The Official Dean Smith Thread | Page 160 | Vital Football

The Official Dean Smith Thread

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So Dean smith has been here for 18 months. We were bust after 10 years of waste and bad management, he comes in and from knowhere we get promoted. We now have a cup final and still somehow sit outside relegation, we also have assets should we go down and fantastic ownership. Pochetino can have the Newton heath job. Aston villa is a project in its infancy, the fruits of witch may take a whee while to blossom. We have to use a little bit of patience.
 
A thing that makes me skeptical of the scouting setup is how they spoke about interrogating the character of the players before we signed them. I sort of have to wonder how they did that because you'd have to say they failed.

Heres the thing if the bought these lads to help fight a relegation battle they did not assess their character and resiliency anywhere near the correct level. If they bought these players thinking they wouldnt be fighting relegation they seriousness made a pigs ear of it.

We've a core crop of players who currently do not possess the character for a relegation fight and are also woefully short of quality and consistency.

The only thing I can say is that for a good few the only way is up. I am not saying we should be shot of anybody as I think many will seriously improve its just that the management team did not give the players what they needed to succeed.

When we talk about real premier league experience at Aston Villa we had six months of John Terry and Tom Heaton, thats it. Its embarrassing to say it but not keeping Glenn Whelan or finding another hardy bastard in central midfield was a mistake. And thats only one glaring error.

We basically had to buy a new team and get them all playing together. When we looked at Championship players, we were quoted outrageous fees (Phillips, Maupay, etc).

The thing that we have struggled with this season is consistency. Most of the players have shown real quality in patches. In my book, that's them struggling to get up to speed in the PL.

I'm confident that we will look much better next season when the current crop are fully up to speed and we can bring in a couple of real quality signings.
 
Who would you hire in place of Dean Smith that would take this squad to higher reaches than 17th and a League Cup final after guiding us from lower championship to a play off win?

It's this kind of mentality from fans of clubs of our size that hold us back. You see it at Everton, West Ham, even United these days. Sack what we've got because the next guy will turn Trezeguet into a 20 goals a season winger and Engels into Van Dijk.

Do you know how f**king rare it is to have a manager these days who loves the club he manages, plays attractive football and gets results on a budget?

Do the rest of us a favour and keep your negative feelings about Smith to yourself, dont mess it up for the rest of us and spread a feeling of no confidence through the fan base.

Whether your belief in Dean proves to be born out or not it’s never been the fans that have held our club back. The passion of the fans even with all their differing views is one of the club’s great strengths.
 
The only thing I know about Dean Smith is before we had him I was told he was a winner a very determined man and a natural leader. People look up to him etc.

This came from a bloke I worked with who was Deans best mates mate. They played together years ago and way before he was even at Brentford, we were discussing managers and Dean's name cropped up.
He's not the soft touch he comes across as in the press conferences that's for sure
 
I think that there's no sentiment in football nowadays - and quite rightly.

Lots of 'ifs' here but if we were to stay up and a top manager courted us, the I think we'd be foolish not to be interested.

Yes DS got us promoted and yes he's got us to a final but I'm not massively impressed by him. I think he's had a lot of slack nbased on him being local and a Villa fan - anyone else would have probably been pushed out by now

I think Deans tactics aren't particularly good; same subs usually at the same time every game (like MON) and I think his insistence to keep using Wesley was an issue that didn't help us and I think he's stumbled onto 3 at the back rather than changing it.

With the backing we have from our Amercian and Egyptian owners, I think we have to be ruthless to get to where they want us to be and that would probably mean shaking Deans hand and saying thank you very much and then getting someone to take us to the next level.
 
Smith has done a great job for us, can’t really challenge that. He definitely improves players (remember the Whelan renascence?).

It is worrying however how much learning on the job he has had to do this year. It’s lost us points.

I like him a lot and appreciate what he’s done so far, but is he really the man to take us where we want to be? We want to challenge for European spots in the next couple years (i imagine that’s the realistic aim if we survive) and he’d have to go through another steep learning curve to get us there, and again if we get there!

That’s all for the future though. For now we must survive. League Cup would accelerate the process!

All managers are challenged in the PL. And the better ones learn from it. Has Pep learned. Yep. Is he still learning? Yep. Take Mourinho. Going to MU he should have been a shoe-in. It didn't work. Has he learnt from it? Yep; at Spurs he's more prepared to work with what he's got than try to buy his way out of it.

Dean? He might get us a European spot this season. If he keeps us up there's no obvious reason to get rid of him. Signing better players is the way to get us to the European spots, not changing managers. It might happen that he hits a ceiling and change is a good idea, but there's no sign of that at the moment.
 
