Your Thoughts On The Current Nottingham Forest Manager

[zicorice]

Judging Hughton is really tough at this stage, because he's largely been dealt a poor hand on arrival.

He really needs at least 1 window before we can get a proper grasp on what he's about. The trouble is that, if results continue as is, he might not even get that.

I'm not happy with various things which he does, but make exception because of said hand dealt. However, the one exception to that is constantly playing Figs. He & Christie may as well wear a set of bullseyes for our opposition to target. Soh may be complete toss, but persisting with someone who's playing complete toss as it is makes no sense.

+1

I haven't liked what I've seen so far but don't get me wrong, he's obviously got a lot about him and I fully expect us to pull out of the bottom zone. But I ask do I want to give a guy a year or so and the ability to reshape our squad in his mould when he has a rep for defensive football, being quite inflexible and apparently not integrating youth. And obviously my answer is no - I want a coach who does the opposite of all of those.

Once you've employed him you should probably give him time to build, so I'll just have to accept it, but it's not the path I wanted us to go down.

+1

I agree with that to a large degree.

I think the club's obsession with pragmatic yet (sorry, try not to laugh here) "winning" football has worn stupendously thin, and find it incredibly disheartening that the managers which EM & co have chosen to employ have all been against attacking/passing football. On the flipside I at least have to give them some credit for at least trying to maintain some consistency there. 

However, I also think that it's unfair to say Hughton doesn't blood youth. He's been playing Yates regularly, and played Swan today too. Mighten returned to the bench too. That may not seem lots, but I think it's satisfactory enough given the situation we're in, and the short space of time Hughton's been here. 

Also, regards style, I do think that we're cutting our cloth accordingly, and that it's easier for a club with our budget to compete in the market for the better defensive players, than it is the better attacking ones. 

I don't think there's a right or wrong way, I just think we need a cohesive plan which takes into account the strengths & weaknesses of the club, and adapts accordingly. Hughton inherited Brighton in a very similar position, and then the following season they flew up the league. The real question for me is will we empower Hughton to do that here, and can he survive being a stylistically bad fit for the more traditional Forest fans too.

Hughton also had a young Dunk and blooded Solly March (now a regular in Prem for them) so not sure it's fair regarding not using young players. Brighton fans are generally no nowts having gone from 5k to 30k in new ground most generally clueless as they haven't produced  many youngsters who have gone on to do much from the Hughton era.