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Katie Borkins

Should we have just kept Houghton?

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After all, we blamed him for most of the dreadful premier league season last season, so the Board sacked him, after the fans "turned" following the WBA game, and appointed Neil Adams instead.  Adams achieved 1 point from 15 and saw us relegated but most assumed 4 of those 5 games were an impossible ask.
Neil Adams was hardly hailed as a decent permanent appointment, most fans willing to give him a chance based on the "fantastic" squad we had which was clearly the best in the division and should "walk it".  However, the feeling persisted amongst many that this was a "cosy and easy" appointment with Delia and MWJ''s fingerprints all over it.
But by Christmas we were only seventh, or eighth, and so Adams had to go after two dreadful performances in January, and we brought in Alex Neil at some expense as an outsider to the club who would be untainted by claims of "cosy Colney".
And now with Neil not yet pulling up trees, apparently it''s because of the players who are no longer the best squad in the league and lack fight and willingness to perform.
Meanwhile, Royle came and went, the Barnet ex-manager came and went, Phelan came and went through the revolving doors of Colney.
With hindsight, maybe keeping Houghton would have been better all round?

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or maybe Hughton would have resigned should the team have been related under his management.

Although if he wasn''t sacked he may well have had a plan with the final 5 games. He knew the team and players better than anybody and perhaps maybe have been able to rally the team to just about escape relegation.

Whether Norwich would have kept him after that or not is another question.

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Hughton should''ve gone at Christmas or stayed until the end of the season.

In hindsight I would''ve fancied Chrissy H to win promotion back to the PL.

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And like KoromaCrab said, I would''ve put more money on Hughton pulling of a shock result that I would''ve Neil Adams.

With 5 games to go it was a crazy decision, predominately based on our previous at Craven Cottage.

And as Gary Lineker said at the time, "the grass isn''t always greener".

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"Should we have just kept Houghton?"

Yes, there was always an argument that in the event of relegation Hughton would be well qualified to get us back. But the players failed to do well enough as a group - and the board gave in to fan pressure.  Well done players. Well done board. Well done fans.

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Its all part of the inevitable downswing.Who can say but would probably be in exactly the same position if Hughton had stayed.

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Bor, you made a point of telling me to include specifics!Who is this Houghton manager? Get our managers name right. You must be 12 if you can''t remember or spell his name right!

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But to answer the post, it depends...Everyone, including me, believes Hughton was allowed to stay too long.But one could argue he''s had success at this level. A few season''s ago, some were complaining about Chelsea''s style of play, grinding our 1 goal wins, but not pretty. What do we prefer, exciting entertaining footie, or success???

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Certainly, it should have been an earlier sacking of Hughton in the PL but then there were a few famous victories from him in the 10 game unbeaten run so perhaps that stuck with the board.

Another question is if the club would have kept him if they were relegated under him in the PL. Would NA have then got the job.

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Hughton!!!!! How hard is it to know how to spell his name?? Makes you look even more like a carrot cruncher.

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LOL Coops. I think you''ll find it was deliberate.

Should we have kept Hughton? What would the boo-o-meter say? The happyclap-o-meter suggests Adams...

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The thought had been on my mind for a while, but felt too heretic say it out loud or write it down. I''m glad someone has brought it up. We would have definitely skipped the long-winded Bassong saga, and while it is hard to tell how the summer transfer moves would have been different, it is hard to imagine that with Hughton and Bassong we would have gone behind in so many games at the beginning of the season. The big question is the extent the players found him uninspiring at the time...

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What has happened to your level of literacy Bor?It''s "Should we of just kept Houghton?"

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[quote user="Samwam27"]Bor, you made a point of telling me to include specifics!Who is this Houghton manager? Get our managers name right. You must be 12 if you can''t remember or spell his name right![/quote]
I got our manager''s name right.  Specifically, it''s Alex Neil.  It''s nice to have a manager with a name everyone can spell. I got pig sick of all that "Hughton" nonsense a few years back.  You would think people didn''t have Google or something.

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In hindsight!!!

It is always said that players suffer a dip in form due to loss of confidence.

Maybe, just maybe, managers suffer the same loss of confidence in their abilities and the direction they are taking a team.

I think maybe Chris Hughton seemed, seemed I say, to have lost a little bit of his belief and mojo last season. Just like Lambert seems to have done.

I am not sure about my sentence construction so maybe you can mark me out of ten teacher?

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Bor The Shakespearean fool offers some insight again....

From last year:

Re: Finance versus the manager

Reply Quote

I felt - both on the training ground, pitch and boardroom - that there was an elephant in the room with Hughton. One that I believe Paul Lambert instinctively felt and saw.

The existing players were not good enough to make the jump you are talking about to a +40 side.

The elephant in the room for Norwich fans under Hughton, was that his method was autistic and calculated and took account of the disparity in playing resources, ability, financial disparity and the inevitable evaporation of the high of promotion, survival and wide-eyes newness of it all. It was a logical approach that focused on our weaknesses and a strategy that could glean points against better sides (in the absence of cup final naïveté). This is inevitably replaced - on the training ground, pitch, boardroom, message board - with a weltschmerzen, an ennui, a weariness as the reality dawns that trudging, grudging point-gathering is the medium term future. No real hope of silverware, success is survival and that''s all.

Hughton''s failure was at the top end of the failure chart, in that it was his big gambles, his cherries on the cake that failed. The forward line was not embellished - though in reality our investment in his area was comparatively limited (extraordinarily) in context - nor cherished. Nevertheless, as Ricardo stresses, we were performing above our station historically, in WLT terms and in a fundamental structural sense, given our rapid rise.

Parma

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Might we have overvalued the players...?

Might they be content with the level they reached and now coast on their past achievements (sic)?

Might other teams, both psychologically and tactically, have spent the season picking on this weakness?

Might Hughton have chosen his tactics in accordance with his resources.....?

Parma

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the man who took us to our 2nd highest ever PREMIERSHIP position got no praise from the fans who thought wba were on holiday and saved us from the drop.

not true as we could have lost our last 2 and still stayed up. The fans should have rejoiced 2 summers ago... not stuck the boot in to the manager and players...

heaping pressure on before a ball had even been kicked and waiting for a mistake rather than a positive started a downward spiral...

you all got what you wanted... funny how what you wanted now isn''t good enough.

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I thought hughton had come to the end in December

the backroom staff he had really upst the fans just as much as hoots BUT we wanted change but I would never have given the job to a complete novice after sacking hoots THATS were we went wrong and its gone down hill from there so now hoots would be better NOW with out the two deadwood staff BUT when we sacked hoots we should have got a better manager than NA then I wouldn''t want hoot now if you get what I am trying to say !!!!!

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What manager would have wanted the Norwich position though, with 5 games to go in the PL against Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Man U and Fulham (Norwich having not beat at their home)?

There is a point that Hughton might have played other successful tactics/formations in training which may have further exposed his players weaknesses, so that could explain why he played in such a defensive way.

Regarding NA however, the result against Chelsea and close game against Liverpool could be considered highlights.

Also I feel the suit, shirt and tie did not help Hughton.

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