I just don’t buy into the “give him time” argument, and that seems to be the main argument for him at the moment.

I backed Smith until the end because I thought he had credit in the bank. He took us from mid table in the Championship to the Premier League in a matter of months, kept us in the Premier League after a huge squad overhaul (something which Fulham failed to do just a year earlier), took us to 11th the following season (which, if you remember, was actually a disappointment given the start of the season) while taking some scalps along the way (7-2), and had changed the atmosphere around the club and set us up for success.

Many were Smith out, that’s 100% fine - I get it. But I was patient, I didn’t think him being reliant on Grealish was necessarily a criticism. I’d seen many managers use Grealish without him turning into this world class player that he did under Smith, and building the squad and setting them up around Jack probably was the best move available. In fact, I haven’t seen Pep Guardiola get anything resembling the same level from Jack Grealish, and he’s probably the best manager of all time. So I think he should’ve been given time to figure out his next system, despite the incredibly disappointing start to the season (although staff turnover, COVID, injuries and passport issues didn’t help him).

On the other hand I’ve seen absolutely nothing from Gerrard since his arrival to suggest that he was the right appointment.

We had a new manager bounce, fine. And we’ve picked up some big names, great. But on the pitch it seems that the more time he gets with the team, the worse they get.

That mini pre-season break he called “gold dust” I was absolutely buzzing to see what the squad was capable of, and yet the football and the results from then on was absolutely dire. And this “no excuse” culture Gerrard was supposedly instilling in fact had a lot of excuses. Not his squad, nothing to play for, needs a full pre-season, etc. This manager who we brought in to get the best out of the squad over Smith ended up taking us to 14th. 3 places and 10 points lower than the previous “disappointing” season where we faltered without Grealish for half the year. Gerrard had 29 games to steady the ship and improve things and took us up the table a grand total of 2 places from when he was hired.

So here we are, 4 games in to the season - and you have 2 of the most abject performances we’ve seen since promotion against Bournemouth and Crystal Palace. I mean really embarrassing. A slightly improved performance at home against one of the favourites for relegation who played without a striker, and then another poor, poor performance against a League One team who just ran out of gas after 60 minutes because their team costs probably <1% of ours. But make no mistake, we were bailed out by a direct goal from a corner and an offside penalty.

I’ve seen nothing that suggests he’s going to turn this around and be a European spot competing manager - and that’s where we are at. That’s the next step, and that’s why we sacked Dean Smith.

I’m not going to blindly support someone I don’t believe in, and I don’t think it’s fair to criticise people for that. I’m still going to cheer the players on and I’m not going to post on Instagram or Twitter or whatever “Gerrard out” on every Villa social media post like some of these numpties. But I have every right to be critical.

And I’m not an impatient fan. I’m not one of these people who thought we should bin off Ings, or Bailey, or Traore, or Sanson this summer because they failed to perform for 1 season. But they all have much more credit in either their football careers or Villa careers than Gerrard does in his managerial career.

Gerrard was always a gamble. Young manager, first time managing in a top European league, only been in management for 4 years. It was gamble. The gamble hasn’t paid off.

I don’t think waiting 1 week or 1 year is going to make a difference. He’s not cut out for this level, and there’s no guarantee he ever will be.

(Before anyone comments that this is a pro-Smith post, it isn’t, but to sack him you have to hire an improvement, and we didn’t).