Dean Smith

[PaulC]

16 hours ago, gwi1890 said:

And unsuccessful at international level whilst playing……

Not the point really but a semi of the euros was more than the golden generation did 

[Guest av1]

I wonder if Deano is going to be like Gregory? Right man at the right time for our club who will both always be thought highly of by the fans, but also someone who had a very modest career elsewhere. 

[PaulC]

6 hours ago, duke313 said:

Guess you can rule Potter and Howe out from ever managing England then.

I think Howe would be a great england manager actually. You can't class Smith and him together in terms of club management. 

[Guest av1]

12 minutes ago, PaulC said:

I think Howe would be a great england manager actually. You can't class Smith and him together in terms of club management. 

I agree, you can’t. And I’m not necessarily saying Smith would make a good England manager, but I think history has shown he that most successful international managers had a pretty modest career. 
 

It’s almost like two completely different trades. 

[david-avfc]

15 minutes ago, av1 said:

I wonder if Deano is going to be like Gregory? Right man at the right time for our club who will both always be thought highly of by the fans, but also someone who had a very modest career elsewhere. 

If he goes down with Leicester I think it will be hard for him to get another PL job (unless he briefly joins one of the revolving door clubs), as being associated with their collapse this season and having two relegations in a row on his CV looks pretty poor to future clubs and their fans - even if neither of them were really his fault. 

Sam Allardyce was always clever in that he never joined doomed clubs and built up a reputation of “never being relegated”. Smith unfortunately hasn’t been as cunning in that respect perhaps to his own detriment. Hope he doesn’t just fade out as he deserves so much praise for what he did here.

[Guest av1]

20 minutes ago, Zatman said:

Big Sam though is on for 2 relegations in a row as well now

That’s a fact mate so it’s impossible to disagree. What I would say however is that  Sam has history of keeping teams up, so maybe people look at his CV in a broader sense. 
 

For Deano, 2 relegations in 2 jobs after leaving us isn’t going to look good. 
 

I love the bloke, some of my happiest memories as a villa fan have been with Smith in charge. So I’m not knocking him, I’ll love him forever, but relegation with Leicester will, imo, ruin his chances of another PL job 

[Keyblade]

Just now, PaulC said:

If he keeps Leeds up it will be amazing and great for his cv

Same goes for Smith too, no? Leeds weren't in the relegation zone when Sam took over but Leicester were 2 points from safety when Smith joined, where they currently remain.

[foreveryoung]

Don't get me wrong, we all love him cause he was a Villa fan and got us promoted. But, he got us promoted with the best team in the Championship by far, best player also. 

Seems though, when Grealish disappeared, so did Smith's rep.

[Mark Albrighton]

28 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Don't get me wrong, we all love him cause he was a Villa fan and got us promoted. But, he got us promoted with the best team in the Championship by far, best player also. 

Seems though, when Grealish disappeared, so did Smith's rep.

Not sure it was the best. It was good and clearly underperforming under the previous promotion specialist who somehow didn’t succeed despite also having the Grealish cheat code at his disposal.

We didn’t really have a stable keeper until someone thought about recalling Jed. And our best defender was crocked which couldn’t be rectified until we took a bit of chance on that out of favour Bournemouth defender.

Grealish obviously was a massive factor. But he wasn’t quite the player before Smith turned up and built the team around him (which we found out had a downside). Before Smith, Grealish is worth about £20m-25m, and only Spurs are biting. No other club is coming along to snap up this obviously brilliant talent. So exactly how good Grealish was widely considered by those outside of the club prior to October 2018 can be debated. 

After Smith arrives, Grealish’s value goes up four/five times that Spurs offer. Not ALL down to Smith, before anyone gets all worked up. But it’s not unreasonable to say Smith setting us up to get the best out of Grealish (and therefore us) was a huge factor in his development.

[Keyblade]

35 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Don't get me wrong, we all love him cause he was a Villa fan and got us promoted. But, he got us promoted with the best team in the Championship by far, best player also. 

Seems though, when Grealish disappeared, so did Smith's rep.

It wasn't the best when he took over. Axel Tuanzebe was the only fit specialist CB when he joined, and he got injured soon after anyway. You could argue we were the best team in 17/18 (Wolves were also ridiculously strong, with Jota and Neves). 

Also, he only had 11 games without Grealish at Villa, hardly enough of a sample size to make a definitive statement either way. His next 2 jobs were taking over teams in the relegation zone. Completely different remits to his previous career, but he had to take them. It's not easy for (English) managers who weren't big name players to get PL jobs. If he keeps them up, it's a big boost to his CV. 

[foreveryoung]

6 minutes ago, Keyblade said:

It wasn't the best when he took over. Axel Tuanzebe was the only fit specialist CB when he joined, and he got injured soon after anyway. You could argue we were the best team in 17/18 (Wolves were also ridiculously strong, with Jota and Neves). 

Also, he only had 11 games without Grealish at Villa, hardly enough of a sample size to make a definitive statement either way. His next 2 jobs were taking over teams in the relegation zone. Completely different remits to his previous career, but he had to take them. It's not easy for (English) managers who weren't big name players to get PL jobs. If he keeps them up, it's a big boost to his CV. 

I don't think he had to take them at all. As I can remember after the Villa job, (which nearly kills every manager who comes here) he jumped into the Norwich debacle, which is really is when he should have had some time out, spent that compo and had Christmas with his family. Instead he jumps into, as good as, the first Prem job offered, when my belief was, with a little time out to recover, he may have got a better job and continued to possibly do well. Norwich and now Leicester have done nothing to improve his reputation as a Prem manager whatsoever.

