The Official Dean Smith Thread | Page 207 | Vital Football

The Official Dean Smith Thread

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JW1985 said:
If Tim Sherwood wasn't one of the biggest spoofers in the history of football I'd be more inclined to believe his whinging. However I remember him going on and on about want to sigh Adama for Spurs and tracking Veretout for years. So which one was he lying about. Also the ones that everyone has zero doubt were 100% his signings were Richards and Lescott. 2 of the worst signings in the clubs history. I will always be half fond of Timmy for saving us, getting to a cup final and his general passion but he's a complete gobshite in my opinion.
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And another he wanted from Spurs (forget his name, I always forget his bloody name, used to cut a strip out of his eyebrow!) and didn't like the fact we wouldn't get, had put unrealistic demands to a transfer. He basically wanted a clause in the contract to say if we went down, he could be sold for 60% (or something like that) of the fee we paid. As it was put to me from the then CEO, it would have basically made him the most expensive loan player ever.
 
The Fear said:
In their highest ever position I think. They didn't take long to rally on Smith's departure and a lot of their fans didn't seem overly fussed by his departure.
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Brentford fans are well used to players and managers being poached by bigger clubs so I wouldn't expect anyone there to be crying over anyone leaving. As for their highest ever position, theres a long way to go and the play offs are a right bastard. You have to be a pretty good manger to get through them I reckon.
 
Not sure, just looks a lottery of matches to me. Not taking away the promotion, that run, at such an unexpected point, was amazing.

But do you really think he's the future for us if we really are ambitious?
 
The Fear said:
And another he wanted from Spurs (forget his name, I always forget his bloody name, used to cut a strip out of his eyebrow!) and didn't like the fact we wouldn't get, had put unrealistic demands to a transfer. He basically wanted a clause in the contract to say if we went down, he could be sold for 60% (or something like that) of the fee we paid. As it was put to me from the then CEO, it would have basically made him the most expensive loan player ever.
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Seeing as we promised an injury prone right back he could play at centre back if he signed for us I'm amazed we didn't end up with this spurs guy as well.
 
Persona
The Fear said:
Not sure, just looks a lottery of matches to me. Not taking away the promotion, that run, at such an unexpected point, was amazing.

But do you really think he's the future for us if we really are ambitious?
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Personally I think he earned the right to finish the season and there's almost nothing that could dissuade me from that. Probably stupid but unfortunately I'm a very sentimental person.

If we stay up via the season being voided then essentially we've had a get out of jail free card. For me that would be the perfect time to say to goodbye and thanks to Dean Smith. Then go out and get a top rated manager. I'm not excited at all by the links to Howe and Dyche both of whom I think would struggle outside of their current clubs.

If we go down then I'm not sure. Especially if its via the league being scrapped entirely and we're essentially demoted despite our game in hand. On one side he's already got us promoted once. Why not again. Especially as we'd be in a better position ffp wise surely, though I'll bow to mike fields expertise on that. On the other its hard to really believe in a manager who has gotten you relegated.
 
Villan57 said:
Just read a little bit about Sherwood and Lerner on twitter and Sherwood basically he was given players by the club that he didn't want, there seems to be a common theme here,
I know I know its the modern way but it's still ridiculous if a manager has no say in recruitment or rather the final say.
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It's ridiculous when you get Mourinho not getting the say over players at Manchester United. It was ridiculous for us when Garde was denied any players.

Other than that, almost all managers have faced limitations. Maybe MON and Lambert should have faced more.

It needs to be a team effort. If you have a director of football then he has the time to go and look at possibilities, work out the options, and so on. I'm pretty sure DS was fully in on all signings, put in a number of his own, and signed things off. At least as much as he did at Brentford. I'd be surprised if Reina and Drinkwater weren't his idea (adopting the Bruce fall back position of preferring "experience" over what he's already got).

Think Sherwood's problem was he hadn't enough experience as manager to know how to put his foot down; it was all new to him, and he was faced with people who thought they knew best and wanted their own way. The lengths he went to to try to get Adebeyor showed he was worried about lack of goals in the team. Nobody could have predicted how poor our back line turned out to be though.
 
McParlandTheGreat said:
It's ridiculous when you get Mourinho not getting the say over players at Manchester United. It was ridiculous for us when Garde was denied any players.

Other than that, almost all managers have faced limitations. Maybe MON and Lambert should have faced more.

It needs to be a team effort. If you have a director of football then he has the time to go and look at possibilities, work out the options, and so on. I'm pretty sure DS was fully in on all signings, put in a number of his own, and signed things off. At least as much as he did at Brentford. I'd be surprised if Reina and Drinkwater weren't his idea (adopting the Bruce fall back position of preferring "experience" over what he's already got).

Think Sherwood's problem was he hadn't enough experience as manager to know how to put his foot down; it was all new to him, and he was faced with people who thought they knew best and wanted their own way. The lengths he went to to try to get Adebeyor showed he was worried about lack of goals in the team. Nobody could have predicted how poor our back line turned out to be though.
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Apparently Adebayor had agreed terms and even posed for the official site at Bodymore in a Villa shirt before backing out because god told him to.
 
JW1985 said:
Apparently Adebayor had agreed terms and even posed for the official site at Bodymore in a Villa shirt before backing out because god told him to.
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Adebayor is a parasite, he tries to pull the hard luck stories to get people feeling sorry for him but he is an egotistical nut case.
 
