"The one thing I’ve got is a good group of lads that want to work hard"

[Rohana]

Am I the only one who feels that the dressing room might have got a bit cliquey under Hyypia and Hughton is having to deal with some big egos as well as a pretty shit squad?

 

[Napier's Knee]

Noticeable last Friday that in the pre-match warm up Calde, Bruno and Tex spent as much time to one side of everyone else as they could

 

[Carrot Cruncher]

One can only summise that, "apart from Leon Best, he's a lazy c***" was cut from the quote.

 

[Codner's Wallop]

Media platitudes from a manager who is doing everything he can to sound positive after a woeful performance.

What concerns me more, is his repeated insistence that we are a team 'always looking to improve', 'developing' and 'hoping to get better'.

Eight players who either started or came off the bench on Saturday is 28 or older. How much more 'development' will they need?

Rather than looking to improve our collective lot, CH may have to concede he's already seen the best of this team and some players are simply not up to Championship standard.

 

[maltaseagull]

'We were poor in possession and our choices of ball were poor. There was no lack of desire'

That's pretty much what I saw at Rotherham.

Obviously I wasn't there but it sounded dire in the 1st half but much better in the 2nd . Was that not the case?

 

[NooBHA]

That's the salient quote in the article. He saw how crap we were and they've been told. He just hasn't hung the players out to dry in public, that's our job. Good management imo.

I agree 100% - in private the players will probably have been told that their performance was unacceptable. In public the manager cannot slate the players because he needs to keep them motivated and slagging anyone off in public is not going to make anyone want to play for you in the next match. Sadly the next match is against the best attacking side in the league.

I sort of wish that the nighmare match had have been against Norwich or Bournemouth and then turn in the better performances against Rotherham and Wigan.

The problem seems to be that very average or slightly below average players don't seem able to turn in a decent performance 2 games in a row. Roll on the end of the season when we can address and upgrade the squad of players we currently have.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

This is the worst squad since Russell Slade's days. I worry for next season as this season 3 teams have been even worse. We might not get that luxury again. The team and club have gone backwards at a remarkable rate in the last 2 years

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

League One squad now. Time to play serious catch-up on the market rate for Championship players. We had some of those until fairly recently, but made little or no effort to retain them. So now we have to pay that much more for some new ones who are probably slightly worse than the old ones.
Oh well, not OUR hundred million quid investment that is currently stalling through chronic under-investment in the only thing that actually matters in the modern game

(awaits uber-apologist [MENTION=24867]chaileyjem[/MENTION] aka 'Pravda' to come flying in with attempted defence of the indefensible)

 

[Ludensian Gull]

Obviously I wasn't there but it sounded dire in the 1st half but much better in the 2nd . Was that not the case?

It was better 2nd half, which didn't take a lot of doing to be honest. But we could have played until next Mon and still not scored.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

League One squad now. Time to play serious catch-up on the market rate for Championship players. We had some of those until fairly recently, but made little or no effort to retain them. So now we have to pay that much more for some new ones who are probably slightly worse than the old ones.
Oh well, not OUR hundred million quid investment that is currently stalling through chronic under-investment in the only thing that actually matters in the modern game

(awaits uber-apologist [MENTION=24867]chaileyjem[/MENTION] aka 'Pravda' to come flying in with attempted defence of the indefensible)

True TH. The club appears to have absolutely zero desire to get promoted to the top flight which I find very disappointing after all the rhetoric spun out over the last 4 years

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

True TH. The club appears to have absolutely zero desire to get promoted to the top flight which I find very disappointing after all the rhetoric spun out over the last 4 years

Same. All the players we flog end up in the Premier League. All the players we buy belong in League One. Still, live fast, die young, leave a good-looking hotel aye?

 

[chaileyjem]

League One squad now. Time to play serious catch-up on the market rate for Championship players. We had some of those until fairly recently, but made little or no effort to retain them. So now we have to pay that much more for some new ones who are probably slightly worse than the old ones.
Oh well, not OUR hundred million quid investment that is currently stalling through chronic under-investment in the only thing that actually matters in the modern game

(awaits uber-apologist [MENTION=24867]chaileyjem[/MENTION] aka 'Pravda' to come flying in with attempted defence of the indefensible)

Its me. Whats your definition of "chronic under-investment"? Our playing budget last year was around £20m and more this year and its up 60% since 2011/12..
How much more do you think the club should spend to guarantee a promotion winning squad. ?
And why have Bournemouth, Brentford this season and Burnley, Palace for example in the last couple of seasons succeeded if [spending money] "is the only thing that matters".

PS: And agreed we have a poorer squad than last season and 2012/13 although its not a "League One" squad whatever that means, Do Wolves have a L1 squad given that most of their squad played their last season ?.. But yes our decline is self evident given where we are in the league. Just disagree strongly that its due to under investment. Bloom's money and the increased income generated by Barber and player sales has given our managers and the recruitment teams plenty to spend. And the accounts (and the players car park) show that they've spent it.

