tajjuk

Great news though he does seem a bit light on coaches. Is he going to struggle to make an impact quickly with just him, Kelv, Watson and the fitness guy?

Blackburn was 10 years ago, reports and rumours I have seen, both from Saints and Stoke suggest that his input into training is fairly minimal and that training is not very hard. We've already seen Hoedt comment on the lack of defensive training as a team in relation to his Lazio days. He was successful at Blackburn, maybe he just became complacent and standards dropped.

Attention to detail, well drilled, meticulous, intensive, preparation, these are words that I would not have used about Hughes, from reports he barely got involved in first team training.

Obafemi > Long. Forget Long, we need to con a championship club to take him off the wage bill, same with Davis, Austin, Forster, along with obviously Carillo, Boufal, Clasie. That is probably £350k a week wages right there. Anyway he's said before that he doesn't play a specific formation, he adapts the players to it. Also remember he hasn't just managed an on the up Leipzig who basically bought their way up the leagues. His previous two clubs he took over, Aalen and Ingolstadt were battling against relegation at the time, so he'll be pragmatic I reckon, he won't suddenly expect us to be playing like Leipzig overnight.

Yeh that is good news, if we go down it won't particularly be his fault (though he still may resign) as the mess is the making of Hughes and Pellegrino, plus the poor recruitment. If he is a genuine target you'd think he probably would need convincing considering Leipzig are 3rd in the Bundesliga, won 5 out of 5 in their Europa League group, they are a club on the up, likely to be in the Champions League next season. We in comparison are not that attractive a proposition, plus the money in the Bundesliga is pretty good. Ralph had no job so was easier to recruit, We don't know how much Les over ruled Wilson though, they obviously think he (Les) had too much power as they are not replacing his role, they are likely to spread it out, we might see maybe two people come in to replace him. A third I suppose if they replace Hunter as well. Makes sense though, supposedly we have always had these targets identified, but they are not always available, I mean he was supposedly in for the Bayern job in the summer, so even if we had looked at him instead of Hughes he probably would have said no.

Blackburn and Birmingham were both amongst the worst teams in the league at the team, both went through several managers. His record considering that is not bad.

The bar for assists and goals in our team is quite low. Redmond for example has 1 goal and 3 assists in 45 appearances, this season and last. Stretch it out further and he has 8 goals, 4 assists in 80 games. And even if you claim he didn't take set pieces, he played more minutes and in more advanced positions than JWP. Simple fact is over the last two years JWPs contribution to the team is no worse off than anyone elses, and its better than most of them, and he played less minutes. Certainly you can be critical he should do more and I'd agree, but people claiming he is crap and doesn't do anything are way off. Anyway IMO everyone has a clean slate under the new manager to show what they can do, new ideas, new system, new style of play, we'll see who impresses, I presume if this guy keeps us up there will be a cull in the summer anyway and a rebuilding job for those who miss the cut.

https://www.football365.com/news/an-intro-to-ralph-hasenhuttl-the-alpine-klopp

Cedric doesn't have pace now? Jeez some people are clueless.

lol no he is not, he's just a solid PL footballer. The guy has played for England, 31 caps at U21 level and over 170 times in the PL and he's only 24. There are literally thousands of professional footballers who would love to be at his sort of level.

Not sure on that, would really like him to nail a place down and actually progress like many thought he would but if we go with what Ralph did at Leipzig, he had two highly mobile centre-mids that had to cover a lot of ground, one of which was Keita. The other was a little more sitting/protect the back 4 style. JWP for me lacks the pace and power for either of those roles, but we'll see, he definitely has the energy and the work rate, so that may put him in good stead and he also has good ability to pick out a pass and Ralph likes to more direct passes in the transition for the fast-counter so that may also work in our favour. But to be honest I reckon if he goes for a similar formation he'll go for Lemina/Hojberg rotating as that 'Keita' role with probably Romeu as the more sitting centre mid. Someone who I think might benefit is Gallagher, at Leipzig they tended to partner a bigger/stronger forward with Werner, and Gallagher apparently has pace to go with his size so may get a chance to show what he can do. If he can show the pressing work rate and add the link play then he could become an important player.

