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Author Topic: Dean Smith - Confirmed  (Read 1522338 times)

Online Drummond

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6945 on: February 26, 2020, 01:13:18 PM »
Jota would still be with us. He may not be Premier League but he'd do just fine in the Championship.

O'Hare would be back and ours. Young Barry would no doubt get games too.

I don't want us to go down but to suggest it's the end of the world is typical doom mongering.

We survived last time with vastly shitter owners. This time we'd be fine. The trick would be recruitment for the next season in the top flight with a largely settled squad.

The club was on the verge of being wound up the last time we were down there. If it happens this time, all decent players will leave and we will be very much under the cosh FFP wise. The revisionism towards our time in the second tier is astounding. It was a complete and utter shit show.

If the decent players leave we'll have a lot of cash in the bank. Unless you think that our better players will suddenly be worthless?

What revisionism?

Online Demitri_C

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6946 on: February 26, 2020, 01:13:57 PM »
Jota would still be with us. He may not be Premier League but he'd do just fine in the Championship.

O'Hare would be back and ours. Young Barry would no doubt get games too.

I don't want us to go down but to suggest it's the end of the world is typical doom mongering.

We survived last time with vastly shitter owners. This time we'd be fine. The trick would be recruitment for the next season in the top flight with a largely settled squad.

Jota couldn’t get into a shit Blues team. Buying him was entirely pointless.

O'Hare? Barry? Or is everyone that we have on the books (excluding Grealish, Mings and McGinn) shit?

We going to seriously throw in a 16 year old and put all the pressure on the lad? As for o hare  he might do ok at championship level but if we are seriously relying in those two to get us promoted we are in trouble.

I think we will invest the sale of players but we will be mindful of FFP so i dont expect us spending on the scale we did when we first got relegated.

Its going to be a huge job and thats if they decide to stick with smith. Of we continue to get woeful performances like watford and Southampton away then he should be sacked of we go down in that fashion with no fight or passion.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2020, 01:15:46 PM by Demitri_C »

Offline chrisw1

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6947 on: February 26, 2020, 01:14:53 PM »
If we had this squad going into a championship season, we'd be right up there i reckon, as long as the recruitment was at least fairly successful...

Heaton, Steer, Sarkic
Guilbert, Elhammody, Hause, Konsa, Engels, (New Player), Targett, Taylor
Nakamba, Hourahane, (3 new players)
Jota, Trezeguet, El Ghazi, (New player), Wesley, Davis, Samatta, Baston.

The new players being a centre back, ball winning midfielder, box to box midfielder, creative midfielder and another winger.

Use the money from selling Grealish, McGinn and Mings who i think would want to go. I also think Luiz wouldn't hang around so he'd probably be sold, Reina wouldn't stay on and we would offload Drinkwater and sell Lansbury and Hogan as well.

But let's hope it doesn't come to that.
To be honest I think that squad would be bottom half Championship unless the recruitment was excellent. 

Offline Hookeysmith

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6948 on: February 26, 2020, 01:20:29 PM »
I know we can all be miserable at times but fuck me reading this and I feel like opening a vein.

We are not marooned at the foot of the table needing a miracle - yet
We have several teams around us who are equally as shit as we are

Whether we get tonked or not we are in a domestic cup final on Sunday - how many teams would swap places with us to have that day out and chance (albeit small one) of winning a trophy

Let not collectively condemn us just yet - even if some of the performances leave a lot to be desired

Offline villa `cross the mersey

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6949 on: February 26, 2020, 01:22:59 PM »
Jota would still be with us. He may not be Premier League but he'd do just fine in the Championship.

O'Hare would be back and ours. Young Barry would no doubt get games too.

I don't want us to go down but to suggest it's the end of the world is typical doom mongering.

We survived last time with vastly shitter owners. This time we'd be fine. The trick would be recruitment for the next season in the top flight with a largely settled squad.

