Are we set to be the "fittest team in the league"?

[Nexus_Canary 1,028]

2 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Leicester weren't far off survival, to be fair.Most fair-minded people would recognise there was a substantial improvement in their results from where he took over, which is doubtless factored into why serious clubs still take him seriously.

Can you name your dealer or whatever you take mate? Id love to be in the same deluded state you live in.
Your hilarious.

[tricky974 61]

My friend is a Leicester supporter I said when they brought in Smith their greatest hope of survival is that the players win games dispite him.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,604]

2 hours ago, canarydan23 said:

Substantial improvement in their results?!

Brendan Rogers managed 0.89 points per game (25 points in 28), Dean Smith managed 0.9 points per game (9 points in 10). And 40% of Dean Smith's fixtures were home times against teams 13th and lower and he had an away tie against one of only two teams below them in the table.

Do you really think fair-minded people would recognise a 0.0072 PPG improvement as "a substantial improvement in their results"?! Absolutely mental.

People who know about running football clubs seem to keep employing him though. I guess you're just missing something.

[The Real Buh 3,486]

8 hours ago, Yobocop said:

What’s the plan for next season bud now the big bad wolf Webber has left? 

who are you and your pals going to have a woopsie in your pants about now? Awww it’s too cute actually 

He hasn’t left

[canarydan23 4,060]

7 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

People who know about running football clubs seem to keep employing him though. I guess you're just missing something.

Do they think he substantially improved Leicester's results?!

[TheGunnShow 6,023]

19 hours ago, The Raptor said:

From personal experience I've found the opposite is true. The more you train the better you feel.

Not wrong, but also not completely correct either as you always need recovery time. As an experienced distance runner yes, you need to train a lot, but you also need to taper down before matches. What makes a league season so arduous is that you go hard over 90 minutes and often have it all to do again mid-week so bodies often haven't fully recovered. 

Had to pull out of a half-marathon at the start of June after an energetic day's hiking chasing puffins the day before. Hamstrings were like piano wire -and that's just running at a steady half-marathon pace. Not the explosive, draining changes of pace that come with football.

This is why squad depth is so important in the Champs.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,604]

2 hours ago, canarydan23 said:

Do they think he substantially improved Leicester's results?!

Guess they saw something if they're looking at employing him...

[Midlands Yellow 4,095]

2 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Guess they saw something if they're looking at employing him...

What though exactly? 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,604]

1 minute ago, Midlands Yellow said:

What though exactly? 

Ask them. Probably some sort of eye test or something. They're all the rage.

Edited June 28, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[Midlands Yellow 4,095]

4 minutes ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Ask them. Probably some sort of eye test or something. They're all the rage.

Did ok at Brentford, ultimately failed at Villa (despite spending shed loads) failed at Norwich and Leicester too. Nice bloke and must interview well but a truly poor head coach. 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,604]

3 minutes ago, Midlands Yellow said:

Did ok at Brentford, ultimately failed at Villa (despite spending shed loads) failed at Norwich and Leicester too. Nice bloke and must interview well but a truly poor head coach. 

Define 'failure' at Villa? They were still in the Premier League and no sign of relegation. If failure equals being sacked then most senior managers on the planet who have accomplished anything are failures, including Farke and Wagner.

Edited June 28, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[Midlands Yellow 4,095]

Just now, littleyellowbirdie said:

Define 'failure' at Villa? They were still in the Premier League and no sign of relegation. If failure equals being sacked then most senior managers on the planet who have accomplished anything are failures.

Massive spend pre season which included Emi. Lost 5 on the bounce and was found out. It’s not hard to understand why they got rid. 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,604]

5 minutes ago, Midlands Yellow said:

Massive spend pre season which included Emi. Lost 5 on the bounce and was found out. It’s not hard to understand why they got rid. 

This is what really irritates me about these sort of arguments. It's all so simple when people are criticising and making the case against people.

Apply  this sort of simplistic logic to Farke then he's unequivocally a clueless clown at Premier League level who doesn't belong anywhere near the Premier League with his record, time and opportunity he had here to mould the squad to his requirements.

Edited June 28, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[Midlands Yellow 4,095]

Just now, littleyellowbirdie said:

This is what really irritates me about these sort of arguments. It's all so simple when people are criticising and making the case against people.

Apply to this sort of logic to Farke then he's unequivocally a clueless clown who doesn't belong anywhere near the Premier League with his record, time and opportunity he had here. 

Make a case why he’s a decent manager then. 

[littleyellowbirdie 2,604]

4 minutes ago, Midlands Yellow said:

Make a case why he’s a decent manager then. 

It speaks for itself. Championship promotion going onto Premier League survival for a newly-promoted side are huge achievements. Failing to keep up already failing sides when coming in part way through a season doesn't negate that, however much people like to pretend.

He is clearly a decent manager as far as people who are involved in actually running football clubs are concerned or he wouldn't keep getting jobs at Premier League and Championship level.

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[canarydan23 4,060]

2 hours ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

Guess they saw something if they're looking at employing him...

SHEFF WEDS: Holy ****, he improved Leicester's results by 0.0072 points a game, let's get him!

