Has Smith made us better?

Tough one this. A foo thoughts.

I remember seeing someone posting some stats a couple of months back. xg for and against, points per game, that sort of thing. And at that time, Smith had unambiguously made us a bit better (by which I mean, more productive) than we were under Farke. This even included the horrible December-ish period, where we were covid/injury decimated and played terribly. It also included those results in Jan, when for just a few weeks we dared to dream.

So all of that is, I think, a few chips in the "yes he has" side of the scales.

On the downside of course, we are now well and truly off the rails. Every performance is a new experiment in how low we can sink, how little effort was can put in, how little pattern we can show. However, we are now once again riddled with injury, so there is that. And also, we are well and truly into the fag end of a relegation season, when all team cohesion goes, when nobody is working for anyone, when players will already be looking ahead to the summer and transfers etc. Yes it would be lovely to see green shoots of recovery, but realistically, you'd need Churchill raised to the power of Jesus levels of motivational skill to get a tune out of the this low quality, confidence stripped and already checked out squad.

We also need to remember quite how bad we were under Daniel towards the end. Jesus that performance against Leeds. And that was with pretty much everyone available (I think?) and before the real despair kicked in.

Personally, I think it's a question of what you choose to believe at this stage about whether Smith is "the one". But my feeling, echoing a point that Bailey has raised, is that currently there is a risk we go into a HUGE summer (where we simply must repair as much of the damage of last year as possible) without a sporting director and without a manager. How on earth is the coming going to be a success if that is where we find ourselves? Feels to me like we just need to hope like hell Smith knows what he's doing.

Posted By: Under soil heating, May 9, 13:19:04