A happy knack

[pete 318]

Whatever you may feel about Hughton you can''t argue that when it comes to the crucial games he manages to squeak a win. Last Season it was Arsenal maybe Everton and definitely WBA. And this season Stoke and West Ham. Perhaps this due to CH ability to inspire rather than players doing it for themselves.

However don''t expect CH to get any plaudits sheer luck.

[newcastle uni canary 0]

i''d add the reading game to that list. But would also say at the time the villa game last year felt like a must win.

[Gingerpele 0]

I think you''re picking and choosing crucial games.

Cardiff was just as crucial as West Ham, and more crucial than Stoke. Stoke away is just as hard to get anything from as Chelsea/Arsenal/Man.C for us, in theory it shouldn''t be, but in reality we''ve done much better against those bigger teams, home and away. We didn''t beat Cardiff. And as NUC says, Villa game was crucial last year.

Essentially to get the WBA and West Ham games to become ''crucial'' we had to lose more important crucial games. Villa won to jump above us in the table. West Ham at home came after we failed to score against Cardiff despite a torrent of attacking play, and then got stuff against the two Manchester games. I''d say after the Arsenal and Chelsea performances Cardiff was very crucial, we needed to build on the performance and turn it into a result. That game clearly knocked the players confidence and that didn''t help at all in the next two games. And it took a very lucky (but right decision) penalty to get that confidence back.

We didn''t start playing good football until after Snodgrass put us in the lead. I don''t know how much credit Hughton can really take for that. Not much at all in my book. Why couldn''t he get Snoddy, Redmond and Howson bursting forward quickly with intent in the first half? West Ham were attacking enough for us to counter. Why did it take a fortunate penalty 50 minuets into a game we should be been really going for to score?

I like Hughton, and i''m not a Hughton outer, but some people seem to be giving him too much credit for Saturday. Its fantastic we won, and we really need to build on it. But a happy knack? Not in my opinion. But good on you for looking at it positively.

[CDMullins 436]

Im a Houghton InnerBut surley those games are only ''crucial'' due to our bad results previously

[Gingerpele 0]

CDMullins pretty much saying what I wanted to say in two sentences ;)

[lappinitup 629]

[quote user="Gingerpele"]CDMullins pretty much saying what I wanted to say in two sentences ;)[/quote]Why use one word when a sentence will do GP? [;)]