Jota couldn’t get into a shit Blues team. Buying him was entirely pointless.
"Buying him was entirely pointless"  - I think there are few others that fall into that category.
We were inadequately prepared for this season, primarily as the attitude prevailing at the club (emanating from the owners) was that we were ahead of schedule (i.e. we were not ready for promotion) -  adding to that were the wholesale changes made to the squad (which I appreciate were necessary), however the inexperience of some of the recruits and indeed the manager, has us potentially facing a return to the Championship.
Will it be the demise of the club? - hopefully not, as we appear to have owners with a long term vision and plans.
It will be gut wrenching for the fans after such a great finish to last season - for me one of the hardest things to swallow is that we have found it hard to compete against some of the clubs who you would normally not associate with the top division …… again its hard to take in unwitting, condescending comments from fans of other clubs i.e. " Villa are a big club, they shouldn't be going down and playing in the Championship"
If we do get relegated I think the biggest decision for the owners revolves, initially, around who should be managing us, reviewing the recruitment team and also the role of the CEO. I appreciate Smith got us back up last season, but he never quite  achieved that with his previous club.
History tells us that the team coming up to the Premier via the play off final  normally struggle to maintain the Premier league status, however I certainly expected more from the manager and squad bearing in mind the funds allowed to rebuild the squad - I guess that's the crux of the issue - the rebuilding
of a squad takes longer than a few months to start taking shape - but going back to my initial point, some of the recruits appear not to be of the quality required or are too inexperienced ….its going to be a hard couple of months

Offline Risso

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6950 on: February 26, 2020, 01:24:22 PM »
Jota would still be with us. He may not be Premier League but he'd do just fine in the Championship.

O'Hare would be back and ours. Young Barry would no doubt get games too.

I don't want us to go down but to suggest it's the end of the world is typical doom mongering.

We survived last time with vastly shitter owners. This time we'd be fine. The trick would be recruitment for the next season in the top flight with a largely settled squad.

Jota couldn’t get into a shit Blues team. Buying him was entirely pointless.

O'Hare? Barry? Or is everyone that we have on the books (excluding Grealish, Mings and McGinn) shit?

No they're not all shit.  Hourihane would still do a job at that level, as would the likes of Targett and Gilbert.  Picking somebody like Jota who IS shit by virtue of being too physically incapable at either Premier League or Championship level isn't a great way of reinforcing your point though.  He's probably the worst player to make an appearance for us this year.

Offline Luke8

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6951 on: February 26, 2020, 01:39:12 PM »
I’m not sure the level of the Championship is even that great to be honest. We made a pretty decent mess of getting out of it last time. West Brom are currently clear at top team with a team that includes Kyle Bartley, Jake Livermore and Robson Hal-Kanu.

Not something we will have to worry about when we stay up anyway!

Offline Clark W Griswold

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6952 on: February 26, 2020, 01:50:05 PM »
Yeah Jota probably is the weakest we’ve used this season agree but it wasn’t a pointless signing as it was intended for the championship and was part of a player going in the opposite direction.

There would be a world of difference if we went down this time compared to last. Last time we had no real saleable assets, Jordan Ayew being about the best and probably rated around £10m at the time.
Now we would be looking at £125m plus for Grealish, McGinn and Mings plus probably a further £20m for Luiz, Lansbury and Hogan.
I take it you can in theory spend all of that if you wanted to and not worry about FFP..? That’s a hell of a lot for a promotion push on top of the squad we’d already have which would also be considerably better than what we were left with last time. Many of these lads are young promising players who will have had a year playing the PL with us already. So, if you want your leaders here’s £150m to get some.
I forgot about O Hare and Barry, two players that could have an impact by then, in Barry’s case even if off the bench. Unless we really fucked up the spending of that money I think we’d have a hell of a team for that level.

Offline Villan82

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6953 on: February 26, 2020, 01:53:37 PM »
Jota would still be with us. He may not be Premier League but he'd do just fine in the Championship.

O'Hare would be back and ours. Young Barry would no doubt get games too.

I don't want us to go down but to suggest it's the end of the world is typical doom mongering.

We survived last time with vastly shitter owners. This time we'd be fine. The trick would be recruitment for the next season in the top flight with a largely settled squad.

The club was on the verge of being wound up the last time we were down there. If it happens this time, all decent players will leave and we will be very much under the cosh FFP wise. The revisionism towards our time in the second tier is astounding. It was a complete and utter shit show.

Here here. It was three years of hell. Urgh. Have people forgtotten what it was like to see your Preston and your Brentford and your Reading raise their game against us and take points off us regularly?

Online Drummond

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6954 on: February 26, 2020, 01:59:09 PM »
Jota would still be with us. He may not be Premier League but he'd do just fine in the Championship.

O'Hare would be back and ours. Young Barry would no doubt get games too.

I don't want us to go down but to suggest it's the end of the world is typical doom mongering.

We survived last time with vastly shitter owners. This time we'd be fine. The trick would be recruitment for the next season in the top flight with a largely settled squad.

Jota couldn’t get into a shit Blues team. Buying him was entirely pointless.

