Hard to know where to start...

"A major problem is that Hughton's constant 'bigging up' of other teams seems to be making everybody believe how good they are" - bollocks. How is it, exactly? And all these teams are 'dreadful'. Are they? Sunderland have beaten Man City and won at Everton. Palace won at Villa and only lost 1-0 at Man City (better than Man U, Arsenal or Spurs). Maybe they aren't that dreadful. But that wouldn't fit your argument, which has it that we should be easily beating these teams and because of some imaginary manager's approach.

"yet still we strive only to survive" - how do you know what we strive for? Where's your evidence? You seem to assume that because we are not doing better we are not trying to do better, but football doesn't work like that. Other teams are always trying to stop you - everyone would like to be better than they are and are doing all they can to do so. Doesn't make it happen.

"We are being crippled by our manager's caution and exaggerated respect for opponents" - are we? Where's your evidence? Surely we are more likely being crippled more by continual injuries to key players that prevent any continutity or fluency (have we been able to put our strongest 11 on the field once this season?). Despite a long post you don't mention this once.

Hull "play without fear" - do they? On what evidence? That they have better results? They seem to have goine to the top clubs with the sole intention of keeping the score down, never switching to a more positive formation even when losing. They've had a go against the big teams at home but so have we (Chelsea, Man U) so that proves nothing. Name one way in which they are more positive than us?

As for the Man U game, maybe we already had the best team we had on the pitch (the one that had been dominating the first half) and changing it would only have made things worse. The only way Wellbeck changed the game was scoring a flukey goal, which then enabled them to play more defensively and shut up the game. That was the main problem, not our formation. They were happy and accomplished at stifling the game (they are the reigning champions) and sometimes there isn't anything you can do that will make things better. Plus, the only obvious choice to take off for Elmander and change the formation was Wes, and since he was playing well Hughton would have been slaughtered (very probably by you) for taking him off earlier.

Posted By: mr carra, Jan 3, 12:57:21