we must somehow sort our terrible home form out. _________________________________________ Yep. Utterly dreadful. Even knowing how bad it is, its still hard to believe.
It was decent against Burnley, not too bad considering we have only won 1 of last 13 PL matches played there. As for beating a top 6 side I would love it too. Man u is possibly our best bet. However if we are going to struggle it's more important we beat the team's around us.
I didn't go. I was otherwise engaged travelling before having a truly delightful evening talking about pretty much anything but football. Onionman Jr, on the other hand went, so here's his match summary. "Great game. We played really well but made two mistakes". I'm very proud of that analysis. Balanced, punchy and to the point. Vin
I think that the overall perspective after that soft winning goal for them has been skewed, the reaction would be a slightly more positive if we had managed to hold on for a couple of minutes for the draw having gone down to ten men
I was resigned to a draw after the sending off, and by 90 minutes, I'd accepted it with a shrug. The Maguire goal though...nope, gonna be a while before I'm over that I'm afraid.
After watching yesterday’s game I see no reason to panic. I think we have enough here to not struggle too much this season. By far the better team, but the same problems persist; switching off when we score first, fragile in defence, and poor confidence. Attribute the loss to the red card, really poor reffing, and Cedric (who i truly believe is a terrible player, agree with those who said he was targeted by Leicester as a weakness) PEH was an idiot, but had a great game. I think the wins will come, and don’t agree with those, especially on SaintsWeb, calling for his head already. I do wish he’d hurry up and properly nail his starting 11 so we can begin to gain some confidence. Perhaps the Cup games will be a good measure for this. Also need to somehow stop some of this bad luck!
It's up - Mods feel free to merge/bring down if anyone else does one...though I'll be pissed off as it took me ages to do
It's not really a comparison. If it was, it'd be no contest. McClaren has had way more managerial success than Hughes (certainly more than one), as he's won the League Cup and been in a UEFA final, plus winning the league at Twente. Hughes has finished in a few decent league positions with Blackburn at his absolute peak, and kept Stoke at ninth for a few seasons. Despite which, I'd take Hughes at Saints 100 times out of 100. My point is that Hughes is distinctly average. A decent water-treader, who (I'll keep saying it until it gets through) won't progress a PL football club. Some will say that Saints need some steadying and he's the perfect man for the job. I say we require someone who is still progressive, and is a more inspiring presence for our young, potentially progressive players, and can attract the type of player we might need if pushing forward. Have no doubt we'll start winning a few soon, but my point - and my view - won't change. You can contest it until you're blue in the face, but if we fancy finishing in the top half of the table, Hughes is likely not our man.
No, you'll keep saying it until you're either proved right, in which case you can then say "told you so", or you're proved wrong, in which case I'm sure you'll concede that you were wrong. I'll keep an open mind til then.
Happy to be proved wrong, obviously. It all depends really on what your aspirations for Saints are. Mine might be higher than others on here (or lower than some, lest anyone take offence).
My aspirations are to win a trophy and qualify for Europe. My expectations, for this season, are a lot more modest.
I think that judging Hughes this early into the job is a bit pointless, he has had 3 games after a full pre-season working with new signings, he is still trying to find that magic formula and it could take a dozen games. if we are still struggling for results at xmas and we are not playing any purposeful attacking football like last season, then questions should be asked, his record at other clubs is a bit irrelevent as it was a totally different set of players. i'm judging him solely on what he does here.
Its not really our job to identify that. For a start, we have no idea who is/was available. But the people at the club should have had something sorted, given how soon it became apparent that Pellegrino wasn't competent. He was fine as an appointment to do that job of keeping us up. That should have been it, though.
Haven't read all the posts, but I'm definitely not judging Hughes on results so far. I only judge him on grounds of being the wrong profile manager for the club. I think we'll pick up some more points soon, but from what I've seen this season so far, goals will be in seriously short supply. It is pretty uninspiring - we've been out of interesting ideas on the pitch for a few seasons, and its not Hughes' fault, but I'm confident he isn't the man to solve it.
