So what went on with Chris Hughton?

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

[quote user="westcoastcanary"][quote user="hogesar"]To be fair Nutty I think as a fan base we give managers more time than others. I think after 18 months of underperforming you can''t really blame fans for thinking a better alternative is available.[/quote]It sounds reasonable, but ignores the crucial question of whether the "underperformance" is real. If the fans'' belief is that we "should" be established in the EPL, failure to become established is interpreted as underperformance. I don''t think we have underperformed at all; if anything we have done better than might reasonably have been expected given how ill-equipped the club had become for top tier football in the years leading up to relegation to League 1 and how constrained any redevelopment was by the financial situation until hugely alleviated by Hughton keeping us up in his first season. [/quote]

 

The "underperformance" I''m talking about is first and foremost this season where we have a squad which is one of the 2 or 3 strongest in the division IMO and yet are likely to fail to even get into the playoffs.  Looking back, I''d say it has been longer than just this season though - I think the team has actually underperformed since January 2016 when we started that horrendous losing run - I think the team was capable of doing better.  So I think hog''s 18 months of underperforming is a bit harsh, for me it''s about 14 months now, although that''s close enough for government work...

 

The bigger question I think you are asking WCC is about whether we are underperforming on some sort of a long term basis, but I don''t think that''s a very meaningful question personally when so many clubs nowadays are outside the top tier but would consider themselves as naturally clubs that "should" be in the top tier - about half the Championship plus probably some lower down...

[......and Smith must score. 1,342]

What a decent thread this is.Brighton should really have gone up last season and barring an absolute disaster they will this year. I''m looking forward to see how CH sets out his stall. Will he go all defensive like he did here ?If he does it won''t be long before the thrill of promotion will seem a long time ago....

[komakino 272]

McNally has his eye on Hughton for a long time before Lambert finally walked out to speak to Villa after previously being refused to speak to Burnley then West Ham.

Hughton seemed like a safe pair of hands and low maintenance compared to the Scotsman - someone the club hoped would just keep them in the PL, but he was never the right man for Norwich, with a very rigid and predictable way of playing and a confidence draining rapport with his players. Not to mention awful football at times and was the complete anthesis to Lambert in every respect.

It was a logical appointment that didn''t work out and took the club backwards after Lambert''s sterling achievements on a very limited budget.

[Parma Ham's gone mouldy 2,219]

From March 2014:

09/03/2014, 11:54 PM

History will treat Hughton kindly

Yesterday''s game could reasonably be considered a typically average performance from Hughton''s Norwich. Many repeated and repeating elements were evident.

Hughton has carefully constructed a drilled methodology that grinds out points based on repeated coaching positions. He is keen to control the controllable.

In a league where 26-28 games are not won, it is logical to coach a side to defend well. The current premier league has 11 sides that need to do this for the majority of the season as they are faced with superior quality, firepower and finances. Such sides not only gave better players, but key weaponry that needs to be nullified. "We look after our own game" is a luxury exclusive to the superior. For everyone else it is a journalistic soundbite that cannot - and should not - be executed in practice.

"Defending" should not be confused with "defensive". If you are mostly inferior, you inevitably do a lot of the former. Over time fans conflate it with the latter. Often the team - and the manager - do not have the luxury of the choice. Fans are naturally - and necessarily and admirably - biased. Religious faith is a prerequisite of support. Players are invested with abilities beyond their range, the favourite have the luxury of their best moments leaving a mental imprint, others less fortunate gave their errors or undesirable characteristics noted - often to the exclusion if any positives they may bring. Many of the difficulties Hughton faces - and much of the criticism he receives - are a product of the premier league, financial disparity, wages to turnover ratios and could be applied to almost any if the bottom 11 and any of those managers. The manager simply does not have that much influence over results, points and club success.

The game yesterday wrote large some of the polemic elements that characterise views on Hughton and which appear repeatedly on this board however.

