Trouble is Ides is that you are judging Hughes on his history and not his current job, he has to be given a bit of time. I wasn't for his appointment but he has improved our play, if not our defending yet.
I dont know if hughes is that much to blame. We STILL have no leaders on the pitch. Not addressed in the summer yet again. It is therefore no surprise whatsoever that we roll over against the top sides. We dont compete and nobody on the pitch is sorting us out.
Where does Gabby do his training? Even when fit, he seems to be low down on the radar whereas Long is first choice. Not going to be a lot of goals with him in the attack.
Of course we had a choice. He wasn’t even on a contract. Not that I am blaming it all on Hughes, but we should have started from the top and let Reed’s replacement pick the manager. We needed a fresh start, but the club wanted to sell the narrative that everything was fine but for an oops mistake of hiring Pellegrini.
Disagree. The players seemed to actually respect Hughes, versus the discontent with Pellegrino and Puel. If we let Hughes go, his replacement would have been under immense scrutiny in the dressing room from day one. And yes, we need a serious remodeling behind the scenes, as well.
Indeed. I don't particularly rate Hughes per se, but I certainly rate him more than Puel or MP. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who is in the dugout whilst the board continue to fail to adequately invest in the squad. Based on what Hughes has available to him, I'm quite satisfied. He seems to be trying to win matches. He's picking players I would be picking. I'm not at all happy with our season so far, and I'm even less happy with the board. But, as you say, I don't think Hughes is at fault. But unless some sort of miracle happens in January (by which I mean, the board finally wake up and do their job), it yet again looks like we're relying on three sides to be worse than us. Fortunately, unless Rafa can work his magic again, the current bottom three (as a minimum) I believe are indeed all worse than us.
And not just invest in the squad, we need to seriously consider our player recruitment and retention strategy overall. We've brought in so many players that we now seem unable to shift for love or money, and some of that owes to getting too cute in the transfer market, trying to save a few mil here and there only to then have to replace the replacement (without moving anyone on).
Letting a two goal lead slip against Brighton is pretty bad. And we barely showed up today. The result against Brighton is really the killer, but today confirmed that the results of that game were no fluke. We cannot count on our defense. We weren’t undone by some genius Salah move, we scored an OG and failed to stop a basic corner. Those two goals are ones just about any team can score against us. In a way, we are somewhat fortunate to stink it up against Liverpool considering it was a lost game anyway. But the players that blew it along with Hughes now have been here long enough that it’s starting to become apparent this is what we are. The points results don’t speak to me as loudly as our play. We haven’t been good enough even against some middling sides that should be beatable. We have a pretty tough schedule of games once October rolls around and we don’t look at all prepared. Unless we right this ship fast, we could be buried by mid-December.
I'm still somewhat perplexed at spending £15m on a keeper (regardless of how good he is) who quite probably won't play a single minute of PL football this season.
After today´s results, chilling out to Jazz FM and John Osborne and his Saturday Soul. Wonderful presenter who treats the listener with intelligence, unlike the bloke on Radio 2 at 9.30 weekday mornings who is constantly taking the p***.
Same, though I find it less perplexing than spending £7m on Armstrong, or £15m+ on Carrillo, etc. At least Gunn will presumably play a role in the future. Mostly, there is no such thing as a 'bargain' anymore, because any player you bring in will be paid wages that are well beyond what they'd on 90% of the top-level teams in the world. If they prove not to be good enough, you have few options to excise them from the squad save from eating a tonne of wages or burying them and counting the days until their contract expires.
Or perhaps a coach/manager who is capable of getting the best out of players. Is Hughes that manager?
Dropping Hoedt and Lemina and ditching zonal defending at set pieces may resolve a few issues, our general play hasn't been too bad and certainly better than most of last season IMO.
There aren't many of that manager available to teams at our current level; we aren't a particularly tempting destination. That said, I'd again stump for Eusebio Sacristan, now at Girona, who plays something akin to our old style and could be tempted away from a relatively small (if overperforming) club if the big boys in Spain don't come a-calling.
I was thinking the very same. Sad thing now is that although we signed a couple of players in mid £10-20 million bracket they appear to be average players and haven't improved the team. That amount of money seems to buy just average players now. We have too many average players on too high wages that we cant or won't move on. If you look at what some teams that are on a par with us have spent in the summer and compare it to us, we certainly seem to be on a downward trajectory in spending power. When was the last time we signed some body who was a rip roaring success?????
