Mark Hughes - NEW POLL

Yet we didn't freeze in the home tie in front of a much bigger crowd....

 

Stick for now but needs a decent summer recruitment and needs to be up there around Christmas

 

'Stick' for me. One (full) year I don't think is enough time for a manager to get in the types of player he wants -- and some of the incomings won't work out, for whatever reason -- and to get the team playing the way he wants. That said, I would expect serious thinking to be done about methods and players between seasons, and I would expect shortcomings to be addressed. We'll see over the first few months of next season if that has been the case. Overall, I'm very much of @Morley Bantam's line of thought.

We always keep coming back to the mental strength aspects of the game, don't we! It was clear this season that we had the ability, but not the 'bulldog breed' / 'keep calm and carry on' mentality -- one mistake leading to others, switching off for periods in a match, not being very good at rescuing points from losing positions, etc. Recruitment needs to be better here.

I suppose Lewis might just have run out of puff -- first season of being 'the man.' Made some mistakes, lost a bit of certainty, made more mistakes... Overall, he's one of the two reasons we made the playoffs, and I think we'll be just fine with him back next season.

RCB

 

The interviewer should have asked: “Tell me Mark, do you think City fans should be happy after what they have seen over the two playoff games?”

What absolutely pathetic performance from the players and Hughes, absolute bottle jobs. 3-1 completely flattered us, Carlisle deserved to win 4 or 5 nil.

City fans are sick to death of abject failure, why should it be accepted?

I’ve watched some absolutely miserable games this season but that was a new record. I just hate how our players clearly didn’t want it as much as the opposition. Where is the leadership, the desire, the passion??

I don’t like singling players out but has their been a worse captain than Smallwood in recent history? How on earth was this bloke in the championship a year ago when he struggles at league two level. He’s the epitome of everything we are missing.

He’s not the only one who’s been pathetic this season though, plenty of other names need to hang their head in shame for offering nothing for 9 months.

Shambolic and embarrassing

 

Hughes in todays T&A:

Hughes revealed that recruitment talks will now be stepped up as City bid to improve the areas where they have fallen short.

He said: “The lads have put in a hell of a shift all year and credit to them. They’ve got us in this position and should take credit for that.

“Some will leave because that’s what happens at the end of a season.

“But the core of the squad is strong and we’ll add good quality and what we feel we need to strengthen areas we need to.

“We’ll be even better next year, so there’s still a lot to look forward to.

“We’re having conversations as we speak. If you get opportunities to speak to guys that can help you then you do that.

“We’ve got a lot of time and a lot of thinking to do. But we’ll be in good shape next year.”

Hughes came in for flak from fans for making the change but insists it was the right move at the time because the 21-year-old was exhausted.

“Banksy was great and did really well on the goal,” said Hughes. “But we were of the mind to take him off prior to that little moment because he was out on his feet.

“He put in a huge shift and we just felt we needed to have a little bit more energy at the top.

“We put Manny (Emmanuel Osadebe) in at the number 10 to give a little bit of support to Derbs and Cooky (Andy Cook). We wanted to match (Carlisle) up and see where that took us.

“We knew they’d shell the ball into the box. Platty coming on was going to help deal with that.

“Banksy can look back on his time with us with great pride because he’s done exceptionally well. It was his first loan (in England) and the impact he’s had is a credit to him.”

 

Well if Smallwood is still the captain next season then we have issues if all this is true.

A true leader doesn’t allow this to happen.

 

Twist.

I think many people saying keep Hughes are doing it purely because they believe that the club needs continuity and not because he's a good coach/manager. I would love to have a long serving manager that gets us where we want to be and keep us there. But what has Hughes actually done? Got us to 6th place in a terrible league with what Sparks said was our biggest ever budget for this league.

I've been to all but 4 games this season and I've walked out of most wins wondering how on earth we've won that as we didn't deserve it. The football is awful, all he does on the touchline is complain to the officials while his opposite number is consistently coaching their players.

What are our tactics from corners free kicks even throw ins? It's just a case of lob it in and hope for the best. If he came here with a reputation for good football and had a bit of success you could land the issues on footballers at this level not being intelligent enough to understand him. But this isn't the case, and there is absolutely no signs of Hughes being a good manager and next season under him will be yet another of failure

 

The bigger conundrum is
Will MH alter his thinking and adapt to L2 then it's a "stick"
Will MH carry on as he is then it's a "twist"
Birmingham may make the problem irrelevant anyway

 

I will be very surprised if they do

 

Me too but absolutely anything can happen

 

So, had Banks not created the goal for Derbyshire, we were going to take him off for Platt anyway, while we were behind?

 

I think the major problem with the team's lack of confidence is that it is more than a mental strength thing, it's based on reality.
We struggle to deal with teams that will be constantly at us, because irrespective of footballing ability we don't have enough players in the team with the legs or desire to match that type of opponent, the players know it as do the opposition.
As others have said, good summer recruitment is vital.
You don't win the war by losing battles.

 

The question has to be asked if they froze in front of 15,000 what happens when they run out to a full house at Valley Parade and things don't go to plan, imagine this lot at the away tie at Villa.
Hughes has constantly said the players they have brought to the club have not mearly to be good footballers but have the mental strength/ attitude to deal with the crowds we can get at Valley Parade that's a worrying scenario to me going forward.

 

Ultimately he has improved us so stick.

A lot of room for improvement though, a midfield that look forwards instead of back would be a start.

 

If Smallwood is still featuring at all except maybe occasionally off the bench then we are not going to progress. The entire midfield needs a rebuild with more pace strength energy and attacking intent - just my opinion but I know it is shared by most around our seats in the kop

 

I think some of the criticism on Smallwood is abit harsh. Sure he's not hit the standards I'd hoped having signed from the championship, but he does the role of a midfield enforcer well.

The issue is our midfield is too similar. Gillead, Clayton, and Smallwood are all basically doing the same job. We lack a player to play along side one of them and pick up the ball from the defence on the half turn and feed our forward players. We also vitally lack running power and pace in front of Smallwood to drag oppositon players around and create space for those forward passes.

 

I can't believe that our team battled away for 47 games and then couldn't be arsed in the second leg. Is that what you are suggesting? Our players didn't want to play at Wembley? Really?

They didn't fancy a promotion and a pay rise?
Give over.

 

I beg to differ. Robbie Lee battered us at Bull Run but we still won the war.

 

if thats true about the players starting to bottle it during the warm up then the winkers should never play for us again ffs they play in bigger crowds just about every home game

 

Oh ffs who's set USG off again