The Official Dean Smith Thread | Page 345 | Vital Football

The Official Dean Smith Thread

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Firstly, paragraphs man, paragraphs 🤨😆

It’s a difficult one to answer without using hindsight which distorts the truth somewhat.

I’ll be perfectly honest with you. He should have been sacked in March right before lockdown - he was awful and getting worse not better. However after restart he had earned the right to continue and the break gave him chance to adjust things the way many wanted him to much earlier.

I’m very happy with the start to this season, the results have certainly come our way. Some performances look more coherent which is mainly what I look for and bang on about with respect to coaching ability.

I just want him to continue to improve and for Villa to be successful.

When that improvement stops/ plateaus then it’s time to move on for both parties (for clarity I think there’s a way to go before we reach this point).

In the finality, I am an Aston Villa FC fan, not a Dean Smith fan, so my only loyalty is to the club and not to players, staff, coaches, owners etc who are a means to an end.

Yep, hindsight is a wonderful thing but that’s why I thought the question is an interesting one now we’ve had a transfer window and a decent start.

Would you say in hindsight, sacking him last February would have been wrong in view of the fact we stayed up, had a decent window and a decent start or too early to judge that one?

And most importantly....how are the paragraphs looking....?!:ROFLMAO:
 
Yep, hindsight is a wonderful thing but that’s why I thought the question is an interesting one now we’ve had a transfer window and a decent start.

Would you say in hindsight, sacking him last February would have been wrong in view of the fact we stayed up, had a decent window and a decent start or too early to judge that one?

And most importantly....how are the paragraphs looking....?!:ROFLMAO:
Sacking him would have sent the club back into the dark ages of 2010-2019. It would have been a major mistake, we would have ended up with relegation and losing Grealish.

There's three factors I look for in a manager or in this case, head coach.

1. Performances. We are playing the best football we have played in years. The performances on the whole have been excellent.

2. Results. Year one, took us from 15th to promotion. Year two, took us from play off winners to a league cup final and avoided relegation. Year three, given Liverpool their biggest whopping in a lifetime and sit 3rd in the table with a game in hand. Results have been excellent.

3. Controversies and player relationships. Dean Smith is well respected by the footballing community, appears to get on well with all his players, present and former, and has helped Grealish develop into a world class player on a new five year contract.

I am a huge fan of Smith and the coaching team he has built around him. I'm enjoying the performances, there's a feel good factor around being a Villa fan that has been gone since MON turned his back on us, the results are good and I'm fairly confident with further investment in the squad we will win things under the current setup.

10/10 performance from Smith so far in his Villa career.
 
Sacking him would have sent the club back into the dark ages of 2010-2019. It would have been a major mistake, we would have ended up with relegation and losing Grealish.

There's three factors I look for in a manager or in this case, head coach.

1. Performances. We are playing the best football we have played in years. The performances on the whole have been excellent.

2. Results. Year one, took us from 15th to promotion. Year two, took us from play off winners to a league cup final and avoided relegation. Year three, given Liverpool their biggest whopping in a lifetime and sit 3rd in the table with a game in hand. Results have been excellent.

3. Controversies and player relationships. Dean Smith is well respected by the footballing community, appears to get on well with all his players, present and former, and has helped Grealish develop into a world class player on a new five year contract.

I am a huge fan of Smith and the coaching team he has built around him. I'm enjoying the performances, there's a feel good factor around being a Villa fan that has been gone since MON turned his back on us, the results are good and I'm fairly confident with further investment in the squad we will win things under the current setup.

10/10 performance from Smith so far in his Villa career.

Cant argue with a lot of that mate...difficult to argue he should have been sacked now we know what happened after lockdown but will be interesting to see how others feel. No guarantees we'd have stayed up if we'd brought in someone for the last 10 games and as you say if we'd been relegated...would have meant losing the likes of Jack and been yet another restart.

