The Direction of the Club

[alpal78]

No s***...

 

I see no shit (full stop).

[Consortium of one]

I can't wait for him to sell.

[cp40]

the signing of barfa does show some ambition from ashley, like with all things hes not the savior we all hoped he would be after he overthrew the original fat dictator however hes not pure horrendous either, we as football supporters tend to get carried away on things. Yes he cocked up several major times in first 2 years, hiring keegan in retrospect for the system he wanted to use at the time was a bad idea, having jfk anywhere near the club was a horrendous idea and gambling it all on a shearer lift in the final 8 games was a bad idea in retrospect, however in the last 18 months there has been an upturn in sense with the occasional major lapse.

 

While he stumbled on hughton more than anything he still decided to give him a go after he earned a real shot at the job in his role as caretaker, he did back his manager sensibly enough in last jan and the summer. Sacking hughton i can't agree with at any level but if i had to play devils advocate i think it would be down to not beating relegation rivals, iirc out of sides who

are realistically in the relegation fight we only beat wolves (i'm open to correction here) and with home losses to stoke blackpool etc it didn't look good.

 

We'll have to wait and see if he really has learned his lesson but thus far we do seem to be on a slight upward trajectory

 

 

you wana buy some ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,?

[Cronky]

Yeah, the Hughton sacking was a bad decision under any logic, but I think Jonny meant it was too soon to say the same about the Pardew appointment.

 

Treating them as two separate incidents, obviously.

 

But taking the decision purely as a single incident, it's a total blunder?

 

Yes, Pardew could be a success here (like I said in that post, I think he will be moreso than Hughton because Ashley will back him because he's a mate), but at the time, he was still appointing a man who had recently been sacked from a League One club, had Charlton relegated and led West Ham to their worst run of defeats in over 70 years - he couldn't have possibly known at the time he'd be a decent choice of manager.

 

I'd see it very much as a single decision, and one that we can't judge yet, as I said.

 

Usually, a manager gets the sack when things are going badly, and the owner then tries to get the best replacement who's available at the time. Effectively, two decisions. I think in this case, Ashley's judgement was that whilst Hughton was doing okay, Pardew would do better and that if he was going to start dishing out long-term contracts and throwing more money into the club, he wanted his own man in charge. Hughton was always the stop gap that he had to accept, and it seems that he never had total confidence in him.

 

Why he didn't see Hughton as the one for the long haul, we don't really know. The 'experience' angle just looks like an excuse. For me, the likeliest explanation is that Hughton was too close and pally to the players and insufficiently tough with them, in Ashley's opinion.

 

I didn't agree with the decision or expect it, but at least he's had the courage to make it. So many decisions that Ashley has made have been reactive, and rather weak. The appointments of Keegan and Shearer seemed to be half-arsed attempts to keep the fans onside, and have backfired. In fact, a lot of decisions that owners make are reactive, and insufficiently daring. In many ways, waiting until things are going badly is the wrong time to bring in a new manager.

 

Sorry, bit long-winded. But this is a decision for the long-term, and has to be judged in that way. Whether things were going sufficiently badly for Hughton to lose his job isn't the real picture.