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Bradwell canary

Hughton or the board?

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Hughton Looks like having two promotions to the PL, and got Birmingham to a position they have not reached since we recruited him.

This would indicate to me that he has a good managerial record.....except here. It raises the question WHY?

Clearly he has the ability, so what was the reason for his lack of success here?

Guess we will never know, but I wonder if he was ever given the support from above to recruit the players he would have liked.

If he had the spending power that AN mostly wasted, I just wonder how things would have turned out for him, and the club.

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Did you watch many matches with in charge of us? the football was dire, tactics so negative and always talked up the opposition.

If he keeps Brighton the PL by playing half decent football, then well done, until then i can still feel the frustration of watching us then (especially his second season)

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[quote user="Bradwell canary"]Hughton Looks like having two promotions to the PL, and got Birmingham to a position they have not reached since we recruited him.

This would indicate to me that he has a good managerial record.....except here. It raises the question WHY?

Clearly he has the ability, so what was the reason for his lack of success here?

Guess we will never know, but I wonder if he was ever given the support from above to recruit the players he would have liked.

If he had the spending power that AN mostly wasted, I just wonder how things would have turned out for him, and the club.[/quote]

Another very poor and unjustified attempt to denigrate the board.How desperate are you?

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[quote user="king canary"]Until Alex Neil came along...[/quote][:D] Fair enough, but the board can''t be blamed for not backing Hughton.

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No they can''t. You can''t really blame the board for not backing any of our managers of late (as much as their wealth will allow).

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"if he had the spending power that AN mostly wasted" ?!?

at the start of his second season, he spent £26m ....still more than any other NCFC manager has spent in one season.

£8.5m of that went on Van Wolswinkel.......you couldn''t make this sh!t up.

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Hughton kept us in the PL for a season. AN didn''t. Period!

But you look at VW now, and he''''s scoring for fun again.

IS the NCFC factor the same as the Bermuda triangle-a mystery!

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Whilst I think the Board are inept in many footballing areas (why sack Hughton seeing what he''s done at Brighton, when keep AN) you can''t fault them as they backed both Hughton and AN financially

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Which league has he been successful in? He''s not succeeded in the Prem particularly, but has proven himself adept in the Championship. He will get found out at Brighton in the Prem, like he did with us. Newcastle were a far stronger squad when he took them up, so he was able to tread water around where they should have been, but with us, he proved he can''t get lesser quality players to overperform, and he isn''t very good at spending transfer money - he''s not terrible but very hit or miss (His signings were: Bassong, Whittaker, Butterfield, Snodgrass, Turner, Tettey, Bunn, Camp, Becchio plus Kane, Garrido and Kei Kamara on loan - which of those is Prem quality? Snodgrass, Tettey, and Bassong (when he signed) were/are decent champs/low-end Prem players, the rest were/are garbage. Kane is the outlier as he''s scored for fun at Spurs but he didn''t show any hint of being capable of that with us - whether that''s Hughton''s tactics, or Kane not being ready at that point is up in the air)
In the Prem with Newcastle, he was harshly sacked, but if you look at the squad, it wasn''t over-performing, they were about where they should have been in 11th. Pardew took over and finished 12th, but would have been 9th if not for throwing away a 3-0 lead on the last day of the season, so he didn''t really do any better or worse than Hughton with the same players.
In the Prem with us, Hughton''s Norwich played atrocious football, resulting in several games where we didn''t even have a shot on goal. He achieved our highest finish in 20 years getting us to 11th, but we were in danger of going down before beating West Brom and Man City in meaningless (for them) games at the end of the season which left us 5points ahead of 17th and 8 points clear of relegation. He couldn''t get the players to perform to the same standard Lambert did and his own signings weren''t up to scratch. 
He spent more than 20million so it''s hardly like the board didn''t back him.
There''s lots of things you can criticise the board for, but Hughton''s tenure being awful isn''t one of them. The only thing I would say against the board regarding Hughton is that they didn''t sack him soon enough. I wanted rid of him from after the first season, because finishing 11th was deceptive, and papered over the cracks of a season we really were dire in for the most part. The football under Hughton was soul-destroying, he set up hoping to scrape a 0-0 out of every game. The football was so poor in fact, that I genuinely started to lose interest in NCFC for the first and only time ever.

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[quote user="GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary"]"if he had the spending power that AN mostly wasted" ?!?

at the start of his second season, he spent £26m ....still more than any other NCFC manager has spent in one season.

£8.5m of that went on Van Wolswinkel.......you couldn''t make this sh!t up.[/quote]
Ah I forgot Wolfy was a Hughton signing - I now class it as my claim to fame that I was there for BOTH of his NCFC goals.

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Hughton was doing OK at Newcastle after he took them up, they were comfortably mid table.I don''t trhink he was sacked at Newcastle for footballing reasons.

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The "on the beach" delusion surfaces again...

We''re neither going up nor down, so how come we managed to beat Reading 7-1?

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[quote user="Nuff Said"]The "on the beach" delusion surfaces again...

