How the hell do we replace Wes?

[eatonparkboy]

Wes can indeed turn on performances like Saturday's and sometimes it just doesn't happen and he looks incapable of helping the team. But his great gift is that he doesn't hide. No matter how good or badly he is playing, he always looks for the ball. And in doing so, the opposition can't afford to ignore him.

I still think he plays better off two strikers but I guess that won't be happening unless we need to score badly.

I think Redmond could do a similar job, he has the confidence as well as ability. 

 

[It's Character Forming]

I'd be interested in when he didn't make our first team.  My guess is that it would mainly be in the season we were relegated under Hughton... which wouldn't be a coincidence.

 

[eatonparkboy]

I met Wes just before Hughton's second game in charge, the home game with QPR and the way he was talking it seemed that Hughton didn't really rate him as a starter. 

 

[morty]

I met Wes just before Hughton's second game in charge, the home game with QPR and the way he was talking it seemed that Hughton didn't really rate him as a starter. 

Firstly, let me make it clear, this isn't about defending Hughton in any way. But its pretty rare that a manager will completely ignore a player who has ability, and is working hard in training. Good, hard working players are rarely languishing in the reserves.

My point is that I think Wes is working a lot harder in matches than he has ever done, how hard a player is working and the managers opinion of him go hand in hand. 

Lets not forget that even the messiah Lambert once dropped Wes.

 

[eatonparkboy]

Indeed, Hughton did include Wes after the first few games and he played regularly but the following season it did appear as if he was one of the players singled out and lazy bones Fer took his role despite some poor performances, and that led to the Villa farce. 

Still that has now turned out well and we look forward to more performances like last weeks. As long as we accept there will be some poor performances from the little guy.

 

[Canaryboy]

and lazy bones Fer took his role despite some poor performances

It was Elmander who often took his role in reality? He'd usually come on as a number 10 type player behind RVW or Hooper. 

Really depressing when you think about it, isn't it, Wes lost his place in the team to Elmander. 

I wonder whether this was because neither RVW or Hooper offered any physicality or aerial ability up front, so Hughton wanted a big man as a number 10. 

Just adds a further layer of tragedy to the RVW signing really, that signing him instead of a player who had the required physicality was probably the reason that Wes ended up on the bench that season. 

Hughton failed to see that the best combination he had at his disposal was actually Hoolahan behind Hooper, instead of realising that when Hooper was struggling and dropping Elmander for Hoolahan he dropped Hooper instead and persevered with Elmander-RVW. 

I'd love to see some statistics on how effective that Hoolahan-Hooper partnership was on the odd occasion that it was used, because I seem to remember most of Hooper's goals being scored when Wes was on the pitch, apart from that one wondergoal from an Elmander chest down. 

 

[hogesar]

To be fair, Elmander seemed to offer more than RvW or Hooper that season, in my opinion.

I think Morty is wrong in regards to potential reasons why Hughton ignored Wes - I doubt work rate ever had anything to do with it. More so the fact that he didn't fit into a fairly rigid system and, regardless of how well Wes plays, his natural style and attempts to play people through etc will mean he'll lose the ball sometimes. Things like that just simply didn't fit into Hughtons philosophy.

 

[Canaryboy]

To a manager like Hughton, Wes is a 'luxury player'.  

To a manager like Alex Neil, Wes in the man you build your team around. 

Just different approaches as managers is what I'd likely put it down to. Not going to Hughton bash too much though, he f*cked things up here in his second season, but he's clearly a decent manager....;

 

[eatonparkboy]

Different division and gulf in class though. Might just be his level.

Hughton seemed a gent and I wish him every success but in his tenure here not only did he take us down (yes I know, not mathematically) but bored the pants of us doing so. If AN takes us down then I know it won't be for the lack of ambition to win each game.

There does appear to be, and no doubt down to the TV money, a gap appearing between the Championship and the clubs who come down from the Prem. Already the three teams who went down are in the top eight and the teams up from L1 finding it tough. I know its early days but it does appear to me significant.

 

[Indy_Bones]

From day one of his arriving here, Hughton seemed to look down on our players as if they weren't good enough to be in that league, and thus began his overly defensive approach that destroyed every scrap of team fight, work rate and attacking play that Lambert had instilled in the players over a 3 year period, and replaced it with putting 10 men behind the ball, camping in our own half, being afraid to attack (and when we did it was ALWAYS through Snoddy) and making every single one of our strikers look shite regardless of how well they may have performed previously.