With our current owners I'd have been more positive about bouncing back than after 2015/16 but who knows how it would have affected us! It certainly would have been yet another backward step! So with hindsight it surely was very much the right decision by the owners/CEO to stand by him.

Like you, I haven't felt as expectant as I currently do since the first 2 seasons of O'Neill....at least we all know that Smith's tenure won't end the same way as that conniving little twit! I will never forgive him for walking out on the club when he did..Smith's a far better man than that!
 
Yep, hindsight is a wonderful thing but that’s why I thought the question is an interesting one now we’ve had a transfer window and a decent start.

Would you say in hindsight, sacking him last February would have been wrong in view of the fact we stayed up, had a decent window and a decent start or too early to judge that one?

And most importantly....how are the paragraphs looking....?!:ROFLMAO:

There’s two sides to that. Hindsight is 10 times more powerful and accurate than foresight. In Feb very few apart from those with blind faith would have predicted that what followed. How many predicted Villa would annihilate the Champions 7-2? But those with faith will use results like that to say I told you so etc, but it’s not based on any rationale other than closing your eyes, crossing your fingers tightly and wishing with all your might!

So of course in hindsight you can simplistically say it would have been a regrettable decision to sack him in Feb.

On the other hand this simple argument doesn’t take into account the chance of another manager coming in, galvanising the team and also leading them to safety.

That alternative timeline manager would also likely be given the same backing in the transfer market and given I keep being told that Dean had absolutely nothing to do with bringing in the players (apart from the ones that work out of course) then on that basis we would have done very similar business wouldn’t we?!

Im happy with Dean at present, he seems to have addressed some of the chronic issues that meant most of last season was a shambles. How far he can take us I don’t know but it will be interesting to see how much potential he has and whether he will make the most of it.
 
Like you, I haven't felt as expectant as I currently do since the first 2 seasons of O'Neill....at least we all know that Smith's tenure won't end the same way as that conniving little twit! I will never forgive him for walking out on the club when he did..Smith's a far better man than that!

:agree:
 
There’s two sides to that. Hindsight is 10 times more powerful and accurate than foresight. In Feb very few apart from those with blind faith would have predicted that what followed. How many predicted Villa would annihilate the Champions 7-2? But those with faith will use results like that to say I told you so etc, but it’s not based on any rationale other than closing your eyes, crossing your fingers tightly and wishing with all your might!

So of course in hindsight you can simplistically say it would have been a regrettable decision to sack him in Feb.

On the other hand this simple argument doesn’t take into account the chance of another manager coming in, galvanising the team and also leading them to safety.

That alternative timeline manager would also likely be given the same backing in the transfer market and given I keep being told that Dean had absolutely nothing to do with bringing in the players (apart from the ones that work out of course) then on that basis we would have done very similar business wouldn’t we?!

Im happy with Dean at present, he seems to have addressed some of the chronic issues that meant most of last season was a shambles. How far he can take us I don’t know but it will be interesting to see how much potential he has and whether he will make the most of it.

Ifs, buts, perhaps and maybes....lots of them on both sides of the argument. I do disagree regarding most of last season being a shambles tbh. Very disappointing in parts and some performances were awful but most of it a shambles? Not for me.

Another manager could well have come in and saved the day...we don't know...what we do know is that Smith led us to safety and we've had the best start to a season for many a year....that's a fact and nobody can question it, whether you believe in Deano or not. If he continues in the same vein we should all be happy.
 
Pointless polarising these discussions to sack him/knight him extremes.

Two years on, I'm still to be convinced of what he's bringing to the club.

We can, and have, outspent anyone below the top half of the PL during his tenure so some degree of success would likely have been achieved with pretty much any random manager, all other things being equal.

I'm still not convinced that he's getting a real tune out of a group of players that most/all of our peers (bottom half PL and below teams) would mostly kill for and that bothers me.

As mentioned before, I'll give him until Xmas to weigh it all up and, yes, I take into account the large player churn as a mitigating factor but I'm also pretty convinced that our relative success this year is likely down to Shakespeare as much, if not more, as Smith.

