The Official Dean Smith Thread | Page 406 | Vital Football

The Official Dean Smith Thread

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Personally I’m desperate to see him stay and be a success. I like Dean a lot. In fact I’ve been desperate to see all our past managers succeed but few have for various reasons. Dean like Mon before him has the advantage of money being spent and I don’t want to see it being ballsed up again by being the wrong manager at the right time.

Think it’s harsh to say Dean is currently the wrong manager at the right time when the fact is...he arrived with us at the lower end of the championship and we’re currently mid table in the Premiership. I know his fiercest critics seem to dislike any mention of what he’s achieved at the club but that’s a fact which current form doesn’t change. What more given the time he’s had could we reasonably have expected? Not much I’d say so appointing him in October 2019 was very much the right appointment at the right time. But as I suggested in my original post, whether Dean will be the man to take us further will be determined next season. He deserves another window and the chance to kick on again. If we don’t I’m pretty sure he’ll be off but when he does eventually leave us I’m think the club will be in a much better position than when he arrived.
 
Think it’s harsh to say Dean is currently the wrong manager at the right time when the fact is...he arrived with us at the lower end of the championship and we’re currently mid table in the Premiership. I know his fiercest critics seem to dislike any mention of what he’s achieved at the club but that’s a fact which current form doesn’t change. What more given the time he’s had could we reasonably have expected? Not much I’d say so appointing him in October 2019 was very much the right appointment at the right time. But as I suggested in my original post, whether Dean will be the man to take us further will be determined next season. He deserves another window and the chance to kick on again. If we don’t I’m pretty sure he’ll be off but when he does eventually leave us I’m think the club will be in a much better position than when he arrived.

Spot on. Dean's done enough in this season, in spite of rocky patches not of his own making, for the owners to not remotely consider changing him. Neither should they.

Next season will be a new test, with some new resources. The owners will want to see progress, and it's down to Dean to see that they get it. Nobody at this point can predict how it will turn out; we'll just have to wait and see. But I suspect the owners are reasonably confident.
 
It really is amazing to me how many people make a case that our manager isn't good enough by producing "what if" statistics.
"If we didn't have Grealish"
"If we didn't have Martinez"
"If the season started in January"

It's one thing to debate reality, performance, tactics etc. but when the justification for an argument is that we wouldn't be where we are without a bunch of factors that are impossible to measure (because they didn't happen) then I can't see the point in a debate.
So what if Grealish has helped us to 15 points? Enjoy it! But using it as a justification for the manager not being good enough..... Ludicrous. Alex Ferguson once said that Schmeichel was worth five wins a season, and Clough broke the transfer record to get Shilton for the same reasons..... Does that make them bad managers because they "relied on one player for 15 points a season."
Grealish wasn't as effective under Bruce or DiMatteo. He was ignored by Lambert, and Sherwood loved him yet couldn't get him to be consistent. Jack Grealish is an exceptional player, but he's not the sole reason we are where we are. Use that as an argument and you can say he was also solely responsible for us finishing where we did last year...
Every good team has good players, some are even exceptional. Take good players out of a good team and guess what...... the team isn't as good. Doesn't mean the manager is to blame......

Why have a manager then?
 
its the lack of tactics at the start of a game and any mid game changes that concern me . The brand of football has become hard to fathom, dull , predictable and boring. Thankfully a fairly solid defence and top class keeper have saved Smith's bacon this year
Good job Davis nicked that one or Myth would be getting some real pelters 🤣
 
An alternative view that would have been doing the rounds on this forum had it been around 40 years ago......
At the end of the 1978-79 season, Ron Saunders' team finished 8th for the second year in a row after finishing the 1976-77 season in 4th. 1975-76 was a relegation scrap. Clearly in those two seasons the team was stagnating and completely reliant on Brian Little and Jimmy Rimmer. We'd had some very poor signings like McNaught, a winger called Swain, and a centre forward called Evans. Tommy Craig was perhaps the worst signing ever. Saunders had clearly taken us as far as he could. The club should have replaced him with one of the big names of the time like Malcolm Allison or John Bond....
I was looking to post something along similar lines.....but you do it much more eloquently!!
I remember standing on the Holte in those listening to some of the guys around me saying how shit Saunders was and ripping him apart for some of the player choices. There were times, I admit, that I was puzzled by his selection choices but he knew what he was doing and he went on to give me the two best years of my time supporting Villa - it was his team that won the European Cup even though he wasn't the manager.
Let's give Dean the chance to complete the rebuild of the team and that will be at least another season.
 