We''re neither going up nor down, so how come we managed to beat Reading 7-1?[/quote]
Do you always look at things in such simplistic terms? 
Man City for example, had lost only once at home all season before we beat them, on the final day, with absolutely nothing in it for them, having lost the FA cup final and sacked Mancini a week earlier. Crowd chanting support for Mancini throughout the game, tightest home defence in the Prem that season, conceded 3 to us (third lowest scorers in the Prem that season), two from poor marking and Johnny Howson strolled past 4 of them pretty much unchallenged for the 3rd. 
Any team can beat any other on their day if they''re up for it. Against Reading, we were clearly up for it. Against us, Man City clearly weren''t interested in the game. 
The Man City game was on the final day of the season, the Reading game came with another 4 to play afterwards etc etc.
Having nothing but pride (and a new sporting director) may inspire our boys to go and spank Reading, but I can''t imagine the big time charlies at Man City find it particularly motivational to play against a bottom half team on the last day, with literally nothing, not even league position riding on it, having just sacked their manager (knowing the new one won''t be appointed until the summer) and lost a cup final a few days before.

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I despaired at the time of the way any single good thing that happened was either luck, teams on the beach.   Any sense of Hughton being responsble for us staying up that season has in some quarters been wiped out.  Some people have had it in for Hughton since the day he signed and won''t give him an ounce of credit., but that season was a real achievement. Interestingly,   Hughton''s first season in the PL with us and AN''s season with us in the PL were quite similar in that both had good runs of results up to around Christmas and then the bubbles burst as teams sussed us out and we lost momentum/confidence.  The difference was with Hughton that he managed to get us over the line in his first season.

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Just a reminder that Paul Lambert achieved more points the previous season with a lower budget and worse defence. And we played much more entertaining football and scored many more goals. It was a decent by Chris Hughton in his first season, but before he was sacked he had taken the club backwards.

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Sacking Hughton with a handful of games to go was embarrassing. The only time I have disagreed with the owners.

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I tend to agree that the timing wasn''t the best,but I don''t think they had much option once the fans turned like that.

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I was all in favour of the sacking and did believe that Adams would be able to get enough out of the squad to keep us up.

Shame for all concerned.

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Basically our board are hopeless when it comes to sacking managers. Off the top of my head:

Neil sacked far too and replaced with Neil 2. Utterly pointless. Should''ve been sacked much earlier or wait til the end of season. Also there''s the timing with the press conference etc. Embarrassing.

Hughton sacked with 5/6 games to go of which only 1 was winnable and that was away at Fulham. Sacked far too late with little or no chance of staying up.

Adams sacked at a time when form was actually improving rather than after a 10 match (or similar) winless streak.

Gunn not sacked after the Colchester debacle but several games later after a 4 nil win. I believe he was sacked whilst on the way to be next match. Harsh.

Walker sacked after consecutive 5-1 and 6-1 home victories. Not a great season but odd timing to say the least.

I''m sure others could add to this list....

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The complete failure of Van Wolswinkel was a kick in the bollocks for Hughton.

It greatly influenced his tactics IMO. He had more to expect from an expensive goal scorer.

Some see it as the other way round I realise and Hughton must have sanctioned the purchase..

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I find it weird that one of the major factors affecting Hughton''s two years never seems to be acknowledged, namely just how ill-equipped the club was for survival in the EPL after years of deterioration on and off the field burdened by debt. Whoever had been appointed when Lambert walked out would have faced the same debilitating lack of anything approaching the required level of off-field support, in particular an efficient, established scouting and recruitment set up and all the rest of the football infrastructure that the manager of any club seeking to survive at the top level would normally be able to take for granted. Lambert got by on his first hand experience of players in the lower leagues, but Hughton was faced with a completely different level of problem. It makes his keeping us up in his first season an even bigger achievement.

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[quote user="westcoastcanary"]I find it weird that one of the major factors affecting Hughton''s two years never seems to be acknowledged, namely just how ill-equipped the club was for survival in the EPL after years of deterioration on and off the field burdened by debt. Whoever had been appointed when Lambert walked out would have faced the same debilitating lack of anything approaching the required level of off-field support, in particular an efficient, established scouting and recruitment set up and all the rest of the football infrastructure that the manager of any club seeking to survive at the top level would normally be able to take for granted. Lambert got by on his first hand experience of players in the lower leagues, but Hughton was faced with a completely different level of problem. It makes his keeping us up in his first season an even bigger achievement.[/quote]Possibly because there is nothing to acknowledge. That is a strange, desperate and confused argument. As far as I am aware these many problems you think existed were there when Lambert was manager and he had to cope with them. They didn''t suddenly arise once he resigned. The only new "problem" Hughton had was how to spend the larger amounts of money he was given, compared to what Lambert had to make do with.Claiming that Lambert had some kind of advantage over Hughton in surviving in the Premier League because of  "...his first hand experience of players in the lower leagues" is one of the more bizarre notions I have seen here. If that was such a bonus why didn''t Hughton keep those lower league players and refuse to spend the millions the directors gave him on expensive and supposedly more talented replacements?It is not clear from your phrasing whether you are claiming Hughton''s achievement in keeping us up was just greater than he has been given credit for, or greater than Lambert''s similar achievment. Either way, no, it was not.

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@PurpleCanary
With respect, I think you need to read my post again. It is clear from what I say that the problems existed before Hughton took over, including throughout Lambert''s tenure. What I said was that Lambert "got by" through that extraordinary period relying on his first hand experience of the lower leagues, which is hardly controversial. I am in no way downplaying Lambert''s achievement up to that point. But Lambert walked away at precisely the time that the club''s ill-preparedness became most crucial.
By calling Hughton''s keeping us up "an even greater achievement", I meant simply that he did it under circumstances which few managers of "second season" EPL teams have to face (and those who do, like Holloway at Blackpool, seldom manage to overcome).

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So, Brighton at home next. Hughton to confirm promotion on our doorstep. Guard of honour from our players perhaps?

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