Warning: very wordy debut post, you're probably not interested.

A few specific points have been getting on my nerves recently, firstly Hughton supporters suggesting that we are doing as well as Lambert did, this is clearly bulls**t. Under Lambert, home or away, we always posed some attacking threat, admittedly with one or two exceptions but it was a shock when we put in a toothless performance rather than just an expected norm. The difference between the two approaches is well represented by their respective trips to Anfield. Under Lambert we rode our luck for the sake of maintaining an attacking presence and got the reward, in both trips under Hughton when we went behind we were still primarily concerned with keeping tight, we surrendered all initiative to Liverpool and inevitably got battered. This also applies to Spurs and Arsenal away. Secondly, i've seen one or two people putting forward low player confidence as an excuse for Hughton. Well let's just think about how he can address that, clearly it's not going to be through his comments to the press, so other ways that normally lift confidence would be, beating a top 6 club, this obviously isn't going to happen any time soon, putting together a run of wins, we've won back to back league games twice under Hughton so this is also unlikely, battering a lower team, he had the perfect chance to do this against a really poor Palace side but instead chose to send the team out in the second half with little attacking intent and hold an unconvincing 1-0 lead. So if there is no confidence the blame for that is Hughton's alone. One more excuse seems to be that his staff are not good enough, well he picks them so if this is the case then it's surely just poor judgement on his part and another minus point against him.

As you may have guessed, I am a Hughton outer, so one or two more quick points to support this view. We have no sort of stylistic identity, we're certainly not a counter attacking side, we are ponderous and slow in the extreme, he appears to be trying to encourage a possession based game which is entirely undermined by the importance he places on shape. Keeping the ball in the middle third is entirely pointless if you run out of ideas as soon as you get anywhere near the opposition area. One of the most worrying aspects of this is that Hughton is clearly pleased with how we played against Chelsea, Arsenal and Newcastle, there was 10 minutes in all of those games where it looked possible we would get anything other than a beating, and has managed to convince some fans that these were good performances. Also, people seem to forget that a football season is not a means to an end. I don't go to football so I can sit back at the end of the season and feel overwhelmed with joy because we've finished 11th, I go to enjoy the games, this is not happening. I used to go to the majority of away games, I no longer go to any. He engenders negativity on every level and it has to change, we will never get consistent results or entertainment from him. As for the 'well who would we get in' view, that is a total non argument but how about Solskjaer, Tuchel, Bielsa, or failing any of those I think Uwe Rosler has the potential to be an excellent manager, and Phelan could be worth a go.

Posted By: LeicesterYellow on December 5th 2013 at 18:04:41

Message Thread

Reply to Message

In order to add a post to the WotB Message Board you must be a registered WotB user.

If you are not yet registered then please visit the registration page. You should ensure that their browser is setup to accept cookies.

Log in