AB/PH comparisons

Quoted from Tommy

You forget how crazy that season was don't you. The focus is often on the unbelievable sequence of events in the play offs. But what an odd season, with how you say we started the season in the first 13 games, flying. Then 2 or 3 months of being seemingly allergic to winning a game of football. And then a couple of statement wins kickstarting a bit of a revival and finishing the season with respectable but not outstanding form to get into one of the lowest play off positions.

An outsider looking at our results that season would be forgiven for thinking we had 3 different managers that season, such was the clear contrast in each third of the season. Which again, is very un-Hurst like, as he's generally a consistent sort of manager.

Quoted from lew chaterleys lover

Not sure about the last bit. It's often very up or very down.

He goes through so many different players every season and often a lot of formations so I think consistency is often lacking.

Quoted from Tommy

You forget how crazy that season was don't you. The focus is often on the unbelievable sequence of events in the play offs. But what an odd season, with how you say we started the season in the first 13 games, flying. Then 2 or 3 months of being seemingly allergic to winning a game of football. And then a couple of statement wins kickstarting a bit of a revival and finishing the season with respectable but not outstanding form to get into one of the lowest play off positions.

An outsider looking at our results that season would be forgiven for thinking we had 3 different managers that season, such was the clear contrast in each third of the season. Which again, is very un-Hurst like, as he's generally a consistent sort of manager.

Quoted from AncientExiledMariner

The down patch in the conference co-coincided with losing McAtee. We were very much a 1 player team at that time.

If we are losing, do you expect him not to change things and just sit there hoping for the best? Do you expect him to hold players to account who are out of form and give another player a shot or not? Hurst will often stick with players if they're performing.

There is this weird trend of trying to simplify football to catch phrases. It just ain't that simple.

Quoted from BobbyCummingsTackle

So I'm not with you and want to put the counter argument, respectfully and for the debate...

I recall the phrase 'death slide' being used about the team toward the end of Holloway's time. We had gone from being OK to being awful and it was difficult to see where the change was going to come. He had signed a pile of players that just weren't up to it, the first team almost picked itself because there was no depth in the squad and that 1st team was poor.
Although not directly related to the on pitch performance we then had the chaos of Fenty, May and Holloway leaving etc etc etc - Holloway said he was staying but was gone within 3 weeks or so. That cannot have helped the players in terms of their preparation to play.
Hurst walked into this chaos and had to sign a lot of players in January and turn them into a side good enough to stay up, when all of us could see we were dead and buried if no changes were made. Some of his signings worked (Matete) and some didn't.
We struggled at first but got gradually better as time went on and I genuinely think that we would have stayed up if we'd have 5 more games (but we didn't). Not only did we get better results but we were better to watch. You are right that some individual results were disappointing but you could see an improving trajectory overall.
He had to fix a lot in that short period and almost got it right. Almost.

My personal view after relegation was that he should be given the chance to stay and show that he could get us going in the right direction and he did that with bells on as the club turned around from 20 years of Fenty shafting it.

Quoted from Tommy

I'd also add that although the team Holloway left us with wasn't great, I seem to recall almost all of the players PH brought in were worse than what Holloway brought in, with Hurst even reverting back to using the Holloway players over the ones he brought in. My recollection of that season is that Hurst made us significantly worse for a couple of months before we started looking like a football team.

Quoted from diehardmariner

I was just adding to Poojah's point that Hurst did get some things wrong.  Despite the 'errors' listed above, I thought Hurst had a bloody good go at turning that toxic ship around.  Death slide is a very good analogy for what he walked into.  I completely agree on that we were better to watch too. Watching in iFollow was bloody hard, but the performances later in the season were really good. Bolton and Salford stand out as ones, not in terms of pure football but just that everyone seemed to be in together and fighting for every blade of grass.

It just took too long to get going.  At the time and even now I can see that Hurst was trying to build from the back and as we got less leaky, we gained a bit more confidence to for it.  Maybe he left his finger tickling the trigger a bit too long, maybe not.  But with a few more games left in the season, I fancy we would have got out of it.  Alas, we'll never know.

Quoted from diehardmariner

I was just adding to Poojah's point that Hurst did get some things wrong.  Despite the 'errors' listed above, I thought Hurst had a bloody good go at turning that toxic ship around.  Death slide is a very good analogy for what he walked into.  I completely agree on that we were better to watch too. Watching in iFollow was bloody hard, but the performances later in the season were really good. Bolton and Salford stand out as ones, not in terms of pure football but just that everyone seemed to be in together and fighting for every blade of grass.

It just took too long to get going.  At the time and even now I can see that Hurst was trying to build from the back and as we got less leaky, we gained a bit more confidence to for it.  Maybe he left his finger tickling the trigger a bit too long, maybe not.  But with a few more games left in the season, I fancy we would have got out of it.  Alas, we'll never know.

Quoted from Tommy

I'd also add that although the team Holloway left us with wasn't great, I seem to recall almost all of the players PH brought in were worse than what Holloway brought in, with Hurst even reverting back to using the Holloway players over the ones he brought in. My recollection of that season is that Hurst made us significantly worse for a couple of months before we started looking like a football team.

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