Blackburn
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Blackburn manager behaves like spoilt child In Feb 2007 Blackburn were drawn against Arsenal in the 5th round of the FA Cup. The game was fairly awful – having smashed Blackburn 6-2 at home and 2-0 away already this season it was expected that this highly negative Blackburn team would fear the worst and play highly negative football – and so it proved to be. Official figures showed Arsenal had 59% of possession, 4 shots on target to Blackburn’s one (and that a miss-hit cross) 5 shots off target to Blackburn’s 1, 4 blocked shots to Blackburn’s 0, 9 fouls to Blackburn’s 18, 7 corners to Blackburn’s 1. And that doesn’t even start to tell you about the time wasting. From that, and seeing how low Arsenal’s shots totals were, you’ll know at once what happened – it was 11 men behind the ball from the start, with a performance based on slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. Blackburn supporters clearly knew what was coming – never has the away section been so empty, and in fact the game was played to an all-time low crowd of around 55,000. At the end of the game Cesc Fabregas went to the Blackburn manager, a certain Mr Hughes, and asked him if he had not once been associated with Barcelona. Admitting that he had, Cesc at the Hughes how he could now countenance such a style of play. Hughes responded with anger – pointing out among other things how many times he had won the FA Cup – a sure sign that he knew just how awful his tactics had been that day – and marched off. He then let it be known to Arsenal that he expected an apology, and Arsenal (for reasons that have not become clear) duly delivered Cesc up, who said he had been speaking out of turn, he was young, and needed to learn how to cool down. So what do we make of this? That the Hughes is so insecure in terms of what he has done and is doing at Blackburn that he needs to shout to a 19 year old kid about the medals he won? Probably yes. There is clearly no connection between Hughes winning the FA Cup as a player with the dreadful way he has Blackburn playing – good and accomplished players don’t make good managers automatically, and creative players do not automatically become creative managers. The argument was thus rubbish – but we are left with the image of a man who (despite all our obvious prejudices as an Arsenal supporting web site) was a highly accomplished player now reduced to shouting and demanding apologies because a teenager criticises the way his team plays. It doesn’t leave you with much faith in the Hughes’ frame of mind. Nor come to that his ability as a manager. And what then reduced his credibility to absolute zero was the fact that five days later Blackburn had to play at home to Bayer Leverkusen in the UEFA Cup. Having lost 3-2 in the first leg Blackburn could expect some robust defending by the German team, and that is what they got. So what did that awfully nice Mr Hughes say after the game, just four days after his team’s terrible display at Arsenal, and his demands for an apology from Cesc? He said that the “referee needed to be stronger” to stamp out the timewasting!!!! “I was disappointed the referee allowed it to happen for so long.” |
