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Suggestions for the next Derby manager

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Danelaw Rams

Danelaw Rams

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, Taribo said:

What were Mel's criteria?

Currently out of work -  ✔️

Knows the club - ✔️

Experienced - ✔️

.....could it just be?

 

?

You know what....how funny that would be if he did.....and made a success out of it! Could you imagine the anger and frustration from the rotten mob up the road . ?

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doheochai

doheochai

Posted
Posted
On 27/06/2019 at 13:02, Coconut said:

Seen a few people try to credit Hughton with doing a good job at Norwich simply by stating their final league position.

They'd finished 12th the season before that under Lambert, getting 11th the season after wasn't some momentous achievement. Hughton finished one place higher by making them more solid, but at the same time sucked all the fun out of watching them. I'd suggest giving this article a read:

http://www.wearebrighton.com/newsopinion/the-worrying-signs-that-history-is-repeating-itself-for-chris-hughton/
 

The season after that they'd only scored 26 goals all season when they sacked him. Yes they were 5 points clear of relegation and 5 games to play but 4 of those games were Liverpool, Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal.

He'd eradicated everything that got them where they were in the first place for the sake of moving 1 place up the table and sending them hurtling towards relegation the next. I don't see that as having done a good job, like some people state as fact.

Would he have kept them up? We'll never know. That doesn't stop people blaming their relegation on his sacking, even though it was likely coming anyway.

It isn't circumstance that leads Hughton to play horrible football in the Premier League, it's just his approach.

If we did appoint him, and he did get us promoted then great! Just as long as we sacked him immediately afterwards!

 

Just want to go back to this -

Anytime you can get a club like Norwich to 11th in a second season in the PL it is a major achievement. Teams bounce around the bottom half of the PL like a yoyo.

The season Norwich were relegated they scored 28 goals - not 26 - Crystal Palace scored 33 and finished 11th. As for Grant Holt - after leaving Norwich he spent 3 years with Wigan and had loan spells with Aston villa, Huddersfield and Wolves. He played a total of 49 games and scored 6 goals - maybe Hughton was right to pack him off to the Championship for £2million.

The Norwich squad inherited by Hughton was old - the youngest player in the entire squad was 27 and out of the 33 man squad 26 of the players were over 30 years of age - including ALL - every last one - of the starting 11. On top of that he had no striker - their strikers between them scored 9 goals in 2012-2013, Without changes Norwich would have faced likely relegation and Hughton had to overhaul the squad. He got rid of 20 players, brought in 10 players and promoted 3 academy players reducing the size of the squad (in part driven by the board wanting to keep the age bill in check). The average age dropped from 31 to 27.

Like every other PL team Hughton struggled to find a striker - he signed Van Wolfswinkel who had scored 28 goals in 55 games for Sporting Lisbon. He also signed Gary Hooper who scored 63 goals in 95 games for Celtic (Hooper actually scored 18 goals in 64 games for Norwich over 3 seasons)

The same off season the following luminaries were bought as strikers -

Paul Lambert at Aston Villa brought in - Nicklas Helenius - (0 goals)

Cardiff signed Andreas Cornelius - (0 goals)

Crystal Palace - Dwight Gayle (15 goals in 64 games)

Everton - Arouna Koné (6 goals in 47 games over 4 seasons)

Hull - Yannick Sagbo (2 goals in 31 games)

Southampton - Dani Osvaldo (£15million - 3 goals in 13 games)

Sunderland - Jozy Altidore (1 goal in 42 games)

Spurs - Roberto Soldado (£26million - 7 goals in 52 games)

WBA - Nicolas Anelka (2 goals in 12 games)

In fact the two best forward players bought outside of the top 4 clubs were Wilfried Bony and Marko Arnautovic. 

Now - Hughton's time at Norwich is always tagged with buying Van Wolfswinkel - but that season he also bought Nathan Redmond who has gone on to have a decent PL career - Martin Olsen who had a decent career with Norwich and then later with Swansea - and Leroy Fer who has had a pretty decent career as well.

