Will history look kinder on Hughton?

[ReadingCanary 0]

Hughton is clearly a decent coach...He''s also clearly very good at spotting a player. Redmond, Olsson, Fer, Tettey, Bassong, Whittaker, Bunn etc.I just don''t think he''s a good motivator or manager when the times are tough though.

[westcoastcanary 173]

ReadingCanary wrote: "I just don''t think he''s a good motivator or manager when the times are tough though."

Times couldn''t have been tougher at Birmingham when CH took over. Just relegated, transfer embargo, club in debt, owner under investigation and facing the additional burden of the Europa League. Creditable Europa League run and 4th place finish in the Championship Any signs of poor management or motivation there? Also, when Lee Clark was sacked in 2014, CH was the fans first choice to replace him.

Why is that when people are slating his management record, his year at Birmingham gets ignored. Because it doesn''t fit with people''s preconceptions based purely on his time at Carrow Road?

[Lessingham Canary 99]

Personally I can only view him on what I witnessed at NCFC, which was pretty dire football week in week out, maybe we have been spoiled in the past (don''t thinks myself) and therefor our expectations are just simply too high.....

Or ?

[Katie Borkins 1]

Houghton never linked midfield and attack effectively which in turn meant we never controlled the game and our defence was under constant pressure. I have never seen so many disjointed "team" performances as under Houghton. The times there would be nobody in the box when crosses sailed in was laughabland the worst thing is he couldn''t stop it from happening -in fact, it got worse as the season limped on to the inevitable relegation.

LDC will blame Snodgrass, but then if he was under performing or disobeying tactical orders then Houghton should have dropped him. He couldn''t motivate or inspire the team or crowd and thank god he has gone so we can enjoy watching a team having a go at positive attacking football again.

[westcoastcanary 173]

[quote user="Lessingham Canary"]Personally I can only view him on what I witnessed at NCFC, which was pretty dire football week in week out, maybe we have been spoiled in the past (don''t thinks myself) and therefor our expectations are just simply too high.....

Or ?[/quote]

There''s a huge difference between rubbishing CH as a manager, and rubbishing his management at Carrow Road. Very few managers have unblemished records of unbroken success at every club they''ve managed.

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

IMO he was a decent defensive coach. But had no idea about the attacking side of the game - which was shown by the fact that none of the strikers he brought in produced consistently for us (or at all in some cases). He brought in strikers who didn''t work for the tactical approach he used (without exception). Coaching-wise, when strikers'' performance dropped off (and most of our strikers, if not all, found this happening under Hughton''s reign), he clearly wasn''t able to help - not just witness RVW, but take the (awful) performance of Harry Kane when he was with us - maybe it was too early but he clearly didn''t get any coaching help to settle in and perform while he was with us. Or take Holt''s dissatisfaction at what he was asked to do from the start under Hughton. Similarly Redmond was pretty ineffective under Hughton, which IMO was largely due to a lack of maturity but I doubt he was getting help to improve during that period. And let''s not even mention Becchio....

Any view on a manager''s qualities as a coach has to be speculation by us (except when comments come out from those involved - which have to be taken with a pinch of salt but certainly all the ones I''ve seen from strikers about Hughton have been negative in one way or another) but I think the above is probably accurate given what we saw on the pitch.

Also, for the two wins at the end of Hughton''s first season, it''s plausible to me that the more open approach came from the players (obviously with the more senior pro''s leading)deciding basically sod it, let''s go for it. The comment about Howson stopping when he''d taken the ball up to the half-way line is accurate IMO. I remember noticing in several games when Wes wasn''t playing that we just had no one on the pitch with any real creative ideas , and our possession would be painfully slow with the ball working its way back and forth, eventually Snoddy would get the ball and try to cut back inside and sometimes he''d get a free kick....

In the end, it''s just not good enough to be a PL manager if you cannot do better than this with the attacking end of the game. And the final nail was that in our second season under Hughton, we lost the defensive solidity that we''d had in the first season, without improving our attacking play. I think it was the fact that we actually got worse, after spending record amounts, which did it for Hughton in the end, for the fans and (finally) for the board.

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

PS in answer to WCC, for me this thread is all about Hughton''s record at City, and I can''t comment on how well he''s done at other clubs, before or since. I can see how he could be fortunate with the striking options and coaching setup at a club when he arrives - as happened at City for his first season where Holt was well suited to his system of play - which could mask his weaknesses as a manager (or at least, what look like his weaknesses to me) and he didn''t stay very long at any of those clubs.

