tajjuk

Yeh I saw that, which must mean Hughes is probably sweating his position more as Reed was essentially a natural backer for him on the board. Maybe Gao is going to get more involved now? Maybe he, as Leach says, thought he'd keep the status quo cos we managed to stay up and was probably convinced by Reed it was a blip seasons etc. but now after the very poor start he is had it with excuses and is implementing the changes he wanted all along?

Could be very likely that Wilson et al could all be going. If they get someone in to shake up the football side, which Reed was basically head of, then that person could basically clear out most of the people down, or at least the key ones like Reed, Hughes, Hale etc. to achieve this new direction and review, they might want to bring in their own people and have a fresh start. It's pretty clear that first team management/coaching/fitness has been poor recently and over the last two seasons (you only have to look at how less sharp Ings is now, compared to coming off the back of a Liverpool pre-season, plus our consistent ability to give away late goals which is a fitness/concentration issue). Then the academy, at least on the face of it seems pretty poor, not many players coming through, not great performance of the U18 and U23 teams for a while. And of course the scouting team has struggled to find any gems and doesn't seem to have recruited the right players. (though management and use of these players might also have contributed). I am genuinely shocked at this to be honest, didn't think the club had this in them any more.

He's 5' 4".

Possibly, is not the money in the Chinese league a lot lower than is was a few years ago? They seem to be reigning in on the spending, and he'd have to mainly work with very poor domestic players as they have limited the forum imports, would seem to be a poor career move for an up and coming coach. Turn us around and he could easily use it as a stepping stone to a better PL ob and loads of money anyway. I'd also presume that if we are on the brink of sacking Hughes then would be not be sounding out possible replacements? Or maybe that is wishful thinking on my part.

Jardim is going to China according to those same reports that say Hughes will get sacked if he doesn't win this Saturday.

Probably mid level championship.

Well the thought of Allardyce is massively depressing, we have to accept what we are and what we are likely to be, which is relegation fodder for the next 2-3 years unless we see a serious change of direction from the board/owner. Which in those circumstances and looking at his record, he is probably the best option to get a relegation threatened team into a mid table team. At least he would make us hard to beat and the team would have a clear identity and would know their jobs. It's sad state of affairs.

Looks a bit nonsense to me, we sold two of our highest earners VVD and Tadic, whilst the likes of West Ham and Everton have spent millions and have given those players huge contracts. The likes of Yarmalenko, Arnautovic, Felipe Anderson, Zaha, Siggurdsson, etc. are probably going to be one over 100k a week I reckon. At a guess I'd say we were around 10th to 12th.

IMO a manager that has some of philosophy and defined way of playing, that wants to improve players on the training field and makes sure they know exactly what their roles are and what is expected of them. AND Some pace going forward, some players than can beat a man with a bit of direct running.

That's horrible, terrible scenes, can only hope some people are alright but it doesn't look good. Thoughts with the families and loved ones.

Report on the BBC website today about Wolves behind the scenes talking about how much attention to detail they have, fitness, nutrition etc. I remember similar stories about us back in the day and I don't fee that same high level is there anymore.

I am not sure our players are as bad as people make them out to me, many have come from good clubs and were performing well for those clubs at a young age, I just don't think the team has any real shape, discipline or particular style of play, identity etc. Often I feel that good play breaks out in games because the players forget that Mark Hughes is their manager and actually start remembering how to play some good football despite his instructions and set up. Top managers meticulously work on the training ground on the team shape and the jobs each of the players is supposed to be doing for the team, we do not look like a team that does that. We look like a team that spends most of the week playing head tennis and then 11 players get randomly selected. You only have to look at Arsenal to see how much improvement a new manager can make, especially when that manager knows how he wants his players to play.

