sadoldgit

Was he "snubbed" though? Others players were preferred to him this time round and to be fair he hasn't had the best season clubwise. It also isnt as if he needs to be playing for a "bigger" club to get into the England squad as he managed it with little old Southampton. I dont think he will be off because he lost his England place. If he does go it will be to a bigger club and for more money.

What a surprise. No condemnation from you about a far right agitator who was rightly arrested for breaking the law. The reason he will not be accepted by "a mainstream audience" is because of his beliefs, not for the way he chooses his language. It doesnt matter which way he chooses to use his words. a far right bigot is a far right bigot. Nice to see you trying to paint him as misunderstood though.

100% this. Teams win together and lose together. To not go and support the poor sod was appalling.

How on Earth is Gareth Bsle a bench warmer? He needs to go to a club who will play him - not Spurs again please!

How **** is Liam Gallagher?

Never in the field of incontinence have so many beds been wet by so many for so few reasons.

So how has Les "pulled a blinder" if there is still a sticking point? The other ITKs seem to be saying it is a done deal and not to worry. Help me out here please Ekon as I am not sure which ITKer to believe. We have also been told that Hughes is either a) already on holiday or b) going on holiday today. Assuming that he is not leaving one holiday to go on another, which is it? Such quandaries.

It is isnt it? If you chose your colours properly there is no need for a third kit - but then it is just another way of getting more money out of the fans,

Or maybe some people just have the patience of a two year old?

Surely every football manager on the planet knows that if he joins SFC he will not have a shed load of money to spend on transfers. Mark Hughes will know that better than most given the time he has spent in the Premiership. If the rumours are true then more fool him if he thinks they are suddenly going to give him a huge wedge to play with. We are not the only club who have to sell to buy. Even the "mighty" Spurs have to balance their books. If this is the sticking point then it would seem very odd that Hughes is prepared to gamble away a job he supposedly wants on a point that he isnt going to win. It is more likely that there is no rush as everything is going to plan and the club are relaxed about when the official announcement is made. Or not.........

Yes it was and he turned out to be a good manager for us. Just as McMenemy was a Saints legend and it all went tits up for him at Sunderland. There are no guarantees in football and I am sure we recruited Puel and Pellegrino thinking we had found good fits. Everton would have thought the same when they recruited Koeman. Manchester United when they recruited Moyes. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and we can speculate all we want about Hughes but we wont know what he will do for us until next season. Whatever that is, we all want more than just staying up dont we? As for Hughes doing the nigh on impossible. No it wasnt. It was possible, especially given the worse form of Stoke and Swansea and that WBA were pretty much gone. I agree that sometimes managers and teams just click, but I wouldnt say that the results showed a massive upturn. He came in and did what he needed to do. Perhaps he can take things further, but I wouldn't say it was a marriage made in heaven just yet.

My dear Minsk, I think you have missed my point. I am not saying we shouldn't employ Hughes, I am saying that we should employ the person who is deemed best for the job by the Board given that they keep tabs on all potential new managers (apparently). If that is Mark Hughes, sobeit. You are right in saying that Hughes might have kept Stoke up if he had stayed. The same argument means that Pellegrino might have kept us up too if he had stayed. As you say, we will never know. What we do know is that the Stoke Board didn't think that Hughes would keep them up so sacked him just as our Board finally lost faith with Pellegrino and sacked him too. In hindsight the Stoke Board are saying they should have sacked Hughes earlier and our Chairman has hinted that Pellegrino could well have been sacked earlier too. Its hard to disagree. Yes it is entirely possible that Hughes could get us into Europe, but if you look at his record in recent years would you say you would put your mortgage on it? Of course the squad makes a difference, but as we have seen so many times, managers dont always get the best out of good squads. Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal all being examples of squads in recent years who have not performed up to the expected standard. As for offering up a better alternative, it is not my job to put forward names for the Board to consider is it? They tell us that they are constantly monitoring managers and players so you would imagine that, at all times, they have a "hitlist." The Times recently intimated that David Wagner was of interest and maybe he was the name that Les Reed through into the mix (if he actually did) who knows? The point is that when you recruit you should always give yourself options, not just give the job to someone because they have stepped in and helped out for a few games. As someone else said, no one is saying there aren't better managers than Hughes out there who might be interested in coming here. If that is the case, why not al least talk to them? No it wasnt Sparky's fault that players missed chances. Just as it wasnt Puel's fault or Pellegrino's fault either! Apparently we came quite high in chances made last season and low in chances taken. A few more chances taken and who knows, Pellegrino might still be here! You cant possibly remember me "bleating" about not scoring in the last few games the season before last because I dont "bleat" about things like that. For the record, rightly or wrongly, I would have given Puel another season, or at least up to New Year 2018, to see if he could make a difference. You say we could end up appointing another Pellegrino. We could also end up appointing another Pochettino or Koeman. Not sure why you think I would want Moyes or Fat Sam when I am hardly breaking open the champers at the prospect of Mark Hughes taking over for three years. Perhaps I am doing Hughes a disservice, but he does seem to have become a part of the Premiership managerial merry go round as Moyes and Fat Sam are. You say you have heard that some players saying how enjoyable it is playing under Hughes. Every time a new manager comes in one or two players always same the same thing in the first few weeks. Yes, I seem to remember it happened under Puel and Pellegrino too! Hughes was a top class, very experienced player. He is also a very experienced manager who actually hasn't achieved that much in terms of success as a manager. Perhaps he will do so with us? I do hope so.

