I've long maintained Hughton is a steadfast long ball merchant with no desire to change. "âI have seen a change in the way they have set teams up,â said Hughton. âAt times they have gone five in midfield when Stoke generally were always 4-4-2. During periods this season they have played five, with Adam in there to be a really advanced midfield player, and (Jon) Walters in a wide position or off the front. They have been prepared to try things and bring in new players but generally they still like to get the ball forward, get wide players on the ball and crosses. At their best, it is a very entertaining style of football." Given the season we have had, I think we have very little to look forward to under Hughtons stewardship if he admires that rubbish so much.
Maybe if he had said "at its best" he would have had some credence. I have no objections to long passes to wingers who will go past one or two players and cross to the far post for an incoming player to head or shoot past a stranded keeper. What I do not like is persistent "whumping" (an old TOC-H [hospital radio] commentators expression) the ball up the pitch because of lack of ideas or game plan.
Maybe if he had said "at its best" he would have had some credence. I have no objections to long passes to wingers who will go past one or two players and cross to the far post for an incoming player to head or shoot past a stranded keeper. What I do not like is persistent "whumping" (an old TOC-H [hospital radio] commentators expression) the ball up the pitch because of lack of ideas or game plan.
Unfortunately its short passes to wingers and long "whumping" balls into the middle because there's no-one to pass to close by.
Would you rather be in the Premiership with Stoke tactics or in the Championship with Norwich tactics? Is the question I have been asking myself. I think the Championship with Norwich tactics but I might be kidding myself. -Losing away to Doncaster, -being held at home to Barnsley -having a managerial merry go round with a stream of under par mercenary ex player managers. I dont want to go back to those days either. We need to invest in a passing football philosophy premiership quality manager and fast. No pressure Mcnally.
I agree. I think Hughton will be manager next season, but I can't see how two league wins (which we didn't deserve in either game) in 2013 can be ignored by anyone . I think Hughton's tactics have been found out and he doesn't really know how else to play. The lack of adjustments to our system in these last few months has been worrying as anything. Another worry I have is how Ricky Van Wolfswinkel will fit in, I honestly can't see how he'll get the service he needs under Hughton. It's not like he was a free as well so we have to get the best out of him, not sure whether Hughton will do that. Norwich star at the Premiership - I don't really understand why us playing nice football means we will automatically go down. Hull and Blackpool went down because they had **** defences, not because they played nice football. We can afford to play better football this season with a much improved defence on last season. A good defence is fairly pointless if you can't get a shot on target because the most we'll ever hope for is a point.
YellowLittle, I totally agree with you. I just meant the chances of us going down are increased if we play open and expansive football. Thats why I said we need to find a manager who can do both, keep us up playing nice football like Laudrup at Swansea. However those managers are hard to find and dont always work. Hence the comment about Mcnally being under no pressure.
I think there has been a false premise on this site that Playing Attractive Football = More Likely to Get Relegated. In actual fact, I'd say that playing the kind of dross we've put out since the start of 2013 = More Likely to Get Relegated. I was also very worried by the PinkUn article where CH said that Stoke could be a model for us. It's almost as if he said that to prove that his way of approaching this season is working, when it quite obviously is not. Without question we are CURRENTLY one of the worst three teams in this league (along with QPR & Reading) and we will be lucky to avoid relegation. In a nutshell, we are not Stoke, we don't want to be Stoke, and we don't have the players to turn us into Stoke.
I think it seriously time to look at a new manager in order to cement our status in the premier league!if we stay up get rid of ch n plan for next yr that my opinion!
I have doubts about CH but I would like to give him time to build his own team in the summer. If at Xmas nothing has changed and we are hovering above the relegation zone I think that we should reconsider CH's position. Let's not forget that CH's remit was to keep us up this year by hook or by crook so we can build for next season when more funds are available and so far despite the truly gruesome football we are being forced to watch he looks like achieving this. I hope things just change in the summer, please, please!
