Saint Pete

I would give them to Bertrand as strikes a good ball and seems to have a bit more bottle than the others.

You ***** Boufal. Cross it. What a miss Gabbiadini.

I agree. Anyone expecting any miraculous improvement in our style and performance today was kidding themselves. The best we can hope for is finding a way to win and Hughes using it as learning more about the capabilities or lack of of the players he has, which he can hopefully use in the next couple of weeks before West Ham.

Well if Hughes was in any doubt about the size of his his task, he will be sure now!

Yep, agree he is not offering anything to us in this game. Would be tempted to to take him off for Long or Sims at half time and have Gabbiadini up top.

Great ball from Bertrand, more of that please.

Will be interested to see how we line up formation wise, but you can see that Hughes is going with the principal of putting our best players on the pitch, which is oddly refreshing given what we have become used to.

Expect to see Gabbiadini back in a starting role, assuming Austin still not fit.

Well said, brain dead whimpering a spot on description! These posts seem to conveniently ignore the 3 consecutive top 10 PL finishes Hughes achieved while at Stoke. Obviously doesn’t fit with the whimpering agenda.

Absolutely 100% this. For those moaning about this appointment, answer me this. How many realistic available candidates for the job have 3 top 10 premier league finishes on their cv, and at a similar size club to us? In our current position, that is surely as good as anyone could have expected. And if it’s true that it’s a short term contract to the end of the season, even better as we are not committing ourselves to him beyond this season. Also gives Hughes great incentive to pull this off, and as said above, he has a massive point to prove.

Was just about to post the same. Beggars can’t be choosers in this situation, it has to be someone available right now and who will accept what may be a short term appointment. The best we can hope for is someone with experience of managing in premier league and a decent competent record. Bearing this in mind I would be OK with either Silva or Hughes.

Maybe so, but they stuck in there, improved in the second half and could have grabbed a point but for an iffy refereeing decision. Also, Hodgson accepted the first half performance wasn’t good enough, so you suspect they will address that in games to come. Whereas Pellegrino has proved incapable of addressing an envelope with his “groundhog day” style of management.

It’s got to happen now, wait any longer and it’s all over. There are no guarantees making a change will save us, but that for me is not a good enough reason not to at least try when our premier league survival is on the line! Pellegrino has had ample opportunities to address our deficiencies and prove we are at least heading in the right direction, but the last couple of games have showed emphatically that he has failed to do this. So there is no valid reason for giving him any more chances and a win against Wigan would not change that. The fact that we don’t play our next league game for 3 weeks makes this the ideal time to do the deed tomorrow and get a replacement in this week so he has more time to work with the players to repair some of the damage done by MP and build up some spirit and confidence. Come on Les/Ralph/Gao - no more excuses and dithering, it has to be now!!

Yep, agree about Palace. Tough last couple of fixtures for them but they have competed well in both games which probably bodes well for them over the run in. Objectively they look more likely to get the points they need to survive than us currently, even though we are still marginally ahead in the table. Looking at this weekends fixtures overall, it was pretty likely that a number of the other teams at the bottom wouldn’t win, which makes it all the more annoying that we haven’t taken advantage of that. The boot will be on the other foot in the weeks when we face the likes of Chelsea and Arsenal, so things look pretty grim for us after getting just 1 point from the last 2 more favourable games.

The thing that strikes me about that MP interview is that the man just sounds so powerless to do anything about our situation. There just doesn't seem to be any acceptance on his part that he and the team need to do anything different to get over our problems of not scoring enough goals and not supporting the main striker enough. You would expect to hear something to reassure us that they are taking positive steps to address the clear deficiencies in our performances and results, but there is precious little of that. The plan seems to be that we continue the same approach because the stats say we are 3rd best at getting into the opposing third of the pitch and hope that the results and goals will just come naturally! I hope he is right and it all turns our way this afternoon but can't say I am confident! Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

There were some good players in that Poch team no doubt, but you have to credit Poch in part for developing some of them and coaching good performances out of them. Remember there's a number on that list who many on here have taken great delight in taking the **** out of for not looking so great since they moved on. Not saying we haven't regressed in terms of quality, but still think a decent manager could get way more out of our current players than what we are seeing now or for a significant part of last season. Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

It's exactly this kind of negative nonsense that is music to Pellegrino's ears! We should have been confident in our own ability to score at least 2 and win the game. At the risk of stating the obvious, football is about winning matches, and the teams that win games are the teams that are successful. Somewhere along the line, as a club, we seem to have lost sight of this simple fact, and in my opinion, this started with Puel. No argument that Pellegrino is significantly worse in this regard with his "draw is as good as a win" mentality. And by the way, we DID concede a goal against Beer Sheva despite playing in such a cowardly negative way, and then had to throw everything at them to try and score 2 in last 10 minutes! Which we almost did. Think how many we could have scored if we had played properly from the start. I personally don't call that clever tactics on the part of Puel. Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

We should have been easily good enough to go out and play positively against Beer Sheva and get the win at home. Instead Puel set us up to **** about and play for 0-0 and we got what we deserved. Pretty unforgivable as we were dumped out of Europe totally unnecessarily. Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

If any of that is true, it’s an absolute farce! Why on earth we are risking our premier league survival by keeping him in place is beyond me, particularly if it’s true he is now not trusted to run things on his own. It would explain why the team look so confused though!

Ah yes, another classic 0-0, how could I forget?

What on earth makes you think we would have got “at least a point” against United? There’s zero chance we would have been 2 goals up in the first place!

Irrespective of result tonight I reckon Palace have too much about them to go down. We will need to finish above at least one of the teams above us currently.

I can only go by what I have seen from Austin on the pitch, and when I've seen him play he has shown no lack of effort, and has shown plenty of desire to score goals. That DOES put him at the other extreme to all our other forwards, including Long! Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

A dithering inability to take decisive action, on and off the pitch.

We only looked like we might score in the second half once Gabbi came on and gave us a more positive set up going forward. First half was abysmal, never created anything. If we had started with more purpose, as you should always do at home, we would probably have won. Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk