[Albion] When Did It All Go So Wrong?

el punal said:

I’ve been wracking my brains for when we went from a safe, conservative, uninspiring team to a disastrous car crash outfit struggling to put anything together apart from some desperate backs to the wall performances in the last few games.

My feeling was that it was the second half showing at Fulham. 2-0 up and absolutely cruising at halftime. Second half starts and the whole team collapsed like a soggy soufflé. I don’t think we ever really recovered from that despite fortuitous wins against Huddersfield and Palace.

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Guy Fawkes said:

The we're winning away' song getting aired at West Ham and then Fulham? (the 'how shit must you be - we're winning away' a great demotivator to our team and motivation to the opposition) 2-0 up in both prior to that being sung and ending 2-2 against West Ham and 4-2 to Fulham. (A bit like signing 1-0 to Liverpool when we were playing Man City in the last game, only ever going to motivate the opposition to try harder against us)

So 2 poor results from strong positions, our fans taking the mickey out of our side, etc.... could not have helped, especially in a league that's as mentally tough to compete in as the division we are in now, no wonder our players started to become more defensive minded and more risk adverse (especially going forward)

Decisions going against us (numerous dodgy goals given against us and we don't get decisions going for us (like the double hand ball by the Burnley player moments before they won a penalty themselves) will also have taken a toll - Does make you wonder, if those decisions had been made correctly / in our favour, would CH still be in the job?

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Is it PotG? said:

Aside from the Man U (H) game early on, any exciting and classy performances that stand out last season? Arsenal (H) perhaps?

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Bwian said:

I admire your loyalty to Hughton.

The truth is that this season we ended up with almost identical stats with his Norwich side who were relegated. He did exactly the same things that Norwich fans told us to expect and they were quickly told to eff off, this time Hughton has learned from that season, blah blah blah. He clearly didn't learn anything from that season because he repeated it and we nearly went down.

Explain to me what worked? Getting our asses kicked at home by relegation rivals and out of form clubs? We got our asses kicked by Millwall but fluked a win. It wasn't working. It really wasn't.

He is a decent man but his time had come to leave.

Sent from my LYA-L09 using Tapatalk

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Captain Sensible said:

Probably not. The mental strength and belief to win, were missing. Regardless of the odd decision here and there.

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Is it PotG? said:

Aside from the Man U (H) game early on, any exciting and classy performances that stand out last season? Arsenal (H) perhaps?

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Guy Fawkes said:

If results aren't going for you, and poor decisions by the officials add to your poor results, isn't that going to affect your levels of belief and your mental strength?

Had we got the decisions in our favour, and as a result, more points on the board (ie not had the 'Brighton haven't won in 2019' thing being banded about for several games) - then who knows, that mental strength may never have evaporated to the extent it did and we would have played more positively on the pitch as a result. Confidence can be a fragile thing and when things are going badly, it can be hard to snap out of it.

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ac gull said:

I thought we looked PL class at Man Utd away in second half

To me defence had just got used to Button - Ryan came straight back in and we let in four at Fulham - had a big mental impact to me

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Captain Sensible said:

Probably not. The mental strength and belief to win, were missing. Regardless of the odd decision here and there.

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portslade seagull said:

Loads according to some CH lovers apparently.

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Mtoto said:

The game before Burnley was a win. The game after Burnley was a win, and so were two of the three games after that, including our first win at Palace for decades.

Your point was?

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Mtoto said:

We didn't nearly go down. Never shorter than 9-4 and even that for only a day or two.

That was mainly thanks to a pretty strong start to the season which included a win against Manchester United and a sequence of three wins in a row at one point. We were not in the relegation zone at any stage so those that were were always chasing.

Constantly looking to start and play on the front foot worked in the Championship and got us promoted. You need lots of wins to go up. You don't need many wins to stay up, though, and that style of play was never going to work in our first seasons in the Premier League when survival is all that counts (and all that he's been asked to secure).

There are 38 matches in a season and you get 38 points - enough for safety - just for turning up. It makes a lot of sense, as a basic strategy, to place considerable emphasis on defending those points when the whistle blows. It's not always pretty, or attacking enough to satisfy the more entitled/demanding fans, but effective all the same. And when we hit the awful three-match run from Southampton on, it made sense to emphasise it even more to get us over the line. Again, not pretty, but necessary. He did what was needed in the circumstances. The idea that some are putting about that it's the *only* way his teams can play is ridiculous, unless memories are so short these days that two seasons ago doesn't count?

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