All managers are challenged in the PL. And the better ones learn from it. Has Pep learned. Yep. Is he still learning? Yep. Take Mourinho. Going to MU he should have been a shoe-in. It didn't work. Has he learnt from it? Yep; at Spurs he's more prepared to work with what he's got than try to buy his way out of it.

Dean? He might get us a European spot this season. If he keeps us up there's no obvious reason to get rid of him. Signing better players is the way to get us to the European spots, not changing managers. It might happen that he hits a ceiling and change is a good idea, but there's no sign of that at the moment.

Don’t get me wrong, i don’t want him gone right now. The performances haven’t answered all his critics though so there’s an argument to be had. It’s been the big head scratcher of the year for me.

I hope it all works out for us this season and we’re able to push on. We shall see...
 
I think that there's no sentiment in football nowadays - and quite rightly.

Lots of 'ifs' here but if we were to stay up and a top manager courted us, the I think we'd be foolish not to be interested.

Yes DS got us promoted and yes he's got us to a final but I'm not massively impressed by him. I think he's had a lot of slack nbased on him being local and a Villa fan - anyone else would have probably been pushed out by now

I think Deans tactics aren't particularly good; same subs usually at the same time every game (like MON) and I think his insistence to keep using Wesley was an issue that didn't help us and I think he's stumbled onto 3 at the back rather than changing it.
At what point *should* Lansbury be brought on to change a game?

Joking aside, we have a thin squad due to coming up ahead of plan and having to buy 13 new players in the summer. 9 of our first choice 11 are new permanent signings. 6 of our first choice 11 were entirely new signings. Those are tough numbers for any coach to get to grips with.

What does "stumbled rather than changing" mean? He changed it because it needed changing.
 
We basically had to buy a new team and get them all playing together. When we looked at Championship players, we were quoted outrageous fees (Phillips, Maupay, etc).

The thing that we have struggled with this season is consistency. Most of the players have shown real quality in patches. In my book, that's them struggling to get up to speed in the PL.

I'm confident that we will look much better next season when the current crop are fully up to speed and we can bring in a couple of real quality signings.

I agree with you, Marv is a good destroyer and Luiz clearly has buckets of potential. The others have had their moments e.g. Konsa hasnt been overawed he's just inexperienced.

I just don't think the strategy gave the players themselves the tools to succeed because they aren't surrounded by enough experience or established quality players. Which again is difficult for any club but especially so one just promoted with the multiple other issues's poor running of the club caused.

The Dean Smith thread probably isnt the place for all this I am just saying he doesn't have the tools to succeed either but its also difficult too because he is inexperienced.
 
The only thing I know about Dean Smith is before we had him I was told he was a winner a very determined man and a natural leader. People look up to him etc.

This came from a bloke I worked with who was Deans best mates mate. They played together years ago and way before he was even at Brentford, we were discussing managers and Dean's name cropped up.
He's not the soft touch he comes across as in the press conferences that's for sure

Think you're right. There's no doubt who's boss. He consults a lot with his coaching staff, but he takes the decisions. Don't think he does sentiment; he doesn't have favourites. Whoever he puts out is whoever he thinks is right for the game ahead.

Doesn't mean he's always right.
 
Engels will take the headlines for a showing of epically bad proportions but I lay most of this result at the managers door.

Smith's set up is akin to high stakes poker but without the players to deliver. One of things he was criticised for at Brentford was that they were easy to play through, and well, so are we. Spurs were permanently two passes away from being clean in on goal whenever they had the ball in our half, it was shocking how often they got through.

The line was too high given the 'quality' we have in defence and the midfield and fullbacks were doing an awful job of tracking runners, most of this for me by design due to the system deployed.

I also have to say that Drinkwater is absolute utter fucking garbage. He's slow witted and when turning on the ball it's akin to an 18 wheeler trying to turn around on a dual carriageway. Madness to leave our best DM on the bench as well.

Very poor from the manager. I think we're going down to be honest. Kind of a hard luck story, we play some very good stuff at times and can be really competitive but are consistently undone by a lack of quality in key areas and tactical decisions which fall short of the standard required at this level.
 
So what we are now asking for is a Bruce type manager who builds from the back and is cautious going forward? Shame we had one of those.
 
I think the step up has shown the levels he’s worked at so far, he’s struggled to change which has lost us many points.

Has his style gained us points over a more defensive style? Maybe but I feel more pissed off than happy.

He will be a better Manager for this season, problem is I don’t think it will be with us.
 
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