tajjuk

LOL.

I liked this bit -

Barring a miracle turn around I think Hughes is already sacked I just get the feeling that they want the new director of football or whatever in place to then oversee the new manager appointment. Is much going to be gained from an inexperienced caretaker, especially considering the tough games. Even if we were in good form and mid table, aside maybe getting something from an out of fom Man Utd side, we wouldn't expect anything against SPurs away or unlikely against a much improved Arsenal at home. The only realistic chance for points is Cardiff away from the next 4, maybe a surprise point in either of the home games. Get the new DOF in to start the new era and allow him to shape the rest of the back room staff in his vision and get a new manager in ready for the january window. Back the manager with at least one decent signing (though I think that is unlikely)

Difficult situation for him to be fair, they have a ton of injuries, I believe they have something like 16 or 17 first team squad members out injured at the moment and they were already losing lots before he took over so the team was low on confidence. People seem happy to take Jardim as our manager and he had only won once for Monaco before getting sacked. They have also basically done an us, but at a higher level, over the last two seasons they have sold Mendy, Bernardo Silva, Bakayoko, Mbappe, Lemar, Fabinho and Mountinho, and then not replaced them properly, tried to replace them more cheaply, and the decent signings they got, most are injured. They also have off the off the field problems, the owner is being investigated for fraud I believe.

Was the 3 at the back a random change because it was 2nd string or is Hughes going back to it? Good to see some of the younger players make an impression. Was this '2nd string' considering how bad Austin, Cedric, Hoedt etc. have been, you'd think there has to be a chance the likes of Valery, Obafemi, Vestergaard etc. will get into the starting team, at least they might have a little more confidence about them having not really been involved in the last two years of decline. Have to wonder what Vestergaard has done, I think for a centre-back coming into the league he has been ok but seems to have dropped out the first team picture completely but of the 8 points we have achieved, he's been involved in 6 of them.

Think that is harsh to say he wanted a goal bonus, it to me looked like a fairly hurt outburst from a player playing in a team knowing they desperately needed a home win and they thought they had it but the ref took it away. I think most of the players care, there is no lack of effort or want, they are just devoid of confidence and don't look like a team, which a lot of which comes down to the manager and coaching staff.

On the Rodgers thing though he is on a route to nowhere, winning the Scottish league must get old as it's not particularly challenging, especially with a sub par Rangers still recovering from their relegations. There is nowhere really to go because their best players will get poached by PL clubs, and the best the can hope for is the odd scrape into the Champs League group stages realistically. Whilst we might not be the best option right now, it's doubtful he's going to get a PL top 4 job any time soon and his best chance of getting another top club is probably to achieve for a couple of years at mid table PL club. So depends on his ambition, he's won two trebles at Celtic and they went like nearly 50 games unbeaten, not much more you can improve on. He's likely to lose his best young players soon, the likes of Tierney and Ntcham will probably go fairly soon. So depends on his ambition. I am presuming Davis might be lined up for caretaker role not permanently, it would be a joke if they considered him to take over fully.

Vestergaard was playing the Champions league the year before last, he was a regular at a good club in the Bundesliga, can't have turned into a terrible player over night, he's barely had a chance and only got that chance pretty much playing in a back 3 we spent all pre-season playing and then abandoned, he's been mismanaged by a bad manager and come into a team that is terribly low on confidence and all over the place defensively.

Austin clearly did in that ref rant, that looked like someone who cared, shame his body does not seem up to it to actually making a difference on the pitch. I think most do, they are just down on confidence and have been a while, they don't seem to have confidence in each other, as Cedric's comments show and you have to question how much faith they have in a manager that seems to not set them up in any sort of shape or style and you wonder how much instruction he gives them. Like I said look at Bournemouth, they have a manager who looks after the details, individually coaches each player to improve them, makes sure they all know their roles, has a style of play etc. etc. . Before the game against Arsenal Defoe was talking about their training, saying Howe expects them to be 100% at it at training each day, he said some days previously (I am presuming at places like Sunderland) you could slack off a bit in training if you weren't feeling it, but not at Bournemouth, he said if you weren't up for it then you might as well not go to training as there is no slacking off with Howe. Do you reckon we are the same? I highly doubt it, Hughes to me strikes me as a manager who thinks he can just shout at them a bit with his strong personality and that will be enough, I think he is out dated, most top managers these days are more coaches, they are details managers, they coach and drill their players in their roles on what they want them to do with the ball, off the ball, in transition, on set pieces etc. from what we have heard coming out of the club, Hughes barely even is at training, we've seen Hoedt complain about the level of defensive training and similar comments were heard about Stoke under him. We look rudderless and leaderless, and a lot of that comes from off the pitch, especially as the confidence of the players is massively low, they are no getting that direction and instruction from their manager. A good manager can make a lot of an average team by making them more than the sum of their parts, Howe is showing that at Bournemouth, Dyche showed it at Burnley last year, Rafa and Wagner are starting to show it at Newcastle and Huddersfield. There is no way our squad is worse than Newcastle, Brighton, Burnley , Cardiff, Huddersfield, Palace etc. but our manager probably is worse than all those clubs

Sack him he's had long enough.

Average players + above average work ethic + good shape/team discipline/press = mid table. Average players + above average work ethic + good shape/team discipline/press + good man management/improving players = challenging in 6-8. The last one is basically Bournemouth, several articles around recently that talk about Howe's attention to detail, how he personally tries to improve every player, how every player knows their jobs and roles within the teams shape and style of play, how the make sure the players are fit and sharp etc. etc. How he creates a family ethic with the players so they are a tight knit unit. A lot of people are saying his methods are very similar to Guardiolas, Bournmouth have something like 5-6 players in the first team squad that were involved in their League one promotion days (sound familiar). Shows IMO what impact a good, modern manager can have on an 'average squad'. Most of their first team squad is from like the Championship level or below.

