A few thoughts on today

In fairness, they scored two goals which were defensively awful for us in a five minute spell and we had by far the better of the game overall. We also looked a decent side for quite long spells of the game. I therefore dont think today's result is all down to Hughton. I also can't think of any players out there who really played badly or did not put 100% effort in. We were unlucky and Cardiff pinched a win they did not deserve.

Not do I think that win makes Solskaer some kind of managerial genius because of the change he made. We still battered them for long enough to have got something and I suspect they will finish bottom of the league looking at how they played and defended.

Nonetheless his making of a proactive change that did, for that crucial middle period, spark his team into life once again contrasts with our own manager who waited til the 75th minute to make his changes. Once again too late by quite some margin.

I also think that our complete and utter dominance once Fer came on and added threat through Redmond just showed why, notwithstanding the fact we played quite well in the first half, the starting line up was wrong. Even though I think we were all quite pleasantly surprised at how well the starting 11 played for much of that first half. The fact remains it was an 11 sent to contain as much as attack and once we pinched a good goal, we did not have the necessary tools on the pitch to drive home our early dominance. So as much as we were the better side in that first half, the game was not put to bed as it could have been and they were a able to build up a bit of pressure ahead of half time once Zaha was introduced. In hindsight, as well as that starting 11 did for the first 45, the suspicion remains that given more than 15 minutes to do it our best, more attacking 11 may have exploited their shocking defence more than once

The goals were just awful play and in some ways you can't legislate for errors/scrappy goals like that but again one of the downsides of the Hughton approach is that we never have any breathing space in a game (or indeed a season) so when mistakes do occur (or we lose games like today) it can often be critical.

But more than anything (and this will obviously be no shock to those that know my stance on Hughton) I agree with other posters below that we just need a change to give us some sort of boost going into the 8 or 9 games after Man City that will define our season now. If Hoot stays I can see us picking up maybe a couple of wins at home against the likes of Stoke and WBA, maybe a couple of points away as well but I just can't see us getting enough points out of them if we maintain the status quo. We need a bounce, even if its only temporary, to get us a couple of unexpected wins and more importantly get the crowd, team and club officials all back believing in one another. With how things are going at present I don't really see what we have to lose.

Posted By: Jim on February 1st 2014 at 20:01:13

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