Dean Smith - Confirmed

[brian green]

Not only will we never know, they know we will never know.

When Idle Jack came home from market with no cow carrying a bag of magic beans at least his mother knew whose fault it was.

[SoccerHQ]

Just watched the Villa View post-match thing. The chap on there (Dan?) seems to think that the summer signings are the problem, which seems reasonable. I've no idea how much he knows (it'll be more than me!), but he said Smith identified targets, which were inevitably too expensive (Phillips/Maupay, I'm guessing), and so was served Suso's cut price equivalents instead. Might be nonsense but it feels kind of true.

Phillips and Maupay are decent players but I doubt we'd be much higher if we'd signed them. Brighton until the shock win yesterday were only 3 points ahead of us and indeed had won two games since November, same as us.

Phillips is o.k but way people talk it's like he's already got 50 caps for England and played many season in champions league. He might've struggled to impose himself in premier league compared to what he does for Leeds.

I really think the biggest mistake was not getting an experienced CB. Wrong to sign three and they're all similar e.g. young and lacking top level experience.

We cut out some of the bad mistakes and we get a few more draws and the odd win. Add just 5 more points and we're still in a really good position to stay up. Who knows if a senior CB was ever seriously identified or if Smith just thought getting Mings here permanently would be enough. As season has gone on we've become much easier to score against.

[SamTheMouse]

I think the spine's OK, it's the flanks where we suck.

[adrenachrome]

I think the spine's OK, it's the flanks where we suck.

Yes. It was clear to see that Chelsea were hogging the line on both sides, and they often play very narrowly.

[Axl Rose]

Watching some interviews this morning with Dean stating that we played well.

The mind boggles.

[LeeB]

I think the spine's OK, it's the flanks where we suck.

Yes. It was clear to see that Chelsea were hogging the line on both sides, and they often play very narrowly.

Yes, this has been the issue all season, not good enough either side, front to back.

Funnily enough this was always the problem with Lambert. We remind me a lot of Lambert's first Villa side, just lacking the world beating centre forward plucked from obscurity to save our arses.

[Risso]

He hasn't got a single clue how to counter teams who like to keep possession.  We're incapable of doing it ourselves, but we also don't have any sort of fighting spirit, grit or determination to get into their faces and disrupt them.  We're nowhere near the shameful shambles we were when we were relegated, but somehow this feels even worse.  Back then that almost felt like a relief and the chance to start again.  Now it feels like it'll kill any sort of forward momentum we had, and we'll almost certainly lose all of our decent players.

[WarszaVillan]

I think the spine's OK, it's the flanks where we suck.

Yes. It was clear to see that Chelsea were hogging the line on both sides, and they often play very narrowly.

Yes, this has been the issue all season, not good enough either side, front to back.

Funnily enough this was always the problem with Lambert. We remind me a lot of Lambert's first Villa side, just lacking the world beating centre forward plucked from obscurity to save our arses.

When have we last had a pair of decent full-backs?

[Fred Crump]

Alan Wright and Gary Charles

[LeeB]

I think the spine's OK, it's the flanks where we suck.

Yes. It was clear to see that Chelsea were hogging the line on both sides, and they often play very narrowly.

Yes, this has been the issue all season, not good enough either side, front to back.

Funnily enough this was always the problem with Lambert. We remind me a lot of Lambert's first Villa side, just lacking the world beating centre forward plucked from obscurity to save our arses.

When have we last had a pair of decent full-backs?

Earl Barrett and Steve Staunton?

[ASHTONVILLA]

When have we last had a pair of decent full-backs?

Bouma and Delaney? Can't think of a time since then when we had two decent fullbacks.

[AsTallAsLions]

Watching some interviews this morning with Dean stating that we played well.

The mind boggles.

It's so frustrating mate, especially as Dean Smith is not a moron. But there is clearly some sort of stubborn, shithouse psychology that infects every manager we've ever had when they get to the point where they are objectively failing at their jobs.

Invariably they will oversee a useless team performance like that one yesterday and still come out afterwards praising the team, defending the performance/tactics, essentially giving a completely different account of the game than what anyone else saw - or, indeed, what the facts suggest. =<26% possession at home against Chelsea is simply indefensible. I'd maybe expect that against the best teams in the world, but never Lampard's boys.

It's hard to know what's going through a manager's mind when he's intent on defending shite like that. To what end? What benefit is it to him to say things like "They've done everything I asked of them", "I thought we played really well" when that only further underlines a manager's incompetence? If we can all label those comments for what they are - problematic at best - I do not understand how an intelligent man like Smith thinks it's the best policy.

A manager who wanted to remain in the real world while retaining the fans' backing would surely say something along the lines of "We know we've let people down today, we need to put our best foot forward at this point, there are 8 games left so we still have time to right the wrongs we saw out there today. We need to be more positive and have more courage and we'll look to do that on Wednesday."

I said it about Jack's performance in his thread but I can echo the same thing about Dean here: you'd honestly never know, on the basis of the last two games, that he was a proud Villa man fighting for the club's survival. If anything - judging by his body language and his words - it seems as if he's just not that bothered. It's almost Brucian.

[Risso]

I agree with all of that ATAL.  There's no more infuriating sight than seeing Dean Smith stood there, arms folded with a look of confused resignation on his face.

[PeterWithe]

I dont think it was a bad move to appoint him at all, his Brentford teams played with aggressive purposeful tactics and were constantly on the front foot, thats why we went for him. When iterviewed and he talks about tactics there is clearly knowledge and method there. Its puzzling why this year we have been abandoned that for a dull defensive style that looks both alien to the players and is utterly ineffective.

[Clampy]

One thing I dont get is when we went to five at the back earlier in the season, we looked a bit a bit more solid and better going forward. It was soon ditched for some reason.