Aston Villa journalist James Rushton has made a claim about Villa manager Dean Smith.
This comes after Rushton recently made an appearance on the Birmingham Mail’s Claret & Blue YouTube channel to reflect on Villa’s 2-1 defeat against Chelsea at the weekend.
After Smith told Sky Sports in his post-match interview that he was happy with what he saw from his players during the defeat, Rushton was asked about this summary from Smith.
He said: “I’m not here pitching for Dean Smith, I’m not totally on his side and I’m not trying to bring all the positives out of this just to keep him in a job or whatever. But listening to hours and hours of him speaking in podcasts about leadership and going back to press conferences at Walsall and Brentford, this guy really does understand when to lay the boot in and when not to lay the boot in.
“I don’t know what kind of tangible effect that may have on results, but he knows when to toe the line. His comments after the [Chelsea] match, I can tell you now, almost for a fact that he doesn’t really mean that he’s proud.
“He’s probably not going to go into the dressing room and start firing rockets off. He’s not the type of person to publicly call out players like other managers, but he’s always willing to fall on his sword for players, he’ll just take the criticism.”
Smith took over at the Birmingham club back in October 2018 and guided his team to win the Championship play-off final at Wembley against Derby County.
In his first season with Villa in the Premier League, they have struggled throughout and currently find themselves in a relegation battle.
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TIF Thoughts…
With Smith saying he was proud of his team’s display in their defeat against Chelsea to the media, that doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t be criticising them in the dressing room away from the media should he feel the need to.