Assuming anything would be wrong. What I would say is that it's unlikely we'd have done any worse from the 5 games after he was sacked if we'd retained his services until the end of the season.
Irrespective of whether we'd stayed up or not, he would have been sacked at the end of the season. The failure to beat WBA and subsequent reaction from the crowd brought that forward. Going into the WBA game, our home form had been reasonable and we were strong favourites to win that day but we conceded the early goal and the rest is history.
I do understand the notion of continuity that has been mentioned, Swansea cited as an example but really, they are the only example. Liverpool have tried allsorts unsuccessfully since 1990 and Man United, fabled for giving Ferguson time, hand-picked and lined-up Moyes to continue the Fergie work and he lasted about 10 minutes.
Lambert was a tremendous manager for Norwich City and gave us as good a three years as I can remember but he left for a reason. There's no doubt that we punched above our weight in our first season in the Premier and his ability to maintain that had to be a consideration when perusing the Villa offer. With us having financial commitments that limited our spend for the coming season it's not really a surprise that he departed for Birmingham. A bigger club, more money to spend and another stepping stone for a hungry, ambitious manager.
That Hughton came in and was able to maintain our level by finishing 11th was a huge achievement, it's something like the 5th highest finish in the clubs history and, like it or not, the final league table is a measure of how you perform against every club home and away. You can't discount the victories against WBA and Man C to suit an agenda. Our season didn't finish after 36 games in order to show an unpopular manager in a lesser light. Our season was as dead as Man City's when we won at the Etihad and the beach-ball-bouncing-Baggies managed to stick 5 past United the next weekend so....
We'd out-performed our financial position for the second season in a row, with the debts all but gone we invested at a level more directly comparable to the teams around us and we bought attacking players to take our performances to the next level. We bought a highly-rated striker on the peripheral of the international squad, a combative but technically gifted central midfielder, the top-scorer from the SPL and an up-and-coming wide player to provide the ammo. These incoming players facilitated the exit of club legend Grant Holt (who had wanted to leave earlier only to be convinced to stay by Hughton) but this, in the beginning, wasn't a major consideration because we had "moved on".
Of course as it turned out, we flopped in that transfer window badly. How much of the blame for that people want to apportion to Hughton tends to vary but he has to take some responsibility, as does the scouting team under Ewan Chester that identified these players and the people that signed the cheques. When it became apparent that RVW wasn't the new RVP and we failed to secure a number 10 to upgrade on Wes; we looked to play a more containing game because we didn't have the weapons to hurt teams going forward.
This wasn't pretty to watch but until the WBA game, Hughton was just about doing enough by picking up points at home, our away form though was poor and we threw away opportunities to take points at Cardiff and West Ham in particular that were vital in hindsight.
When we lost to WBA we were 5 points above the drop zone with 5 to play. Fulham were up next and they were dead and buried, we know the rest of course and the performance we put in at Craven Cottage was every bit as abject as that which had passed before. People claimed that it was too late to change the mindset and maybe they're right but for the first time in weeks we could have fielded Tettey, Howson and Fer that day, the triumvirate at the heart of our best performances that season, but we didn't. Hughton might have done, it might have made a difference, we might have lost 4-0.
Our failure in the recruitment stakes cost us dearly but any thought that retaining and playing the heroes from before like Fox, Jackson or Holt or Morison would seem as misguided as our signing policy that summer when you look at their subsequent records.
Could he have kept us up? Possibly. Would he have kept us up? Doubtful. But we didn't improve for sacking him in those last 5 games so if you were in his shoes you might still think you could have and fair play to him for that. It didn't work out here but however hard people try, that first season of his can't be erased from the record books or discredited because of subsequent events. Maybe one day when emotions and ill-feeling around the relegation aren't quite so raw, it will be accepted for what it was, which was a fantastic over-achievement given the financial constraints at the time. Until then he'll be remembered for spending £30m poorly and us being relegated, that's football.
I wonder if Adams would have got the job had we stayed up? How many would still swap him now?
I don't know, but with the start we've had and the strong transfer window that's just closed, we'd probably all be better served concentrating on what might be rather than reminiscing on what might have been. That terrible season when we got relegated to L1 was the catalyst for a hell of a ride subsequently, maybe this relegation will initiate something similar? We can live in hope...