I'm not saying it isn't but it's still a pretty low bar for us and IMO not good enough. JWP doesn't start because we are playing a 4-4-2 and he works in neither in a midfield 2 or as a conventional winger. Which is not really his fault, it's more the archaic tactics/shape we are playing. We have neither the pace, physicality or defence to successfully play a 4-4-2 IMO. Watford play a 4-4-2 sort of, but they have Deeney to be physical and annoying up front, Gray/Success to add some pace and then have very powerful centre-mids in Doucoure and Capoue who are basically able to do pretty much everything. We have very little like that. Atheltic Madrid also play a 4-4-2 variant but again have very good defenders, pace and power up front, pace on the wings and are very aggressive at retaining the ball, again we don't have or do that. And considering we have some tall centre-backs and come centre-forwards who are pretty decent in the air I think making some use of JWPs very good set piece ability is not a bad idea. Personally I'd have him sitting narrower as a AMR in a 4-3-3, get a proper DM in the protect the defence which should allow more freedom for Betrand and Cedric to bomb on. I'd go - McCarthy Cedric, whatever centre backs they all seem a much of muchness at the moment, Bertrand Romeu Hojberg Lemina JWP Redmond Ings

'A club once praised for it's vision'. Yep, where has that gone? The drive for constant improvement and boundary pushing does not seem to be there from top to bottom throughout the club. When we came back up we seemed to be a club that was trying to squeeze every little extra percent out of everything we did, recruitment, training, youth development, coaching, playing style etc. People from the club were going around the world linking up with other clubs to see how they did things and how we could learn to improve. Now we just seem to be stumbling along. We have gone from the club that ruthlessly sacked Adkins despite him doing a very good job because the ambition was burning for us to do better and he wasn't thought as the right man for the job, to appointing a footballing dinosaur in Hughes on a 3 year deal. The Southampton football club of 3-4 years ago would have never touched Hughes with a barge pole. Turkish has it right, there is complacency and arrogance at the top for a job well done now 2-3 years past and an owner who seems to have neither the passion, interest or even the presence to change that. As the article says we look very much like Villa, Newcastle, Swansea etc. a few years of highs with a steady decline towards the championship mid table with terrible managerial appointments, recruitment decisions and general club apathy.

He doesn't so far seem to be the player that was so good for Basel and starring in the Champs league against City. He seems devoid of confidence, it's like our club just sucks the confidence out of these young players, they play with freedom and creativity for their teams, play well in European games and the come to use and look like they are playing well within themselves.

If we don't win against Newcastle he should be sacked IMO. It'll have been 10 games, with 6 or 7 points, including games against 5 teams in the bottom half, several at home. Simply not good enough, even a win doesn't take us to a point a game, which probably in itself is not enough to keep us up. Plus still have to play away at Chelsea, Man City, Arsenal, Man Utd, and Spurs, plus home to Liverpool, City, Spurs, Arsenal and Utd, so that is basically 10 games we will very likely take zero points from. Meaning we'd have 18 other games to pick up another 30 plus points from.

Good point, Arsenal are a pretty good example of what a new manager can do + couple of the right signings (like a proper DM/ball winner) but most of that team is the same as the one Wenger was struggling to beat some bad teams with.

It's all of it, it's board decisions, recruitment and management. Can't really credit Hughes with much when we spent all season playing 4-4-2, yet spent all pre-season playing 5-3-2 and we have no real identity in our play, shape, pressing etc. Even if the players are just average (which they are not, they wouldn't have been getting into teams like Juve, Lazio, Bayern etc. if they were some average player or championship level player) Hughes is still not really getting the best out of them and it must be tough for the players when we have no real definable identity or style.

Ings was a loan because it was quicker to get it done on deadline day.