When the players were walking out for the second half against Leeds there seemed to be a bunch of "chat" going on between various players - the last time I saw that was with doghead before his inevitable demise.

I think I know what Smith wants to do and, perhaps, how he wants to do it but I'm just not sure that gung ho kick and rush football is ever going to make it in the PL unless you have a team like Liverpool - you need to be better than the other team in virtually every position on the pitch to get away with that style of play and be really good at passing the ball yet we still have a couple of glaring weaknesses, never mind outright strengths, as things stand.

I do struggle to get away from the line of thinking that we could/should be getting more bang for our buck given the money spent but it's early days still perhaps - it's not early days anymore by Xmas though - it may not be pretty still but ultimately, the position in the table then will dictate the reality, no matter how any of us try to pick the details/personalities apart in the meantime.
 
what we do know is that Smith led us to safety and we've had the best start to a season for many a year

:wahey:

Totally.

Doesn't matter now whether we agree on the shambles description, its in the past, just like the past successes that keep getting quoted, they're not relevant to what is to come. The most important thing is to see Dean keep improving, and in turn improving our performances and results.

I think if you asked him Dean himself would give himself a strong but not perfect scorecard, I think he probably knows where his strengths and his improvement areas are (at least I hope so).

When I was competing, even when I won I knew where the potential was to do better and had to endure having this rammed down my throat by my coaches till the next time!
 
Pointless polarising these discussions to sack him/knight him extremes.

Two years on, I'm still to be convinced of what he's bringing to the club.

We can, and have, outspent anyone below the top half of the PL during his tenure so some degree of success would likely have been achieved with pretty much any random manager, all other things being equal.

I'm still not convinced that he's getting a real tune out of a group of players that most/all of our peers (bottom half PL and below teams) would mostly kill for and that bothers me.

As mentioned before, I'll give him until Xmas to weigh it all up and, yes, I take into account the large player churn as a mitigating factor but I'm also pretty convinced that our relative success this year is likely down to Shakespeare as much, if not more, as Smith.

When the players were walking out for the second half against Leeds there seemed to be a bunch of "chat" going on between various players - the last time I saw that was with doghead before his inevitable demise.

I think I know what Smith wants to do and, perhaps, how he wants to do it but I'm just not sure that gung ho kick and rush football is ever going to make it in the PL unless you have a team like Liverpool - you need to be better than the other team in virtually every position on the pitch to get away with that style of play and be really good at passing the ball yet we still have a couple of glaring weaknesses, never mind outright strengths, as things stand.

I do struggle to get away from the line of thinking that we could/should be getting more bang for our buck given the money spent but it's early days still perhaps - it's not early days anymore by Xmas though - it may not be pretty still but ultimately, the position in the table then will dictate the reality, no matter how any of us try to pick the details/personalities apart in the meantime.

But St Dean.
 
There’s two sides to that. Hindsight is 10 times more powerful and accurate than foresight. In Feb very few apart from those with blind faith would have predicted that what followed. How many predicted Villa would annihilate the Champions 7-2? But those with faith will use results like that to say I told you so etc, but it’s not based on any rationale other than closing your eyes, crossing your fingers tightly and wishing with all your might!

So of course in hindsight you can simplistically say it would have been a regrettable decision to sack him in Feb.

On the other hand this simple argument doesn’t take into account the chance of another manager coming in, galvanising the team and also leading them to safety.

That alternative timeline manager would also likely be given the same backing in the transfer market and given I keep being told that Dean had absolutely nothing to do with bringing in the players (apart from the ones that work out of course) then on that basis we would have done very similar business wouldn’t we?!

