Dean Smith - Confirmed

[AsTallAsLions]

Is it just me or are players these days much more prone to massive form swings?  Fancying it or not fancying it  on the day seems to be the new norm.  Nakamba was unrecognizable as the player last Tuesday night.

Billing / Lerma bullied the mf and in general we were out numbered in there , this was a game where you need one of the cb's to push further up to help in MF but all 3 were all over the place.

Let's be honest. We might as well not have a fucking midfield in the first place, for all the time they spend out of position, unable to retain possession or play a simple pass along the ground to another player in a Villa shirt.

[ChicagoLion]

Is it just me or are players these days much more prone to massive form swings?  Fancying it or not fancying it  on the day seems to be the new norm.  Nakamba was unrecognizable as the player last Tuesday night.

Billing / Lerma bullied the mf and in general we were out numbered in there , this was a game where you need one of the cb's to push further up to help in MF but all 3 were all over the place.

Yep l been saying the same all season, we give up on the Centre of midfield and hope our wide players and a Jack can win it for us. This strategy often fails and The reason we are likely to go down.

[aj2k77]

We should have signed a combative, enforcer type. Instead we signed Drinklager. Waste of everyones time.

[themossman]

I would swap that all day long for mid table Premiership security.

Which wasn't the point. We obviously haven't fucked it all up given where we currently are.

End of season may be a different matter mind.

I think you’re referring to my post and it's a fair challenge. I did say *in the event that* we go down, and I’d also echo what Brian says. Cup finals are nice and all but irrelevant with respect to staying up which is much more important and what I was specifically thinking about.

We spent a lot of money in the summer. Yes, we had gaps to fill but then we also had two players who would probably have walked into any almost any team in the league, and can Norwich and sheff Utd say that? 3 if you include Mings.

Whichever way you look at it, we don’t appear to have spent our money very effectively, or got the most out of our players via coaching and tactics.

[PeterWithesShin]

Yes you did say that, sorry.

[Toronto Villa]

The £150m is a red herring.

We had to spend that money, we were starting from a position of barely having enough players to form a team, let alone a squad. We HAD to spend money to get the numbers up.

If anything, we didn't spend enough, we got the numbers up but I don't think we got the quality up enough.

agreed. The question is could we have under the rules? Because surely if it was as simple as failing to bring in 2 or 3 more players for another 30-40m back in August, come January we wouldn't have been pissing about with Danny Drinkwater on loan and some bloke on a free from Swansea.

[brian green]

To clarify my point of view.  If you said to me at the start of the season come the end of January you will be in a Wembley cup final and secure in the Premiership I would have bitten your hand off but we are not secure in the Premiership at the end of January we are teetering on the brink of the relegation places and playing very inconsistently.  If it has to be either or I want security in the top flight.  That is my view.  Others may well disagree.  I get that.  I was walking on air on Tuesday night like every other Villa fan.

[itmustbe_it is!]

I don't get this "which would you prefer, cup final or Premier League survival" thing.

I want both, obviously

[SoccerHQ]

I think he’s doing ok too. Play off winners always struggle so this was sort of what I expected.

Play off winners dont spend 150m and be consistently shit most of the season. They can at least do a bit better on the road.

In my view smiths under achieving badly and invested very poorly.

What about all the established teams at this level who have spent 100m +? West Ham spend that and below us. Brighton spent a fair bit in the last 12 months on forward players alone.

Everton spent 500m + in last three years and are only now starting to pull clear into the top half.

Spending money is always just a part of it. We could've spent much less, picked up some steady eddie free transfers like Gary Cahill and I reckon we'd have 3-4 more points on the board but then you don't build as much for the long term.

[hilts_coolerking]

That could be the difference between going down and staying up.

[themossman]

Agree soccer. The parallels with 15/16 are strong. I don’t think any of the signings are actually bad and I’m positive that they have all increased their value this season, and will go onto good things. But they are also all hot and cold, wildly inconsistent, which you would expect of young players adapting to a new, highly competitive league. Luiz and Marvelous both great cases in point. Great players on his their day but have both vanished in really key games and cost us some important goals. Given they were initially thought to be coming into the whelan void, instead of Kalvin Phillips, that’s just not the profile of player you want there at all.

I really think we are a couple of outfield heatons short of a good mid table team and it’s annoying we didn’t get them in.

[SheffieldVillain]

I think he’s doing ok too. Play off winners always struggle so this was sort of what I expected.

Play off winners dont spend 150m and be consistently shit most of the season. They can at least do a bit better on the road.

In my view smiths under achieving badly and invested very poorly.

What about all the established teams at this level who have spent 100m +? West Ham spend that and below us. Brighton spent a fair bit in the last 12 months on forward players alone.

Everton spent 500m + in last three years and are only now starting to pull clear into the top half.

Spending money is always just a part of it. We could've spent much less, picked up some steady eddie free transfers like Gary Cahill and I reckon we'd have 3-4 more points on the board but then you don't build as much for the long term.

Also, even steady eddie free transfers of the type you've mentioned cost in terms of wages.

Cahill is reputed to be on £80k+ per week at Palace over two years. That's nearly £5m per season on the books and no chance of any back.

Konsa, who we got instead, cost a £13m fee spread over a four year contract for FFP purposes plus £30k per week (£1.5m per season, £6m in total), with the added possibility of a highly rated England U21 centre half increasing substantially in value by the end of that.

From an FFP perspective, you can absolutely see why those kind of decisions were made.

[SheffieldVillain]

Agree soccer. The parallels with 15/16 are strong. I don’t think any of the signings are actually bad and I’m positive that they have all increased their value this season, and will go onto good things. But they are also all hot and cold, wildly inconsistent, which you would expect of young players adapting to a new, highly competitive league. Luiz and Marvelous both great cases in point. Great players on his their day but have both vanished in really key games and cost us some important goals. Given they were initially thought to be coming into the whelan void, instead of Kalvin Phillips, that’s just not the profile of player you want there at all.

I really think we are a couple of outfield heatons short of a good mid table team and it’s annoying we didn’t get them in.

Kalvin Phillips, Neal Maupay, Jarrad Bowen, Said Benrahma and others who people have continually said we should have blown £20m-£30m each on from the Championship are no more proven than any of our signings and would equally have been young players adapting to a new, highly competitive league. Maupay in particular has given roughly equal value to Brighton as Wesley has to us.

Spending the £30m Leeds asked for Phillips (and I speak as someone who wanted him) would have been utter madness given our FFP position.

[Risso]

I think Phillips will be worth double that in 2-3 years, so not madness at all. He’d be miles better than Nakamba, and finishing a few places higher in the league offsets FFP a fair bit.

[themossman]

Take your point but I do think stand out players from top end championship teams are less of a risk than players moving to the country for the first time.

The thing about Phillips that annoys me the most ( and I also agree about the price) is that we didn’t even replace him with a cheaper player of the same type. We seemed to move onto an entirely different profile of player. Same with Abraham > Wes.