Norwich are a small club who don't spend money - in 2013-2014 they were the only club in the PL without any debt and their wage bill was 17th in the PL. One director of the club was paid more money that most of the players in the squad. Norwich made £9million profit that season - if they had added that to the £8.5million they paid for Van Wolfswinkel and bought a more expensive striker they might have stayed up (and by the way Van Wolfswinkel went on to have a decent career in Holland (20 goals in 32 games) and then Switzerland (24 goals in 50 games) - including playing in the champions league - he is a decent striker, just not PL standard)

Now - to deal with Hughton's sacking - the Norwich board panicked after WBA beat Norwich 1-0 on 5 April. Norwich had lost 3 of the previous 5 but had beaten Sunderland 2-0 a week earlier and were 5 points above the relegation zone with 5 games left. The argument was that four of the remaining games were against top 4 sides and the conclusion was that they would lose all 4 - hoping to pick up a win against Fulham to survive. But they lost to Fulham and they were relegated. The sacking had a major impact, not just on Norwich, but on Sunderland. Sunderland had been buried in 20th place for large part of the season. The same weekend Norwich sacked Hughton Sunderland were beaten 5-1 by Spurs - they had lost six in a row. A week later Sunderland scrambled a draw at man city - the same time as Norwich were losing to Fulham. They got an enormous boost of confidence and went on a run of 4 wins against Chelsea, Cardiff, Man Utd and WBA. Now - Norwich had four games against top 4 opposition - Sunderland had two games against top 4 teams. How do we now if Hughton hadn't been sacked that Norwich couldn't have done something similar. Hughton is adamant that he would have kept Norwich up. Last season Brighton lost 6 of 8 in Feb, March and April. After losing 2-0 to Cardiff some fans were calling for Hughton's head. Unlike Delia Smith, Tony Bloom didn't panic and Hughton kept Brighton up.

Much has been made of the style of football played by Brighton last season - but the reality is that the three most creative players in the Brighton squad - Pascal Gros, Davy Proper and Jose Izquierdo suffered injuries at crucial times during the season (JIzquierdo). The article linked to above talks about Hughton not playing Jurgen Locadia and Alireza Jahanabksh because of the style played by Hughton - but the style was dictated by the players he had available. If these players were good enough Hughton would have adapted to use them - they weren't.

Most Brighton fans recognise that Hughton was dealt a squad that he didn't control the assembly of (he did up when Brighton got promoted, then player purchases were taken over by a backroom committee). Hughton's influence over the squad was further reduced in September when Brighton appointed Dan Ashworth as technical director. Indeed it looks like this appointment was designed to undermine Hughton all along as Ashworth had previous connections with Graham Potter (they both worked together at WBA).

Most Brighton fans recognise that Hughton did a remarkable job in keeping the club in the PL for two seasons - and that this season he had more difficulties to deal with than the previous season. Was it pretty - absolutely not - but pretty will get you relegated in the PL if you don't have the players (and we will see what happens with Potter in the coming months), It takes years of slog to build a PL squad and even then there are periods of panic - Burnley, Bournemouth, Watford etc - have all had similar panics over the years (as well as the odd relegation).

Money dominates PL football and these days unless you are willing to spend up to £100million a year on wages and up to another £100million a year on transfer you will be grinding it out in the bottom four or five. if you want to make the top 6 you need upwards of £1billion of a transfer pot and £5million a year per player on wages then you can forget about it.

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NottsRam77

NottsRam77

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Danelaw Rams said:

You know what....how funny that would be if he did.....and made a success out of it! Could you imagine the anger and frustration from the rotten mob up the road . ?

Be like the Brian clough story in reverse ...

well kinda ... ish .. not really ... maybe a tiny bit lol

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lrm14

lrm14

Posted
Posted
6 minutes ago, Mostyn6 said:

Cowley is working though. He’s not unemployed. Doubt Mel would have spoken to him without the world knowing. 

Didn't his side also play some horrendous football that consisted exclusively of lumping it to that ogre Matt Rhead?

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Nuwtfly

Nuwtfly

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, lrm14 said:

Didn't his side also play some horrendous football that consisted exclusively of lumping it to that ogre Matt Rhead?

Would of thought 95% of the people on this forum have never watched Lincoln City play more than once, to be fair. 

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NottsRam77

NottsRam77

Posted
Posted

Moore or Neville genuinely scare me, they really do 

this is a massive window for us 

additions need to be made

the last thing we need is a rookie manager coming in and doing exactly what clement did with us, overpaying for players that simply weren’t good enough and then between him and rush saddling us with such players for god knows how long on monstrous contracts 

I think mels learnt from that particular lesson but we still need to be oh so careful as a bad window now could set us back all over 

we’ve hamtrung ourselves last few years with so many inept signings on big big money .... let’s not go do it all over again please 

When mels writing chqs...... for what was it 1.25m a month for players that are either not at the club or not part of the 18 imagine where we could have got to if that 1.25m a month we’re actually good enough to be contributing to the first team efforts 

 

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