not sure I've calmed down But

[mrcoke]

You can't blame MH for everything yesterday. On reflection yes his team selection should have been more ambitious, maybe he will do that against Sunderland.

But CP conceded possession to Stoke, and it was the Stoke players who gave an incompetent display of passing and woeful shooting.

I hope MH has a few "sergeant major" type trainers, who will give the players a right roasting on the training ground this week and instil some of the basics.

(I haven't quite calmed down yet.)

[Staying up for Grandadstokey]

Jan 19, 2014 10:33:19 GMT davejohnno1 said:

In the cold light of day and for the first time this season I would point some accusing fingers in the direction of Mark Hughes.

We all knew what we were going to face yesterday. There were no surprises.

A flat back 10, force the game to become scrappy, try to nick a goal from a set piece or mistake and eliminate all space forcing the opposition to play in front of them for 90 minutes.

That is exactly how it turned out so what did Mark Hughes do...pick the slowest, most immobile team we could field.

We dominated possession and large parts of the gane but never looked like we were going to score.

We needed movement, guile, creativity and some pace and we offered only Assaidi.

Arnie should have started, Ireland should have started, Guidetti should have started.

I've seen criticism of N'zonzi and Whelan but they did their job.

We dominated possession and looked solid defensively (another individual error gifting them a goal from nothing) but they just never have an option to pass too.

Walters and Crouch are total passengers and Adam, as much as he really tries to make things happen, just isn't good enough to operate in a game where the opposition will deny him time. His legs don't work.

I'm still very disappointed. Disappointed with Hughes, disappointed with lots of our players and disappointed with myself for not putting every penny I have on Palace winning 1-0!

Ireland should have started ?.Surely not going on his (Non) cameo performance after 56 minutes.I think he touched the ball about 3 times.

[fortressbritannia]

Playing Crouch up top certainly played in to TP's hands. We knee what was comin but it reminded me of Southampton last season, we looked like we only had to turn up to win.

[wearestoke80]

Jan 19, 2014 12:32:00 GMT thevoid said:

Jan 19, 2014 12:23:51 GMT Sergeant Muttley said:

Here we go again "this is what Pulis left him bollocks"
I repeat "I'm very happy with what i've found at the club in every aspect"
May 29th to Jan 18th = Hughes team

Perhaps he thought an expensively-assembled bunch of Premiership players could perform the basics of the game?

But they have shown in a few games that they can play some pretty good stuff - the question is why so inconsistent?
We have done ok against some of the so called big clubs where maybe just playing these kind of teams motivates the players enough on it's own.
Saturday we looked totally unmotivated as we have against all the clubs around us. This lies at the managers door to get the players fired up before a ball is kicked.

[sufolkstokie]

The constant playing 'the tall lad' up front on his todd, whilst not scoring goals, especially away from home, coupled with the usual rickett in a very frail and leaky defence makes no sense whatsoever

[mcf]

These results will be the norm if we don't get sorted defensively.

The individual errors are coming because we seem to be persisting with pushing the full backs too high up the pitch.

It's happening every fucking week now.

[wearestoke80]

Jan 20, 2014 7:58:15 GMT mcf said:

These results will be the norm if we don't get sorted defensively.

The individual errors are coming because we seem to be persisting with pushing the full backs too high up the pitch.

It's happening every fucking week now.

Gerry Francis was our defensive coach - who is doing this role now?
I can only assume with how we have gone backwards in this area - no one.