (about 2.5 a game for the rest of the season) so if we can get even a small improvement at the back we'll start to really frighten teams again, like we were a few weeks back.

Our squad in 16/17 was lopsided, not too far off what it is this season in fairness. We all thought at start of the season an attack of Ayew, Gestede, Jack, McCormack and Kodjia would rip through the division but it never happened and that was the strongest area of the squad by far.

At the back Elphick massively struggled so we went with Baker-Chester which was o.k in fairness. Gollini also struggled a fair bit so similar to Nyland.

Think the biggest difference was we still had a losing mentality running through the club at the time which resulted in our very slow start to that season.

I never expected play offs that year anyway. Now it's different as we know what this level is about and of course spent loads since.

[footyskillz]

Good grief. Give the bloke a break. He’s less than three months into the job , hasn’t yet had a transfer window, injuries to key players and we are still in with a good shout of the playoffs. How many of the critical posters above would feel happy being criticised in their jobs with similar constraints after that period of time , I wonder?

Think people who are giving a 3 month appraisal are perfectly right and healthy to on performance so far .

Injuries and unbalanced squad are taken into consideration by all , I believe , which comment here as we are all aware .

However it feels like some have head in clouds and that posters who even ' dare' give a critical performance observation and question are just told
" he hasn't been here long "
"It's not his squad"
"We have injuries"

I admire dean Smith as he doesn't use this as an excuse and I don't think ever would .
That's a massive plus about this coach.

He's working with what he's got and we are commenting on how he's working with what he's got.

Straightforward really.

I think we should be really critical of Dean Smith for allowing Grealish, Axel and Taylor to get injured.  In allowing this, the momentum, fluidity and confidence was stopped in its tracks because we hadn't got like for like players to bring in and, in some cases, players he should have brought in were injured or short of match fitness following injury.

The squad is paper thin in players that can influence games in the right way and drastically short of pace in midfield and defence.  To he'll with it, Smith is to blame for that too.

Now, I need to trawl the web ....... architect, Rome....

What about playing only one central striker when we current have a squad with striker options and there could be some felxibility in his system

What about using squad strengths or bringing in youth players to play in required positions.

What about sticking to his vision of collective responsibility in football and having different captains.

[paul_e]

Our squad in 16/17 was lopsided, not too far off what it is this season in fairness. We all thought at start of the season an attack of Ayew, Gestede, Jack, McCormack and Kodjia would rip through the division but it never happened and that was the strongest area of the squad by far.

At the back Elphick massively struggled so we went with Baker-Chester which was o.k in fairness. Gollini also struggled a fair bit so similar to Nyland.

Think the biggest difference was we still had a losing mentality running through the club at the time which resulted in our very slow start to that season.

I never expected play offs that year anyway. Now it's different as we know what this level is about and of course spent loads since.

That attack should've been fine but a midfield of Westwood, Gardner, Tish and Jedinak was nothing like good enough to supply them. Of those 3 the only 1 with any mobility was Tish but he looked far too raw to play regularly meaning we played a combination of the other 3 and couldn't get any control of games. Everything was so slow that our attacking players were marked out of games.

The defence was nothing like as bad as it is now, Bruce took over a team that had conceded 12 in 11, plenty of teams get promotion with that. To go back to the previous point, the lack of presence in midfield meant teams could press on us late in games and we had no

The mentality side of things is a factor but I think a lot of people overstate it. Yes teams do come down and then struggle but that's usually because they're making the same mistakes (as a club) as they did the year before. Teams that accept relegation and start building for promotion in the last few games tend to do much better because they've accepted that they need to make changes. We, as a club, just threw a massive sulk for 2 months and then threw money around like confetti, forgetting that wasting money on older players was what caused all the problems in the first place.

[villa `cross the mersey]

I wonder if Dean is wishing he'd stayed at Brentford ?