Can't disagree with anything in the OP. I really believe Traore has been massively underused. Since the Stoke game I've been banging the drum for him to be LM. He always offers something going forward and has the speed to get back when needed.
Interesting question. Sunderland and Blackburn - No. We were just as awful. Spurs - We were better. But Spurs really were in a different league and did outclass us in the first half. The big difference however was that Warnock changed tactics and for the first 20 minutes of the second half we frightened Spurs withour recovery. What was the difference between the recent humiliations and the Spurs game? The manager and his capacity to change tactics. That is why I for one think that Warnock would have been the better choice for the run in whatever Sparky's prior track record was before he was appointed. Having re-read your initial post, the same applies to Sunderland at home. A manager willing to make substituitons and bring on attacking players who are willing to commit themselves to the cause almost led to the Sunderland result being completely reversed. It was a catastrophic error by our defence that led to Sunderland's winner that night with seconds left on the clock. At the moment, I feel that it is critical in evey game for us to score first because we do not have a plan B to cater for going behind in a game. It isn't rocket science. When you chase the game, you attack with conviction. You don't pass the ball around for the sake of it. Warnock understood that. Hughes has yet to convince on that point.
Not only was the 6 goals conceded an embarrassment, but it could easily have been more! The looked like they were going to score everytime they poured forward. Couple of good saves from Kenny, couple of last ditch tackles and a couple of poor efforts from them stopped the score from being double figures!
We were 4-0 down before the clock turned 25 minutes FFS! After that it was only about damage controll, are you suggesting we should have tried to have got something out of the game after that? They would have reached double figures if we had tried to go at them when they were running riot. The reason we looked better late on when reverting to 4-4-2 with Traore is because Chelsea was satisfied and didn't pressure us like in the first half. We got it wrong before it started, Buzsaky away from home is a disaster waiting to happen, and using Cisse on the left wing/mid was hopeless. In hindsight we should have lined up 4-4-2 with Traore instead of Buz, but imo the end result wouldn't have been much different. Chelsea deserves a lot of credit, they were simply irresistible on the day. When everybody thought they would be tired after Barca they instead took great belief, confidence and energy from it. Three main things lead to this result if you ask me. 1: Superb Chelsea performance. 2: Lack of passion and commitment from our lads. Though it has to be said that conseding after 45 seconds could be a factor. 3: Poor tactics from MH. To be fair, the gameplan went out the window after that early goal. And with tactics I'm not refering to which formation we played. What really killed us was the distance between our back four and midfield. We were nowhere near as compact as we needed to be, and this is down to Hughes and not the players. Derry, Barton and Buz never got to terms with it as Chelsea flooded this area with three players constantly (Lampard, Mata and Sturridge) running at our defence. We were always going to struggle with such a naive approach.
And to answer your question, yes we have improved under Hughes. Boring away from home apart, as he only seems to look for draws when in hindsight going for it probably would have brough greater rewards. But don't tell me NW would have conjured up the home wins against Arsenal and Spurs and to some extent Liverpool. Neither would we have Onouha, Taiwo, Diakite, Zamora and Cisse if NW was still in charge. Without those we would find ourself behind Wolves now, fact.
Passion and coomitment are not always clear to see on a TV screen! I was at LR last Saturday and saw this in abundance from all our players. I didn't see that it had disappeared yesterday,the players looked like they wanted to do it, but simply were having a very bad day, but that was on a TV screen! It just seemed to me that Chelsea played very very well and we had a collective very off day. That, with the first goal debatedly offside, and a Paddy nightmare (think he was partially to blame for the first 4 goals) was easily enough to do us 6 - 1. Think we need to forget yesterday at least until next week after we have hopefully beaten Stoke, and get back to the winning recipy for the Stoke game. What MH has to work out is where to play Cisse - he still seems our biggest goal scoring threat but where do you play him without disrupting what has been a winning formation at home? As I remember Neil used a very similar 4 2 3 1 formation when we did them at the Brittania - with Traore playing out left in the 3 and HH up front. I fancy Traore there again. Adel in the middle of the 3 and Cisse on the right where I think he'd do better than on the left as yesterday. It would mean leaving Jamie on the Bench but coming off the Bench seems to make him a more explosive and scoring player.
Cisse is not a wide player. He had a nightmare at Lazio playing wide right and was delighted to escape from it. If he plays it has to be up front around Zamora, where he will score goals.
Yes, we were regressing fast under Warnock and Hughes had a massive job to do. Yesterday was a blip but i cant see how anyone would want Warnock back or think Hughes has done a worse job. We got beaten by 6 at Fulham under Warnock. Cisse was just playing to get some match time, I think he will be up front in a 442 against Stoke, theres no point having 5 in midfield as they will just bypass that anyway.
But to answer the OP - NO, not yet! We may have gone a few steps forward in organsation and a better squad following the January investment, but we have gone backwards in terms of passion and adventure from our Manager, and Neil would also have improved the squad in January. perhaps with players with better discipline. Neil also showed better ability at making changes during a game than MH.
