Norwich City Part Company With Dean Smith

[CaaC (John)+]

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Dean Smith: Norwich City sack head coach after three defeats in four

Last updated on2 hours ago2 hours ago.From the section

Dean Smith has been sacked as Norwich City head coach after a run of just three wins in 13 Championship matches.

Assistant manager Craig Shakespeare and first-team coach Liam Bramley have also left Carrow Road.

Steve Weaver and Allan Russell have taken caretaker charge of the team.

FULL REPORT

 

[Gunnersaurus]

Bit harsh for Norwich to sack smith I think. I know they were favourites for promotion but they are still in 6th place. 

[Dan+]

Dean Smith is a poor manager. Has produced par at best anywhere.

[Danny]

5 hours ago, Dan said:

Dean Smith is a poor manager. Has produced par at best anywhere.

Stabalised us as a mid-table Championship club on a bottom 3 budget and got an absolute shitshow in Villa promoted and then kept up.

[Gunnersaurus]

20 minutes ago, Danny said:

Stabalised us as a mid-table Championship club on a bottom 3 budget and got an absolute shitshow in Villa promoted and then kept up.

He kept them up then did very well in the season after if I remember rightly. Like I said I think he's a bit unlucky here. Whether he's premier league level I don't know but I think he's championship level and wont have a hard job getting another job 

[N U F C]

7 hours ago, Dan said:

Dean Smith is a poor manager. Has produced par at best anywhere.

Not sure about that but he's not done a very good job at Norwich.

Hoping they don't come back up anyway, sick of them coming backwards and forwards every season.

[Stan]

Surprised he failed there. Norwich have a decent set up and given the recent stints in the PL, shouldn't be short of cash compared to other clubs in the Championship. 

He never seemed to find consistency with Norwich. 

[Lucas]

This was on the cards. They have been hit and miss all season.

When you are going for automatic promotion as they should be, and you are 12pts off second at this stage with half a season to go, something hasn't gone right. That's poor for Norwich.

You can't win 2 out of 13 and justify it when you have such a talented squad for that division, you just can't.

They may well lay 5th now but 5pts seperate Norwich in 5th to Stoke in 17th. With the run they are on, they would definitely have been dropping out that Top 6, especially when you see the effects changing manager has done for West Brom and Middlesbrough.

They have done the right thing. Nipped in the bud early and before the transfer window has opened.

Remains to be seen now who they bring in. Dyche still floats about, Scott Parker seems to be the new darling for targetting promotions but equally, they could give someone like Steve Gerrard a route back into management.

Going to be interesting times there.

[Lucas]

4 hours ago, Danny said:

Stabalised us as a mid-table Championship club on a bottom 3 budget and got an absolute shitshow in Villa promoted and then kept up.

I'd agree he did well with yourselves but Villa is a terrible shout for me.

He walked into a good squad of players there who massively underperformed under Bruce and was allowed to bring in some quality loan players in January.

How can you call them a shitshow when for the Championship, they had Mings, McGinn, Hourihane, Adomah, Bolasie, Abraham, Kodja, El-Ghazi to name but a few.

Lets not forget they got to the playoff final the year before too.

Then he spent close to £140m first season back up on about 14 new players and they literally scraped survival because goal line technology wasn't introduced. Not for me that one.

[Reluctant Striker]

At Villa, his journey was, that he did as was expected/desired & just about got us back up. Just about kept us up the 1st season back. 2nd season we got to 11th. All to plan & appreciated. 3rd season, there was a violin orchestra around him leaving, because Grealish had sold his sole for big time winners medals. Replacements were injured or eyebrow raising.

I think he said himself the game before his last with Norwich that it has been the 1st time he's known that sort of crowd reaction he was getting.

Villa never went straight back up as Championship winners, or runners up. Oddly at Norwich I sense they collectively accept Premier League relegation, but expect Championship dominance. People can still look back & think it felt brutal for him at Villa. But it's Norwich that have been harsher. IMO. And I think it was a wrong knee jerk choice for him. He might have got a better offer in the Premier League, or a less difficult objective in the Championship. The later is the best he can expect at this point.

[Danny]

9 minutes ago, Lucas said:

I'd agree he did well with yourselves but Villa is a terrible shout for me.

He walked into a good squad of players there who massively underperformed under Bruce and was allowed to bring in some quality loan players in January.

How can you call them a shitshow when for the Championship, they had Mings, McGinn, Hourihane, Adomah, Bolasie, Abraham, Kodja, El-Ghazi to name but a few.

Lets not forget they got to the playoff final the year before too.

Then he spent close to £140m first season back up on about 14 new players and they literally scraped survival because goal line technology wasn't introduced. Not for me that one.

Villa’s recruitment prior to Smith had been a shitshow. The season they went up they had 23 players make 11 appearances or more, 12 of them left the club immediately after going up due to end of contract, end of loan or retirement, a couple just not good enough to go up. Of the 23 altogether, only 3 became key players for Villa; Grealish, McGinn and Mings (who they had to sign permanently as he was also on loan). That’s 20 key players to Villa’s promotion who were either nowhere near good to play in the Prem or were too good on loan that they couldn’t go back to Villa. 5 of their top 11 most appeared players throughout their promotion season left straight after promotion.

