in many ways, tony pulis is the modern version of john beck. i mean, pulis made the pitch shorter lengthways and crossways so he could use the impact of his long throw more often! straight out of the john beck coaching manuel that one!! but beck was successful at a lower level - his cambridge side was extremely effective.
I take it you don't rate him then Supers! I think Hughes gets an unfair rep, he has done well everywhere apart from QPR in my view. With Wales he almost got them to a major european finals which is incredible, you ask anybody at Fulham if they would take an 8th place finish every season and see what reaction you get, Blackburn again did well, Man City spent a lot, but basically put the foundations in place for Mancini to get the credit. So i can't really see where this 'failed manager' tag comes from. I presume you would call Brian Clough a 'failed manager' for his time at Leeds?
guru, i would say that i dislike the man. not sure how i rate him - i can't remember but weren't wales in a piss-easy group and bottled it in the final game? he did a decent job at blackburn certainly, but i completely disagree about man city - he was way out of his depth there once the money came in. the only reason why it looked like a harsh sacking was because they had just won a couple of games on the bounce - the timing was a bit iffy. he bought a couple of decent players - kompany for one - but then he played him in midfield! mancini was the manager who waved the magic wand, not hughes. fulham was entirely based around hodgson's very capable team and even then they were in danger of the drop most of the season. you could argue he did quite well at fulham, depending on how you look at it, but then he blotted his copybook further by walking out because the clubs ambitions didn't match his own. he kept qpr up by the skin of their teeth, though i personally feel warnock would have kept them up. he then laughably failed at qpr and they could take years to recover from the mess he created. and i don't see your clough comparison as relevant at all i'm afraid. clough was hounded out by the leeds players because he wasn't what they were used to. you could suggest he was relegated in his final season, therefore he was a failure but that would be missing the bigger picture of a man who had guided two unfashionable clubs to tremendous success over a number of years. a failed manager is someone like iain dowie, paul jewell, even alex mcleish - managers who keep getting '2nd chances' but fail. for me, hughes was a total failure at qpr, but been average in every other role bar blackburn, so maybe i'm being a bit harsh labelling him 'failed' but the guy is obnoxious and that comes across every time he opens his mouth, and i certainly don't like the way his teams play the game - i rate him no differently than pulis, hence why i question the reason for change?
So would you say that Who-tun was a failure/or average this season, considering that Lambert kept you up reasonably easy in his season, and Who-tun was in danger of the drop until virtuely the end of the season? surely you can't judge 2 identical scenerios so differently? BTW, This isn't a pisstake, just want to know if your judgement is being clouded.
BTW, the clough reference was because you labelled him a failure after just one bad experience, in my eyes. so thats why i used old big head because he had one failure, but that didn't make him into a bad manager.
again guru, i fail to see what you are getting at? how was hughton a failure exactly? he's actually bettered what lambert achieved the season before, although i will accept we sailed a little closer to the wind in the final straight. both seasons in many ways were almost identical - the only difference was we made a slightly slower start this year by not winning any of our first 7 games. under lambert our last 19 games were pretty poor but we had enough points in the bag from mid-season to ensure survival - same in many ways as this season. is my view of hughes clouded? i'm not sure - could it be clouded cos i think the guy is a total bellend? then yes! it probably is - on paper his record probably doesn't lok too bad but add in the joorabchian factor, add in the meltdown at qpr. i just spoke to a fulham fan friend of mine and brought up hughes (we'd never really discussed it before) and he says hughes should have been fired. he tore their very successful team apart, alienated their best players. it was only when high profile players such as danny murphy intervened that they pushed up the league. the players hated him - the fans hated him. i think having a completely arrogant tosser in charge is bound to piss players off. i do not think he is a good manager. average and the very most. it'll be very interesting to see how he gets on at stoke. make a slow start and he'll be gone by november i reckon. make a good start and we'll see how good he really is. my money would be on him making a slow start...