Whatever they've seen, it was a significant improvement in Leicester's results under him, was it?

[canarydan23 4,060]

2 hours ago, Midlands Yellow said:

Did ok at Brentford, ultimately failed at Villa (despite spending shed loads) failed at Norwich and Leicester too. Nice bloke and must interview well but a truly poor head coach. 

I think you're being kind about Brentford, both his permanent predecessor and his successor got Brentford into the playoffs, the latter achieving promotion. Don't think Smith got them higher than 9th.

[Capt. Pants 4,290]

6 hours ago, TheGunnShow said:

Not wrong, but also not completely correct either as you always need recovery time. As an experienced distance runner yes, you need to train a lot, but you also need to taper down before matches. What makes a league season so arduous is that you go hard over 90 minutes and often have it all to do again mid-week so bodies often haven't fully recovered. 

Had to pull out of a half-marathon at the start of June after an energetic day's hiking chasing puffins the day before. Hamstrings were like piano wire -and that's just running at a steady half-marathon pace. Not the explosive, draining changes of pace that come with football.

This is why squad depth is so important in the Champs.

It's the case in most sports. You get fitter when you recover, which is why pre season training is so important as it's the only build period where actual matches, often 2 a week, don't get in the way of the recovery process. 

Last season we had a World Cup break; an opportunity for a secondary build period, but it turned out to be an absolute shambles with some of the squad not even going. Smith said we would come back a different animal, which of course we didn't, and he rightly lost his job.

You're absolutely right about squad depth, especially in terms of rotation and keeping players fresh. Lots of supporters don't like that though and view it as 'tinkering'.

[The Real Buh 3,486]

4 minutes ago, Capt. Pants said:

It's the case in most sports. You get fitter when you recover, which is why pre season training is so important as it's the only build period where actual matches, often 2 a week, don't get in the way of the recovery process. 

Last season we had a World Cup break; an opportunity for a secondary build period, but it turned out to be an absolute shambles with some of the squad not even going. Smith said we would come back a different animal, which of course we didn't, and he rightly lost his job.

You're absolutely right about squad depth, especially in terms of rotation and keeping players fresh. Lots of supporters don't like that though and view it as 'tinkering'.

😂😂 I forgot about the “different animal” thing lol!!

Still, 5 more games for some. 5 more games.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,604]

2 hours ago, canarydan23 said:

SHEFF WEDS: Holy ****, he improved Leicester's results by 0.0072 points a game, let's get him!

Whatever they've seen, it was a significant improvement in Leicester's results under him, was it?

Here's another thought for you: Our top player, Buendia, was sought after by bigger clubs than Aston Villa, but the one he opted for was the one managed by Dean Smith at the time. Players like Buendia, Grealish, and others clearly seem to have some confidence in him as well as successive clubs. We lost our best loan player on the back of sacking Smith.

Just all adds up to the conclusion that the stick he gets on here is a load of rubbish.

Looking back, we were always having injury nightmares under Farke. Was the reduction of fitness rates under Smith partly trying to dial back because there was concern we were pushing our players too hard? Webber was obviously concerned enough that he prioritised deepening the squad rather than a smaller number of higher quality players for the sake of that concern.

 

Edited June 28, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[littleyellowbirdie 2,604]

2 hours ago, canarydan23 said:

I think you're being kind about Brentford, both his permanent predecessor and his successor got Brentford into the playoffs, the latter achieving promotion. Don't think Smith got them higher than 9th.

Meaningless comparisons given so many other variables changed. Hell, his critics won't even acknowledge he did a better job in the Premier League for us than Farke did in result terms inheriting the same players in the same season, which is fact.

Should have let him have the rest of the season. We'd have lost nothing and saved a bit of money on a pointless sacking.

Edited June 28, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[canarydan23 4,060]

That's at least two bucketfuls of cognitive dissonance right there @littleyellowbirdie.

Let's be honest, you're not really arguing in defence of Dean Smith, you're just struggling to deal with being proven emphatically wrong about him. I guess it's even more galling for you that some of us called it even before his appointment.

Chin up, it happens, I thought Peter Grant was going to be fantastic, you didn't see me tying myself into all sorts of logical knots once it became obvious he was actually garbage.

[wcorkcanary 4,345]

21 minutes ago, The Real Buh said:

😂😂 I forgot about the “different animal” thing lol!!

Still, 5 more games for some. 5 more games.

My dog came back from the Vet a 'different animal. '

[aBee 152]

4 hours ago, canarydan23 said:

I think you're being kind about Brentford, both his permanent predecessor and his successor got Brentford into the playoffs, the latter achieving promotion. Don't think Smith got them higher than 9th.

No, I think he did reasonably well for us in context. There was a big turnover of players after we finished 5th under Warburton (who apart from not buying into the new recruitment strategy also had his group of favoured players who made the owner feel unwelcome at the club). While he got us to three midtable finishes that was while both selling our better players each season and him helping to develop the new ones so each season the squad was better and playing a more consistent style. We were top 6 when he was poached and finished 11th after Thomas Frank got W1 D1 L8 in his starting run. We had a big investment in the squad in summer 19 (paid for by the sale of Maupay), most of whom are still regular starters. Smith would probably have taken us to the play offs in 18-19 had he stayed. 
 

