Dean Smith

[Follyfoot]

One of our own now immortalised in the history and fabric of out great club. 
 

In years to come, we’re you there when we went 10 on the bounce and that day at Wembley

Made enough money, now get on the waiting list for a season ticket gaffer and come home, we will be waiting with open arms 

Edited December 27, 2022 by Follyfoot

[briny_ear]

Not really sure why Norwich have sacked Smith after he has achieved 35 points from 24 games this season.

That’s virtually the same as he achieved for Villa in his first 24 matches (36 points).

What more were they expecting?

[DJBOB]

He did manage to get Sargent firing!

Just need to find another club with a player he can get going like Jack or Sargent to take the charge on. 

[villa89]

3 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

What more were they expecting?

They expected to win the league. It's what they do, the promotion relegation cycle. Smith is vastly over rated as a manager on here. It was inevitable he wouldn't succeed there. 

[PaulC]

They have lost 9 games this season and won 10 which is like a mid table team. It's very understandable why they sacked him. 

I don't know where he goes from here but it's made for life financially so hard to feel sorry for him 

[Zatman]

18 minutes ago, PaulC said:

They have lost 9 games this season and won 10 which is like a mid table team. It's very understandable why they sacked him. 

 

but they are 5th which is not mid table

[KentVillan]

1 minute ago, Zatman said:

but they are 5th which is not mid table

Tbf, at the moment "mid table" in the Championship runs from 3rd (39 pts) to 17th (30 pts).

I think Norwich fans wanted them up high and dry with Burnley and Sheff Utd.

[VillaChris]

27 minutes ago, briny_ear said:

Not really sure why Norwich have sacked Smith after he has achieved 35 points from 24 games this season.

That’s virtually the same as he achieved for Villa in his first 24 matches (36 points).

What more were they expecting?

Considering they were top at start of October, probably not to be 12 points off 2nd place!

I like DS as much as the majority but I do find due to him being a decent bloke he tends to get more leeway when he goes on one of his long middling winless streaks.

Norwich have won something like 3 of their last 12 games. Regardless of how much you rate their squad or not that's not good enough for a newly relegated team. Watford sacked that Edwards guy after only 10 games. I know they're far more knee jerk club but Norwich clearly gave him the WC break to get it right and since then they lost terribly v Blackburn and found a way to lose v 10 men Luton.

Key now is to take a proper break and find a club he can build over long term like he did with Brentford and to lesser degree Walsall. They'll be more opportunities early next season if he's prepared to wait long enough.

The Cardiff job could come up sooner but they have transfer embargo so he'll probably swerve that.

[useless]

Norwich's squad is nowhere near good enough to be expecting top two as a minimum, as a squad ability they're closer to midtable than they are to team that you would expect to finish top two. QPR probably got better players than Norwich.

[Dale]

18 minutes ago, useless said:

Norwich's squad is nowhere near good enough to be expecting top two as a minimum, as a squad ability they're closer to midtable than they are to team that you would expect to finish top two. QPR probably got better players than Norwich.

Yep. No where near as good a squad as we had at any point in the championship 

[KentVillan]

41 minutes ago, useless said:

Norwich's squad is nowhere near good enough to be expecting top two as a minimum, as a squad ability they're closer to midtable than they are to team that you would expect to finish top two. QPR probably got better players than Norwich.

They aren’t, but in theory he’s a PL manager coming up against some pretty mediocre managers, and he’s struggled to make much of an impact.

I don’t put it down to him being an awful manager, I just don’t think he’s turned out to be a good fit for Norwich. It’s a mix of slightly (but not wildly) inflated expectations from their fans, and his own rabbit hole he’s gone down with Shakespeare.

I think if he gets back to the style of football he played at Walsall, Brentford and Villa in the Championship, he could do a good job somewhere and be well liked by the fanbase.

His real talent is getting the best out of very talented players who just need an arm round the shoulder. I don’t think he’s had much of that to work with at Norwich unfortunately. There’ll be other clubs at this level who will suit him better.

