DEAN’S GREAL BLOW
Jack’s sale led to slump
DEAN SMITH’S sad departure from his boyhood club can be traced back to Jack Grealish’s summer departure.
He was called into the club’s Bodymoor Heath training complex yesterday lunchtime and told face-to-face by chief executive Christian Purslow his three-year reign had ended.
Poor results did for him in the end but Grealish’s £100million departure to Manchester City was always going to leave a massive hole – how it was filled was the big conundrum.
There can be no blame attached to Grealish or Smith for the way that transfer came about or was conducted.
Grealish going was inevitable and, in fairness, Villa’s owners moved quickly to let Smith spend most of the cash.
And from that point, a toxic mixture of bad luck with injuries and bad results conspired to place huge question marks over his position.
In came Emiliano Buendia from Norwich (£33m), Leon Bailey from Bayer Leverkusen (£30m) and Danny Ings from Southampton (£25m). They are all transfers that may yet come off – the trouble is they have not so far and, with five consecutive defeats setting off the alarm bells, the owners decided to act.
Club-record signing Buendia has been hampered by injuries but his performances in a Villa shirt have hardly been inspiring.
Bailey only managed his first start in the 4-1 defeat by West Ham last Sunday after an injury-delayed start but is yet to show why there was such a fuss over him.
There was not a person in the country who doubted that Ings was going to be good for hitting around 20 goals but, again, injury has not helped and he has managed only three goals in
nine appearances. When Smith needed his key men to come up trumps for him, they came up well short. His signing of keeper
Emi Martinez from Arsenal for £20m has proved to be an inspired one, but too many of the others are still asking for the time that Smith ran out of.
The fact that he is Villa through and through meant the owners gave him as much of it as they felt they could before deciding to act.
Only six weeks ago everything seemed rosy as Villa won 1-0 at Manchester United. But they have hit a wall, with Friday night’s tepid 1-0 defeat at Southampton proving to be the end for Smith.