[Trawling canary 0]

He kept us up and signed some good players.

There were better options than him at the time but he won''t go down as one of our worst that is for sure.

He did have a hard act coming after the Messiah

[Grant Holts Moustache 105]

Something that is often overlooked is the 12 clean sheets in the second season, which was in the leagues top 10. If we could of got a goal in each of those games that''s enough to stay up. There''s no doubt he built a great foundation and transformed a defence that very rarely kept clean sheets previously. I believe he went wrong in that he didn''t have the pace in forward positions for the style he wanted to impose. Don''t get me wrong I found it very hard to watch at times that season but then it never is when you aren''t winning as much as you expect.

The pace of it was slow but I believe he was trying to build us to play a passing counter attacking style which reduced the risk of us being countered by being very organised in the way we moved as a unit. It reminded me of Swansea in their first season in the prem under Rogers. Very slow possession focused game with a clear emphasis on trying to keep a clean sheet and break for the odd goal when the opportunity arose.

However he made the wrong signings as Wolfswinkel and Elmander neither had the pace nor he ability to play up top alone and Hooper looks to have been his Hoolahan replacement. As we all know we have always been better with Hoolahan playing than not and that could have contributed to us not turning enough of those clean sheets into wins. As for Elmander and Ricky, we all had to watch them struggle to finish any chances off.

One striker different, a bit of luck and it could be a different story and everyone calls him a tactical mastermind for getting the team mid table on a wage budget that was in the bottom 3. He didn''t though and that''s the fine margins of football, the reason we all debate on here and keep watching the game. It would be even more dull if everything went as expected.

[westcoastcanary 173]

@It''s Character Forming

Yes, the OP is about whether history will look more kindly on CH''s time at Norwich. But every time CH is discussed on here people line up to rubbish him as a manager full stop, not simply as manager of NCFC over those two seasons. You yourself say that you are only commenting on his time at Carrow Road, but you then go on to refer to his time at other clubs by implying that if he was more successful elsewhere it can only be down to factors out of his control!

I said myself earlier that many different variables account for a manager''s success or failure. If, as you appear to accept, they can contribute to a manager''s success, they can equally well contribute to his failure.

[Jim Smith 2,317]

Hughton had two major problems. One was a complete and utter inability to influence the game during the 90 minutes. Game management I think McNally called it. He has obviously read all the coaching manuals and can set a team up ok (probably better than Lambert in that respect) but then when things happened during games and we needed to react or respond he couldn''t do it. clubs like ours in the prem need managers who gain them extra points through a bit of nous and reading the game. Hughton never did that.

The other problem was his inferiority complex and attitude to away games. We pretty much wrote off half our fixtures but not attempting to win them. We probably would have lost to that Sunderland side last week under him because we would have say back, posed no real threat and invited them to play themselves into the game. Under Neil we will still lose plenty of games away at this level but if we do meet sides who are our equal or even are better than us but having an off day then we will take advantage of that and those points could be extemy valuable. Hughton''s approach brought every game and ultimately the whole season down to fine margins and never have us any breathing space. He continually got out of jail and kept our heads just sbove water by beating poor sides at home but we were always just one home defeat in such a game away from getting sucked in and we could all see that if that defeat happened to West Brom then it was probably going to be too late to recover.

Nice bloke, his player recruitment was good. I have nothing against him personally as he was trying his best but the board should have seen what was going to happen and acted much earlier.

[king canary 7,606]

I think the simplest way of putting it is this- under Lambert our team looked more than the sum of their parts, under Hughton they looked less.

Line those two XI''s up and I reckon I''d take more of the Hughton players than the Lambert ones- Whitbred and Ward or Bassong and Turner? Tettey or Fox? Bennett or Redmond? Yet the team consistently looked worse. The guy who earlier mentioned Howson not crossing the half way line summed it up for me. It at times felt like each player had been given a box on the pitch and told not to leave it.

[spencer 1970 207]

[quote user="Bor Bor Bor"]Bryan Gunn signed Grant Holt.[/quote]

...and Roeder signed Wessi.

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

@WCC I think you''re missing my point which is that Hughton, based on his time at City , was poor at dealing with the attacking side of things. I can''t comment on when he was managing other teams because I''ve never paid much attention but it''s entirely possible this weakness was masked there because of the setup he inherited when he arrived- which is what happened in his first season at City when he had Holt up front. So when people talk about his record at Brimingham or Newcastle I''m dubious whether that shows he was better than the manager we saw over 2 seasons at CR.

