Braeburn's Prem - Hughes Out (again)
OK, I’ll admit it, I have a problem, a big problem with Mark Hughes being Southampton manager. This, of course, will come as no surprise to any readers of my posts over the last couple of months and yet it feels therapeutic to come out and say it. In short, the man is spoiling the experience of supporting my football team. My emotions on a matchday are strange and unnatural. Victories, rare that they are, stick in my throat. The thought of Hughes smugly congratulating himself on a job he believes to have been well done is almost too much to bear. Defeats on the other hand, while not enjoyable, do carry the benefit of hopefully pushing Hughes further towards the door.
Earlier this week Saints beat Everton on penalties in the League Cup, a result that on the face of it, I should be pleased with. The Toffees have spent heavily on players, they have the manager of my dreams and Saints have not won at Goodison Park since 1997. So why am I not pleased? Firstly this was not a win, it was a draw. Secondly, this was an Everton reserve team minus many of their star names. Lastly and perhaps most dispiritingly of all was the sheer, aching predictability of it all, exposing just how ‘last century’ Mark Hughes and his management is.
Somehow, Saints found themselves one-nil up going into the final twenty minutes of the game. Hughes, having no actual plan or footballing modus operandi to speak of, looks around and panics. His mind drifts to days gone by. Thoughts come to him of Alex Ferguson, or perhaps more likely Ron Atkinson... ‘What would the gaffer do?’ The answer he came up with was to remove a striker from the pitch and replace him with a midfielder. Football tactics 101. Basic. Predictable. Exactly what the opposition wants you to do.
I was following the game in Spain and immediately texted this to the Saints WhatsApp group of which I am a member:
Lo and behold 12 minutes after Steven Davis, whom I have absolutely nothing against, came onto the pitch, Everton equalised. It was no surprise, Hughes is quite simply not a football manager equipped to win football matches in the modern era. This is a fact he has proved time and time again. The list of clubs at which he has been at best a boring churner-outer of the mediocre or at worst an utter failure and disgrace is too long for me to be bothered to list.
The simple facts are thus... Since he arrived at Saints the team has claimed just 13 points from a possible 45 on offer, extrapolate this over an entire season, and it is relegation form. On five occasions during that period the team has taken the lead (twice a two-goal lead) only to draw or lose the game. Five times out of 15 games? Is nobody at the club looking at those numbers?
The man is stuck in the 1980’s with no idea what tactics to employ in the modern game, he has no humility and a grossly over-inflated view of his own abilities as a football manager. On Tuesday, recognising that my current negative state of mind makes me an unwelcome presence, I tendered my resignation from the Whatsapp group above. If only Hughes was able to see his own situation so clearly then perhaps he might follow my lead. My offer was refused with the observation that ‘none of us is skipping through the daisies...’ at the moment, surely the Saints board would snatch the Welshman's arm off if he offered to go?
Wenger In
God yes.
He loves Southampton players, he could have them straight out of the academy!
And then slowly ruin their careers by never playing them!
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