I was looking to post something along similar lines.....but you do it much more eloquently!!
I remember standing on the Holte in those listening to some of the guys around me saying how shit Saunders was and ripping him apart for some of the player choices. There were times, I admit, that I was puzzled by his selection choices but he knew what he was doing and he went on to give me the two best years of my time supporting Villa - it was his team that won the European Cup even though he wasn't the manager.
Let's give Dean the chance to complete the rebuild of the team and that will be at least another season.
'Eloquently' is not something that's ever been leveled at me.... :tophat:
I can remember listening to the phone-ins on BRMB - all the same stuff we see on here. Even as a teenager I used to have a good laugh.
It's unrealistic that the club will give Smith 4 or 5 years to get to the top as that's just not the way things are anymore, but seeing as we are improving our league position season-on-season under him, I really can't see them replacing him until there's significant decline.
One thing that gets overlooked, especially by the "we are a one-man team" folks, is the strength of his relationship with Grealish, which I am convinced played a role in Grealish being happy to stay....
 
The only thing I have learned in my 63 years on earth is swopping manager every 18 months 2 years dont work. After last season and staying up thanks to a failure of goal line assistant most realists would have settled for a comfortable top 10.
Last season we lost key players for amazingly long periods with no replacements and lacked quality in most areas of the pitch.

Smith may not be the most charismatic bloke in football management (I do wish he would stop spitting) but he is building and building takes time, Ferguson never won a trophy at Old Trafford for 4 years but they stuck with him. Give him time give him the opportunity. His Brentford side were a joy to watch and maybe he just needs a few more transfer windows.
 
15 points? Where on earth did you get that from?

Let's try this approach. Of the 15 games in 2020, let's suppose we score half the number of goals in every game. And just to make sure we aren't doing Dean any favours, where there's a 0.5 of a goal involved let's round it down. How many points do we lose. SEVEN. So we'd now be on 38 points with 6 games left to play. 13th, 2 places below where we are now. Probably where many thought we'd be lucky to get to at the start of the season.
we wouldn't score the number of goals!

I give you Liverpool & Newcastle H - Arsenal West Brom & Southampton A, all games we wouldn't have gained the wins without JG. are you trying to suggest we didn't need Jack this season- FFS take your DS glasses of for a second - if jack doesn't Play we dont create! we chucked the kitchen sink at Albion & only equalised due to a stupid defensive error. Wake up
 
we wouldn't score the number of goals!

I give you Liverpool & Newcastle H - Arsenal West Brom & Southampton A, all games we wouldn't have gained the wins without JG. are you trying to suggest we didn't need Jack this season- FFS take your DS glasses of for a second - if jack doesn't Play we dont create! we chucked the kitchen sink at Albion & only equalised due to a stupid defensive error. Wake up
The great thing about making up alternative realities is you can make whatever you want true so it backs up your argument.

But yes, without by far our best player we would not have been as good. Earth-shattering stuff.
 
The great thing about making up alternative realities is you can make whatever you want true so it backs up your argument.

But yes, without by far our best player we would not have been as good. Earth-shattering stuff.
I'm not sure but get the impression that without Jack another manager could do better than Dean, Maybe maybe not but the fact is we have both and neither is going anywhere. Every single manager in the PL and beyond wish that had Jack
 
An alternative view that would have been doing the rounds on this forum had it been around 40 years ago......
At the end of the 1978-79 season, Ron Saunders' team finished 8th for the second year in a row after finishing the 1976-77 season in 4th. 1975-76 was a relegation scrap. Clearly in those two seasons the team was stagnating and completely reliant on Brian Little and Jimmy Rimmer. We'd had some very poor signings like McNaught, a winger called Swain, and a centre forward called Evans. Tommy Craig was perhaps the worst signing ever. Saunders had clearly taken us as far as he could. The club should have replaced him with one of the big names of the time like Malcolm Allison or John Bond....

Am I misreading you because finishing 8th in a 22 team league for two seasons in a row was not stagnation. Particularly as he got us 2 league cups in the previous 3 seasons and a quarter final in the UEFA cup. I can’t remember a rush to sack him either but admittedly it was a long time ago!
 
Am I misreading you because finishing 8th in a 22 team league for two seasons in a row was not stagnation. Particularly as he got us 2 league cups in the previous 3 seasons and a quarter final in the UEFA cup. I can’t remember a rush to sack him either but admittedly it was a long time ago!
The post was made with tongue firmly planted in-cheek.
 
I haven't seen a better manager at Villa for building a team than Lord Ron. He built 3 in his time there all of them successful.

If you learn anything from his era though , it is that it doesn't happen overnight and there are bumps on the way , and that a large part of why I still back Deano plus we are seeing continued improvement.
 
I haven't seen a better manager at Villa for building a team than Lord Ron. He built 3 in his time there all of them successful.

If you learn anything from his era though , it is that it doesn't happen overnight and there are bumps on the way , and that a large part of why I still back Deano plus we are seeing continued improvement.
:agree::stupid::clap::clap:
Unfortunately, the modern football manager rarely gets the time to build teams nowadays due to the instant-gratification nature of the world. A run of bad games usually spells the end. Throw in a signing or two that doesn't work out and it's definitely curtains. Ferguson would never get 4 years to win anything now, the way he did at ManUre. You only have to look at the Moyes appointment as evidence. Ferguson even said publicly that Moyes should be given time. He was out after less than a year....
 
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