Clearly he didn't feel the same at Newcastle, Birmingham and now Brighton (Newcastle were clearly the best squad in the league when he took over, and no-one expected miracles from either Brum or Brighton anyway), and it just makes me wonder what could have been if he'd actually looked at our players through a positive light instead of the dull grey that he chose to use...

 

[KeiranShikari]

You know, I don't think Brighton have won by more than a single goal yet. Yup, it's Hughton.

 

[eatonparkboy]

You know, I don't think Brighton have won by more than a single goal yet. Yup, it's Hughton.

Did put three past the gentlemen down the road though.

 

[morty]

To be fair, Elmander seemed to offer more than RvW or Hooper that season, in my opinion.

I think Morty is wrong in regards to potential reasons why Hughton ignored Wes - I doubt work rate ever had anything to do with it. More so the fact that he didn't fit into a fairly rigid system and, regardless of how well Wes plays, his natural style and attempts to play people through etc will mean he'll lose the ball sometimes. Things like that just simply didn't fit into Hughtons philosophy.

To be fair, neither of us can read Chris Hughton's mind, can we? The onus is always on a player to play his way into the managers thoughts, and make himself undroppable. Perhaps there was faults on both sides, maybe Wes is a player who if he isn't at the centre of things, his head ( and workrate) drops.

I agree about Elmander though, he was unfairly treated by the fans, in my opinion.

 

[hogesar]

To be fair, neither of us can read Chris Hughton's mind, can we? The onus is always on a player to play his way into the managers thoughts, and make himself undroppable. Perhaps there was faults on both sides, maybe Wes is a player who if he isn't at the centre of things, his head ( and workrate) drops.

I agree about Elmander though, he was unfairly treated by the fans, in my opinion.

Well, yes, we don't know for sure. What I do know for sure is we missed Wes that season. Well, more pertinently, we missed an in-form Wes!

 

[GJP]

Hughton failed to see that the best combination he had at his disposal was actually Hoolahan behind Hooper, instead of realising that when Hooper was struggling and dropping Elmander for Hoolahan he dropped Hooper instead and persevered with Elmander-RVW. 

I'd love to see some statistics on how effective that Hoolahan-Hooper partnership was on the odd occasion that it was used, because I seem to remember most of Hooper's goals being scored when Wes was on the pitch, apart from that one wondergoal from an Elmander chest down. 

Too lightweight. Hoolahan is at his best with a striker who has a bit of presence upfront (hence his success with Holt). Hooper is ok if you get the ball into his feet but he doesn't offer much else. And it's difficult to relieve pressure because the ball just keeps coming back.

If you had to pick the laziest player in the Norwich squad it'd be Hooper. By a mile.

 

[KeiranShikari]

I agree, it wouldn't have been great but it would have been our best bet. Better than switching Ricky and Hooper.

Hooper and Elmander actually linked up okay in some games.

Oh well, at least we're good now.

 

[It's Character Forming]

I think the problem we had including Wes in the team in the season we were relegated came down to the people we had available after Holt left.  With Hughton's approach to football in the Prem, you would need 5 in midfield to include Wes, because otherwise you'd be weak defensively.  Which requires one up front, but none of RVW, Hooper or Elmander were effective in the Prem on their own up front.  The alternative was to have two up front, but then he would drop Wes because he wanted four more defensively-capable midfielders (and this was probably fair enough given that Elmander, RVW and Hooper would all not contribute much defensively).

Neither approach worked very well.  If you had Wes in the team, you had an ineffective sole striker.  Or you had two strikers but no Wes so we lacked creativity.  It was all a bit painful, not least because we'd spent so much on strikers who didn't fit in with the approach we needed.

With hindsight I'm now of the view that if we'd consistently played Becchio up front with Wes behind in a five man midfield, we'd have done well enough to survive (the margins were very tight), because he had more ability to play up front on his own than any of our other strikers (which wouldn't take much).  Of course, it would have been embarrassing to have a championship player on the pitch with our record signings on the bench.

The fact that Hughton has got off to a good start with Brighton this season wouldn't change my view - there's more flexibility in how to approach games up front in the Champ and he may have inherited strikers who fit in better with the style of play he's using, or he may have learned from the failure of his last season with us !

This season I am much more comfortable because Jerome is so well-suited to playing on his own up front, we can comfortably accommodate Wes in most of our games - the only debate is whether it's too attack-minded to have both Wes and Redmond in the team for games like Sunday.