This. Which is again why I find it weird people aren't talking about managers and focus so much on the players. Our recruitment hasn't be great, that is no doubt, but we have still been buying young players who have played for good clubs, in Europe, are internationals etc. Ok they might not be the same level of players we had under Koeman, but that was challenging for 5, 6, 7th, these players are not good enough for that level, some might be, but we don;t have the right balance in the team IMO to form a squad to punch that far above our weight (as others have identified strong defensive mid, target man type player and pace were all there under Koeman which we do not have). But, these players would not have played for Juve, Lazio, Bayern, performed against Man City in the Champs League, won Euros, played for England, got oodles of u21 cap etc. if they were not decent premier league level players. The squad is good enough for a comfortable mid table position, maybe top 10 if we got a bit wind under our sails, but they have more talent and ability than relegation fodder, but our last two managers have not done that because they have been bad. Pellegrino was too negative, too restrictive on a team that was not used to playing like that (pretty much all of them throughout their playing careers have played in decent to good teams that would generally win more games than they lost, so that is 'old' us for the players still here, and the likes of Basel, Juve, Bayern, Celtic, Lazio etc.) and they were not used to it. We were playing like West Brom without the work ethic and organisation, its how he played with Getafe and he had players there who bought into it because they were underdogs and mainly those sorts of lower league players punching above their weight. He then applied this mentality and set up to a team that had finsihed top 8 or better for the last 3 years, had got to cup final, had played in Europe and had added players, who whilst they were squad players, were playing for some of Europes top clubs. It is why we were so damn awful against teams we should have beaten, because he set us up like we expected to lose to these teams, teams 1-2 years ago we'd generally control the game against and dominate. Then we come to Hughes, who I have literally no idea what he is trying to do, what style of play he is trying to impose, we look loose, we look unstructured, the players look like they don't really know what their roles are. Who the hell plays 4-4-2 in this modern game? Not many, and the most successful I can think of is Simeone's 4-4-2 at Atletico Madrid and that works because it has a very clear style of play and his players have very clear roles and instructions. We are not playing that verison of a 4-4-2, we seem to playing a generic 4-4-2 because Hughes can't think of better option. Passages of good play seem to break out, but they seem to break out despite the tactics not because of it, like the players end up working it out on the pitch for themselves.

^ That is probably fair, we are probably expecting more of the owner, but yes technically he hasn't done much actually wrong. And Kreueger I supposed the main criticism is about his leadership for not getting the football side sorted out. He should be sacking Reed and Wilson, because that is the clear area of failure. Their job is to get value and good players from our transfers, they have not been doing that.

This is something that has been labelled at him in the past, I have heard similar things about his time at Stoke, they didn't really work much on defending, defensive shape etc. Let's be honest a club like ours cannot expect to play ope and expansive football and outplay everyone, we need to be solid and hard to beat in most games. I highlighted this issue, everyone and their mother is complaining about our defenders, but these are players who have played at the high level for good clubs, they have not suddenly become bad. We simply play too open, clearly do not defend well as a team and do not have a good defensive shape. There is not enough protection for the back 4, no obvious press at any level and we have two full backs that are used to bombing forward being the team's main width having consistently played over the last 4 years with inside forwards in front of them in 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1 type systems, and are now playing in a 4-4-2. And that is after spending all pre-season playing a back 3 with these players playing as wing-backs. Hughes is not good enough, he is not a manager that is going to make us solid or get more out of the players so they play above their ability, we need to try and find that. AND We need to re-jig the scouting team, Les Reed and Wilson ultimately oversea player recruitment and the last 3 years they have been exceptionally poor in this area. They should go and we get new blood in. But I'd get a new manager at the same time.

Yeh Christensen would be quality, though I'd reckon he'd maybe set his sights higher. Loftus-Cheek though is a more viable option and exactly the sort of player we need, he has pace, power and trickery. He must be getting frustrated with his lack of game time.

Looking at Bournemouth we could desperately do with some pace and power. Plus also looking at the likes of Brooks, Maddison and Maguire, we should not be shying away from signing top young talent from the championship, I feel we have generally ignored this market too much (aside going for Maddison this year). And agree with others, we need a dominating DM, would love Wanyama back, but Romeu looks like a shadow of his former self at the moment, but if you look at the likes of Bournemouth and Watford who you would say are the teams punching above their weight, they have a lot of pace and power about them in the middle of the pitch and going forward.

Confidence does seem to be an issue, its playing with their minds I reckon, we seem to be playing all right in spells, there are clearly some decent players there, but as a collective unit once something goes against us, be it a mistake or missing a chance, they seem to go into their shell. I feel a good 2-0 win would do wonders for the team, clean sheet, put some chances away, hold to a lead, banish some mental demons, just can't see where it's coming from right now.