Though it’s also worth noting that the team improvement under Smith stepped up after Frank became his assistant in December 16. 

[BroadstairsR 2,213]

6 hours ago, wcorkcanary said:

My dog came back from the Vet a 'different animal. '

Did it identify as a cat then?

[Nuff Said 5,179]

On 27/06/2023 at 13:20, Barry Brockes said:

I read somewhere that one of the big six clubs, might be Arsenal, now actively recruit young athletes into their set--up as opposed to recruit young footballers on the grounds that it's easier to coach good athletes to be good footballers than it is the other way round. Presumably this recognises the increasingly important role that athleticism plays in the modern game.

I’ll see your “recruit athletes and train them as footballers” theory, and raise you Przemysław Płacheta.

[littleyellowbirdie 2,604]

14 hours ago, canarydan23 said:

That's at least two bucketfuls of cognitive dissonance right there @littleyellowbirdie.

Let's be honest, you're not really arguing in defence of Dean Smith, you're just struggling to deal with being proven emphatically wrong about him. I guess it's even more galling for you that some of us called it even before his appointment.

Chin up, it happens, I thought Peter Grant was going to be fantastic, you didn't see me tying myself into all sorts of logical knots once it became obvious he was actually garbage.

Cognitive dissonance? I'll remind you that I'm not arguing he's the greatest manager to ever have lived. I'm simply stating that he's a good manager, which he must be for players and clubs alike to consistently show confidence in him. I would say it's those who insisted/continue to insist on pushing an absurdly negative view of him in spite of the evidence to the contrary who have a problem with cognitive dissonance. Regardless of margin, he bettered Farke's and Rodgers on results with the same squads; that automatically shows his ability should be compared sensibly to theirs, not dismissed as inadequate while some idea is pushed that those he replaced were competent.

I'd also argue there's a fair bit of cognitive dissonance in the notion that changing managers mid-season is always the right thing to do with a bad run of results but moaning that Farke got sacked after 2 points over 10 games in the Premier League. It's definitely not me who is suffering with cognitive dissonance in their outlook here.

Top-level championship/lower level Premiership seems to be his level, as borne out by the ease with which he has got jobs at that level for the last decade and a half, and actually held on to them for long stints on the whole, in spite of the trends in hiring and firing of football managers.

I'd have more respect for the arguments against if he'd had the whole season, was afforded some trust that he he actually had a long-term goal (just as Farke did, but wasn't always clear in his first season) and we'd finished mid-table, and a decent number of fans hadn't so clearly made it their mission to turn other fans against him at every turn to make sure morale was so bad throughout the club that there was little chance of anything else happening.

I don't believe he was garbage; the evidence of the rest of his career doesn't support that; I don't think he had a chance with so many resolved to sit on their hands despondently all the while he was manager.

You say I've been proved 'emphatically wrong' about him, but you don't see any fans so emphatically against him outside of Norwich circles.  You yourself said many times that 'anyone' could do a better job than he did, which was a point the second half of the season proved you were emphatically wrong about.

Edited June 29, 2023 by littleyellowbirdie

[TheGunnShow 6,023]

16 hours ago, Capt. Pants said:

It's the case in most sports. You get fitter when you recover, which is why pre season training is so important as it's the only build period where actual matches, often 2 a week, don't get in the way of the recovery process. 

Last season we had a World Cup break; an opportunity for a secondary build period, but it turned out to be an absolute shambles with some of the squad not even going. Smith said we would come back a different animal, which of course we didn't, and he rightly lost his job.

You're absolutely right about squad depth, especially in terms of rotation and keeping players fresh. Lots of supporters don't like that though and view it as 'tinkering'.

We did come back a different animal. Started out as a clumsy-looking puffin, came back as a sloth.

[hogesar 9,760]

14 hours ago, aBee said:

No, I think he did reasonably well for us in context. There was a big turnover of players after we finished 5th under Warburton (who apart from not buying into the new recruitment strategy also had his group of favoured players who made the owner feel unwelcome at the club). While he got us to three midtable finishes that was while both selling our better players each season and him helping to develop the new ones so each season the squad was better and playing a more consistent style. We were top 6 when he was poached and finished 11th after Thomas Frank got W1 D1 L8 in his starting run. We had a big investment in the squad in summer 19 (paid for by the sale of Maupay), most of whom are still regular starters. Smith would probably have taken us to the play offs in 18-19 had he stayed. 
 

Though it’s also worth noting that the team improvement under Smith stepped up after Frank became his assistant in December 16. 

Yeah, if you take us out of the equation you'd generally say Smith would do a decent job at Championship level for most teams. So it's not hugely surprising to see a newly promoted team speaking with him.

[aBee 152]

3 hours ago, hogesar said:

Yeah, if you take us out of the equation you'd generally say Smith would do a decent job at Championship level for most teams. So it's not hugely surprising to see a newly promoted team speaking with him.

Particularly as a former Wednesday club captain.