I agree, but if, for the sake of argument, he just about keeps us up and we win the Cup, the board will find it very hard not to give him a new contract.
If he keeps us up and wins the Cup, I’ll be taking a close look at the Queen and her honours list, statue builders in the South and what the Pope does about creating new Saints
Do the board want the fans to be happy....of course they do, especially as it means the team are doing well. Do they sack a manager (expensive action) and hire a new manager (expensive again) to keep the fans happy and off their back....no, they don't. They do it because they see it is necessary....perhaps too late, but that is another story. As for Hughes....succeed (either in keeping us up or vastly improving our play) and he will be offered a new contract. The short contract is to cover both parties....if it works out, I'm sure he will be here next season.
I’m sure you’re right, and if it’s true about the 7 figure survival bonus it will have been a good few weeks work for Hughes. Let’s just hope he doesn’t try the Koeman approach when it comes to negotiating the new contract though!
Speaking of Soccernomics, Mark Hughes gets a mention. It's about how the new manager bounce isn't real. Good news, it does say we'll regress to the mean anyway. Bad news, Hughes is going to get all the credit, and a new contract.
Højbjerg is a very intelligent young man and much brighter even than JWP. I think he will be a great manager one day.
Just because a new manager doesn't necessarily produce an improvement in results doesn't mean a new manager can't produce an improvement. However, I do agree that an underperforming side like Saints is more capable of improving under a new manager, so achieving what we are capable of (or regressing to mean) makes us a nice career move for any manager. The big draw back is of course that there are so few games left to save us. What I want is to see us play less depressing football.
WHU is a key game. There seems to be turmoil on and off the pitch there. Win there and we've every chance of staying up, lose and we could well be scuppered. We might well go down, but if we go down with enough fighting spirit then Hughes can be forgiven for being brought in too late. My major concern if we go down is that other clubs will treat us as an all-you-can-eat-buffet, and, unless we can encourage a lot of bidding wars, we'll lose a good squad on the cheap that, with the right manager at the start of the season, could have come 9th-12th in the Premiership. If we go down, which players will stay and which do you think we'll lose?
I like your optimism, personally I think we have left it too late and probably will go down. A positive result (well a win really) against West Ham could change all that though.