Hughton is a good coach. He has drilled a clear, repeated, repeatable pattern of play and methodology on the team. The players know what is required of them, they do their best to enact it and carry it out with diligent effort. They work for the team and - by extension - the manager. His methodology is to ensure that Norwich are hard to score against by tightening the spaces between and in front of the defenders. He is particularly concerned about conceding via transition turnovers and counter-attacks. Our slow, deliberate forward progress in possession is to ensure that we are less vulnerable to the counter thrusts of sides winning the ball from us as we make - or try to make - penetrative passes to score. If players are not out of shape at this strategic point, it is far more difficult for opponents to score or create chances without gambling with their own shape. Like a boxing counter- puncher we are willing teams to do this so we can exploit their subsequent structural weakness.

Learning to defend strongly and teaching players in all positions to quickly revert to a specific shape when out of possession, requires discipline and work. It is not random or "clueless", it is entirely the opposite. It is also something that requires constant repetition to drill and become natural when under pressure. If you have a side that is (mostly) inferior in resources to the opposition, it is a coaching theory to maximise your odds by drilling your side to a scheme that they can always fall back on and which requires something out of the norm for the opposition to score. You are forcing the opposition To demonstrate their superiority in a way they may not always be able to do. The calculation is that you will always be able to repeat your chosen tactic.

This approach is designed to maximise your odds over the long term (say a season). In order to reinforce it, the logic is to repeat it to some degree regardless of circumstances. The belief is that this will accumulate more points - on average - over the course of a season. It is an inflexible - and arguably ruthless - approach that (almost) deliberately ignores circumstance.

Inverted wingers cut inside and deliver balls to a single striker. Odds of a goal are low, but equally opposition full backs have to attack on the outside or long way round, maximising defensive recovery time. These wide players are also stepping into or attacking the weaker side of the full back, allowing for low risk shooting opportunities. These wide players return to a narrow midfield without the ball and remain connected to their own full back, doing man-and-a-half defensive cover. As with yesterday, they are not encouraged to run beyond the lone striker and often gone short to receive the ball with backs to goal. Hoolahan connects well and offers options, but is not a player who lays the ball early. He will also not run beyond the lone striker. He looks tidy in possession, but makes his choices in leisurely fashion. The above factors ensure we do not counter or stretch teams. We lack pace and the pace we do have is constrained by the methodology that requires careful positioning by the wide players. Redmond''s pace would be better used going beyond RVW and his dribbling better used In the 10 position, where risk of (his) tactical compromise is far less. RVW cuts a forlorn and frustrated figure. Analysing his movement and counterpointing it with footage of his previous career goals and inherent style and playing strengths, it is a legitimate question to ask whether his particular skills match the precise requirements of Hughton''s structure. He is a willing worker now, but stretching teams on The counter by moving wide into space to receive the ball, then driving angled runs towards and into the Box for shooting opportunities (his modus operandi) are not seen or likely to occur with our set up. Playing on your own up front is a thankless task and it was hard not to reach the conclusion yesterday that Crouch''s predictable, repeated, hard-to-combat structural play is what would suit Hughton''s way better. Many a defender-turned-manager has a view that strikers create and score goals in an alchemists moment and are the (separate) cherry on the (main) cake. In coaching and managerial terms I am not convinced that Hughton knows what strikers need. He has bought an expensive toy and expects it to perform something out-of-the-ordinary once a game to exploit the clean sheet that has been religiously worked on. In coaching terms I see far less methodology in the phase between midfield possession and chance creation.

Hughton''s rigid philosophy will continue to garner points on a regular basis. We are often hard to beat via his coaching structures. Keeping Norwich up - even only just or via 3 worse teams each year - is a scenario that would have been the dream one only a couple of years ago. We should not underestimate it now simply because of (artificially) raised expectations.

