Sooooo then.....................

[Iwans Big Toe 312]

I didn''t get the chance to see the match last night, and being 5000 miles away from home (I know plastic plastic blah blah blah) for the last 4 months I have missed a considerable chunk of the season. I have managed to catch a couple of games though (The first 8 games of the season before I left and then Newcastle away, WBA away, Cardiff away and Man City home) and in most of those matches we have seemed a team bereft of ideas and confidence. At the start of the season my attitude towards the coming year of football was to give the manager the benefit of the doubt After all we had finished 11th and there were enough good performances to suggest that we could, a la Stoke, establish ourselves in the top flight. The 10 game unbeaten run, the final few results of the season, OK there was some absolute dross thrown in there too, but how many times have we beaten Arsenal, Manchester United and the defending league champions all in the same season? Add to that the summer signings of 2 Dutch internationals and a host of other players that the binners could only dream of attracting to play at their shack. Yet here we are 26 games in, 5 points off the bottom of the league, the 4th worst defensive record, 2nd lowest goal scoring tally, which combines to make the 3rd worst goal difference, we seem to be listing and slowly sinking like the Ark Royal and we still have ''that'' end of season run of games to look forwards to.

I believe that we have probably missed our chance to change the manager this season and we should have been more proactive earlier in the season in looking for a new manager and given him enough time to steady the ship and get some of his own playing personnel in. There are few that would have fitted the bill though as we were never likely to prise Mourinho away from Chelsea. The name Bielsa was bounded about for a bit, but I think that was probably a bit of wishful thinking and there was never much of a chance of him arriving. Pullis may have caused a collective groan, but he would have continued with the current managers defensive philosophy, with a big difference, I believe that he would have been successful at it. I don''t feel that Solskjaer would have been the right man to keep us up, look at the job he''s doing at Cardiff. Mike Phelan was mentioned, but he has even less experience managing than OGS. Curbishly is the opposite with bags of experience, but would he have been happy with a 2 hour commute to work every morning? Di Matteo has Premier League relegation fight experience. And then of course there is Malky.

This season though is worryingly starting to have the feel of Deehan or Roeder about it as the board seems to be fiddling whilst Rome burns. I can see us again getting to the point of no return, where we are all but mathematically relegated and giving the job to someone completely out of their depth, probably Hucks, and tarnish another club legend''s reputation. If at it''s conclusion, as I am very sadly concerned about, we find ourselves plying our trade in the Championship next season, will it be the end of the world? After all, look at West Brom, since the turn of the century they have spent their time yo-yoing between Premier League (8 seasons) and Championship (7 seasons). They seemed to have finally established themselves and yet they are now in the relegation mix again. Is this the best that we should hope for? And if we did have to put up with one season the misery of relegation, the next the joy of winning the league or a play off triumph at Wembely, would that be so bad?

The other concern I have though is that if we do go down we will witness another Worthy type debacle ensuing as the board refuse to admit they have made a bad decision in appointing the current manager and we''ll see them sticking with Hughton next season as they feel he''s the the best candidate available to bring promotion at the first time of asking. Of course if they were to do this it would most probably only produce a poisonous atmosphere at the ground. The last football match I got to attend with my father before he passed away was the Hull City game following our relegation under Worthy, a horrible performance and result unfortunatley. There was similar feeling amongst the fans that day that the manager had run out of ideas as to what to do to change things and was just repeating the same mistakes hoping for a different outcome. This environment eventually forced the board''s hand and we ended up hiring Peter Grant.

If you look at this board''s track record with hiring managers it doesn''t look all that good. Out of the 9 full time managers appointed by the current owners (not including the other 4 caretakers who''s combined win percentage is only 15%) I would argue that only 2 have been successful. Paul Lambert, which was a no brainer, and Worthy, which was a bit more luck than judgement as I think he was a cheaper option at the time, much like the Mike Walker appointment in 1992. Whilst Hughton may have led us to our best league finish since the day''s of Walker, I think that that was based mainly on the fact that the league was weaker than the previous season and we still had some of the Lambert mentality running through the team. 12 months on and any resistance that was put up against Hughton''s philosophy has finally been beaten out of the side and they now look dejected husks of former players, who are resigned to the fact that unless there are 3 teams worse than us (which seems unlikely) they are facing relegation.

So in closing let me leave you guys with this question to ponder. If we do some how manage to stay in this league by the skin of our teeth or we are very sadly relegated, who do you think the man to manage us to either Championship glory or Premier league mediocrity is? And would it be the same person no matter the situation?

[Iwans Big Toe 312]

Obviously this post must far too reasonable discussion to get a response from any on this board today. May be I should have just stuck to "storm the board room, lynch the chairman and burn down the ground!!!!!" :P

[Ginja 26]

[quote user="The Frisbee Hyena"]Obviously this post must far too reasonable discussion to get a response from any on this board today. May be I should have just stuck to "storm the board room, lynch the chairman and burn down the ground!!!!!" :P[/quote]

I think I speak for many people when I say tl;dr; [;)] [:P]