Where Has It All Gone Wrong?

[Drummond]

According to Opta we're doing better than expected... clicky

[oldhill_avfc]

While it's easy to hammer player recruitment in hindsight this group of players looked perfectly fine just a month or two ago and then almost beating Liverpool in what would have been a very deserved result. That we have a manager who throughout the season has been tactically naive late in games, immensely stubborn in his approach and has become increasingly defensive in his outlook and accusatory as results became poorer is for me the biggest issue we are facing.

I am very much in the camp that Dean Smith must shoulder the majority of the blame for what has gone wrong so far. He gave us all the impression that he was an astute football manager who had a specific gameplan for each opponent and one that irrespective of the opponent would see us trying to win. The evidence is very much to the contrary. He has one plan and our possession stats of late suggest he is trying to avoid defeat rather than play to win. He hasn't sorted out our defensive issues. All too often we are overrun in midfield and our players still make stupid errors throughout the game. Those things should have been fixed by now. It's on the manager to do that with his staff, with his players; to send them out best prepared to get positive results. For me, there are no signs that is happening now, or more worryingly is about to change any time soon.

You've contradicted yourself a few times here - you say the players are fine then point out the continued defensive issues, stupid errors and getting continuously over run in midfield.

The players have never looked perfectly fine - Targett is a defensive liability, Nakamba/Luiz have been error prone since day 1.  Trezeguet and Jota have never really contributed and El-Ghazi is probably a sub rather than regular starter.

I agree that his tactical intransigence is a major issue (and that he has previous form in this regard) but you simply can't just blame Smith.

On a positive note I don't think we are that far off having what's needed to scrape through - but money needs to be spent and the management team (ie not just Smith) need to have a plan B.

[dave.woodhall]

The 'solely down to Grealish' theory falls down by looking at the league table on tbe day Smith was appointed. Grealish certainly hadn't had much of an effect for Steve Bruce.

[Ads]

The 'solely down to Grealish' theory falls down by looking at the league table on tbe day Smith was appointed. Grealish certainly hadn't had much of an effect for Steve Bruce.

It also doesn't account for the turn around starting at 16:02 at Stoke. That second half performance was the opposite to what we saw first half and much more in tune with the 900 record breaking minutes that followed.

That's not me downplaying Grealish, he's a wonderful player. But as you attest, he was a wonderful player August-October and in the two previous seasons. They didn't end with promotion.

[AV82EC]

Yep, quite why someone isn’t willing to give Smith seemingly one iota of credit for getting us promoted I’ll never understand.

[AVH87]

The 'solely down to Grealish' theory falls down by looking at the league table on tbe day Smith was appointed. Grealish certainly hadn't had much of an effect for Steve Bruce.

Although there are quotes from Jack himself saying his head wasn't really in it for those first couple of months of the season after the Spurs move fell through, and the club had told him he had to be sold.

[KRS]

This very same squad without Grealish also came within a few minutes of beating Liverpool...until they lost concentration and fucked it up at the end.

[Bobby Boy]

Start with a base of recruitment and team selection.

Add a dash of team formation, tactics and intransigence.

Include a smidgen of injuries, bad luck and VAR.

And there you have it. Someone left the cake out in the rain.

[KRS]

So things started going Pete Tong towards the end of October which coincides with a really tough run of fixtures starting with Man City away, and the 11 league games since have only yielded 7 points from a possible 33:

PLD: 11
W: 2
D: 1
L: 8
F: 10
A: 23
GD: -13

Take out the Man City game so it’s just the 10 games over November and December, and it still doesn’t look much better...

PLD: 10
W: 2
D: 1
L: 7
F: 10
A: 20
GD: -10

That is relegation form and likely to get most managers the tin tack. Given how the fixtures pan out, I just don’t see how he keeps his job if we lose tomorrow and it would be a big risk to back him in the transfer market rather than give the window to a new manager, however I imagine most of the players would already have been identified by now by our expert “executive player transfer committee”.

[Villan82]

Yep, quite why someone isn’t willing to give Smith seemingly one iota of credit for getting us promoted I’ll never understand.

Smith undoubtedly galvanized the club and gave it a lift. He also got the best out of Jack.

However, there was also the dodgy run last winter- as bad as anything under Bruce, and arguably di Matteo also. I also found his comments, was it around West Brom away, about the whole league fearing Aston Villa a little bit odd? Those comments blew up in his face given the crap run we then went on.

We all want the best for him, if he can turn it around it would be great. However, the current 'questions' about him are justified because it hasn't quite been good enough with too many points chucked away through bad decisions.

[Clampy]

At the end of the day, if a manager is going to get grief when things go wrong, he should receive credit when it goes right and for last season, he definatley deserves that.

[wince]

Having to get an entire squad in the summer hasn’t helped. Also we look like a championship side at times. As for Deano, nice bloke but it’s like keeping Neville chamberlain because he avoided us entering the war in 1938 and gave us a year to rearm. We need a Churchill to smash forward. Lose tomorrow and questions will have to be asked. Unlike the chumps division you can’t go on ten game poor runs and expect to survive in this league

[Monty]

The 'solely down to Grealish' theory falls down by looking at the league table on tbe day Smith was appointed. Grealish certainly hadn't had much of an effect for Steve Bruce.

Certainly Smith got the best out of Jack at that level. I'm just very unconvinced he's the man to do it at this one.

[ChicagoLion]

We lost a few big characters in the summer ( Hutton Whelan Jedi) clear out and replaced them with inexperience.
I don’t think you can under estimate The value having blokes like this around even though they were physically not up to the Prem.

[mike]

The 'solely down to Grealish' theory falls down by looking at the league table on tbe day Smith was appointed. Grealish certainly hadn't had much of an effect for Steve Bruce.

I don’t know the answer to this, but where were we when Dean took over and when Jack came back from injury? I’m not saying Smith had nothing to do with us getting promoted, he certainly did, we did really well when he started and I thought automatic promotion was nailed on. Then we had a shocking spell where we looked to be out of the playoffs. Jack came back and we went on our amazing run.