 

[Ernest]

The problem is that 20000 have renewed their season tickets so why should the club bother now that they have the money ? If nobody had renewed it might have forced their hands to actually pay some decent money for proven players instead of all these loans, the last time we spent a season like this with god knows how many loans was 2008/9 and we nearly went down then too.

 

[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

The problem is that 20000 have renewed their season tickets so why should the club bother now that they have the money ? If nobody had renewed it might have forced their hands to actually pay some decent money for proven players instead of all these loans, the last time we spent a season like this with god knows how many loans was 2008/9 and we nearly went down then too.

I really don't believe that 20,000 STHs have renewed.

That's just Barber spin.

 

[Uncle Spielberg]

Its me. Whats your definition of "chronic under-investment"? Our playing budget last year was around £20m and more this year and its up 60% since 2011/12..
How much more do you think the club should spend to guarantee a promotion winning squad. ?
And why have Bournemouth, Brentford this season and Burnley, Palace for example in the last couple of seasons succeeded if [spending money] "is the only thing that matters".

PS: And agreed we have a poorer squad than last season and 2012/13 although its not a "League One" squad whatever that means, Do Wolves have a L1 squad given that most of their squad played their last season ?.. But yes our decline is self evident given where we are in the league. Just disagree strongly that its due to under investment. Bloom's money and the increased income generated by Barber and player sales has given our managers and the recruitment teams plenty to spend. And the accounts (and the players car park) show that they've spent it.

The real mystery to me this season is the suicidal mission Bloom set about in not only appointing Hyypia but then refusing to sack him after 3 wins in 23 matches and us firmly in the relegation zone. If he had stuck to his plans we would be playing league one football next season. This is a worry that he could not see what 30 000 other people saw around October last year. Any explanations ?

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

Its me. Whats your definition of "chronic under-investment"? Our playing budget last year was around £20m and more this year and its up 60% since 2011/12..
How much more do you think the club should spend to guarantee a promotion winning squad. ?

Give it a rest Pravda. Don't give a shit what the Albion are playing their players as a year-on-year increase on what they paid their players the year before. Its a meaningless figure. Say the Albion's wage limit increases 2% a year and the market rate increases 10% a year. It'll take a maximum two years before anyone other than journeymen with mortgage commitments come here. Meanwhile, all our decent players are being asset-stripped to the Premier League. Maybe Tony Bloom is going LARGE on a market downward correction, which will undoubtedly happen at some point. But it won't happen before the Albion are playing in League One.

 

[essbee]

The real mystery to me this season is the suicidal mission Bloom set about in not only appointing Hyypia but then refusing to sack him after 3 wins in 23 matches and us firmly in the relegation zone. If he had stuck to his plans we would be playing league one football next season. This is a worry that he could not see what 30 000 other people saw around October last year. Any explanations ?

This exactly. That period when we kept on losing, NSC went into meltdown on a daily basis and still no axe was wielded
was possibly one of the most bizarre periods I've supported the Albion through. Madness, sheer madness.

 

[Mellor 3 Ward 4]

Its me. Whats your definition of "chronic under-investment"? Our playing budget last year was around £20m and more this year and its up 60% since 2011/12..
How much more do you think the club should spend to guarantee a promotion winning squad. ?
And why have Bournemouth, Brentford this season and Burnley, Palace for example in the last couple of seasons succeeded if [spending money] "is the only thing that matters".

PS: And agreed we have a poorer squad than last season and 2012/13 although its not a "League One" squad whatever that means, Do Wolves have a L1 squad given that most of their squad played their last season ?.. But yes our decline is self evident given where we are in the league. Just disagree strongly that its due to under investment. Bloom's money and the increased income generated by Barber and player sales has given our managers and the recruitment teams plenty to spend. And the accounts (and the players car park) show that they've spent it.

The biggest under investment was last summer when we invested in a clueless Manager.

And I'm sorry but I just don't buy into the 'we have an increased playing budget' - so many players have been sold over the last 2 seasons (Ulloa, Bridcutt, Barnes, Buckley etc.) and replaced with far inferior players, or journeyman loanees who couldn't give a toss about the club.

We have gone so far backwards in the past two seasons it's unbelievable.

Anyone who thinks otherwise is IMO deluded.

 

[el punal]

Come on. This is the poorest Albion team for several years now. They probably are trying hard. They could be a good bunch of lads. They just lack in ability at this level, and we've been very lucky in finding several teams even worse than us. We all have opinions on the reasons for this, and we all hope that next season will be better. That's an odd thing for a football fan to want, eh?

Ever the eternal optimist!

 

[Eeyore]

Obviously I wasn't there but it sounded dire in the 1st half but much better in the 2nd . Was that not the case?

That was about the sum of it. My feeling was that if we had played the first half in the same way as the second the result would have been reversed.