O'Hare? Barry? Or is everyone that we have on the books (excluding Grealish, Mings and McGinn) shit?

No they're not all shit.  Hourihane would still do a job at that level, as would the likes of Targett and Gilbert.  Picking somebody like Jota who IS shit by virtue of being too physically incapable at either Premier League or Championship level isn't a great way of reinforcing your point though.  He's probably the worst player to make an appearance for us this year.

I picked Jota as he (along with O'Hare and Barry) is the closest we have to Grealish.

Jota did well at Brentford in the Championship, I'd argue that he could still be useful. If you go through our squad, I'd say they are good enough to get us promoted.


Offline chrisw1

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6955 on: February 26, 2020, 02:02:57 PM »
Jota would still be with us. He may not be Premier League but he'd do just fine in the Championship.

O'Hare would be back and ours. Young Barry would no doubt get games too.

I don't want us to go down but to suggest it's the end of the world is typical doom mongering.

We survived last time with vastly shitter owners. This time we'd be fine. The trick would be recruitment for the next season in the top flight with a largely settled squad.

Jota couldn’t get into a shit Blues team. Buying him was entirely pointless.

O'Hare? Barry? Or is everyone that we have on the books (excluding Grealish, Mings and McGinn) shit?

No they're not all shit.  Hourihane would still do a job at that level, as would the likes of Targett and Gilbert.  Picking somebody like Jota who IS shit by virtue of being too physically incapable at either Premier League or Championship level isn't a great way of reinforcing your point though.  He's probably the worst player to make an appearance for us this year.

I picked Jota as he (along with O'Hare and Barry) is the closest we have to Grealish.

Jota did well at Brentford in the Championship, I'd argue that he could still be useful. If you go through our squad, I'd say they are good enough to get us promoted.


I disagree.  Even with Tammy the majority of that squad was mid table at best without Grealish.  I can't see that team being anywhere near the likes of last seasons Norwich & Sheffilield or this seasons Leeds or West Brom.  If the recruitment was brilliant then maybe, but otherwise I'd seriously fear for that team.

Online Drummond

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6956 on: February 26, 2020, 02:14:27 PM »

I disagree.  Even with Tammy the majority of that squad was mid table at best without Grealish.  I can't see that team being anywhere near the likes of last seasons Norwich & Sheffilield or this seasons Leeds or West Brom.  If the recruitment was brilliant then maybe, but otherwise I'd seriously fear for that team.

Luiz, Nakamba, Guilbert, Targett, Samatta, Engels and Konsa are good players if not world-beaters. They'd do fine at that level. We'd need to strengthen, I'm under no illusions, but a couple of decent loans too and I think we'd be fine.

This season has seen some mistakes but it's not like we've been outclassed week after week as happened before we went down last time. We're challenging and in most games we play.

Online paul_e

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6957 on: February 26, 2020, 02:52:35 PM »
The fatalism on here has reached new heights I see, we now have a squad that isn't even top half of the championship with Jack, Mings and McGinn. A couple more defeats and we'll be getting kicked straight into league 1 for being so shit.

On topic, we'd need to replace Mings well and get a proper defensive midfielder but other than that I'd be ok with us going with players already at the club, Samatta and Wesley would be very good at that level, AEG has proven he's good there and I think Trez would do well. Then we've o'hare, vassilev, archer, ramsey and barry who would all get chance to play senior football and have shown glimpses of being very talented. We might lose Heaton and Reina but Steer, Nyland and Sarkic are all capable of being first choice in the championship.

I think we'd be near the top all season and we'd have a lots of youngsters with a lot more experience by the time we came back. What we did wrong when were relegated last time was selling Benteke and Delph and trying to buy a new squad. What we did wrong the first season after relegation last time was try to buy a new squad. What we did wrong when we sacked RDM was take on a manager who approaches every window like a kid in a sweet shop. What we did wrong (with no alternative) this season was buy a new squad. Continuity matters and we've had none for 4 years, we need to fill gaps and adapt rather than tear down and replace, regardless of which league we're in next season.

Online Drummond

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6958 on: February 26, 2020, 02:54:48 PM »
Crikey paul, we agree.

Online paul_e

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Re: Dean Smith - Confirmed
« Reply #6959 on: February 26, 2020, 02:58:09 PM »
Crikey paul, we agree.

In all honesty I think we do more often than not, it's just that a couple of years I got so fed up with Bruce and people defending him that I had no patience for a lot of posters and you got drawn into that.

 


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