Premier League table since the transfer window closed

[Making Plans 936]

[img]http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/04/21/article-2609367-1D3C818D00000578-686_634x380.jpg[/img]

[mrs miggins 0]

oh my god we''re bottom

[GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary 1,735]

just goes to show...we were down on Jan 31st 11.00pm.....when Hughton didnt stengthen a shot shy attack with more firepower.

[Mr Brownstone 0]

I wonder if we''ll ever find out what happened in January?

Did we not have the funds that we were led to believe we''re available?

Did Hughton fail to attract his targets?

Or did the Board decide not to back him?

Sincerely hope it wasn''t the latter.

[mrs miggins 0]

I remember we were really close to signing a number 10 so that Wes could move on but the deal fell through unfortunately.

We don''t know who that was though but I imagine it was quite a big deal

[Juggy 0]

The three teams not to invest are in the bottom four - Norwich, Villa and Newcastle. Which is why I said the other day that we need some serious answers, whatever the answer is it is unforgivable and a failure.If we couldn''t attract players here then that is good reason to change managers.If we didn''t have any money then it is negligence to have spent our entire budget in the summer without leaving spare funds for January (and would mean that McNally had lied to fans about money being kept for January).If we failed because transfers fell through then clearly we didn''t have a Plan B. We may well have failed to bring in a big name number 10, but the failure to bring in any attacking players at all was just ridiculous. Even just bringing in a striker on loan instead of Guiterrez would have been better business. Hughton manged to bring in Kei Kamara last season, who won us a few points, hardly cost the earth did he.

[mrs miggins 0]

Agree with Juggy, we had a whole month to sort the problem out, wtf didn''t we

[Holtcantshoot 0]

[quote user="Juggy"]The three teams not to invest are in the bottom four - Norwich, Villa and Newcastle. Which is why I said the other day that we need some serious answers, whatever the answer is it is unforgivable and a failure.If we couldn''t attract players here then that is good reason to change managers.If we didn''t have any money then it is negligence to have spent our entire budget in the summer without leaving spare funds for January (and would mean that McNally had lied to fans about money being kept for January).If we failed because transfers fell through then clearly we didn''t have a Plan B. We may well have failed to bring in a big name number 10, but the failure to bring in any attacking players at all was just ridiculous. Even just bringing in a striker on loan instead of Guiterrez would have been better business. Hughton manged to bring in Kei Kamara last season, who won us a few points, hardly cost the earth did he.

[/quote]Not to rain on your parade but I can''t see evidence that Liverpool bought anyone in the January transfer window and have gone on a 12 game unbeaten run amassing 34 of a possible 36 points. Equally I think the board had likely spent their annual transfer budget allowing Chris to sign a number of "big" signing in the summer so were probably unwilling to let him have any more strikers after they''d signed 3 in the last transfer window. The real question is why was Hughton not replaced at the end of last season after months of dour football and underachievement.Perhaps more importantly, did Hughton actually make the signing of RVW for £8.6m or was that the club trying to make marquee signings to make themselves feel/appear big? He really didn''t seem like a Hughton sort of player from the off and his constant game time when his performances weren''t warranting it had started to feel a bit like the Andrei Schevchenko / Fernando Torres incidents at Chelsea where the managers are being told they have to play the boards big signings whether they like it or not.

[ron obvious 1,499]

Why do you think RvW wasn''t a Hughton type player? He seems exactly the type he thought would do well - in the team he envisaged. Which didn''t happen. Obviously.

And I think it''s reason 2 (we have difficulty in attracting players at this level).

[Tetteys Jig 830]

Hughton has based his prev striker line ups on a big target man, RVW isnt that.

[Juggy 0]

"Not to rain on your parade but I can''t see evidence that Liverpool bought anyone in the January transfer window"

Doesn''t really rain on anything though does it, a bit of morning dew perhaps. If I said three of the four teams not to really spend any money are in the bottom four, then that doesn''t detract much from the point does it? Everybody could see that we had things to address in the final third. We needed Yobo, because we had Turner out and Bassong carrying an injury.But Guiterrez, what problem did he solve, what problem would he have solved if he''d stayed fit (buying a crock wasn''t wise in the first place). Doesn''t score goals, doesn''t assist goals, isn''t a creative player. We failed to bring in anybody who might have had a small chance of changing things up top, or winning us a few points like Kei Kamara.

[Juggy 0]

"Equally I think the board had likely spent their annual transfer budget

allowing Chris to sign a number of "big" signing in the summer"

McNally said prior to the January window that we''d kept money for January, and we all knew that RVW''s transfer fee was considered surplus budget from the year before.McNally also admitted in January that we were struggling to attract players to the club (probably Quags, Toivanan, and Alderwield).So either he is lying to his own customers, or he is telling the truth, and I''m inclined to think that he is telling the truth.

[blahblahblah 2]

Might be wrong here ( usually am, saves time), but I think that if the bottom 4 all score at the same rate as that table in their remaining games, we''ll stay up on 34 points.

Norwich 0.66 pts per game, 3 games left = 2 pts, giving us 34 pts.

Cardiff - 1 point per game, 3 left, would equal 33 points in total

Fulham, less than a point per game, 3 games left, give them 3 points say, that''s 33 pts.

Sunderland - 0.72 pts per game. 4 games left, round up to 3 pts. That''s 32 points for them.

Means nothing of course. But there''s still hope, and a couple of draws might be enough.

[Making Plans 936]

[quote user="Mr Brownstone"]I wonder if we''ll ever find out what happened in January?

Did we not have the funds that we were led to believe we''re available?

Did Hughton fail to attract his targets?

Or did the Board decide not to back him?

Sincerely hope it wasn''t the latter.[/quote]Regarding point 3 - if they didn''t back him in the January window, by not giving him any money to spend, then why did they continue to back him until the last 5 games of the season which were always going to be tough. In fact, if they thought he couldn''t be trusted to spend any "new money" on players that could have improved our already perilous position, then why did they trust him at all ?Surely we should have got rid at the end of December.

[Yellow Wal 314]

GJL Mid-Norfolk Canary wrote the following post at 21/04/2014 4:58 PM:

just goes to show...we were down on Jan 31st 11.00pm.....when Hughton didnt stengthen a shot shy attack with more firepower.

It wasn''t firepower we needed it was an attacking intent, that we didn''t get until two weeks ago.

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Juggy wrote the following post at 21/04/2014 7:27 PM:

...................... Everybody could see that we had things to address in the final third. .............

But surely the biggest problem we had was the ineffective attacking tactics employed by Hughton. I can''t really see who we could have brought in who would have solved the problem if we still played the same system that has ruined the confidence and reputations of two proven goalscorers.

Unfortunately Hughton outstayed his welcome and should have left much earlier.

I have been critical of Snodgrass quite often this season (especially before Christmas) but most of my criticism has been because of the way he has been asked to play.

I felt he had a good game on Sunday but also felt that was because he played with more freedom. The strict inverted winger system he was asked to play for most of the season has been very detrimental to our strikers. Whoever we brought in would have been in the same boat.