Dean Smith can’t wait to drill home his Aston Villa vision
Dean Smith is looking forward to a full week drilling his vision into his Villa players after admitting his coaching time has been severely limited by the international break and then a glut of fixtures.
The new boss took over a fortnight ago and has overseen a win against Swansea followed by defeat at Norwich in midweek.
And he has had just two training sessions before travelling to Loftus Road for tonight’s clash with in-form Queens Park Rangers.
Smith has already employed a different style of play with higher intensity, but he acknowledged he needs time on the training ground to get his ideas across fully.
“Ideally we would have liked more time but that’s the nature of the Championship,” said the former Brentford and Saddlers boss.
“I joined here and had a week’s training, and for three days it was with only 12 players. Then another eight come back from international duty.
“So the lads have come back and been involved in the games certainly haven’t had an awful lot of coaching.
“Theirs has been more of a recovery session because playing Saturday-Tuesday-Friday is a very quick turnaround.
“We can have more of a detailed week next week.
“Playing on the Friday, we can recharge the batteries over the weekend but it will only be nice doing that if we can put in a performance against QPR.”
Smith will have John McGinn back from suspension tonight, but will be without winger Albert Adomah, who suffered a knee knock at Carrow Road. Tammy Abraham is available after suffering a blow to the head on Tuesday.
