I wouldn’t be surprised if end Oct early Nov we take action, there’s no way they would make the same mistake as last season. Hopefully.
The main issue with getting rid of Hughes mid season is that you fall into the trap that we fell into when appointing him - you need someone who knows the league to come in as they have the best chance of hitting the ground running. If he were to go I would say Allardyce would be very high up the list of candidates which would also be terrible. I have no expectations with Hughes, I wouldn't have appointed him in the first place. I do however think we will be fine this season under him, it is just a question of how close to the drop we end up that will determine if he is still here next season.
I doubt that we will be in position to make a clear cut decision that early....we will be bobbing along and not so bad that we are willing to pay out again to another sacked manager and then start looking for another one.
Trouble is, it's not Hughes that's the problem here, as we/most of us realise. Koeman MASSIVELY benefitted from the structure that was set up by Cortese/Markus (and the work done by Poch with the team). It's a bit like Trump and the US economy taking an upturn currently - all that's happened there is the continuation of a trend that was begun by the Obama administration. When Trump's less effective policies actually shake out, it'll probably start coming apart. Same with us. We've all benefitted from the factors put in place by Cortese/Markus, and now those hapless berks Reed and Krueger (and to a pretty large extent Katherina and Gao) are being left to implement and undo the work he did, it's started to come apart. Until something changes there, I have no confidence in their ability to fall into a barrel of tits and come up with anything other than sucking their thumbs. So, for the moment, Hughes it is (and at least he's better than Pellegrino). If we sack Hughes, they'll pick another average choice barring a complete change in their own ability. Oh for someone with a bit of vision and belief again.
Yes. Though I would suggest (and it would certainly tally with everything that we know, plus everything that we're seeing now) that the 99.9% driver of all of that was Cortese.
History is always written by the 'victors'... I'd suggest he was spending money that Kat etc wanted to keep for themselves (as shown by recent developments again....)
I remember saying back when we were in League One when people were talking about the PL and wanting to be European challengers etc that if we did get to the PL, we would solidify ourselves and then be sold by Liebherr. This was before Markus died iirc, I also remember saying that nobody should be that bothered by that as the work done to get us to the PL and keeping us there was a great achievement so we should be thankful for that. Turns out I was right (although I'm sure I have made 100 other predictions in that time that I have forgotten as they were wrong). I don't blame KL for selling us, she just didn't need to say all the PR bollocks about selling us to someone with big ambition and taking us to the next level etc when it seems clear that she just sold us to the highest bidder.
...and Redmond ...and Hojberg The football is miles better than last couple of seasons. Cut out the silly mistakes at the back and we will be an above average mid table side
Try man for man marking at set pieces too as our CBs don't lack height, I agree with your general point and lots of teams don't play as much football as we do.
I'll always thank Kat for getting Staplewood finished (she did her old man proud), we just need to see greater productivity from our Academy now.
I suppose it is down to personnel but we seemed to handle zonal marking quite well in the past. Clearly the current set of defenders / midfielders are struggling.
So as Laces has let us down yet again (boo, hiss!!) Is there any takers for the match thread? I vote a newbie.