[Keyblade]

2 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

I don't think he had to take them at all. As I can remember after the Villa job, (which nearly kills every manager who comes here) he jumped into the Norwich debacle, which is really is when he should have had some time out, spent that compo and had Christmas with his family. Instead he jumps into, as good as, the first Prem job offered, when my belief was, with a little time out to recover, he may have got a better job and continued to possibly do well. Norwich and now Leicester have done nothing to improve his reputation as a Prem manager whatsoever.

Who's offering him a job with a year out of football after being sacked by Villa? I agree that he should have taken more time just for himself really but by the same token I don't think he could have afforded to turn down the opportunity.

Name recognition goes a long way in this game and even in his heyday with us when we were in the mix for Europe, his wasn't quite up there. Even this Leicester job, I suspect Craig Shakespeare had a lot to do with his appointment. The upside of keeping these doomed teams up is huge for his CV going forward.

[AvonVillain]

1 hour ago, Keyblade said:

Who's offering him a job with a year out of football after being sacked by Villa?

A better prospect than a hopeless, doomed Norwich outfit. It was a terrible decision by Smith, if a somewhat understandable punt. This Leicester relegation will be the real blow to his career, though. They've definitely got the players to do better than they are.

[Zatman]

16 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

Don't get me wrong, we all love him cause he was a Villa fan and got us promoted. But, he got us promoted with the best team in the Championship by far, best player also. 

Seems though, when Grealish disappeared, so did Smith's rep.

We had the best players in the Championship but not the best team hence why Smith was hired and we only got playoffs through a miraculous run

 

[HanoiVillan]

On 16/05/2023 at 16:53, PaulC said:

I know you are joking but that's never going to happen. Whatever people think of Southgate he's been there done it as a player smith hasn't.

 

On 17/05/2023 at 09:50, duke313 said:

Guess you can rule Potter and Howe out from ever managing England then.

The order of suitability of these three for the role IMO is clearly:

1) Howe

[huge gap]

2) Smith

3) Potter

It has nothing to do with their playing careers. But Potter seems almost uniquely unsuited to international management: he takes ages to improve teams by drilling them with a style of play, whereas international managers have to get simple instructions to players in highly constricted time-frames. Potter also proved completely incapable of managing a massive squad at Chelsea, and while actual squads are 23 men, the England manager needs to have successful relationships with a wider cohort of players. 

By contrast, Howe has managed to improve playing squads over both long (Bournemouth) and short (Newcastle) time-frames. He's improved his previous biggest weakness (organising a defence) to the point that he's now a leader in it, and his other big weakness (wasting cash on poor purchases) isn't relevant to international football. 

Smith has proven successful in gaining quick improvements at two clubs (Brentford & us) but failed to do so at either Norwich or Leicester. His squad management skills seem quite good, and he seems able to maintain good relationships with players. But without more top-flight success than essentially one season with us, he would struggle to get and maintain the respect of top-level players. 

[VillaChris]

16 hours ago, Mark Albrighton said:

Not sure it was the best. It was good and clearly underperforming under the previous promotion specialist who somehow didn’t succeed despite also having the Grealish cheat code at his disposal.

We didn’t really have a stable keeper until someone thought about recalling Jed. And our best defender was crocked which couldn’t be rectified until we took a bit of chance on that out of favour Bournemouth defender.

Grealish obviously was a massive factor. But he wasn’t quite the player before Smith turned up and built the team around him (which we found out had a downside). Before Smith, Grealish is worth about £20m-25m, and only Spurs are biting. No other club is coming along to snap up this obviously brilliant talent. So exactly how good Grealish was widely considered by those outside of the club prior to October 2018 can be debated. 

After Smith arrives, Grealish’s value goes up four/five times that Spurs offer. Not ALL down to Smith, before anyone gets all worked up. But it’s not unreasonable to say Smith setting us up to get the best out of Grealish (and therefore us) was a huge factor in his development.

Can argue about promotion all day long. Ultimately in those first 18 months he did what was required, got us up (just) and kept us up (just).

Problem for me was 20/21. We were as good defensively then as we are now but it all fell apart when Grealish got injured. You really shouldn't go from being established in top half to 1 win in three months pretty much on account of one player.

Of course if Ollie picked up an injury I doubt we'd have gone on as long an unbeaten run as we've just done but I'd have backed Emery to come up with a decent plan B to keep the results ticking over, we've missed Kamara for chunks of his reign already and yet the midfield's been competitive in most of our games under him.

Then of course Grealish left but it wasn't like he went on August 31st with no time to plan for the season ahead. We had a month's notice yet there were some very scrambled team selections and performances in his final month. Going three at the back just to accommodate Axel Tuanzebe basically cost him his job and looks a very strange decision now.

[Zatman]

1 hour ago, VillaChris said:

Can argue about promotion all day long. Ultimately in those first 18 months he did what was required, got us up (just) and kept us up (just).

Problem for me was 20/21. We were as good defensively then as we are now but it all fell apart when Grealish got injured. You really shouldn't go from being established in top half to 1 win in three months pretty much on account of one player.

in fairness Barkley was supposed to be that man to take pressure off Grealish but he was hopeless

[Zatman]

Today I think we started 9 players that he coached/developed. He did a fine handover job to Unai

 

[Dodgyknees]

7 hours ago, Zatman said:

Today I think we started 9 players that he coached/developed. He did a fine handover job to Unai

 

Yeah, he’s left a legacy here

One that was almost broken by the “Gerrard Tax” 

[useless]

A win tomorrow will lift Leicester out of relegation zone and make them favorites going into last day, even if they lose tomorrow will still have a chance on last day, just need to beat West Ham and hope that Everton and Leeds lose. For some reason I've got a feeling he's going to do it.