Our full backs are however over-protected and Hughton''s methodology simply does not allow for altered circumstances (and are typically influenced by the position a manager played as a player). Indeed he has the coaches (as opposed to the manager''s) autistically repetitive patterns even when 4-1 down after 37 minutes or 1-1 against a deep-defending 10 men. It was noticeable in the last 15 minutes that Olsson was repeatedly allowed the ball by the opposition, but he was still conscious that he was the pace entrusted with watching opposition breakouts. He was somewhat paralysed by what he has been drilled to do and the circumstances. The manager displays the same (deliberate) inflexibility. He is reinforcing his one-card-trick methodology.

Yesterday Olsson could have played more centrally in the last 15 minutes, in a sweeping defensive role, to counter counters with his pace (even though Stoke showed no real appetite to do so). Johnson had a good game, but in the last 15 minutes his deep midfield area was where the ball was in the space the opposition conceded. Howson sensible dropped in here to play the Gerard generalissimo role and a further player could have replaced Johnson, with perhaps a Becchio central target-man cameo a la crouch to bounce off. Elmander is tactically clever enough to have dropped into midfield spaces, to the yards outside the box where the shooting opportunities inevitably occurred against a tightly packed defence. Hughton perceived a danger from 10-man Stoke that I did not see.

Hughton does not have a plan B because he does not want one. This is unwavering belief in his coaching method being enough to keep Norwich up. The odds are (just) that he is correct. It is a recipe for repeated, narrow survival, not seat-of-the-pants entertainment. There is less action at higher levels anyway and this is inevitable and (mostly) more professional. It is not boring, but if goalmouth action is your criteria, it is not entertaining either. We are a much more professional, organised side than we have been for many years, but not winning 28 games a season is hard for all fans. You can only win every week in League 1. There is too much (money) to lose for pleasing the masses to be the priority (blame Murdoch not Hughton)

Hughton would (arguably) not have been able to have engineered the miracle that Lambert produced. It could also be argued that Lambert could not (either via temperament, ambition, ability or belief In his resources moving forward) have achieved the more prosaic and pragmatic miracle of repeated safety. The odds are that Norwich will again (just) stay up this season. It will likely be the case that Hughton will be replaced regardless, this now appears both an inevitable and pragmatic option. History will judge him more warmly than many currently do. Sometimes you get what you want, sometimes you get what you need.

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[king canary 7,605]

Parma

I''m a bit confused by that post- the content seems to contradict the title. From reading it it says Hughton played inflexible, rigid tactics that didn''t actually suit the players at his disposal.

[Woodman 92]

[quote user="komakino"]McNally has his eye on Hughton for a long time before Lambert finally walked out to speak to Villa after previously being refused to speak to Burnley then West Ham.

Hughton seemed like a safe pair of hands and low maintenance compared to the Scotsman - someone the club hoped would just keep them in the PL, but he was never the right man for Norwich, with a very rigid and predictable way of playing and a confidence draining rapport with his players. Not to mention awful football at times and was the complete anthesis to Lambert in every respect.

It was a logical appointment that didn''t work out and took the club backwards after Lambert''s sterling achievements on a very limited budget.[/quote]

While we were doing well, it was fine, but as soon as things went wrong, he was on a loser because he wasn''t Paul Lambert. Then when he stopped playing Holt, it completely unravelled as far as the crowd were concerned. Holt and Colin Calderwood didn''t see eye to eye, from when they were at Forest.

There are similarities with our current situation - there were a few occasions when Hughton ought to have been on the verge of being sacked - a thrashing at Man City, the Luton cup exit to name just 2, but he managed a couple of life saving wins, until that fateful West Brom loss. The same might apply to AN if and when the playoffs become unachievable. But I suspect we''ll hang on until the end of the season this time.

