kirku

You think that getting a Villa squad including Tammy Abraham, Jack Grealish, Tyrone Mings, John McGinn and a bunch of other lower end PL/top end Champ players to limp into 5th and go up via the play offs is, "getting the best" out of them? While Smith objectively underperformed with that squad, Farke was winning the league with the likes of Steipi, Trybull and Zimbo.

I really don't see how you could get this conclusion from what I posted, at all. You said that Hughton was one of the two most "unpopular managers historically". I disagreed with this premise based on the fact that he was generally liked as a person, if not a coach, so in terms of "popularity" he was somewhat shielded from the worst vitriol. I didn't insinuate he should've stayed.

That was a separate point I made about transfer spend, which was not the season I referenced. Yes, Grealish broke through under Smith - but that was a matter of timing rather than anything else. Abraham already had a great season at Bristol in the Champ and a full season in the PL with Swansea before going to Villa. The very next season he played over 30 games and scored 15 goals for Chelsea. You don't get players of that quality very often in the Champ. And when you do, they usually don't end up finishing 5th.

Hughton was unpopular for his style of play but admired for his personality. Can't say the same for Smith. After his comments yesterday, he's probably heading towards Roeder levels of animosity. FWIW, I think I preferred us under Hughton. It at least looked like he had a plan and so we could see what we were trying to do. It was dull as dishwater but I didn't feel as disconnected as I do under Smith.

Smith wildly underperformed in the Championship with Villa with the squad he had. Getting a team with Grealish and Abraham into 5th is not a good achievement. Especially when the rest of the squad had a large number of decent PL performers and outstanding Champ players in it.

Roeder and Hughton had better pedigrees before joining Norwich. O'Neil and Megson achieved more afterwards. Farke will quite possibly join that list. Hell, Rioch was probably a better appointment on paper..

And now many of them carry those chips on their shoulders..

As far as I can tell, he underperformed at Villa with a huge transfer spend and did relatively well at Brentford until his successor absolutely blew his achievements out of the water.

I'm interested in the idea that Dean Smith is "the best manager on paper in your lifetime" - what is this based on?

1) It's all timestamped. 2) The idea that I've edited your responses in order to reply to them is as pathetic as it is nonsensical. The only meaningful edit I made was highlighted with an edit tag and put in italics. The rest were minor typos. Your original post only had the first paragraph. You added the dig after the fact. It's clearly seen in the post I quoted but whatever makes you feel better, I guess.

It's all in the posts I quoted. Clear as day. Sad.

You've done that thing again where you go back and edit in antagonistic points after I've already replied. What was I saying about credibility? Gareth wouldn't stand for such poor sportsmanship, I wouldn't have thought..

Hopefully the one that's no good will be out of a job soon and the one who deserves more time will continue to coach his team for the next few years... Edit - have you seriously just edited the post I replied to, to try and make it look like you "predicted" this reply? Now that's hilarious!

Oh, no, it's more about the insane hypocrisy of someone saying the same thing multiple times over accusing me of tedium. I thought that'd be obvious. As for "winning", there's no winning here. Just points that make sense to a reasonable person and those that do not. On your edited in comment on Smith, given most of your posts in this thread are highly subjective then it helps if you have some credibility. Hard to reconcile that with vociferously going to bat for Dean Smith recently.

I hope you have the self-awareness to realise how hilarious these posts are in combination.

You've only said two factual things in this entire exchange: England lost to Hungary ("were doubled", repeated about 4 times) England played teams ranked in the top 20 and lost to France The rest has been subjective guff that doesn't stand up to the slightest breeze of scrutiny, such as England's draw being "astonishingly fortuitous". As for the second part, I knew it was too much to ask. You've probably still got a huge chip on your shoulder from that time you spent recently defending Dean Smith - another one of your arguments which has made you look more than a little silly.

I hope you have the self-awareness to realise how hilarious these two posts are in combination.

There's nothing to presume - it's all in your posts. There's very little factual content in them to engage with, unless we're talking about being "doubled", of course.

You have an extremely skewed vision of what England's major tournament performances have been throughout history, forgetting previous struggles to even qualify for said tournaments, and an unrealistic view on the expected quality of opponent that teams tend to draw at World Cups (as evidenced by my most recent post). Be glad you're not Spanish, Brazilian, German, Italian, or Belgian - you'd be really upset..

How many times are you going to say "we were doubled by Hungary"? I think we understand already this incredible importance you put on the highly prestigious Nations League. As I've said previously, you seemingly have a poor understanding of how international football works. England's group was the only one where all the teams were inside the top 20. France: Australia (38th), Tunisia (30th), Denmark (10th), Poland (26th), England (5th) and Morocco (22nd) Argentina: Saudi (51st), Mexico (13th), Poland (26th), Australia (38th), Netherlands (8th) Croatia (12th) Spain: Germany (11th), Costa Rica (31st), Japan (24th), Morocco (22nd). Brazil: Serbia (21st), Switzerland (15th), Cameroon (43rd), South Korea (28th), Croatia (12th). So "only playing sides ranked 16th - 20th" is "fortuitous in most people's minds" - only if they don't understand the context very well, don't understand group seeding, or think that drawing France in the QFs qualifies as good luck.

My first post in this thread was about 54 years of England results at major tournaments. Yours was about a single result in a friendly. It's beyond hilarious that you're now claiming the above. Please quantify your claim that England had an "astonishingly favourable draw". This should be fun.

This is currently your argument: England lost to the 36th ranked team in a glorified friendly, England are rubbish. England scored 12 goals in 3 games against teams in the top 20, England are rubbish. Italy didn't qualify, Germany got dumped out at the group stages, Spain and Brazil got knocked out by much smaller sides yet you're upset that England largely outplayed the reigning champions and were a missed penalty away from taking the game into extra time? Forget being easily pleased, you need to get some context.

Senegal, Wales and Iran are ranked 18th, 19th and 20th in the world. It's quite hard to claim on the one hand that a single Nations League result is indicative of anything (and a "full tournament") while decrying the quality of opponents at the World Cup.

1 decent World Cup game? England scored 12 goals across 3/4 other games..

Hats off to you if you actually believe the Nations League is a "full tournament". A marketeers dream..