And possibly even somewhere like Southampton will take an interest in him (although I think that would be another mistake).

[PaulC]

1 hour ago, Zatman said:

but they are 5th which is not mid table

Two points above Coventry and Luton in 12th and 13th places who both have a game  in hand. And 15 off the leaders. He had to go 

[Villa_Vids]

59 minutes ago, useless said:

Norwich's squad is nowhere near good enough to be expecting top two as a minimum, as a squad ability they're closer to midtable than they are to team that you would expect to finish top two. QPR probably got better players than Norwich.

They never looked like a team that were going to achieve top 2 under DS. Also, Smith has no credentials or history of building a title winning team or automatic winning team. He is a safe pair hands at a solid championship club imo. His time at Villa will be Smith's greatest achievement as a player or a manager.

I think his sacking at Norwich is a case of the fans turning toxic and them being in the bottom five for recent results.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Villa_Vids

[Zatman]

                Gunn

Hanley Gibson Omobamidele

Aarons Sara McLean Gibbs Giannoulis

       Pukki    Sargent

 

Thats the team yesterday, thats a playoff starting eleven if lucky

[useless]

They never looked like a team that were going to finish top two under Smith for the simple fact they haven't got a squad that's anywhere near the usual quality expected of a top two team.

A top two team is usually one where half of the players would be expected to be at least bottom half Premier League quality, the only players Norwich have that would attract Premier League interest are Aarons and Ramsey, and possibly Pukki as a squad option for a lower half team.

And inlcuding Ramsey in the list is pushing it, not because he isn't a good player, but because he isn't even there's, any interest in him from the Prem would be as a prospect rather than a ready made PL player.

Of all their players Aarons probably the only one that would have any chance of going to the Premier League and getting regular game time in the here and now, and even with him I don't think it would be a guarantee as has been out of form.

 

[KentVillan]

Does anyone know why they had such a quiet summer transfer window by their standards? I don't know loads about Norwich, but it always felt to me like they didn't replace Buendia, who was their star man in 2020/21.

Will there be budget available in Jan for the new coach? If not, I think they'll struggle to push much beyond 5th. Just a strange situation all round. Smith and Norwich have both dropped off, and both damaged their chances of progressing.

[PaulC]

OK let's see what the new manager when appointed does with that squad. 

[Zatman]

3 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Does anyone know why they had such a quiet summer transfer window by their standards? I don't know loads about Norwich, but it always felt to me like they didn't replace Buendia, who was their star man in 2020/21.

Will there be budget available in Jan for the new coach? If not, I think they'll struggle to push much beyond 5th. Just a strange situation all round. Smith and Norwich have both dropped off, and both damaged their chances of progressing.

They signed Rashica to replace Buendia and he was a flop. Some of the other signings were poor except Melou who looked OK last season. Sargent is only coming good now and looked terrible last season

They had zero ambition to stay up last season and Farke would have walked anyway if they didnt sack him

[Naaaaarch]

Evening all, Norwich fan in peace.

I've been enjoying this thread from afar for a few months and thought it was finally time to drop in and give some thoughts/answer some questions from a Norwich POV.

I'll start by saying that the sacking was absolutely 100% warranted, no doubt about it. For his sake and ours it should have probably happened a lot earlier. Before the World Cup break would have been ideal but it's clearly not been working for significantly longer, ever in fact. It's been 13 or 14 months and I don't believe we ever truly saw a 'Dean Smith team'.

Between mid August the beginning of October Smith went on what can only be described as the strangest unbeaten run I've ever seen (and I witnessed a 10 game unbeaten streak under Chris Hughton). Performances were pretty awful for the most part but we were grinding out results. This spawned two trains of thought - the hopeful view that confidence would breed performances as the season progressed and the soon to be reality that results would simply catch up with performances. After the results stopped coming the confidence drained away and we were only going 1 way. Now we're only a few points off 16th in a poor league.

