It seems to me there are two possibilities: a) it was a decision made to pander to the crowd, to court popularity b) it was stubbornness and he wanted to show the fans that he had been right all along Personally I go for the second option.
I think it was an honest attempt to try and salvage something from the game. Granted, it was a poor decision, but I really doubt there was any ulterior motive.
I will give him the benefit of the doubt here (sorry)..................... What has RVW done in his previous games to suggest he would make any difference? Hence, might as well try something else, albeit totally untested
a) would be just as stupid though. People questioned why he brought becchio in and then never gave him a chance way back when he was first with us. To decide now, in a crunch game that that was the right time to blood him was idiocy. As the commentator said after 15 minutes, becchio hadnt touched the ball yet. RVW is a pretty rubbish option for scoring goals at the moment, but hes much better at getting stuck in and helping create things than becchio even was at his playing prime. Hughton seems more and more dull witted the longer this season goes on.
wasnt there some issue with RVW putting his parts on when he got subbed in the swansea game? i would think that has probably more to do with it...
I suspect he probably thought that the Brom defence were very comfortable with what we were putting against them so he thought he would try a more physical presence up top, especially seeing as Brom were going to sit back and maybe let us put some crosses in the box. With hindsight, we were worse after the change but I understand the rationale behind it.
Van Wolfswinkel would have hardly been more effective, to be fair. We had many, many problems today. I don't think Becchio was one of them.
I wasn't even criticising the decision - almost certainly it made no difference to the outcome. I just couldn't understand it. Why ignore a player for 18 months and then put him on in a crucial must-win game? I admit I had forgotten RvW's reported tantrum last week. I guess that was probably the reason.
Erm if he had decided to not play RVW as punishment for the above than he would not have used up a space on the bench... I conclude it is far more likely that the change was made for the reason I said in my last post.
It was probably because Hughton thought that Becchio may pose more of a physical threat - Olsson and McAuley completely dominated Hooper and Elmander whereas in the corresponding game last season Holty gave them both a torrid time. Presumably Hughton counted on Becchio doing the same ........ he counted wrong.