Interesting to note previous comments regarding not wanting to have a managerial merry go round contrasting with the Hughton out posts giving us three managers in three seasons. My opinion is stick with CH next season as he has the defence he wants and will have the opportunity to build on this. Were we to get a new manager we would just go through the same process of bringing his own men into the squad that we have seen this year. success is built on continuity not chopping and changing managers (costing huge amounts of cash) and squads need time to eveolve not be remade every season until we get it right. Make no mistake we were pretty lucky when Lambert managed to conjure back to back promotions bringing in some good players on the cheap but primarily using people who left us in League 1 and it has been pretty impressive that we managed to stay up and look like staying up again with (by comparison with our PL peers) a weak and cheap squad. Look at CH's signings - do we feel that they have improved the squad? I would argue certiainly but now we need to concentrate on bolstering the attack. I can understand why CH chose to bolster the defence when we had one of the best strikers in the league last season who had been consistently scoring. For whatever reasons GH has not performed as well in front of goal this season and we have been found wanting. When we had a purple patch Wes could do no wrong and looked like a world beater. Recently when he has played he has been pretty mediocre, possibly fatigued from his efforts earlier in the year. Tetty has had an up and down season. The players we can afford are always going to be erratic - if they were brilliant every week they would not be playing for Norwich they would be on £100k/week somewhere else. Anyone who thinks that we are going to light up the division playing ultra skillful attacking football is in cloud-cuckoo land. We simply don't have the players to do this. It is easy to compare us with Swansea but we do not have a hugely wealthy owner bankrolling us and we have not had the benefit of Liverpool paying stupid money for our players and they managed to pick up a diamond in Michu but then we may have done in RvW. We are only going to improve over time if we have patience with a manager and develop the squad incrementally. To judge CH on one season with a mish mash squad of his own players and those he inherited is not really fair. I know things are bad at the minute but I don't see how changing manager every time we have a bad run is the solution. We are currently a club getting their premiership feet, not one chasing Europe and until we improve the players no manager will change that. Do people think that had Lambert stayed we would be better off? Where are Villa currently? Bearinig in mind that they have a number of good young players who would stroll into our side. It is so easy to heap blame on the manager when he is doing a reasonable job with the resources at hand. I would be delighted if we were playing better football and getting results but realistically I would happily have taken 17th at the start of the season with a view to securing the financial future of the club and providing the resources to improve the squad and re-develop the stadium. I just want to get this season done and dusted and move on to better things next season. If we play poor football and hover at the bottom come April 2014 then maybe it is time to change but if we stay up again and improve the squad year on year then that is, for the time being, what our level of expectation should be.
Playing attractive football doesn't mean relegation, Look at how Lambchop took to the premier league last season with you guys, he had i think you would all agree a weaker side yet you looked more at ease and were safe pretty early, compare that to Who-tun who has better players but a more negative approach.
The problem is that we have totally lost our blood and guts approach to important games, we know how to sit back and defend a 1 nil but we have no enterprise going forward. Last season I knew that if we conceeded a goal at HT Lambert would get the players fired up and up for it and we still had a good chance of winning or taking something from the game. With CH if we go 1 nil down I have ZERO confidence that we will bounce back and improve our performance. What has happened to Wes? He is such a creative player, a little magician and has that game changing ability in him. CH's system allows for very little creative play. If Wes does turn it on he has no one to pass to. I witnessed this against Chelsea at home on Boxing Day. Wes skipped pass 2 tacklers one was Luiz and it would have been 3 on 2 if our wide players were forward but instead we had no options and he got smothered. The RVW geezer better be bloody good because if things stay the same he will have hardly no support.
I'd like to see how you guys would improve our attack with the current players. The facts at the moment are that we need 4 defenders and two holding midfielders. Without those we would get slaughetered. Realistically, Johnson and Tettey are our only options there. How would you, with 4 players we have now, build a high-scoring and passing attack? it doesn't work!
We have largely the same players as last term, don't we? We managed to line up attacking then didn't we? We cannot pass. Did you see the Stoke game? I'm not talking 50 yard diagonals. I mean just pass forward, it is left for Bunn just to pump it up there and hope Kamara or Holt wins a flick on to no one, because all our players are sitting near the halfway line! The point of having 2 DM's is that they extinguish any attacks that breakout and the ball is played in the opponents half most of the time from half way, so your DM's are the base of the team. This then should allow the wingers to push up and attack with the lone forward and the man in the hole (normally Wes) should push up and support the lone striker. The wing backs such as Rusty and Garrido should then push up to keep the pressure on and aid the wingers. Our team cannot pull this off, it is not a way they feel comfortable to play. I think Hughton should have noticed this and have a plan B. I mean if I can see it and many other can why can't he?
I think what the majority of the Who-tun out brigade are saying is that you have better defenders than last year, so why do you need the 2 defensive midfielders? Lambert coped quite well with less talented/same players by having a more attacking style and didn't get slaughtered. and argubly the premiership was weaker this year than last!
You've all made a good point, we did it with Lambert. He was a better motivator and Grant Holt could still play football then. He doesn't even chase balls now. I think Hughton's inflexibility is costing us, but I think if I were in his position I would line up in a largely similar way. Let's not forget Turner wasn't there for Stoke and neither was Ruddy. I agree that we can't pass, that's actually most of my point. Were we able to pass, we could build the attacks better. We can't pass, so we lump. It does make logical sense, as ugly as it is.
As much as I respect you, Kemp, this is one of the stupidest things you've ever said. Your point assumes that you are right. Out of all of us and Hughton, only one has the professional training to make that decision, so it's pretty arrogant to assume that you know better.
One reason we can't pass is because CH doesn't play the best passer of the ball at the club - Fox. Now I accept that Fox has not exactly shone on the two or three occasions he has actually been given a game but any player would struggle when a) his manager clearly has no faith in him whatsoever b) he hasn't played a competitive Prem game for months. More generally, if we can't pass it's because CH doesn't trust people who can pass and have skill. Let me remind you of the start of the season. He wasn't playing Wes, who he also clearly didn't rate at that time. Injury forced him to play Wes, we went on our ten-match unbeaten run. If we can't pass the ball, there is only one person to blame for that.