Ok, so we agree that he is 'average' but realistically who else would have been a better shout for Stoke, you could possibly say Di Matteo, thats about it though.
ah, i was going to say i was surprised di matteo wasn't talked about more! gianfranco zola was who i felt they'd go for. as far as transition is concerned, hughes is a good appointment because he can carry on from where pulis left off, but the brief for a new manager was to change the style completely, so it makes no sense to go for someone similar. they would have been better off going for your very own mick mccarthy if they wanted to carry on as is - he's a far more capable manager than hughes.
My wife watched the Cambridge v Leicester playoff to enter the top tier of English football ( yes Beck got that close) and noticed Cambridge took several minutes to take their throw ins - she asked whether what they were doing still qualified as football. Still a good question today. Mind you at some point in the second half Julian Joachim worked out they were hopeless on the ground and dribbled around them all before placing the winner past their keeper. I also heard a story John Beck put Steve Claridge on the transfer list because he shouted that he wated the ball played to feet during a training session! Beck always reminded me of the Victor comic book story 'Behind the Crimson Door'!
I have to disagree with Supers here. Wales, Blackburn and I think Fulham he done a good job. I also see the Hughton link is a fair comment from Guru, as I was thinking about it earlier. Hughes had big boots to fill in Hodgson and he had Hodgson's players. Surely their target for that season was to finish mid table, given they had lost a very successful manager and overachieved with Hodgson. I can't see how finishing 8th with Fulham can be considered a failure. I can't see how anyone will know whether their 'high profile players' really intervened or not, unless I've missed something? I know Hughes is a bellend but perhaps they hated Hughes because he wasn't Hodgson as well, most of that is similar to Hughton's situation when he came in. Had Hughton finished 13th would he be deemed a failure? One place below Lambert's best achievement. That's exactly what Hughes did, one place below Hodgson's best. Hodgson actually finished 12th with Fulham in his last season, although I understand that the Europa League will have stretched their squad. The Man City one is the difficult one to judge in my book, I don't think it was a disaster but he did probably did underachieve slightly in a transitional period for the club. I think only the top managers will have done a better job myself, and Mancini came in at probably the end of that transitional period. What exactly were the expectations at that point? It wasn't like when Chelsea first got the money because they were the only team splashing that amount of cash at the time, and they had Ranieri, a top manager in charge. QPR was an absolute disaster, no questions asked. Anyone that says different is off their rocker. He spent the money very badly, although his biggest problem was not having a good enough strike force and leading the line were three over 30, injury/suspension prone strikers in Johnson, Zamora and Cisse. The sort of error he can learn from. For what it's worth, I think he'll do an average job at Stoke. It's a difficult job and if he is to change their style of football than it will be even more difficult and could potentially be an overhaul in their squad. I just think he's done succeeded more than he has failed. One thing I do agree with you on Supers, is that he is an arrogant twat.
i don't know anything about the situation from fulham - just what i heard from a friend yesterday - so it could be bollocks or sour grapes, who knows. he certainly thought passionately that he was a poor man manager. i see the comparison but when you look in detail, there is a massive gulf between where fulham were when hughes took over and where norwich were when hughton took over. for starters, fulham were an established premier league team who had just played in a europa league final and had an excellent, top half team already in place following nearly ten years of sustained premier league football. norwich were in their second season of top flight football following back to back promotions, had just lost one of, if not their best ever manager, and had a porous defence after a poor end to the previous season and a number of players who had carried the team a long way but were starting to look out of their depth. fulham needed tweaks, norwich needed far more surgery and still do to be fair. i'm not for one minute suggesting he had poor results whilst at fulham, you can't just dismiss an 8th place finish in this league and it was a similar thing about hughes at fulham and hughton's norwich that they both flirted with the drop - in my opinion we were always likely to do so this season, fulham under those circumstances should have been less likely.
I'd say Hughes is a better fit at Stoke than Dematteo. I don't think there's a million miles difference between Pullis and Hughes to be honest. Pullis was so overated in terms of what he achieved, he spent a ****ing fortune on players and hardly recouped anything back. Stoke never finished in the top half as I recall.