How do you build a team on that? Of course you have to spend big to replace that if you actually want to stay up.

By way of comparison 8 of the players on the pitch when Brentford beat Man City very recently were key players to our promotion season, when we thrashed and embarrassed Man Utd 4-0 we had 12 players on the pitch from our Championship days.

In terms of building success as a promoted side in the Prem we are at positive end of the spectrum and Villa’s recruitment in the Championship was at the very negative end. And Smith had to take over that shitshow and make it a Premier League side, survival and consolidation.

Not saying he didn’t deserve to be sacked in the end, what I would say though is that we’ve seen Spurs struggle to replace Bale and suffered the form that goes with that, we saw Liverpool struggle to replace Suarez and Liverpool suffered the form that goes with that. I think Smith and Villa have suffered the same fate with Grealish going and in the end Smith has had to go due to the outlay in replacements.

Overall it’s very clear to me Smith done a good job at Villa, always done a good job at Brentford and Walsall and well Norwich are a law onto their own. It’s very easy to dominate the Championship with Emi Buendia in your team, but we’ve seen with two Norwich managers how their board are happy to make it hard for them to succeed, selling Buendia made Farke’s job a so much harder and we’ve seen fairly limited investment into the team this season.

Is Smith going to be a top ten manager? Probably not no. But of he goes to a club that will consistently back him financially and allow him to build a team that will stay together for a number of years then there’s no reason why we won’t see him in the Prem in the next few years again.

[Reluctant Striker]

1 hour ago, Danny said:

Villa’s recruitment prior to Smith had been a shitshow. The season they went up they had 23 players make 11 appearances or more, 12 of them left the club immediately after going up due to end of contract, end of loan or retirement, a couple just not good enough to go up. Of the 23 altogether, only 3 became key players for Villa; Grealish, McGinn and Mings (who they had to sign permanently as he was also on loan). That’s 20 key players to Villa’s promotion who were either nowhere near good to play in the Prem or were too good on loan that they couldn’t go back to Villa. 5 of their top 11 most appeared players throughout their promotion season left straight after promotion.

How do you build a team on that? Of course you have to spend big to replace that if you actually want to stay up.

By way of comparison 8 of the players on the pitch when Brentford beat Man City very recently were key players to our promotion season, when we thrashed and embarrassed Man Utd 4-0 we had 12 players on the pitch from our Championship days.

In terms of building success as a promoted side in the Prem we are at positive end of the spectrum and Villa’s recruitment in the Championship was at the very negative end. And Smith had to take over that shitshow and make it a Premier League side, survival and consolidation.

Not saying he didn’t deserve to be sacked in the end, what I would say though is that we’ve seen Spurs struggle to replace Bale and suffered the form that goes with that, we saw Liverpool struggle to replace Suarez and Liverpool suffered the form that goes with that. I think Smith and Villa have suffered the same fate with Grealish going and in the end Smith has had to go due to the outlay in replacements.

Overall it’s very clear to me Smith done a good job at Villa, always done a good job at Brentford and Walsall and well Norwich are a law onto their own. It’s very easy to dominate the Championship with Emi Buendia in your team, but we’ve seen with two Norwich managers how their board are happy to make it hard for them to succeed, selling Buendia made Farke’s job a so much harder and we’ve seen fairly limited investment into the team this season.

Is Smith going to be a top ten manager? Probably not no. But of he goes to a club that will consistently back him financially and allow him to build a team that will stay together for a number of years then there’s no reason why we won’t see him in the Prem in the next few years again.

Villa's Championship recruitment was odd at times. Scott Hogan & Ross McCormack are names that spring to mind where big money was splashed with no pay back. At all.

Twighlight Terry, 2nd chance Mings, youngster Abraham & veteran Jedinak were favoured at different times, over trying to build people from scratch. And maybe they made more sense in & around Villa. Still trying to go more with names people already knew.

The only real find & develop signing was the £2.7m for John McGinn, who was actually an end of Steve Bruce era signing. At some stage there would have had to be far more of that type signing, the longer it went on.

And if you look at the 2018 play off final line up to the 2019 play off final side, I'm not sure there's a huge quality adjustment Dean Smith created. I think it was more his motivation that helped propel them back into play off contention. Going 10 undefeated at the end to make it in his first season.

For me, I still feel Dean Smith did what Di Matteo or Steve Bruce had every chance to have been doing. And Dean Smith would probably have got them back up automatically if he'd started a fresh season.

[Dan+]

7 hours ago, Danny said:

Stabalised us as a mid-table Championship club on a bottom 3 budget and got an absolute shitshow in Villa promoted and then kept up.

I mean you'll know the context better than I will but I'm looking more at your squad rather than your budget and you didn't have a squad at any point that should've gone down. I think the one thing that put me off Frank to us was that people haven't tended to do well post Brentford.

Again, with Villa, I think par - maybe harsh given where they were but 15th in the league after 12 games, I don't think taking that squad, Grealish fuelled to the playoffs is that remarkable. Did the job but he's clearly pretty limited.

