Topcat

To be fair to the Club they have started to take the right decisions. With the terrible recruitment decisions in recent years they rightfully sacked Les Reed they also rightly judged that we have a failing Academy and had to sack Martin Hunter. Then in past week with the failing first team they sacked Hughes and hired a plausible replacement. But we still have in place Ross Wilson who had a major role in player recruitment and the legacy of £300m squandered on a squad full of bad players. Clearing out that pile of sh*te is going to cost more than £100m to bring in enough better replacements. Maybe 4 or 5 old pros such as Cahil for 6 months is what is required to keep us up? We also need a very good DOF to work through this. The question I have is whether Gao and his people can raise enough money to save their £200m?

Hits nail on the head. Our coaching comes from 2 goalkeepers.....

We have a mid-table squad for League 1.

Gap to safety has now grown to 3 points and that is before we play Arsenal.

Training with national express coach as a driver?

Sadly true. A bit difficult to find a worse shower. Les Reed's lasting gift.

Gallows humour.

Are they in the Championship?

All Hughes has to do is beat ManU and that will guarantee he will still be in place in January. Not much of a challenge.

Also why 1/4 of the summer transfer money was spent on a reserve goalkeeper and nothing spent on buying a striker, just one in on loan with option to buy later. For a team that had a terrrible record scoring goals last season..............

With 5 of the next 9 Prem games against top 6 sides we are almost certain to be in the bottom 3 in January. We need a new manager now so that they can take the lead in what players need to be cleared out (or sent home) and to make the right choices of players to bring in.

Steve Grant, a great summary of the problems going into the game. "We had 9 players starting". Hoedt and Austin a waste of space and dragged down the team.

It was just a very gentle pass back to the goal keeper. Very kind of him, are they mates?

The three teams below us have all played more top6 games than us and have therefore a slightly easier set of games for the rest of the season. To date we have played just 3 of the 12 games whereas Huddersfield have played 4, Fulham 4 and Cardiff 5. Of course by the end of the first week of January, we will have had 9 more games of which 5 will be against top 6 sides.......... if we are out of the bottom 3 on Jan 5th by at least 3 points then we will stay up IMHO.

Cedric was rated in a Guardian article as one of the worst players this season in the prem.

A water into wine level of miracle required.

If, Fulham's defence has a miracle performed on it and manages to play well, then a loss by us could see Hughes out.

Not sure that Reed may have had a hand in discouraging the selection of Yoshida and Gabbi. I agree with you on the Austin substitution.

I agree with Supersubpuckett's summary " LES GOT STUCK IN HIS WAYS, HAD TOO MUCH INFLUENCE AND BECAME OUT OF HIS DEPTH. HUNTER DID A BAD JOB WITH THE ACADEMY. HUGHES IS NEXT IF THE RESULTS DON'T PICK UP. OUR AMBITION IS STILL TO BE BEST OF THE REST BUT CLEARLY FALLEN WAY SHORT OF THAT RECENTLY. WE'RE GONNA GET SOMEONE WHO KNOWS ABOUT FOOTBALL TO HELP US." FWIW to get relegated a Club usually has to have major failings in several areas. 1) Bad manager/coach, 2) Poor player purchases 3) Inadequate U23 player development. Currently we have failings in all 3 and only 1) "The Manager" can be fixed now and 2) "Player purchases" has to wait until January and needs the best part of £100m to start to fix. The fact that Reed and Hunter were not replaced in the summer does indicate that Kreuger does not have a good enough grasp of what a well run football Club looks like.

Ten points looks very optimistic. 4 relegation battles, 3 of which are against teams that are playing better than at the start of the season. The other 3 games are against top 6 sides.....

I agree not much improvement. At home we had less possession and they had more shots on target than us. Relegation form.

for which side?

Something clearly started failing with the u23 etc developments in the time that Hunter was in charge. With Reed being matey with Hunter, suspicion will now arise on what else had gone wrong under Reed.

If Reed and Hunter really had become a negative presence at the Club then we should expect a solid win against Watford. A loss should finish Hughes off.

We have a team full of under performers. it would therefore make more sense to let it be known that there was a budget for January to bring in a couple of players.