JW1985 said:
Persona



Personally I think he earned the right to finish the season and there's almost nothing that could dissuade me from that. Probably stupid but unfortunately I'm a very sentimental person.

If we stay up via the season being voided then essentially we've had a get out of jail free card. For me that would be the perfect time to say to goodbye and thanks to Dean Smith. Then go out and get a top rated manager. I'm not excited at all by the links to Howe and Dyche both of whom I think would struggle outside of their current clubs.

If we go down then I'm not sure. Especially if its via the league being scrapped entirely and we're essentially demoted despite our game in hand. On one side he's already got us promoted once. Why not again. Especially as we'd be in a better position ffp wise surely, though I'll bow to mike fields expertise on that. On the other its hard to really believe in a manager who has gotten you relegated.
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Beautifully summed up and pretty much where I am at. I think as we got worse 'this' season I would have thrown the dice, probably 4-5 games back. Got someone in short term, with experience and has done it before, probably the dinosaur sorts who I'd hate long term. But yes, agree with the above, very similar chain of thought that I'm having.
 
Dean was the best we could get at the time, he played attacking football and had a system that was unfortunately found to be lacking in PL. If the best we can get next time is Dyche or Howe it leaves me completely underwhelmed.
Strategically, the money we spent should have produced better than it did and our triumvirate are all to blame. They have the positions of power, spent 140m, but the team got worse rather than better as the season progressed. Tactically, Dean looked out of his depth.
If the season gets cancelled so should Dean’s contract and Suso’s. A new manager brought in that is able to handle a club as ambitious as ours.
 
Wicked Messenger said:
Dean was the best we could get at the time, he played attacking football and had a system that was unfortunately found to be lacking in PL. If the best we can get next time is Dyche or Howe it leaves me completely underwhelmed.
Strategically, the money we spent should have produced better than it did and our triumvirate are all to blame. They have the positions of power, spent 140m, but the team got worse rather than better as the season progressed. Tactically, Dean looked out of his depth.
If the season gets cancelled so should Dean’s contract and Suso’s. A new manager brought in that is able to handle a club as ambitious as ours.
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Don't agree with that bit. We got what we payed for, IMHO. Possibly even slightly better. Look what we had to pay to get Mings. Look what we would have to have payed to get Maupay (who is looking no more than average).

If the team got worse as the season progressed, then it must have been OK to start with. I don't believe it has (got worse). January was good (the thrashing by Man C excepting). What's hitting us is losing 2 games at the end of December we were aiming to win, and 2 games out of this last run of 4 losing matches (Southampton and Bournemouth, both away) where we also aimed to get at least something.

For that I blame tactics, mainly. To survive in the PL you have to beat enough of the teams around you. At all costs you shouldn't lose. I think we have the players to do that.
 
Wicked Messenger said:
Dean was the best we could get at the time,
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I'm never sure of this argument whenever we go for managers. I think we have small time thinking with who we go for. This is a massive club, (potential, fan base etc as we all usually agree) and we have billionaire owners.

I thought at the time we could have broken the bank for Brendan Rodgers, who in his talking about Villa at the time we got McGinn over Celtic, seemed to be saying a fairly clear 'they are massive' to me. He was unhappy at Celtic. If we had sold him the long term vision, paid him the big money....?

We seem to accept mediocre and the club has by and large always gone for that. Houllier was the last attempt at pedigree, right idea, wrong man (ill health, no offense at all, as people who know me will know) .. before that GT and Big Ron really.

If we remain in the Prem, I can't see that a club like this, if we are serious about trying to push upward, can't go for a high level manager. I don't have a list of names, I can hardly remember my own name half the time. But Poch or someone of that caliber would surely be tempted. There are only so many big clubs with jobs open across Europe at any one time!
 
Wicked Messenger said:
Dean was the best we could get at the time, he played attacking football and had a system that was unfortunately found to be lacking in PL. If the best we can get next time is Dyche or Howe it leaves me completely underwhelmed.
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Me too, especially after recently watching the Leeds documentary. Going after Marcelo Bielsa and getting him was a huge show of ambition. He is a top manager and I can imagine they would have done well (like Wolves) had they got promoted. And they showed that ambition as a Championship club too.

There is no reason whatsoever that we can't show some serious ambition if the likes of Leeds, Everton and Newcastle are. No excuses.
 
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To be fair, when the new owners arrived their priority was to repair the damage, and sticking with Bruce to see how he did bought them time. They acted quickly enough to shift him when things were falling apart. Can't remember who the other candidates were when DS was interviewed, but I've a suspicion they weren't quite ready for a big plan with a big name appointment, DS convinced them he could do a job with the existing squad and could buy them more time. In the end it turned out OK and maybe against their expectations we scraped promotion.

Would have looked pretty bad if they'd then sacked DS. And maybe they still had to buy time because of the sheer rebuilding job which had to be done, with a limit to what they thought they could spend.

My guess is that IF we don't get relegated, they can spend more on boosting the team, and do so in a buyers market. Which means buying time is no longer necessary; they can afford to think in terms of a big plan. And in terms of the manager for that plan. Question is can they persuade a big manager that a project with us would be a worthwhile, exciting one. I think they could. I'd be very surprised if they didn't want a significant move forward. They've probably got a more informed view than any of us whether DS can take us forward; I don't rule him out but from my limited view I can't see that he's made a strong case to do that.
 
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