A number of managers dont manage the basics every season. Hughes wasnt exactly mastering them at Stoke and that is why they sacked him. I expect they didnt expect him to get them up to 10th last season. I didnt say that Hughes wouldnt get us into Europe, but he doesnt have a record of getting clubs like us into Europe, only keeping them up. I think we have a better squad than Stoke. I am not sure what your point is. We are talking about the manager. Are you saying he will do better here because he has a better squad? I dont think it works that way. Who else could guarantee better results? You cant guarantee better results no matter who you bring in. It will always be a gamble, although some more so than others. Sparky only won 2 out of 8, albeit in difficult circumstances, so if he stays, lets hope his record improves eh? As for who else - it is not my job to put forward other prospective managers (thank goodness) and we are told that the club are constantly monitoring prospective managers and players, so you would imagine they would have a few other names on a list. If you were to press me I would hope that Slavisa Jokanovic's name would be on that list. I would imagine that there are plenty more up and coming managers that we could interview rather than just go with a steady journeyman manager with a patchy record. As has been said many times before, if Hughes had been suggested as Puel's successor this time last year this place would have gone into meltdown and the Board accused of having no ambition. Has beating Swansea and Bournemouth really changed things so much that now Hughes is the only one who can take us forward?

Unless we bring in two more strikers, but I guess they haven't thought that far ahead.

These were the basics that you would expect any manager worth his salt to do when coming into a struggling club though Dellman. Hughes has proved he can get teams to survive in the Premiership (although he may have not done so with Stoke if he had stayed there) but we want to do more than survive dont we? Whatever happened to trying to get back into Europe? Do the Board really believe that Hughes is the man to take us there, or have they bottled it and are looking of 3 years of finishing 10th? If it is true that Reed is the only member of the Board saying that we should explore our options then he is the only one employing any common sense in this matter. That is not to say that we shouldn't employ Hughes, but it should be on the basis that he is the best man for the job, not the only man for the job.

Do you seriously regard 4 top ten finishes in a row a failure?

And yet somehow we did even better when the Don jumped ship. Go figure.

So being positive and hoping for the best instead of wetting the bed and assuming the worst makes you a "mong" does it? In that case I am happy to be a mong. Its a good job the team didnt give up like some of the fans. As long as it is mathematically possible to stay up there is always hope. Unless of course you are a bed wetter

I didnt realise that signings players was an exact science. Clearly no manager ever have signed a dud apart from Les Reed. There are plenty of players who look good elsewhere but when they either sign for your club dont cut the mustard and for a variety of reasons. Not all players suit the Premiership but a perfectly good in other leagues. The trick is, of course, to find the unearth diamonds. This is getting harder as we are in completion with every other club and as we know, we dont pay huge wages. The business model has worked very well up to this season (finishing 8th and a good cup final was not a disaster last year) and Krueger is right when he says that it is all about the bigger picture. These people clearly can do a job because they have proved season after season that they can deliver. They just need to get back to delivering again. How many people on here would still have a job if they had one poor years appraisal and were sacked because of it? I have followed this club since 1966 and every year the Chairman, CEO or whoever heads the Board has come in for some stick. Of course the Board are open to criticism, but this constant need to find someone to blame and to sack them makes no sense. Pellegrino has already paid the price for not delivering what we or the Board were expecting, That should be enough. The fans seems to want to see Hughes given the job. If Reed and the Board do this and Hughes fails, do we sack the fans? The Board have earned the right to stay on and continue their work. What they must do of course is show that they have learnt from their mistakes this season. But dont expect to see the club spending huge amounts of cash and dont expect them to find a Mane or a VVD every season.

Other than Pellegrino and his colleagues.

You can say it all day long, it doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have beaten those teams. He did manage to turn over the poorer sides. He might even have surprised us all and taken points off of Chelsea and Arsenal! We will never know.

The Dildo Bros have said that they are looking for a "high calibre" manager. Ouch.

Or another Pochettino or Koeman.

I totally agree. It would be silly for the club not to explore its options. Hughes came in and did what needed to be done over 8 games. He managed to get an underperforming squad to win two games (but who is to say Pellegrino wouldn’t have managed that?) plus some draws and, thanks to WBA, Stoke and Swansea being even poorer, we avoided the drop. It is one thing doing what you have to do over 8 games, another doing it season after season. The club need to make a decision based on what their policy is going forward. It would appear that mid table mediocrity is the order of the day based on many posts here. Perhaps we should get Claude back? At least we might get another cup final to spice things up a little.

This time last season this place would have gone into meltdown if Hughes was being seriously suggested. It makes perfect sense to go through a procedure to see who is out there and then select the best man for the job. If the Boatd think that is Hughes, so be it, but let’s not pretend that a) he is the only option and b) he is automatically the best option because he won two matches and kept us up.