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Did we go backwards by appointing Dean Smith?

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18 minutes ago, king canary said:

A glance at his track record shows teams that have always played a good, attacking style of football. To compare him to Allerdyce or Pulis is just ignorance. 

In the context of hoofball, I think it's fair.

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15 minutes ago, Robert N. LiM said:

Whatever the relative merits of DF and DS (and personally I have a lot of time for them both) I think we can all agree we dodged a bullet when we missed out on Fat Frank.

I've got nothing but respect for Farke Robert but can't join in with some on here trying to rewrite history.

OTBC

Edited by Disco Dales Jockstrap
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1 minute ago, Disco Dales Jockstrap said:

I've got nothing but respect for Farke Robert but can't join in with some on here trying to rewrite history.

OTBC

Oh, quite agree. Just trying to lighten the mood. Would be so funny if Lampard takes Everton down, having clearly decided he was far too good for us.

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3 minutes ago, Robert N. LiM said:

Oh, quite agree. Just trying to lighten the mood. Would be so funny if Lampard takes Everton down, having clearly decided he was far too good for us.

5-0! Didn't even know they were playing!

OTBC

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21 minutes ago, Mello Yello said:

Steve Cooper would have been a good shout here.....Mark Robins even?.....

With all due respect, if Smith was available and we hired Robins it would have been a strange decision. Done wonders at Coventry but doesn’t have the same CV as Smith.

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smith isn't a bad appointment , just an underwhelming one. Yes KK would have been my choice,  but a young up and coming manager isnt gonna  come here and tarnish a decent record with 2nd tier football. Maybe he'll be our next? I will reserve my smith judgement for a decent stint in the champs next season.  Benefit of doubt time surly??? 

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The timing was unusual but equally there was a demand from 99% of fans on here to show some desire to stay up - despite that Farke was under very little pressure from the terraces.

However, contrary to the geniuses on here who claim the club dont want to be in the Prem, I think the fact we rolled the dice on sacking Farke and appointing Smith, with all the associated costs, is actual demonstrable evidence that we do care about staying up and giving it a go.

Will always be thankful to Farke and what he did here,  but his record at this level made it really hard to defend - although there are a lot of caveats to why we struggled, and its certainly not all Farke.

So far been relatively happy with what Smith has delivered but more performances like Brentford against the lower teams and he will be under significant pressure for next season, especially with the recent seasons at that level where we've played beautiful football and scored at will in a lot of games.

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Head to head for this season:

Farke: 5pts from 11 games. Victory against Brentford, in his last game, and two draws Vs Brighton and Burnley.

Smith: 12pts in 16 games. Victory against Southampton in his first game followed by two draws against Wolves and Newcastle. Victories also against Everton, Watford and a draw with Palace.

We've had two runs as such. The first starting with Farke's first win and ending with the draw with Newcastle. The other, if you include cup games, was a run of 1 defeat in 6 with 4 wins and a draw. One of the wins was Vs Charlton, the other three were all premier league opposition, albeit Wolves in the cup.

I think the problem we are seeing isn't so much about quality but style. Smith appears to know the strengths of needing to be able to mix it up. What we are lacking in though, are the 'strong' athletes that he arguably had at his disposal at Villa. He's trying to put his game plan out there with a squad of players brought in for Farke's approach (even though that changed this season, which is where I think he went wrong).
 

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13 hours ago, Bovril said:

Farke is a better manager than Smith given unlimited resources. 

How do you know this? At which clubs have they both managed that have allowed them unlimited resources? 

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5 minutes ago, non-scoring strikers said:

How do you know this? At which clubs have they both managed that have allowed them unlimited resources? 

It's an opinion. Do we have to put 'IMO' before every sentence we write on here?

Also, although obviously neither of them have had 'unlimited resources', it seems a fact rather than an opinion that Smith had many, many more resources at his disposal at Villa than Farke had at Norwich (at least if we are measuring resources purely in financial terms). 

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I said at the time, I'd be happy with Smith until the end of the season (No matter what) to put us in the dogfight of survival,

I guess he kind of did that for a couple of weeks until some poor results went against us.

And he seemingly wasn't given any pocket money in Jan.

However, I'm uninspired by him.

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9 hours ago, astro said:

Knutson was the manager we should have got. His team absolutely destroyed Celtic home and away the other week. They play with a wonderful energetic, free-flowing and effective style. 

Sadly, that ship has sailed now. When he finally does move, he'll be going to a far bigger club than Norwich.

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16 hours ago, Nexus_Canary said:

Panic appointment. I questioned why we appointed a manager that couldnt cut it in the Prem to save us.
Fire him as soon as we are down and overhaul again.

We should have kept Daniel Farke.

Exactly this ^

Plus the four excellent points made the by OP:

16 hours ago, rock bus said:

 

  • Farke himself brought a different style of play based on skill and possession with a defined methodology that was meant to thread right through all playing levels. At the moment under Smith I'm struggling to see what our style of play even is (this may be just because he doesn't have the players to suit his style).
  • We were adopting a non domestic transfer and scouting policy - allowing us to fully exploit the opportunities where we can acquire better prospects for less money given the strength of the English league even at championship level.
  • The concept was also that you could swap out the Manager and/or the Sporting Director without a total upheaval of the coaching staff and/or philosophy -something that plainly didn't happen.
  • Succession planning would mean identified replacements who will continue the strategy of the club - again didn't happen as Smith wasn't available at time of Farke' sacking. Whilst Webber may always have liked him I cant believe he knew he  would become available and we clearly didnt have a lined up Manager as should've been the case.

 

I now fear that we are heading towards the championship with a very 'traditional' British manager and coach with no defined playing style or a strategy to get us promoted again. We had managed to re-establish our identity as a club and as a result the Management, team, club and supporters all seemed totally united. Now we appear to be more disjointed than ever and I fear this bodes for a really long spell in the championship (or worse, if Smith cant sort the squad out).

 

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17 hours ago, cambridgeshire canary said:

Not his squad, not his players and yet despite our current poor form hes still done better and won more than Farke.

Not yet he hasn't, we haven't got to 21 points.

Where do you think 4 points is coming from?

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My problem with Smith is not so much that he's a bad manager because I don't think he is. My problem is that the style he is currently playing is not far off long-ball, Stoke, Wimbledon, Bolton etc.

Hanley to Gibson and whack 50 yards up the pitch or Gibson to Hanley and whack 50 yards up the pitch. Even the athlete-obsessed on here will get tired of that very quickly. The games just aren't fun anymore and I don't feel proud of the way my team are approaching things like I did under Farke - we are just like anyone else in our position. Boring, direct and still crap.

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I don't think Smith is a bad manager. In my view he is doing the best he can with what he has got (in terms of squad).

Whichever way you cut it this is not a squad capable of staying in the Prem, for all the reasons discussed on here and in the wider media.

 

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3 hours ago, Worthy Nigelton said:

My problem with Smith is not so much that he's a bad manager because I don't think he is. My problem is that the style he is currently playing is not far off long-ball, Stoke, Wimbledon, Bolton etc.

Hanley to Gibson and whack 50 yards up the pitch or Gibson to Hanley and whack 50 yards up the pitch. Even the athlete-obsessed on here will get tired of that very quickly. The games just aren't fun anymore and I don't feel proud of the way my team are approaching things like I did under Farke - we are just like anyone else in our position. Boring, direct and still crap.

I think the PL has a lot of teams who play a high press very effectively and with players who are more competent and consistent at it than in the Championship. There are two principal ways of beating that- play through or past. Playing through requires strong athletic midfielders who can run at opponents and beat them. Playing past involves going long at times or being mobile, tough and accurate enough in passing to pass round. If you don’t have the players for the former, you will lose a lot and heavily if you can’t stomach going long and aren’t good enough to pass around. 

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I’m slightly bemused by the notion that Kjetjil Knutsen is considered to be an up and coming young manager when he is only 5 years younger than me and is 2 years older than Dean Smith 🤔

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7 minutes ago, Google Bot said:

kpgz1dp555m81.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=9a7d1a1f94530c9286e4c398c9191e663defcde2

Interesting for those who like xG.