And yes it''s a truism that no manager is fully control of his own destiny and it''s partly dependant on factors outside his control, but for CH in his second season this is less true than most, because he''d had time to let go the players he didn''t want, bring in record signings up front, and plenty of time to get them playing his way (compare the way AN has got the players to play his way in just a matter of months). And yet in the second season his team did significantly worse than the season before.

Also the point about his team''s "defensive solidity" is that we lost this toward the end of his tenure (which was a major factor in our relegation). If you look at his results from Christmas on, he had 16 games of which only 2 were against top 6 teams (because we had 4 of the top teams for our last 4 fixtures) but we lost 9 of those 16 games including home defeats to Fulham and WBA and heavy away defeats to Villa Swansea and Soton. Realistically in that run of 16 games we needed around 20 points to be on course for survival, given we could expect to end up with 1-2 points from our final 5 games, but we only got 13 points from them, which simply left us on course for relegation and was why CH was sacked.

I agree the margins were fine, in that it would only have been necessary to get a draw vs WBA and a draw Vs Fulham for us to survive but the point is that margins at the bottom are close and the same was true for the other teams around us. People say CH was able to pull out results when he needed them but that ceased to be true in early 2014 - he NEEDED to get a win from the Stoke game, or a draw away at Villa or Soton or Swansea or Cardiff or West Ham, and then the season crunch game was home to WBA but he failed in every one of those games, so we ended up relegated 3 points below WBA.

What narks me now about Hughton is that with simply competent management that season he could have brought in someone to replace Holt (eg Jerome) and if he HAD kept us playing defensively solid for the season, survival should''ve been pretty comfortable. Then we''d have time to further strengthen our team (like Stoke for example). So I do find it hard to take when people try to give the impression CHs record and performance at City was better than it actually was. In his second season he failed and let us down badly.

[ellis206 0]

I always felt sorry for Hughton, had an almost impossible task from day 1, his issue? Following on from Paul Lambert. For me, the fans played a large part in our relegation, the negativity around the place was horrendous and Carrow Road wasn''t a nice place to go and watch football. Our own fans having altercations with Ruddy and Snoddy, booing at halftime even when it was 0-0, booing every sub, even when taking off an injured Gary Hooper,  singing "you''re just a s**t Grant Holt" to Elmander at Villa away, and then people were wondering why our players were playing with no confidence and making so many mistakes. Baffling. Another common thing some fans used to comment on (already a few on here) which was just ridiculous was saying how Hughton used to "big other teams up" in his media interviews, therefore giving the opposition confidence and putting fear in to our players, I''m sorry but if our players had zero confidence because a manager said in an interview that the opposition is a decent team then surely they shouldn''t be playing football? Fans also liked to ignore the opposition manager praising our team and pretty much every manager up and down the country praising the opposition team in a pre match interview, it''s something that''s called respect but given how our own players were treated a few unfortunately wasn''t taught this life skill. When we did win a game (and we had some good wins under Hughton), fans were unable to give Hughton credit, when we beat WBA and City, it was because the opposition were on the beach (clearly ignoring WBA''s result against Utd the week after) or the players ignored the manager and went out and did their own thing. I said at the time that these types of fans are a cancer to the club, they''ll be the same morons who booed the water break on Saturday against Stoke and they''ll be the same pant wetters who are going crazy over our transfer dealings so far. Hughton wasn''t anywhere near our greatest manager (nor our worst), but he did have us midtable with the smallest transfer budget and wage bill in the league and that''s no mean feat, as some have alluded to, he did have an eye for a player (just not strikers) and a lot of our recent success is built on those players. At the time of the appointment pretty much everybody agreed he was the best man for the job, few on this post (talking with hindsight) are saying he should never have been appointed as everybody knew he had negative tactics, well quite frankly they are talking rubbish, flew out of the championship with Newcastle then had them midtable in the PL and they were the 5th highest scorers in the league, then did an incredible job at Birmingham with a transfer embargo, loss of a few players and a Europa league campaign, his Birmingham side also scored a lot of goals and reached the playoffs. He is loved by Newcastle and Birmingham fans but I guess Norwich just wasn''t the club for him.