[Danny]

19 minutes ago, Reluctant Striker said:

Villa's Championship recruitment was odd at times. Scott Hogan & Ross McCormack are names that spring to mind where big money was splashed with no pay back. At all.

Twighlight Terry, 2nd chance Mings, youngster Abraham & veteran Jedinak were favoured at different times, over trying to build people from scratch. And maybe they made more sense in & around Villa. Still trying to go more with names people already knew.

The only real find & develop signing was the £2.7m for John McGinn, who was actually an end of Steve Bruce era signing. At some stage there would have had to be far more of that type signing, the longer it went on.

And if you look at the 2018 play off final line up to the 2019 play off final side, I'm not sure there's a huge quality adjustment Dean Smith created. I think it was more his motivation that helped propel them back into play off contention. Going 10 undefeated at the end to make it in his first season.

For me, I still feel Dean Smith did what Di Matteo or Steve Bruce had every chance to have been doing. And Dean Smith would probably have got them back up automatically if he'd started a fresh season.

You were never set up for continued success and I think without him you could well have ended up relegated. He built a real core of your team that kept you comfortably afloat since.

19 minutes ago, Dan said:

I mean you'll know the context better than I will but I'm looking more at your squad rather than your budget and you didn't have a squad at any point that should've gone down. I think the one thing that put me off Frank to us was that people haven't tended to do well post Brentford.

Again, with Villa, I think par - maybe harsh given where they were but 15th in the league after 12 games, I don't think taking that squad, Grealish fuelled to the playoffs is that remarkable. Did the job but he's clearly pretty limited.

We recruited well with Smith which helped us massively but he was also instrumental in the transfers we made, he was unfortunate in that we never spent big with him at the club.

I would say Frank is a better manager than Smith and would back him to manage any side like yourselves who are in and around the European places, but there is always that issue of struggling after leaving us. But then I don’t think Smith did struggle and if you look at where he left us vs where he took Villa then that is a success.

I think the key to Smith being a success is him being given time to work the team out, over the long-term you will punch above your weight or achieve what is being set out.

[Dave]

I like Dean Smith as a Manager. I thought he did well at progressing Walsall, Brentford and Aston Villa. However when the "Oh Dean Smith, Your Football is Shit" started last week I expected the Norwich board to react.

Whilst I think the recruitment has been sub par I'd also say he should have been doing slightly better with the players at his disposal. I imagine a new manager will play two up top with Sara in a more advanced role and we will see  a change in fortunes.

[Honey Honey]

Steve Bruce has been contacted apparently 

[Dave]

I cant see it. If they thought Dean Smith's football was shit then replacing him with the person he replaced as Villa isn't the answer.

[Bluebird Hewitt]

Would be a huge step backwards if that happened. You only have to look at how Bruce did at West Brom to see that.

[Lucas]

If Norwich wanted to be proper cunty they could do worse than have the cheek to make a request for Kieron McKenna at Ipswich.

It would go down like a lead balloon but he's done a solid job to date.

[Stan]

David Wagner could be in line to replace Smith...

 

 

[Dave]

On 01/01/2023 at 12:42, Stan said:

David Wagner could be in line to replace Smith...

 

 

Sounds imminent. 

I imagine someone on the board who didn't want Bruce leaked that name to the press when his name was floated about in a meeting because they knew the fan backlash would make him a non starter.

[Danny]

Norwich job is a poisoned chalice. Where is the development, the opportunity to show you can compete in the Premier League? They are happy yoyoing whilst being financially stable, which fair enough don’t get caught in debt, but its not great for a managers future.

[Dave]

2 hours ago, Danny said:

Norwich job is a poisoned chalice. Where is the development, the opportunity to show you can compete in the Premier League? They are happy yoyoing whilst being financially stable, which fair enough don’t get caught in debt, but its not great for a managers future.

Kieran Maguire was saying on his podcast a while back that they surprisingly went for it last season with a higher wage bill than most of the teams in the bottom half. People just didn't recognise because the players they bought in were largely awful.

[CaaC (John)+]

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David Wagner: Norwich City name former Huddersfield boss as new head coach

Norwich City have appointed former Huddersfield Town boss David Wagner as their new head coach on a 12-month rolling contract.

The 51-year-old succeeds Dean Smith, who was sacked the day after his side's defeat at Luton Town on 26 December.

Wagner guided the Terriers to Premier League promotion in 2017 and kept them in the top flight for a season before leaving by mutual consent in 2019.

"This is a very special and proud moment," he told the club website.

FULL REPORT

 

[Lucas]

It's quite sensible of them really because he knows the league well and when all's said and done, he did a very good job at Huddersfield. Keeping them up for a seaon in the PL was incredible.

He's kind of tailed off since at Schalke and Young Boys but you'd think he would bring in some unknown quantities in Europe that could set the Championship a light and having a good relationship with Klopp, may even be able to twist Liverpool's arm for a couple.

And at least he will adopt a clear philosophy there, they will go a bit more fast paced, high intensity so watch out for them to start climbing the table again after a few weeks adjusting.