Credit to Dean Smith for getting Plymouth to go into administration in his first season in charge 
One thing Smith is given huge credit for is creating a philosophy or DNA they called it, running through all teams.
But this isn’t a Smith creation, it is an FA creation. When Smith did his coaching badges he and his cohort were taught to do this.
I have coaching links with Oxford United through coaching kids teams and they do exactly the same thing. We are given a booklet covering everything. For example, the warm up, every team, even down to the under 9 teams warm up in exactly the same way as the 1st team.
So I suppose you could say thanks to Smith for implementing an FA philosophy.
Hmmm, but there’s a large margin for error in actually implementing said FA philosophy. I’d give more than the Lion’s share to Smith for that.
Akin to saying to Hamilton - drive as fast as you can and stay on the road, then claiming it’s the ‘philosophy’ wot won it. Not really.
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So? You still have to implement the style?
Whitney did his badges pretty recently. That was a very different style of play. If it was easy as that everybody would be producing that style of football, whether you want to credit the idea to an FA Manual or not.
We played Oxford not that long ago. Didn’t look like that style of play to me…
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I do think Smith did a great job for us. He also had a share of luck, but I don’t begrudge him that.
If I was going to criticise him I would say he wasn’t flexible enough in his approach. There were times when we were playing ■■■■■ teams that were there for the taking, but we didn’t even look like we were trying to win and ended up just taking a point. We looked more like we were playing a training game where everyone in your team has to have a touch before you can score.
But If he had stayed with us I am certain we would have been promoted.
It’s not the style of play that the FA suggest, you can play tippy tappy or route one, but they do suggest implementing the same style from top to bottom in the club. Smith is given credit for that at Walsall, I’m just letting you know it happens at other clubs and the idea wasn’t his.
Oxford are not having a great season, but it is more down to personnel than style of play. They have an even bigger financial burden than we do.
I don’t think any body is claiming he created that style of coaching. Barcelona have been doing it with La Masia for Decades. If anything it’s common sense to teach your youth teams an identity that matches the first team.
But implementing that is a completely different story. That’s why he deserves credit for it.
The personnel? But you just said all clubs produce players that way? Surely they should be too if it’s that easy?
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I’ll type slowly for you…getting all of your teams to play the same way is not the same as choosing a style of play…getting all of your teams to play the same way has nothing to do with player recruitment or retention…tricky to grasp simple concepts sometimes?
Are you that condescending to the kids you teach when they point out the holes in your points?
P.S. it doesn’t matter how slowly you sit and type, I’ll still read it at the same pace. That’s kind of the point of a message board.
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I think Smith deserves more credit for implementing that style throughout than he’s being given credit for. Given the fact that in his first two seasons we were in a relegation battle it would have been so easy for him to concentrate all of his efforts into the first team. At the other end of the spectrum in, in his final year when we were pushing for promotion, again he could have taken his eye off the ball and put all of his eggs in the first team basket and left the playing style for the youth team/reserve team managers to their own discretion. The fact that he didn’t do that speaks volumes.
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Especially implementing it from scratch at every age level of a club with comparatively scarce resources.
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All going to plan Witton Way…lol.
Think I’ve mentioned it before what’s he ever won! Answer nothing! Haven’t checked his stats as a manager but I’ll guess it’s something along the lines of He has won as many games as he has lost as he has drawn!! Indicating a very average run of the mill guy! Oh and he was a very average ch in his playing days, seems average runs through his DNA.
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Dean Smith inherited not only a decent squad but arguably Walsall’s most successful group of young players to come through the academy. Many of his work in the transfer market was crap. It didn’t go unnoticed how much worse we were when O’Kelly wasn’t about.
Smith’s positive traits were that his team always played for him, without question. We were more professional under him and he had a way he wanted his teams to play from top to bottom.
However, that way was never my cup of tea. It was pretty at times. But he played narrow, he doesn’t like traditional wide men or forwards for that matter (which get’s me off my seat), often playing one man up front without much help or even adapting that ‘false 9’ tactic which effectively means you play with no forwards (we are not Liverpool). He wasn’t an advocate of crossing a ball into the box. He played out from defence, which is fine, but it was slow and ineffective, particularly at home. We went backwards, sideways, backwards sideways, 10 yards forwards, then backwards again. His tactics suited us far more away from home. At home we were ineffective and very easy to beat. A real soft underbelly. It’s a shame we then employed a pillock after Smith, which kind of made Smith look a lot better than he was. Whitney is probably the 3rd worst manager we’ve ever had behind Merson and Hutchings.
It would be interesting to see how Smith get’s on with the Vile, given, if he is to succeed with his way of playing, he needs better players to be more incisive in the final 3rd of the pitch.
Talking of Managers, I can’t understand why Bonser is so hit and miss when it comes to hiring a manager, or Walsall in general for that matter, even before Bonser, we went from Buckley and Coakley, to Barnwell and Hibbitt in 5 short years. Bizarre. We later went from Sorenson to Graydon, chalk and cheese.
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Agree with style total crab football
Yeah he should be winning bags of titles with Walsall and Brentford. We were always winning stuff before he came along…
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We had Bradshaw and Grigg during that time, both out and out strikers. Id take both over any of the forwards we’ve had since.
By what measure?! We were dreadful when he took over.
Dean Smith inherited not only a decent squad
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Click here to see decent squad
In the measure that under Hutchings they were under performing and in bottom place in the league.
That was a good set of players. The same lads had finished 10th the previous season.