Puel was fine not that exciting football but he knew how to set up a team and make sure they had jobs, Mope was very defensive and to me managed us like we were the level of say Cardiff, a newly promoted team who were expected to lose every week which meant we threw away winnable games against other mid table and lower teams.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/arsenal-transfer-news-gunners-rivalling-13682633

Some big typos in it but it's spot on. Something we have been saying for a while, the club has lost its direction, it's style and way of playing, this occurred from top to bottom. Hughes was the ultimate example of it, we looked rudderless on the pitch, there is no style of play, no defined shape, no high press or specific counter etc. It just looked like 11 players who had been plonked on the pitch, who'd done some basic drills during the week, sent out by a manager who I presume thought that his personality and motivation was enough to get them to win games. Keeping the firefighter on does not work, and keeping these failure managers in jobs does not work, these managers are premier league experienced, but they are also experienced in losing and failing for the most part

Gao wanting 'Galacticos'? like players he has actually heard of?

Hmmn I'd expect backlash after that Arsenal defeat, they were poor in the 2nd half. Defensively they don't look solid, Vertonghen will be out, that young centre-back they have seems to make at least one dreadful error a game and Aurier is pretty dodgy as well. So I think we have a chance of scoring but don't fancy us keeping Kane, Ali, Eriksson etc. quiet.

I can't imagine a guy linked with top jobs, only being out of work for like 4-5 months coming to us unless he was promised some funds to strengthen in January. Similar if we are getting Mitchell as well. I doubt it's a huge transfer kitty, but probably enough for 2 players I reckon, maybe £30-40 million.

Considering our current ratio of duds to gems is lots to none, anything would be an improvement. Recruitment is always going to involve a lot of guesswork and every club signs duds, but if we can find 1-2 Manes for 3-4 duds I'd imagine most of us would be happy.

A little bit yes but let's hope he was learned a few lessons there, also from what I have read it more seemed to be that they weren't 100% committed to giving him a longer contract when he only had a year on his deal and we wanted a longer to commitment to keep building, so not really a sacking and also shows he is potentially a 'project' manager and we might be able to keep him for a bit. I'd also presume that if we are getting him and Mitchell the board must have promised some investment, his team at Leipzig was built on a decent amount of spend (though not PL levels) and his team had a lot of pace going forward which we simply lack.

His record looks pretty impressive to me, took a nothing club in Aalen to the German 2nd division, then took another provincial German club in Ingolstadt to the top league for the first time in their history, and then kept them up, then took RB Leipzig to 2nd in the Bundesliga after promotion and then got them to 6th last season, only 2 points off Champions league. Yes Leipzig had lots of investment from Red Bull but still, his performance with Ingolstadt is pretty similar to say Howe getting Bournmouth promoted and keeping them up and his performance at Leipzig is akin to taking say Wolves this season to the Champions league places.

This guy and Mitchell sounds too good to be true to be honest. The cynic in me says club PR, the old 'oh we tried to get him but.....' and then settling for someone average.

I'd imagine any system would need changing if you had just lost your two best goalscorers and hadn't really replaced them, or replaced them with different sorts of players. IIRC of that season, in terms of chances created, shots, possession etc. we were basically the best outside the top 6, we just consistently did not put away our chances which hampered our progress. I find the slack Puel got baffling, not only at the time but in hindsight as well you can clearly see the difference between a competent manager like Puel and the two useless ones we have had since. He was no Poch and never would be but people are making him out to be far worse than he was.

Agree, we should and could have aimed higher when we appointed him and the transfer policy of that window was also poor as well, should have been stronger with Mane, selling him for £30 million was way under value and we sold him stupidly early in the window, then didn't replace him, plus then letting Pele go and not replacing him either. The whole strategy smacked of complacency IMO, Les et al thinking they could just find more gems again, we then didn't learn from it a year later, doing basically the same thing, settling for a lesser manager target and still not replacing those players.

IMO Puel was a solid if unspectacular manager who did a job probably about on par for the squad he had available with the cup run being a bonus (and very unlucky) probably sans cup run we would have gained a few more points at the end of the season but I think the players were gutted and lost drive. He could at least set a up a team tactically sound (our performances against Liverpool showed that) and players looked like they knew their roles and jobs, and we looked like we worked on stuff in training. IMO the same cannot be said of Hughes. Could we have done better? Totally, but we didn't that was more the issue, if you sack a solid manager who has done an ok job, because you have loftier ambitions you have to make damn sure your recruitment of the next manager is on point and the same for the new players you brought in. Which didn't happen. I 100% believe though we'd have been nowhere near relegation last year or this year with Puel in charge, there would still have been plenty of grumbling and I don;t think we'd be some top 8 challenging team, but I think he would have got a lot more out of the summer signings and a lot more out of the team as whole.

I think I lean towards Flores over Sousa just because his record with a pretty bang average Watford side was decent.