[GPs Beard 0]

Hughton was the famous "Plan B" - as per Alan Bowkett (Do we have a plan B? You bet we have ) and I think he was ironically taken on as much because of a track record of success in the Championship than in the Prem. I felt at the time , that should we get relegated in the first year under CH, than he would certainly be given the opportunity to get us back up. That he survived in the Prem , and as has been pointed out we then spent relatively big on RVW etc, the pressure to stay up became greater. He still kept us out of the relegation zone for most of the season, but over emphasised the need to defend to try and get to those 40 points . We barely changed shape at times after transition, and most of all, the fans got fed up.

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

For me, Hughton had some good fortune in his first season with us, because he had Grant Holt playing at his peak, and we were thrashed 5-0 in the opening game which jolted the players out of their complacency when they came back from the summer thinking they were now established Premier League players.

He recognised the relative weakness of our squad (compared to most mid-table Prem teams) and decided the first priority was an absolute solid defence , taking limited risks going forward, so fullbacks would rarely stray upfield and defensive midfielders ditto had their defensive duties as their primary role.  With Turner at his best, under Hughton''s coaching the back 4 turned into a very solid unit, Ruddy was also at the top of his game.  Up front, GH was a very difficult striker to defend, superb at playing up front on his own, managing to make the most of some poor service, getting a very respectable return in goals for himself, and also drawing a lot of fouls around the box which we were able to convert into more goals.

 

It all came together in that unbeaten run, including well-deserved victories over Man U and Arsenal.  Towards the end of the season we did come uncomfortably close to the relegation zone, but a couple of wins at the end lifted us into a rather flattering league position (although as it turned out, we could have lost to both WBA and Man C and would have still been safe).  Also the extreme tedium of his ultra-cautious style of play was steadily losing support from the fans, so that when the shackles seemed to come off for those last two victories, many speculated the players had rebelled against Hughton''s approach and decided on their own to go for it.

 

Where it all went really wrong for Hughton was the failure to bring in a replacement for GH (for various reasons I think it was right to let GH go, not least that I think he''d had enough of playing under Hughton''s style, the problem was that he wasn''t replaced properly).

 

Hughton''s style required a striker able to play up front, hold up the ball effectively, put pressure on the defenders with little support, force them to foul him to keep him under control, and convert a decent proportion of the chances which came his way.  Since then we''ve had Mbokani and Jerome who can play this way (although neither of them can do it as well as GH at his peak).  The problem for Hughton was that in his second season, none of our strikers were able to do this, and obviously the recruitment of RVW was a disastrous mistake because he could not play effectively in Hughton''s system.  He was left with the choice of leaving one striker up front (who''d then be ineffective) or having some sort of combination (e.g. Elmander/Hooper) which might add effectiveness up front but then weakened us defensively. 

 

To make it worse, in his second season Hughton seemed to be trying to play a more open style of football, but this just meant that we lost our defensive solidity while we were toothless in attack.

 

Could he have succeeded if we''d kept him on in the Champs for the following season ?  Perhaps, but people need to remember the players had probably lost faith in him by the time he was sacked, so it wouldn''t have been easy for him to regain that respect. 

[westcoastcanary 173]

@ICF

"The "underperformance" I''m talking about is first and foremost this season where we have a squad which is one of the 2 or 3 strongest in the division IMO and yet are likely to fail to even get into the playoffs."

[Y] An element of crossed wires I think. I took Hoggy''s "eighteen months" to be a reference to Hughton''s reign, post the WBA defeat pre-Christmas 2012.  

Re. what you refer to as "the bigger question", for me it''s more to do with our chronic ill-preparedness for survival in the top tier owing to the state to which the club had been reduced in the years of decline culminating in relegation to League 1. Nutty mentions Peter Grant''s signings, but it would be pertinent to ask what sort of scouting network we had at that time, or what sort of recruitment infrastructure, or indeed whether we had anything more than the most basic football infrastructure at all. When we arrived back in the EPL under Lambert, we were "a Premier League club" only in the sense that we were playing in that league. Hughton started the reconstruction process while also trying to keep us up. The burden which this placed on him was what led, if you remember, to the creation of the original Football Board (or whatever it was called). This is a perspective which people seem to me to totally ignore; yet the sort of success fans crave on the field is impossible without first class support services off it.

