Where Has It All Gone Wrong?

[kippaxvilla2]

Play off final delirium.  Owners others can only dream of.  Nassef stating  openly the sky is the limit.  We had a manager and players all fighting for each other and seemed to get the ethos of the club.

Fast forward end of the summer window.  The recruitment was accepted as being sound but there were the usual concerns about lack of PL experience and big question marks about whether the forward line options would be adequate enough. 

Season starts reasonably hopefully although we have a knack of losing games when on top and developed a plucky loser tag.  It was a sign of things to come.

Then come December and the whole thing has turned into a complete car crash at an alarming rate.  Literally almost as soon as Dean signed a new contract it has gone to shit.  But deeper rooted problems are emerging meaning this slump is a symptom.

1.  The scouting and recruitment of these players without underpinning them with experience is turning out to be a catastrophic error of judgment.

2. The lack of forward options and pinning our half a season hopes on a rookie who hasn’t exactly stormed the Belgian league seems to be bordering on the negligent particularly as it’s now being compounded by his seemingly undropppable status.

3. The intransigence of the Head Coach and coaching team in not seeing what 40000 others can see week in week out.  Namely the formation and the complete lack of pace in the team just isn’t working.

4. Talk of players holding meetings without the Head Coach present if true and it’s a big if doesn’t bode well for harmony. 

5.  An alarming lack of characters in the squad to the point where we really have become a one man team. 

It’s very depressing and I wanted to focus on the positives! 

[Legion]

Jack Woodward being re-appointed. That's where it lies. We went down when he was present. In the years he was not there we got ourselves back up. Now he is back and it has all gone pear-shaped.

[Legion]

Sorry for the flippancy. In all seriousness you make a lot of very valid points.

[kippaxvilla2]

You’re right though Lee....

[Risso]

1) I would say the management set up was the first big mistake.  Pitarch as Director of Football and Smith as Head Coach simply hasn't worked.  It's led to an unbalanced squad with some 'Suso' signings, and some Smith. 

2) They've simply bought too many duds.  Christ knows what they thought they were getting in Wesley.  He's slow, cumbersome, shit in the air, can't beat people, rarely gets into good positions and never shoots.  If he had any of those traits you might think he'd be a success in time, but all the things you need to be a successful Premier League striker are entirely absent from his play.  Trezeguet is hardly any better, and El Ghazi is similarly shite. 

3) Deciding to go into a new campaign trying to stay up with the people in 2) as our forward options was utter insanity.  It was so monumentally stupid it's almost impressive that a team of people actually came to a collective agreement that that would be OK.

4) Dean Smith - decent Championship manager, nothing more, and has got away with murder because of his Villa connections.

[hilts_coolerking]

Too much youth and not enough experience among our summer signings.

[ROBBO]

I think the players can see what we can see that the team has no game plan, the Leicester game was a clear example playing a high defensive line with slow centre backs against one of the quickest forward lines in the league.
They would see that little effort appears to be put in to finding opposition weaknesses and exploiting them we play the same way no matter the opposition, the pity of it is that we do have a couple of gems in the team who will be off next season unless we can start winning games and I'm pretty sure we will not with this manager.

[villa `cross the mersey]

Some valid points there from Kippax and Risso....
It's all gone a bit "Pete Tong"
As a club we don't appear to learn from our mistakes ....the current owners need to be proactive now - the thought of relegation is unpalatable and even more so if they are prepared to accept it rather than fight it .....

[itbrvilla]

Recruitment and a naive inexperienced manager.

[SoccerHQ]

Drawing with Manchester United.

Even when we get a good result off them, it still f***s up our season.

[garyshawsknee]

DS has to take the lions share, being too rigid in selection and formation, but Richard Madeley was in charge of recruitment and while we needed an overhaul, lack of experience in this country with the signings and lack of options up front will cost us.

[danno]

DS has to take the lions share, being too rigid in selection and formation, but Richard Madeley was in charge of recruitment and while we needed an overhaul, lack of experience in this country with the signings and lack of options up front will cost us.

Well there's our problem right there, Judy was always the brains.

[richtheholtender]

1. His reluctance to change - I thought he was a good up and coming coach with a good football brain. This is lacking.
2. Motivation of the players - It isn’t the defeats to Southampton and to Watford it’s the manner. We have been outfought which isn’t acceptable and comes from him, the leader.
3. Transfers - I thought from his time at Brentford he had an eye for a talent and at bargain prices. Looking at Trezeguet and Wesley in particular I am not sure that’s the case.  Just on Wesley, Dean (to the best of my knowledge) has always played fast flowing, intigate passing football with a striker that fits this system, so why when we signs one for villa does he sign a big target man type? Especially with Abraham going back, he had a plain canvas??

All of these were the reasons I wanted him and the why I wanted to give him the season regardless. But he is struggling now.

[PeterWithe]

He’s part of a structure that has bought a load of players not suitable for a successful season in the PL

He’s partially at fault for that but only partially, he’s been asked to make a silk purse from a sows ear and hasn’t managed it. He did a magnificent job in getting us to the PL and for me he’ll go down as being one of my favourite managers ever.

[Des Little]

Our inability to adapt to change in games has stood out for me, not least the challenge presented by playing against ten men.  That takes some doing.