[Katie Borkins 1]

For all the long blah blah apologist posts on Houghton, go to the following wiki page and look at the section called ''Managers''.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwich_City_F.C.

History has judged him and his overall record for our club, in the modern age, is 3rd or 4th poorest.

Every reign has ifs and buts. Fact is he squandered a shed load of transfer money, failed to build a cohesive team and then took us to the brink of relegation with turgid dinosaur football in which Snodgrass was asked to emulate Ronaldo.

It''s a "no" from me.

[Safris wonder goal 0]

Hughtons lack of desire, ambition such as settling for a draw against ''ull when they had just gone down to ten will stick with me for years, the complete opposite of what the players had been used to under Lambert and are again used to now. Then the inevitable 97th min penalty to ''ull had us leaving their place with all we deserved nil points, That alone should see to the clown never managing in the premier league again.....unfortunately though as his dull,drab,dreary,negative tactics would surely lead to an Alex Neil inspired thumping with a similar squad to which he couldn''t manage to string 1 good team performance in every 3 games with. He''s up there with the Rodent when it comes to poor poor POOR appointments. Especially after being assured he was the right man for "playing the Norwich way" then came a complete overhaul of our successful tactics.

[Van wink 2,994]

Ellis

"ellis206 wrote the following post at 25/08/2015 6:53 AM:

I always felt sorry for Hughton, had an almost impossible task from day 1, his issue? Following on from Paul Lambert.

For me, the fans played a large part in our relegation, the negativity around the place was horrendous and Carrow Road wasn''t a nice place to go and watch football. Our own fans having altercations with Ruddy and Snoddy, booing at halftime even when it was 0-0, booing every sub, even when taking off an injured Gary Hooper, singing "you''re just a s**t Grant Holt" to Elmander at Villa away, and then people were wondering why our players were playing with no confidence and making so many mistakes. Baffling. "

This one really made me smile Ellis, I presume you are joking here?

The poor old fans forking out their hard earned are now getting the blame for Hughtons failure.

This thread is about how Hughton will be viewed by history, not completely rewriting history.

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

Are you that guy who lives backwards?

Only the Hull game under CH they scored a pen middle of the first half, had a man sent off shortly after, and we laboured to try to equalise for the rest of the game. Now that lack of ability to create chances with masses of possession should''ve been a warning sign in hindsight but to say CH went there to get a point is just crazy.

[Highland Canary 76]

Like most of the away games against potentially winnable teams, including that Hull match, Hughton set up for the 0-0. When we went behind as we invariably did there was no response because any creativity had been coached out of the team. Two years of anti-football - it''s a no from me.

[lake district canary 4,531]

Ellis gets it.  The grumblimg, the booing, the social media bandwagon, the players coming out and having to say they didn''t understand why the fans were so anti-Hughton and would have to have a seige mentality - it all contributed to the direness of that second season.    Some people want it both ways. Some want to think they are fantastic fans and that they help the team with their fantastic support - and when they do that they are right. But they can also have the opposite effect if they are booing, abusing the players and not offering one iota of encouragement. It all becomes poisonous and makes things worse. 

Hughton and the players may have been struggling to do the business, but for a large amount of that second season, we were only three points away from mid table. That fact alone suggests that the nature of the league was such that it was going to be tight for all clubs. We were in the mix, but the anti-Hughton bandwagon was in full swing and at a time when we needed everyone pulling together, we had the opposite.  The players lost confidence, but when your own fans are getting on your back at the slightest thing, it must be hard to be positive. 

[Van wink 2,994]

This fan bashing really is a low point in the debate.

Disgruntled fans may well have been a consequence of the way Hughton had us playing and the frustration with his ineptitude, but they could hardly be blamed for his failure, he must carry the can for that I''m afraid.

Those like yourself who continued to give him your backing when it was so clear that he was failing are really scraping the barrel now.

[Hoola Han Solo 448]

LDC, you really are a repetitive bore.

It was NOT the fans fault that we got relegated. It was 100% down to Chris Hughton. His second season in charge was an unmitigated disaster pretty much from the start.

What did you expect the fans to do? Clap along to the dross being served up most weeks? Be joyful that we were sleep walking towards relegation?

Maybe you should spend less time criticising your fellow fans and get your head out of golden boy CH''s a rse for a few minutes.

[Branston Pickle 3,657]

I have some sympathy for the CH era, it was always going to be tough to take over from PL - but he ended up squandering a small fortune on players and our PL status with it, whilst having us play a pretty poor brand of football. Overall it''s a ''no'' from me.

