Fired Leicester City boss Dean Smith has been heavily linked with Sheffield Wednesday, but talkSPORT pundit Simon Jordan has reservations about the 52-year-old.
There’s been a lot of back and forth regarding Smith to Sheffield Wednesday. It’s been claimed that the Owls have been in talks with Smith over him replacing Darren Moore, then it was claimed that no contact has been made. And earlier this week, it was said that Wednesday have made Smith their first choice manager.
Smith seems like a favourable appointment among fans – the former Walsall, Brentford, Aston Villa, Norwich City, and Leicester City boss has earned promotion from the Championship before, doing so with Villa in 2019. But the former Wednesday player has since endured tough spells with Norwich City and then with Leicester, where he oversaw relegation from the Premier League last month.
The Foxes appointed Smith on a short-term basis. And following relegation, Smith was in talks with the club over potentially leading them into the 2023/24 Champisonhip campaign before Enzo Maresca eventually landed the job. During that time though, talkSPORT pundit Jordan fired a warning to Leicester City regarding Smith.
He’s quoted by Leicestershire Live as saying:
“I’ve got no particular issue with Dean Smith. I think he did a great job at Brentford, and he got Villa promoted and then kept them up. But we have to deal with the here and now.
“He was put into Norwich and got them relegated. He was removed from Norwich because he wasn’t pulling up any trees in the Championship. If that’s your blueprint, then by all means keep him at Leicester.
“You’ve got to look at the present. He had ample time to deal with the decline at Leicester City. With that in mind, he’s done nothing, nothing to suggest he should keep the job besides the fact his name is Dean Smith, and he’s managed a few teams. He’s got shedloads (experience) of getting teams relegated and leaving them in the middle of the Championship.
“I’m erring towards the fact that I don’t see the case for it besides the fact he’s been decent in the past. In the recent past, he’s not been great. There might be a whole raft of reasons behind that, but they might be the same reasons he’s going to have at Leicester City for being unsuccessful there, because he’s got a task on his hands there.
“Have you seen anything from Dean Smith in that period of time at Leicester that tells us that he’s worthy? Did we see anything at Norwich City? Have we seen anything that says we must give him the job at Leicester?
“They went to Fulham when it counted, and they went 3-0 down. There was no real new manager bounce. Leicester City had good enough players to have got out of that situation. What was his most recent form in the Championship with a newly-relegated side? Norwich. What did he do? He got the sack.”
Should Wednesday still pursue Smith?
If Smith is good at leaving teams in the middle of the Championship then that would arguably be good for Wednesday, as going into next season they’ll simply want to avoid an immediate relegation into League One.
But Jordan is pointing to the fact that he left teams with big budgets and big expectations lingering in the mid-table – not teams like Wednesday who’ve just come up from the division and will likely be expected to struggle next season.
What’s more is that Chansiri says he wants a top six finish next season, so a move for Smith doesn’t seem to make sense.
It’s easy to get carried away in a manager with a long CV and with experience of managing at the highest level. But whether Smith is the right man to guide Wednesday through this tricky summer and through a tricky 2023/24 season remains to be seen.
Chansiri should carefully consider all of his options before naming his next boss.