This has to be one of my favourite threads of all time as opinions are so divided. I personally don't rate Hughes and never have. Some of his stats thrown up on here would seem to back my opinion rightly. Others argue differently and comment on how he kept us up and so on. I look at it as we finished where warnock left us and now even though we have only played 3 games we are lower than that. Having said that, i firmly believe we will climb this table and be quite comfortable come the end of the season. How we perform in doing that is yet to be seen and here lies my dilemma with Hughes. I think he is a steady manager at best and if that's all we want to be then we may just have the right man.
I think there's still a pro-COLIN lobby lurking around this Board and they're taking their ire out on the current Manager. If it was Sir Alex Ferguson it would have been the same. Make no mistake, Warnock's football was just as dire to watch as Hughes'. Even the promotion season was a case of bludgeoning the other teams into submission rather than out-playing them. As far as I'm concerned, there's practically no difference between the quality of either Manager. The only difference is Hughes being able to attract top names but that comes at a cost, with the amount of staff he brings with him onto the pay-roll.
I'm in. Last season he had someone else's squad plus a few rush/panic buys. This season, with his own signings, we've played just three league games, all very different games with different sorts of challenges. The Swansea game, for me, represents the only surprise/disappointment out of the three. 10-12 games in - that seems a fairer time to start making real judgements. Even then, you still have to ask yourself if any incoming manager is very likely to get better results fast enough to make a difference. Oh, and this thing about him being the 13th (or whatever) best paid manager in the world. This was written by someone who has seen the contracts and bank statements of every football manager in the world, was it? Or just some journalist working from made up figures bandied around in the public domain?
Im IN for sure. I can totally understand where everyone who is out is coming from but for me MH deserves time. We all cried for Tango and Cash to go when he kept on sacking managers after stupidly short times in the job. MH came in halfway through last season with a huge job in keeping us up - and he did, however close it was, he kept us up. Last seasons results should be forgotten about now and should not be used to judge him. He inherited a struggling squad with pretty much zero confidence. He turned it around and has re constructed the squad heavily this summer to avoid a repeat. There is no doubt much more quality throughout, despite being short in some areas as most of us seem to agree on. And yes, as MH said most came in early in the summer so a solid pre season should have made the team a 'team' by now. But for whatever reason it hasnt happened. But he still needs time to work with his team, his players, and time to impose his style on the side. Sacking him now, or in the next month would see a return to the Tango and Cash era of sacking every few months. It just doesnt work. Hughes teams generally start slowly anyway, so now is not the time to panic - after 6 games: 2004-05 - Blackburn - 16th - 5pts - Finshed in 15th 2005-06 - Blackburn - 18th - 5pts - Finshed in 6th 2006-07 - Blackburn - 10th - 8pts - Finished 10th 2007-08 - Blackburn - 7th - 9pts - Finished 7th 2008-09 - Man City - 9th - 9pts - Finished 10th 2009-10 - Man City - 3rd - 15pts - Finished 5th - Sacked in December 09 2010-11 - Fulham - 7th - 8pts - Finished 8th
You cant judge the entertainment value of a match retrospectively...the crowd at the Arsenal match didn't exactly sound bored! We played decent counter attacking football. It's hardly as if we did a stoke and and played with an ugly time-wasting style. I'm not sure exactly what you wanted from a side fighting tooth and nail to avoid relegation? A lot of this is coming across as very conspiracy-theorist. You're so convinced that Hughes is a crap manager, that you're prepared to write off our wins during a relegation struggle as "boring". We completely shut arsenal down, due to excellent defensive marshelling of the side, but no...it was actually because a lot of us shouted loudly? Even during these games, hughes was essentially playing with Warnock's side. He couldn't spend time implementing a glamorous style of play, because we needed points desperately, asap, by hook or by crook! Just because one manager has done something, it doesn't matter that another should automatically be able to do the same thing. Who knows what a manager's strengths are? Who knows what the situation behind the scenes at sunderland was like? I'd certainly bet it wasn't as tumultuous as that at QPR. We know that Hughes tends to start slowly, but we also know that he's finished in the top 10 in every full season he's had in the premier league. If that trend continues into this season, then i'll be very happy! I'm not disagreeing that the football we've seen this season hasn't been up to scratch, but i think it's too early to start writing off the manager. On the QPR podcast the Harrow manager reckoned you need a good 6-10 games to see a side gel properly.. If there's no improvement in the performance over the next 3/4 games, then i'll start worrying. Hughes only has control over the performances, not the results, and i'd say in our previous 2 games Vs Walsall/City we've performed better than Vs Norwich/Swansea. All that said..i'll be expecting another marked improvement against Chelsea. There's 2 weeks for the players to train together, the new recruits are all in, and we've now announced our 25man squad. Time to get down to business Mark
What's this? Quoting and replying to yourself now! On top of that baby talking the other day, I'm starting to worry about you!
http://www.mancityfans.net/mcfnet/viewtopic.php?f=119&t=43776 Few interesting posts, from fans who know him
10 games for me. We've been through all this **** before. We were a laughing stock. There is no way TF is going to axe him in the near future so lets give him the benefit of time. 3 games? You're having a laugh.Glad there's a 2 week break. I will however, puke all over this laptop if I hear him saying "Obviously", one more time. Try smiling once in a while Mark.
I can remember saying something like this after a particular game (which the Rs had won) in the Promotion Year, Swords. You can imagine the response that I got. The style of play also talks directly to another comment I made a little while back about how both Swansea and Norwich won new friends in the PL last season because they were infinitely more entertaining than the Rs under either Warnock or Spunky. The Rs used to be famous for their entertaining style of play.
Fair enough Uber. I wll criticise him if I feel he's made a mistake but any Manager with a new squad needs some time. He doesn"t come across as being over-endowed with interpersonal skills but, if he's successful, I don't care.
http://forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=264743&sid=d29870e8b432d9f7b04cf6ec43a22e0d **** me this thread is even better!
Nice one Ãber. I haven't been to LR expecting to be entertained since Tel was in charge. Then and earlier we played with flair, fluidity and a touch of imagination and a certain arrogance. There have been plenty of individual players I have enjoyed watching since then, and there are still passages of great play, but it's the exception rather than the rule. Now we have the most talented squad since the 70s, but the pressure of surviving in the premiership and innate managerial conservatism still holds most teams back from performing as they really can, not just us.
