Got to agree I believe in giving managers a chance, but Smith has used up all his. We should never have let Farke go.
I’ve been really disappointed by Hayden today, I heard he was looking good in recent games. He looks so leggy and completely off the pace, poor passing. Pukki looked pretty anonymous after missing his good early chance
Hayden should have come off, it seemed to me that McLean was having to do all his running for him and he continued to drop deeper and deeper which invited them in to us. Gibbs or Nunez should have come on for him
But it's not going to happen, is it? Because that would mean a) Webber admitting he has screwed up big time by lumping us with this mediocre excuse for a head coach, and b) Delia and Michael listening to the fans rather than sucking up to the Webbers.
Utter **** , Smith is a clown and most of our over paid entitled players don't seem to have the minerals to get promoted in this notoriously tough league.
Hugill has barely played all season and was a spectator for 84 minutes but yeah it's his fault we lost .
It was a great goal for Sargent and a good first half for us, though Boro started to come back into it. The second half was totally lacklustre though and that has happened too many times. I sense that Smith and Shakespeare are technically good but they just don't inspire the players to battle for a win. It's like we were going through the motions in the second half and that wasn't helped by Pukki and Sargent going off.
Completely agree. The habit of collapsing in the second half is too much of a pattern, it’s not a one-off, and it’s purely managerial.
Pukki being substituted so early seemed to me to typify Smith. Overthinking, trying to be clever, and being stupid.
I'm fed up with people making excuses for Pukki missing chances. He's needs to be dropped and Sergeant given a proper run in his best position. Like wise Arrons needs to step up or ship out defensively he's a liability and he no longer provides much threat going forward, maybe a few less back passes and a bit more positivity going forward would help.
I thought Aarons had quite a good game today. I accept that Pukki didn't, although I still think taking him off was not the right decision. My general point would be that something is wrong with this team and whether X is in the squad or Y is dropped or Z stays on the pitch doesn't really make much difference. I know this sounds nebulous, but it lacks a heart, a collective strength, a driving force: something that we had in 18/19 and 20/21. If you don't have that, the Championship is a graveyard, no matter how talented your players are individually. And for me that has to come from the manager, and it isn't coming. And it won't come until he is gone.
Agreed The fact that none of us can really say with confidence whether we are happy with Pukki’s performance, or McClean’s, or Aarons - Hayden is up and down, no consistency at left back, debates over Cantwell, Hanley still getting occasional criticism, changing goalkeepers etc etc I’ve missed out so many chopping and changing moments - that’s no individual player’s fault. It’s a management issue. It’s a mess, they are out of ideas and are just rolling the dice every time now.
This is now my reading of Smith. He got lucky at Brentford because he was employed by a club that was (and continues to be) incredibly well run, so he did OK. Not as well as the coach before him or after him, but he kept them ticking over. He also got lucky at Villa. In his first season, he had what was generally agreed to be the best squad in the league, including Grealish, and he just about managed to get them up through the play-offs. On promotion he still had Grealish, plus a spend of about 100m I believe, and he managed to keep them up because of a ridiculous fault of goal-line technology. Norwich has been his first job (other than Walsall, which I know nothing about) where he has needed to add value to the squad rather than merely depend on the quality of his players. He's been found out. He is incapable of making a team more than the sum of its parts. He's adequate if your aim is mid-table, but mediocre. He will become one of those managers who always gets a job, usually with a Championship club, but never repeats his 'successes' with Brentford and Villa.