He's only been in charge since September 2017 to be fair so actually only the last two windows apply. Wasn't the guy who Everton stole, Steve someone? in charge for Musa, Slimani etc.? and he then went and signed a load of dud at Everton like Klaasen.

Well Maddison is good, but we went for him also and Maguire is good, but I think most of us could have called that one as well. They spent around £50 million on Iheanacho, Adrien Silva and Iborra last year, not sure any of them have set the world alight. Silva obviously they mucked up as he missed the deadline but still has only played 9 times for them, Iborra has not been a regular either last year or this year, and Iheanacho has just 4 goals for them and has been in and out of the team. This year their big signings, aside from Maddison were - Ghezzal - Only started 5 times and has 1 goal as a winger/attacking player Benkovic - who they sent straight out on loan to Celtic Söyüncü - who has played just twice (81 mins of football) Pereira - who is their regular right back and has done ok looking at his stats Danny Ward - back up keeper from Liverpool, who they weirdly paid about £12 million for. Transfermkt has them spending over 112 million Euros for that lot, though of course they had the Mahrez sale. Looks very hit and miss to me just like us and probably their best signing there is Maguire and Maddison, the latter we had identified and presumably Les sanctioned bids for.

It's some sort of points based system based on transfer fee, number of caps for the international team in the last 2 years and standing of that country. Richarlison had no caps before joining Watford and Jesus probably had very few so I think they would get in because Brazil are high ranked and the fee is quite high, something like that. I think South American players tend to go to Portugal, Spain, Italy because the cultures and weather are similar and they already know the language or can pick it up quite quickly.

No point looking a rumours I don't think until at least we get the new DOF in and probably the new manager as well. They could go in a completely different direction, I mean I don't really understand why we are not looking beyond Europe for example, huge amount of talent in Brazil for example, just look at Richarlison and we seem to have just decided not to look there out of spite, things like that might change now Reed has gone. Would love us to look at someone like Luan for example from Gremio, think he is the type of creative player we need.

Yes and No, PL jobs fur European managers don't come up that often, especially as many clubs go the fireman route over and over. I mean Silva went from winning leagues with Olympiakos, cups with Sporting to a pretty much already relegated Hull. Pellegrini went to a West Ham team that was marginally better than us last year, and he's won league titles and works wonders with Malaga. Wenger is turning down PL clubs because he doesn't want to manager another English club because of Arsenal. I still think Jardim is probably unlikely, but maybe not that unrealistic, he's unemployed and the mess of Monaco this season has probably tarnished his chance at a really big club.

Unemployed ones - Jardim (12), Cocu (19) stand out there. I mean probably they are destined for higher clubs but the Premier League money might tempt them. A few others in that list that could be tempted.

Should we be getting managers just sacked by other PL clubs? Not really worked with Hughes and not particularly worked with Puel at Leicester. Are we just presuming this is a blip for Jokanovic? Arguably we have better defenders and that seems to have been his main issue, but are their worries about his defensive management?

Picked up this quote form a Guardian article - Maybe we are going for both, Webber and Farke I like these quotes from/about Farke -

New manager syndrome likely to kick in, he's got plenty of time to work with them as well what with the international break. (well those that are not on international duty)

Fitness is a big part of that though, if you are knackered you can't keep a press up or track back so you will naturally sit deeper and deeper, plus your concentration goes and you make silly mistakes. Confidence is also an issue

I think you could probably build 2, which means just with that money alone you could have another 30-40 3G pitches across the country which literally could provide facilities to 1000s of kids. And waterlogged pitches for kids is a massive problem in this country, so many games get called of every week and the 3G pitches are often booked up months in advance.

Sports Science is more about nutrition and avoiding injuries, actually getting them match fit and able to play at a high intensity is down to the coaches themselves. The losing leads thing is very clearly fitness related because once the body fatigues keeping concentration is much harder. And you only have to look at the declining sharpness of Ings to see whatever we are doing, it is a long way behind what Liverpool are doing, when he arrived he stand out as probably our fittest and most energetic player. Also that Hughes article is damning, I also do not buy that we have a squad that is 17th worthy in the PL, as that article points out we are level with Cardiff, their squad is nowhere near the level of talent we have but they at least have a manager who has a game plan and makes sure his teams work hard and are hard to beat. Said it before and I'll say it again, pockets of good play seem to break out with our team almost despite Hughes, like our players revert back to muscle memory of when they were playing in better teams and better systems. There is zero identity or style to our play, most clubs in the league you can identify their standard shape, their press levels, their passing preferences etc. I have no clue what ours is apart from a mess. Whatever our failings in recruitment and at board level, the last two managers have consistently failed to get this squad even performing averagely, let alone punching above it's weight. Pellegrino was too restrictive and too negative, he set us up like we were the Alaves of the PL, like every game we were big underdogs, but we were not, we should have been better than that and certainly more positive at home against teams our level or below. Hughes is just showing he is a PL dinosaur, his best results are years behind him and those stats show it.

Target someone from a set up that is known to get more than their resources, makes good signings that sell for more and gets youth into the team, that is what we were supposed to be about until we lost our way. So identify a club in Europe or here where someone has a played a key role in that clubs success and see if we can tempt them to come work here.

We might approve both at the same time, I'd presume the club were already looking at the managers anyway and I'd hope they were looking at DPFs as well. Or we might get a guy in who then reviews it a bit and then makes an assessment. Can't see Hughes failing consistently over the next 4-5 games and just getting away with it just because we have no DOF