[westcoastcanary 173]

[quote user="king canary"]Parma

I''m a bit confused by that post- the content seems to contradict the title. From reading it it says Hughton played inflexible, rigid tactics that didn''t actually suit the players at his disposal.[/quote]Surely what it says is that, at Norwich, Hughton was constrained by circumstances to adopt a strategy "designed to maximise your odds over the long term (say a season)" in order to effect "the ..... prosaic and pragmatic miracle of repeated safety" (which was the primary objective set for him by the board). The point being, I take it, that had Hughton set out to play in a way more "suited to the players at his disposal", the odds on our survival were likely to have lessened, not increased. 

Wherein there is a moral for today, namely that building a side suited to providing "seat-of-the-pants entertainment" (or what Alex Neil refers to as "expansive football") is not necessarily the way to maximise your chances of promotion? 

[king canary 7,605]

@westcoast

A couple of things.

1) that point about maximising survival chances doesn''t really make sense to me. Surely a system only increases your chance of survival if it suits your players? To just say ''this system is better for staying up'' without actually considering how well it fits the players you have is just wrong. Also we''ve seen enough from the likes of Bournemouth, Swansea, Southampton that a defense first approach is not the only way to stay up.

2) I do sometimes think some people fail to recognise that there is a middle ground between the ultra-defensive football of Hughton and a as you call it ''seat-of-your-pants'' approach.

[lake district canary 4,531]

[quote user="king canary"]@westcoast

A couple of things.

1) that point about maximising survival chances doesn''t really make sense to me. Surely a system only increases your chance of survival if it suits your players? To just say ''this system is better for staying up'' without actually considering how well it fits the players you have is just wrong. Also we''ve seen enough from the likes of Bournemouth, Swansea, Southampton that a defense first approach is not the only way to stay up.

2) I do sometimes think some people fail to recognise that there is a middle ground between the ultra-defensive football of Hughton and a as you call it ''seat-of-your-pants'' approach.[/quote]

Hughton was not ultra-defensive.  He is and always be a pragmatic manager and his whole approach is a balanced one. His approach worked for a the first half of the first season when he got Bassong in and our defence was good enough for that long unbeaten run.  The problem came with a crisis of confidence once that run ended - the 3-4 against Man City (were we ultra defensive then?). Once that confidence bubble burst, it was like having to get the basics right to try and get the defence back to where it was during the unbeaten run. That led on to a more defensive style - but it was out of neccesity.  After that there was a demand from fans and I believe from board

level that we be more attacking - but that was not ever going to go well - you have to allow a manager to manage how he wants.  We were never more than an odd goal here and there from doing ok that second season - poor finishing let us down - and we had significant injury problems that season too - and the mix of players was not the best.  Someone said we missed Holt earlier in the thread - and I think that is the one factor that cost us that season. We still haven''t had a leader like him on the pitch since he left.

[king canary 7,605]

You''re probably right- ultra defensive insinuates a team good at defending which we were not in that second season.

The person who''s confidence bubble burst for me was Hughton himself. After that unbeaten run he seemed to retreat further and further into negative tactics s and his response to every defeat was to try and make us more defensive. I remember at the end of the first season giving him the benefit of the doubt and expecting next season with more investment in the attacking players that we would be better.

It just didn''t happen. The warning signs were there early, failure to trouble a 10 man Hull team, and as the season went on it got worse and worse.

I think it''s easy to forget just how poor we were that season. We scored less goals than anyone, yet had the third worst defence. As soon as the opposition scored you might as well leave as we weren''t coming back. He was a bad, bad manager for us.

[komakino 272]

I always felt CH would be a very good manager with a very technically gifted side. But to get to manage a top top you have to earn the right, which he hasn''t done this far.

