by Im_Spartacus » Sat Feb 06, 2010 8:38 pm
Football, despite all the science people try to baffle you by, is a pretty simple game.
By motivation you can get your men thinking in the right frame of mind. By tactics you have an opportunity to deploy your resources in the best way possible, and try to either overwhelm (as top teams do) or surprise your opposition (as bottom teams do). We do neither. For the last 3/4 weeks, assuming out players are superior in talent to the opposition, clearly both tactics AND motivation have been missing.
The win against Portsmouth last week almost took me back to the Stoke home game last season when Robbie got a hat-trick. That was the game I realised that Hughes wasnt the right person for the job as despite the win, you could see quite clearly the disorganisation in the defence was not just a 1 off, and on a different day we could have been 2 down by half time. Based on this, and the tactical ineptitude of the Liverpool defeat, you could see that the manager's organisation was going to cost us. I was hammered for this at the time, by Socrates amongst others if I remember correctly. We didnt win for the next 2 months, because what I could see through a victory, clearly the opposition management saw, and were more shrewd than Hughes.
The pompey game last week set those same alarm bells ringing that we are off down the same path, and the Hull game has ramped that up for me now to a siren. I know someone has taken the piss earlier in the thread about what ifs in the pompey game, but if you are only papering over cracks, sooner or later those cracks will open up and swallow you - the cracks referred to in the pompey game came and fucked us good and proper in the arse today.
I feel a cunt for saying it, but he has it all to do from here. It took me 12-14 games to decide that Hughes would never have what it takes, helped greatly by some crass stupidity. Amazingly, although we have not had a "Gelson at left back" situation yet, I am starting to have doubts even earlier this time based purely on motivation and tactics.
The signs are ominous, and Mancini has it all to do from here. I'm right behind him for now, but he asked to be judged on results, and any more repeats of the dross served up in the last few weeks, and I will happily drive him back to Italy.
