The Villa Match Zone

“We were never going to come here and outplay Brentford” – I Think Smith Nails The Problem With Our Overpaid Prima Donnas

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Aston Villa head coach Dean Smith returned to a familiar ground earlier this evening as we faced off against Brentford at Griffin Park.

Returning to his former haunt, Smith was looking to rectify our more recent record against the Bees and pick up all three points to get us back to winning ways as we continue with our promotion hopes, and fans wanted to see some momentum in our play given how we ended the crazy tie against Sheffield United last Friday.

We sadly, probably got what most expected. Losing 1-0 to a stoppage-time Neal Maupay goal after such another woeful performance from the side will leave Smith and Pitarch praying for the summer where we can finally offload our freeloaders as they aren’t doing the job asked of them.

How do I know that, Smith’s style of play has been evident from his Walsall days and it followed through at Brentford and we even saw it for a few weeks with us. The dressing room presumably have got tired of working for a living again.

They need to look at themselves as on paper they are better than they’ve shown for the last few months, despite our imbalanced defence and the loss of Jack Grealish.

If it wasn’t for Financial Fair Play, I wonder how many ‘seniors’ Smith would’ve loved to hand a P45 to in January, as let’s face it, without a massive change in their attitude they won’t find new employers.

Their future is certainly not with us.

Fans need to accept Smith’s words in public will be different from private, and given the turn in performances, I can only imagine ‘some’ players have already taken issue with his instructions that they actually work now.

Speaking to the BBC following the fulltime whistle, Smith said of the pathetic showing.

“It’s very frustrating. We were never going to come here and outplay Brentford – I’ve not seen a team do that here for four years. They’re very good on their own patch, but we stayed organised and made it difficult for them to get big chances. The frustrating part for me is that the best chances fell to us and we didn’t take them.”

Maybe it would be more honest to throw them under the bus, but the keywords in that short statement above for me are ‘we were never going to come here and outplay Brentford’.

The squad won’t/can’t do it. But he has to give some praise to those players making an effort.

Smith’s problem is, who do we replace the jokers with? The current feeling in the fanbase is NOT the time to introduce youngsters because some think JG is crap, others think Tammy offers nothing but the occasional goal.

We could have the next Pele, Pirlo, Messi and Ronaldo on our books but after 90 minutes they’d be set for a future stacking shelves for some.

In Smith we must trust…

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