Im happy with Dean at present, he seems to have addressed some of the chronic issues that meant most of last season was a shambles. How far he can take us I don’t know but it will be interesting to see how much potential he has and whether he will make the most of it.
I think the blind faith brigade are few and far between crimson.
Most of us who backed him were not amongst those on here who were predicting world domination on the back of a freakish 7-2 result, and neither were we predicting the big crash after the Leeds fiasco.
Its a time will tell exercise and when it becomes apparent that Dean either does or doesnt have it in him to take us further I am sure we will join with you and others to say thanks Dean, but time for a change.
That time is not yet.
 
I don't think we have spent that much - maybe I'm in a minority.
You look at the teams of Man U, Citeh and Chelsea and even Leicester, West Ham and say Palace and our players cost less per man. We started from nothing, well Jack and McGinn, and there were parts of the game v Liverpool when we looked like a fast paced world beating team.

My worry is that Dean has done this before - showed us what we could be like and then we've lost it.

I still live in hope.
 
Two years on, I'm still to be convinced of what he's bringing to the club.

We can, and have, outspent anyone below the top half of the PL during his tenure so some degree of success would likely have been achieved with pretty much any random manager, all other things being equal.

I'm still not convinced that he's getting a real tune out of a group of players that most/all of our peers (bottom half PL and below teams) would mostly kill for and that bothers me.

As mentioned before, I'll give him until Xmas to weigh it all up and, yes, I take into account the large player churn as a mitigating factor but I'm also pretty convinced that our relative success this year is likely down to Shakespeare as much, if not more, as Smith.

Our relative improvement this year if it is in fact down to Shakespeare just confirms to me that we can only make marginal improvements with 'nationally known' managers.

Graham Potter, Eddie Howe, Chris Wilder etc. are all good coaches and they'll bring a clear plan but how far are you going to go with them. I think of it like standard deviation. Dean IMO is in the same bracket as those names and I think 80% of managers fall into this category. They won't transform you but might improve you a little bit over time or they'll get you in and around where you would have ended up anyway.

Now when we talk Bielsa, Ancelotti, Pochettino etc. they are the top 10% who drastically improve you and then you've Lambert et al. who are in the bottom 10%. Most managers are in the blue section below which is probably +/- 2 positions in the table. OGS another fine example, bobby average manager but United will probably finish comfortably between 4th and 8th which is around their level as a team anyway.

1603808312816.png
 
Our relative improvement this year if it is in fact down to Shakespeare just confirms to me that we can only make marginal improvements with 'nationally known' managers.

Graham Potter, Eddie Howe, Chris Wilder etc. are all good coaches and they'll bring a clear plan but how far are you going to go with them. I think of it like standard deviation. Dean IMO is in the same bracket as those names and I think 80% of managers fall into this category. They won't transform you but might improve you a little bit over time or they'll get you in and around where you would have ended up anyway.

Now when we talk Bielsa, Ancelotti, Pochettino etc. they are the top 10% who drastically improve you and then you've Lambert et al. who are in the bottom 10%. Most managers are in the blue section below which is probably +/- 2 positions in the table. OGS another fine example, bobby average manager but United will probably finish comfortably between 4th and 8th which is around their level as a team anyway.

View attachment 43160

Short stroke need fast hips :lol:
 
Our relative improvement this year if it is in fact down to Shakespeare just confirms to me that we can only make marginal improvements with 'nationally known' managers.

Graham Potter, Eddie Howe, Chris Wilder etc. are all good coaches and they'll bring a clear plan but how far are you going to go with them. I think of it like standard deviation. Dean IMO is in the same bracket as those names and I think 80% of managers fall into this category. They won't transform you but might improve you a little bit over time or they'll get you in and around where you would have ended up anyway.

Now when we talk Bielsa, Ancelotti, Pochettino etc. they are the top 10% who drastically improve you and then you've Lambert et al. who are in the bottom 10%. Most managers are in the blue section below which is probably +/- 2 positions in the table. OGS another fine example, bobby average manager but United will probably finish comfortably between 4th and 8th which is around their level as a team anyway.

View attachment 43160
Don't forget the empirical rule, if normally distributed 68% of the data falls with in one standard deviation of the mean.
 
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