[lake district canary 4,531]

[quote user="Wes Hooly Fan"]LDC, you really are a repetitive bore.

It was NOT the fans fault that we got relegated. It was 100% down to Chris Hughton. His second season in charge was an unmitigated disaster pretty much from the start.

What did you expect the fans to do? Clap along to the dross being served up most weeks? Be joyful that we were sleep walking towards relegation?

Maybe you should spend less time criticising your fellow fans and get your head out of golden boy CH''s a rse for a few minutes.[/quote]

Repetitive bore?  Some on this thread have repeatedly put their side of the argument - so it is apparently ok for them to do that because you agree wth them, but it is not ok for me to repeat things because you don''t agree with me.    I see.

And comments like your last sentence do nothing for the argument either.  Fans are not perfect, anymore than the manager or players, so if you boo or lambast one of our players or the team when they are drawing a match at half-time, then you will rightly be criticised by fans who like to offer support, even if things aren''t quite how they would like.

[Katie Borkins 1]

Worthy was one hell of a manager then, picking up wins and points in the face of a much more hostile crowd than anything Houghton had to endure... even when the crowd turned it was a little half-hearted, as if Houghton had driven out some of the supporter''s passion for the fight.

He is not indefensible, but I find the apologists who cannot admit his basic and fundamental mistakes to be too blinkered to even argue with.

[Lessingham Canary 99]

History will look kind, it will show he was manager of our wonderful club ! that in itself is enough, it will only be those who followed the club home and away during his tenure that will offer a different viewpoint, some of us will find it very difficult to ever let go of our views having endured his negative tactics and boring football. Certainly knocked the fight out of me, sitting on coaches or driving miles week after week barely ever missing a match, attending but never believing.

The capitulation at Southampton away was the final nail in the coffin, as far I was concerned, my feelings went from a passive disbelief to really wanting too boo and sing to have him sacked ! I can only guess those who say otherwise didn''t attend many matches during that period.

The other bit I never got, was how he was always so favoured by TV pundits and written press, and maybe that has tainted folks view on him ?.

[nutty nigel 7,534]

But Hughton had never pretended to be anything he wasn''t. He didn''t change his style or philosophy while managing us. As many fans were quite happy to uncover at the time Hughton has always had a negative philosophy right back to his playing days. Yet despite that he got the job after Lambert and was heralded as a good choice by the majority of the fans at that time. Fans who were saying the second half of the previous season had shown up Lambert''s gung-ho tactics and we needed to tighten up defensively.

Hughton failed because he/we totally wasted a huge transfer kitty on attacking players after he''d kept us up on a comparative shoestring the previous season. That left us with far worse striking options than he inherited. Jerome would have probably kept us up.

[Indy_Bones 441]

[quote user="ellis206"]Hughton wasn''t anywhere near our greatest manager (nor our worst)[/quote]He is statistically our worst manager ever at this level with the exception of Dixie back in 94/95, and seeing as how Dixie didn''t have a club record amount of money spent on transfers, and had to accept the fact that Sutton had already been sold (and would probably have kept us up if we''d had a more experienced backup to Gunny from the first game he got injured), then I''d argue that out of the two, Hughton did the worse job.I''ve never seen such an apalling and ineffective brand of football as we had to endure during large parts of Hughton''s tenure (basically the entire 2nd season and half the 1st), even during our darker periods from the mid 90''s to mid 00''s we still played some decent football at times, and that was with a much weaker squad than Hughton had available to him.I''m sorry, but the excuses about him not being given a chance or similar just don''t wash, he chose the way he wanted us to play, he chose the players he wanted to sign, and completely f**ked up our season by not doing either job correctly, and was rightly sacked months after he should have already been given his marching orders.Well presented, comes across as professional and respectful, but the man couldn''t manage his way out of a water paper bag, never mind a premiership football team, and he should probably stick to either being a defensive coach or a PR spokesperson, because that''s all he''s really good at, and considering how poor our defending was at times, I''m somewhat unsure about even the former...

[nutty nigel 7,534]

Well obviously the stats show he can manage his way out of a paper bag. You don''t finish 11th in the PL if you can''t manage even if folk want to believe 6 of those points had nothing to do with the manager. Add to that Newcastle, Birmingham and Brighton. Can we see what this water paper bag might look like Indy?