- Aug 8, 2005
- 27,242
- Thread starter
- #601
If you look at that we were essentially meeting expectations, at least on paper (I know West Ham, Newcastle and Wolves wins were 'lucky'), until the Southampton home loss.
Arguably we have been playing pretty shit for a while, i.e. since end of Jan, with West Brom in the FA cup games and the capitulation at Fulham, but until then it wasn't causing too much of an issue.
I do wonder if something happened around that time.
I was never comfortable with the undue haste with which Ryan was brought back for the Fulham game.
It went completely against the spirit of "if you play well you keep the shirt", it just wasn't necessary and I do wonder if that undermined Hughton a bit. Sure, he may have felt that was the right thing to do but somehow doing it for Fulham, a day or so after Ryan got back seemed far worse than doing it for the following game. Almost like, he is so great, you're so shite Button, which didn't seem fair.
Additionally I felt he dropped Knockaert when he was actually playing well just to give game time to Ali J and Locadia. And neither have really shown anything in that time at all.
Equally Stephens and perhaps Propper seem undroppable. I do wonder if there is a split in the dressing room between the old guard that brought us up and the new signings. That certainly isn't the togetherness that we have previously had.
Maybe that's hard to achieve at this level with all the money sloshing around and massive egos everywhere?