I suppose saying 'performance bad' without context is kind of pointless. His remit was to make us harder to beat, more robust and versatile. None of those things happened. We'd go through large patches of games where we'd just break down tactically and seemingly lose the ability to play a simple 5 yard pass. It was really bemusing to watch at times and as fans we simply put it down to being coached poorly.

When it comes to the squad I don't think we're as weak as some of you are making out. Our glaring hole is a traditional winger, something I'm sure Smith would have appreciated (I'm sure we tried to sign El Ghazi) but Burnley and Sheffield United are not running away with this on individual magic. Not many of us were expecting it to be easy but we weren't expecting to be 15 points off the pace at this point that's for sure. I doubt we'll end up this far away either.

Away from the football I actually have a lot of sympathy for Smith. I'm not sure if you're aware but our sporting director has seemingly been doing everything in his power to burn down any relationship between the club and the fans recently. Smith has been a bit of a meat shield for him at times. Had the place been as open as when Farke joined then the club would have been working to get buy in from the fans instead he was left to fend for himself.  I also get the feeling his heart wasn't always in it having just lost his dream job but we certainly didn't help there. 

It's hindsight 20/20 but he probably should have taken that holiday. 

 

[KentVillan]

2 minutes ago, Naaaaarch said:

Evening all, Norwich fan in peace.

I've been enjoying this thread from afar for a few months and thought it was finally time to drop in and give some thoughts/answer some questions from a Norwich POV.

I'll start by saying that the sacking was absolutely 100% warranted, no doubt about it. For his sake and ours it should have probably happened a lot earlier. Before the World Cup break would have been ideal but it's clearly not been working for significantly longer, ever in fact. It's been 13 or 14 months and I don't believe we ever truly saw a 'Dean Smith team'.

Between mid August the beginning of October Smith went on what can only be described as the strangest unbeaten run I've ever seen (and I witnessed a 10 game unbeaten streak under Chris Hughton). Performances were pretty awful for the most part but we were grinding out results. This spawned two trains of thought - the hopeful view that confidence would breed performances as the season progressed and the soon to be reality that results would simply catch up with performances. After the results stopped coming the confidence drained away and we were only going 1 way. Now we're only a few points off 16th in a poor league.

I suppose saying 'performance bad' without context is kind of pointless. His remit was to make us harder to beat, more robust and versatile. None of those things happened. We'd go through large patches of games where we'd just break down tactically and seemingly lose the ability to play a simple 5 yard pass. It was really bemusing to watch at times and as fans we simply put it down to being coached poorly.

When it comes to the squad I don't think we're as weak as some of you are making out. Our glaring hole is a traditional winger, something I'm sure Smith would have appreciated (I'm sure we tried to sign El Ghazi) but Burnley and Sheffield United are not running away with this on individual magic. Not many of us were expecting it to be easy but we weren't expecting to be 15 points off the pace at this point that's for sure. I doubt we'll end up this far away either.

Away from the football I actually have a lot of sympathy for Smith. I'm not sure if you're aware but our sporting director has seemingly been doing everything in his power to burn down any relationship between the club and the fans recently. Smith has been a bit of a meat shield for him at times. Had the place been as open as when Farke joined then the club would have been working to get buy in from the fans instead he was left to fend for himself.  I also get the feeling his heart wasn't always in it having just lost his dream job but we certainly didn't help there. 

It's hindsight 20/20 but he probably should have taken that holiday. 

 

Yeah I think it was a bad fit, and you've done him and yourselves a favour getting rid of him. He still seems a bit shellshocked after losing the Villa job, and starting out with the thankless task of trying to keep you up was never going to endear him to the fans.

I am sceptical about your squad, though. Not saying another manager can't turn it around and make you harder to beat, but Smith's thing was always working with the most talented players to help them play with freedom, and you just haven't replaced Buendia.

You need to do a bit of business in January IMO, besides bringing in a new coach... and Smith needs to take a breather. He's a better manager than his critics say, but he obviously also has some flaws, which he can probably address with the right back room hires. He'll do okay if he finds the right club and the right circumstances to join.