One of the indirect – and, let’s face it, more meaningless – impacts of Covid-19 is that it increased the patience of Premier League owners. Managers dealing with empty stadiums, biosecure bubbles and uncertain finances were given greater leeway. In the whole of 2020-21, only four Premier League clubs changed managers. That was the lowest in 15 years.
It could never last. Elite football is too manic, too pressurised and offers too many false idols for restraint to linger unabated. The window of patience has ended in some style. Three clubs had sacked their manager by the end of October. Manchester United, Norwich City and Aston Villa (the Dion Dublin triangle, if you will) all have coaches in some peril.
Two of those are fairly self-explanatory: Norwich are stuck to the bottom, already cast adrift and with Derby County’s record low points total more far more likely than a miraculous survival; on size, wealth and squad strength, Manchester United should be serious title challengers.
Villa are a little more complicated. They finished 11th last season and are only seven points off fifth, towards the bottom of a bunched pack.
If madness is trying the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results, Dean Smith’s sanity is not in question. In 10 league games this season, Smith has used five different formations. Fifteen players have started at least three times. Captain Tyrone Mings has been dropped and then used as an emergency striker. Thirty-six year-old Ashley Young has started three league games – central midfield, left-back, left winger. But diversity can easily be interpreted as straw-clutching when it fails to yield results.
Villa’s decline – they have taken 40 points from their last 34 league games – can be reasonably judged through the prism of one player. Jack Grealish missed most of the second half of last season and was sold in the summer. The trends mirror one another: Villa have won three of their last 24 league matches without Grealish in their team. That presents them – even if it seems a little harsh on Smith – as the Grealish team more than Smith’s side.
Villa knew that they could not replace the best player of their last 20 years directly. Instead they opted for a multi-faceted solution: the guile of Emi Buendia, the pace of Leon Bailey and the better chance conversion of Danny Ings. But that’s the problem with replacing a talisman; it takes three players to provide less than the sum of one’s parts and it takes time for everyone else to adjust.
Smith has clearly been allowed to spend freely. Villa have invested north of £300m on transfer fees alone since promotion and Grealish sale only offsets a third of that total. But then only the manager knows how much of that he pushed for and how many signings were as a result of sporting director Johan Lange and CEO Christian Purslow’s clamour to establish the club as a challenger for European places. That level of investment – quality and quantity – creates its own riddle: if you’re buying a new team, at what point does it make sense to buy a new manager too?
Smith would be complicit in his own downfall if he goes. The defending has dropped off a cliff this season (and there are no new faces in the back five), he has struggled to afford Buendia creative influence or settle upon a forward line that gives Villa attacking impetus without compromising on midfield stability. Perhaps being the man who consolidates a club in the top flight doesn’t automatically make you the right one for the next step.
He would also be paying the price for Villa’s rampant ambition. Talk in the summer was of a top-six challenge and a first season of continental football in more than a decade, but the only time Villa have finished in the top six since 2010 was the Championship. It is hard to criticise ambition; the acceptance of mediocrity is just as dangerous. But if Smith fails to ride out the current storm, whoever replaces him faces a mighty difficult task to effect sustainable progress at a rate that satisfies the people who appoint them.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/2ZHTEOv
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