Slightly concerning. I was initially against the Smith appointment but realised that was mostly because I didn't want Farke sacked unless it was for a genuine upgrade. At one point I thought Smith might be that. There's an argument that Farke may well have done just as well as DS did with Villa had he had the same squad - possibly even better? 

Regardless, the problem was Farke's record in his other Prem season left less room - rightly or wrongly - for him. 

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I have no idea who is better. Smith's assistant however does seem to be an improvement on Farke's.

Smith's substitutions also appear to be more timely and thoughtful and he is less dogmatic than Farke in that he is prepared to be a little more creative with his approach to games and sure sometimes this doesn't work out.

Opposition managers knew exactly how Farke was going to play and at Premiership level that is a big advantage to give away to clubs with vastly superior playing resources to yourselves. 

However I really liked Farke. He was genuine and he never made excuses, plus he was committed to the development aspect of his playing squad. I think he lacked a really high quality assistant who could challenge him and also help him solve problems "in game". 

Both managers have lacked a sufficiently strong squad to perform at this level and yet both are good enough characters not to admit to this and to play along with the narrative being spun by the board.

It really is difficult to compare the two.

It's a little bit like asking "which is one is better a cheese sandwich or a ham one? " They are different that is all but in terms of results nothing has changed.

Perhaps because nothing has changed this is proof that what was needed wasn't a new manager but better players. 

Edited by Bonzo
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15 hours ago, Bonzo said:

I have no idea who is better. Smith's assistant however does seem to be an improvement on Farke's.

Smith's substitutions also appear to be more timely and thoughtful and he is less dogmatic than Farke in that he is prepared to be a little more creative with his approach to games and sure sometimes this doesn't work out.

Opposition managers knew exactly how Farke was going to play and at Premiership level that is a big advantage to give away to clubs with vastly superior playing resources to yourselves. 

However I really liked Farke. He was genuine and he never made excuses, plus he was committed to the development aspect of his playing squad. I think he lacked a really high quality assistant who could challenge him and also help him solve problems "in game". 

Both managers have lacked a sufficiently strong squad to perform at this level and yet both are good enough characters not to admit to this and to play along with the narrative being spun by the board.

It really is difficult to compare the two.

It's a little bit like asking "which is one is better a cheese sandwich or a ham one? " They are different that is all but in terms of results nothing has changed.

Perhaps because nothing has changed this proof that what was needed wasn't a new manager but better players. 

A ham one. Farke is ham.

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21 hours ago, hogesar said:

Slightly concerning. I was initially against the Smith appointment but realised that was mostly because I didn't want Farke sacked unless it was for a genuine upgrade. At one point I thought Smith might be that. There's an argument that Farke may well have done just as well as DS did with Villa had he had the same squad - possibly even better? 

Regardless, the problem was Farke's record in his other Prem season left less room - rightly or wrongly - for him. 

I'd say that graph shows some obvious improvement, in that there are at least a couple of games where our XG is better than the XGa stat. The fact this never happened under Farke this season does rather back up the view that there wasn't a single game we could claim we were unlucky not to win. 

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On 08/03/2022 at 09:46, Worthy Nigelton said:

My problem with Smith is not so much that he's a bad manager because I don't think he is. My problem is that the style he is currently playing is not far off long-ball, Stoke, Wimbledon, Bolton etc.

Hanley to Gibson and whack 50 yards up the pitch or Gibson to Hanley and whack 50 yards up the pitch. Even the athlete-obsessed on here will get tired of that very quickly. The games just aren't fun anymore and I don't feel proud of the way my team are approaching things like I did under Farke - we are just like anyone else in our position. Boring, direct and still crap.

I suspect that may be born out of necessity though. The players we have aren't capable of playing the attractive possession game at this lev. If they were I reckon Farke would have managed to get them performing.

He is being pragmatic to get results; something Farke was unwilling or incapable of doing

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