It is, it's a piss poor record against the sides we played in that period.
What you've done here is: just looked at some games on paper, and gone "these teams are lower mid table we should beat all of them". Classic 'Football Manager' style attitude but in reality it just doesn't work like that.
Great bit of re-writing history going on as well. Hughes may have had a marginally better record against the same sides much earlier in the season, but lets have it right: When PL took over, we were in total and utter freefall, and would be around where WBA are now if he'd stayed.
On another thread, you reckoned Hughes would've got a win at Southampton!
Based on absolutely zero but your myopic refusal to acknowledge that PL has improved things.
The 12 league games before Lambert took charge were:
L 0-3 L 0-1 L 0-5 D 1-1 W 3-1 L 0-3 L 0-1 L 1-5 W 2-1 L 0-3 L 1-2 D 2-2
That's a record of: P12 W2 D2 L8 F10 A28 GD -18(!) Pts 8 from a possible 36.
So far under Lambert, in half the amount of games the record is:
P 6 W1 D4 L1 F5 A4 GD +1 Pts 7 from a possible 18.
So, only 1 point less so far, than the previous incumbents managed in double the amount of fixtures!
You're living in an absolute fucking fantasy world if you thought we were going to go charging up the table as soon as PL was appointed. The fabled 'new manager bounce' has admittedly happened at Swansea, but look at Palace, where Hodgson took an age to get them going, before finally putting a decent run together, and as for West Brom.....
The isues with our squad when PL took over were massive: We were averaging less than a goal a game in the previous 12 fixtures (and still are now), and were averaging almost 2.5 against per game (which he has massively improved).
Contrary to your belief, in the real world it's not 'piss easy' to stop a team who's conceded fucking 50, from being disorganised and conceding all over the shop.
I can perfectly understand why he set up Saturday not to lose, and hoping we could nick a goal on the break. If it wasn't for two poor finishes (Choupo, and N'Diyae header), and some poor decision making from our forward players in good positions we may have done so. Losing Saturday would have been catastrophic.
I agree that Lambert is not without fault (no manager is!): Some of his substitutions are baffling, his dropping of Ramadan is a mistake and he needs to take the shackles off the team and give our more creative players more of a free reign in the home games coming up.
But on the plus side: He dropped Darren Fletcher from the team (Hughes would never have done that), he wasn't afraid to axe £18m Wimmer (everyone was crying out for that), he's told Berahino to get fit (something Hughes didn't have the bollocks to do), he gave a young lad scoring for fun in the reserves a chance recently (didn't work out immediately but at least he was prepared to try it, at least he is proactive with subs and makes them earlier than Hughes did, and he's stopped us conceding shed loads of goals for fun.
If we are to stay up, we have to win 3 more games, and Lambert must surely know that.
He is rather limited in his tactical approach, but who would you have preferred, bearing in mind:
We were knocked back 3 times (allegedly) by other managers, in freefall before his appointment, the squad is an unbalanced car crash due to terrible investment and lack of spending by the owners (who seem to be getting off very lightly by the way!).
Whoever we had appointed in January, we would be talking about largely the same issues we are with PL now.
If we are ultimately relegated it shouldn't be all on PL, sure he will have played a part; but in a comparativley short space of time, and only having 15 days of a single transfer window what did you expect.
To say we should all of a sudden be blowing teams away who are in a similar position to us, given our form over the last 3 months, is fanciful at best.
For what it's worth i would keep PL on next season, at least he knows the Championship and has got a team promoted from it previously.
Anyway, interested to hear your thoughts.