His body language with us and post match interviews screamed that he knew he wasn''t working with players that he thought we good enough.

That was the big difference between him and his predecessor - Lambert knew he had average players, but he made them feel good and therefore got more out of them. Whereas Hughton was the reverse of this, with the inevitable consequences.

Hughton was at the club far too long and the club went backwards by not making the correct decisions - sound familiar?

[Hank shoots Skyler 2,094]

Indy_Bones wrote:

''''Got to laugh at this.

Perm CL qualifying, top 4 each season, great players with superb football on display, but apparently this represents being stale....

Just lol at modern football....''''

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

What on earth is the use in boasting about their top 4 record when they are out of the champions league with a whimper season after season? They''ve put in some truly pathetic performances in the CL!

They are embarrassingly predictable in the league as well, he''s maintained a squad that is happy to chase for the title but has and will never assert itself with any genuine threat in this current regime. His reluctance in the transfer market in previous seasons has also ensured they remain a class below the teams at the top of the prem.

Take nothing away from what he''s done there, but I think things have really stagnated in the last few years. The general gist from the Arsenal fans I know is that they have a great deal of respect for what he''s done, but would like him to be moved on (in the most dignified way) in favour of someone new.

[Tim Allman 1]

Enjoyable thread, thanks to all contributors.

One thing not mentioned so far with Hughton is that in his first season he was restricted by the second tranche of the debt repayments agreed when City were in League 1. From memory our promotion “cost” City £20+ million in repayments, around 50% of which would have been reflected in the playing budget in season 12/13. Attackers generally cost more ££ so getting defenders in would have been sensible give the Lambert squad he inherited.

Overall in season 12/13 I don’t Hughton didn’t do a bad job at all given the restrictions in the budget

[PurpleCanary 5,558]

[quote user="GPs Beard"]Hughton was the famous "Plan B" - as per Alan Bowkett (Do we have a plan B? You bet we have ) and I think he was ironically taken on as much because of a track record of success in the Championship than in the Prem. I felt at the time , that should we get relegated in the first year under CH, than he would certainly be given the opportunity to get us back up. That he survived in the Prem , and as has been pointed out we then spent relatively big on RVW etc, the pressure to stay up became greater. He still kept us out of the relegation zone for most of the season, but over emphasised the need to defend to try and get to those 40 points . We barely changed shape at times after transition, and most of all, the fans got fed up.[/quote]This is the point, which statistics support. The problem with Hughton was not that he was overly defensive, but that he held on to that ultra-cautious approach even when the way games had gone demanded a change. Talking about Bowket, this was the devastating critique of that aspect of Hughton''s counter-productively rigid thinking he launched at the end of that relegation season;“Going forward we want people to put a team out that has a flexible style in terms of different tactics but plays to win. We want to play a passing game. There will be times and it will be appropriate, when you’re under the cosh against Chelsea, you want 10 men behind the ball. But there will be other times when, for example in the Premier League, you go to Hull and play for 64 minutes against 10 men, and you wouldn’t know how to open a can of tuna, let alone their defence. And that is not tolerable."We have to play an entertaining, passing game. We have to be able to attack at pace, possibly sometimes on the counter-attack. We have to be able to change tactics within the game, and we have to be able to entertain."

[It's Character Forming 1,160]

I think the Hull game at the start of Hughton''s second season was a very clear sign of the problems we would have that season - you have got to be able to attack sometimes.  We had all our new players on show but there was simply no ability to create chances.  Without Grant Holt, we were stuffed basically.

 

The most depressing game I''ve ever been to as a City fan was when we played at Spurs early in Hughton''s second season.  We sat back deep in our own half and let them attack us.  Even after they were 2-0 up, we didn''t show any desire to attack.  They eased off, otherwise they could have scored 10.  I''d rather lose 5-1 at Man City like we did under Lambert because at least we had a go.  That game under Hughton, we never showed any appetite to score a goal, and really what''s the point ?