That old expression of 'careful what you wish for' springs to mind with anyone thinking of ditching Chris Hughton for someone, hopefully, better.
Those of you of a certain age cast your mind back to the early 1980s. The Albion had Mike Bailey as team manager. He took the club to their highest ever league position of 13th in the old first division. He was pragmatic to say the least - remind you of someone else? Most games won were 1-0 jobs, the draws 0-0 and entertainment value slightly lower on the list of priorities. Bailey was shunted out and the club decided they wanted a more exciting brand of football. Enter Jimmy 'White Dancing Shoes' Melia.
Jimmy was loved. The fans loved him, the media loved him, the discos loved him. I'm sure the players loved him. He was loved so much that he got us to a cup final. He also got us relegated. He was the opposite of Mike Bailey, who knew that we were a team that had to scrap for points to survive - Jimmy didn't, and it's taken 34+years to get back to where Mike Bailey had us.
Chris Hughton is a different kettle of fish to Mike Bailey in personality but probably the mind set is the same. Survival is paramount. Survive and then you can build on that for the future. Remember, Chris did that when he arrived in early 2015, to an Albion in the mire of relegation. We survived, we moved on - upwards. Time will tell whether this will be repeated in the Premier League, but at least he should be given the chance.
People think we can just have the audacity to steamroll some of the biggest teams in the country
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The 'Blame the Recruitment' slant is justified. We all knew a month before last season ended that we were going up. That is when recruitment should have gone into top gear, especially as we all knew months prior to the end of the season that we needed goal scorers. To be reliant on a possible loan, requiring an extra couple of hours after the transfer window closed, says that they messed up. Even more so when the potential loanee told us to sod off!Team Hughton for me. He's playing it the best way he can with the players he has. A few things have gone against us which could easily have gone the other way, and left us with quite a few more points than we currently have.
I also don't really buy this 'blame the recruitment' argument - Paul Barber already explained in some detail how complex transfer windows are. Everybody wants to get their business done early, but lots of things can stop that happening: players not wanting to jump until late in the window when they've seen all the options, players failing medicals, clubs with much bigger resources gazumping you, clubs losing players they expected to keep so having to hold on to players they were prepared to let go. Reckon all of these have happened to us.
Let's hope we get what we need in the January window, but let's not fool ourselves that plenty of other clubs are trying to do exactly the same thing, and we may not get our perfect outcome.
The 'Blame the Recruitment' slant is justified. We all knew a month before last season ended that we were going up. That is when recruitment should have gone into top gear, especially as we all knew months prior to the end of the season that we needed goal scorers. To be reliant on a possible loan, requiring an extra couple of hours after the transfer window closed, says that they messed up. Even more so when the potential loanee told us to sod off!
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