Have Norwich committed Hara-kiri by sacking Chris Hughton?

[Garyalanlawro]

Last weekend’s sacking of Chris Hughton following his side’s 1-0 loss at home to fellow strugglers West Brom seems like a rash move at best, made to seem even less well-thought-out by the appointment of Neil Adams, Norwich’s youth team coach as replacement, a man Glenn Roeder said was “never going to be able to manage anything better than an under-10 team”.

Adams has a crucifying last five games; next up is Fulham, who are Norwich’s main rivals to avoid the drop, followed by an in-form Liverpool, an out-of-form Man Utd, with Londoners Chelsea and Arsenal rounding off what has to be the worst run-in in the league. So why didn’t the board leave him in place at least for the next game?

A possible reason is that Hughton was currently unpopular; fans had been throwing stuff at him from the stands and his win record at Norwich has been one game in four. Indeed, many fans may be relieved at his dismissal and seeking a bounce that a new manager might bring. Additionally, a win at Fulham might have boosted his approval temporarily, making his sacking less palatable in another week.

That said, is Neil Adams the man for the final five games? He has just won Youth League Cup (under-18s) with Norwich, but the Premier League is a different proposition and it’s unlikely that the board sees him as a long-term replacement.

We analysed Norwich’s team scores using the Beat Your Manager! performance ratings and found that team performances were actually on a slight upward curve (see graph on our blog; http://beatyourmanager.ie/blog/) over the last eight games. It’s possible that this swing could have continued under Hughton and maybe been translated into wins and points; however, it has to be acknowledged that Norwich won two and drew two of those 9 games, losing the other five.

To have a chance of survival Norwich NEED to beat fellow strugglers Fulham at least. April sackings in the Premier League are rare; the last one was Chris Coleman at Fulham in 2007, and prior to that, it was Jean Tigana, at....? You guessed it, Fulham in 2003. Norwich are currently five points outside the dropzone and it’s likely that the current bottom three (Fulham, Cardiff City and Sunderland) will be the ones relegated. However, Fulham were also in a similar situation in 2008, where they won 4 of their final 6 games under Roy Hodgson, staying up in the process. Fulham’s run-in is quite kind, but they really need two wins and a draw to survive. While that sounds like a big ask, it’s hard to see Norwich getting any points from their last four.

So, Hughton goes and it’s one of the statistical oddities of the Premier League that he has now twice fallen victim to the curse of being sacked after losing a game to West Brom (the most deadly team in the PL; see our blog post last weekend), when he previously lost the Manager’s job at Newcastle in 2010. That time, Kevin Nolan and Joey Barton paid a nice tribute to Hughton following the Newcastle sacking (see the video clip http://youtu.be/W6JAsXZPyTE) and while Hughton’s departure may not be lamented by fans, it would be interesting to see how the Norwich players feel about it.

It’s a fascinating run-in, starting with the Fulham v Norwich six-pointer at 3:07pm this Saturday (and of course, it’s not on television – Setanta Sports, take note)

If you’d like to see Norwich City’s player ratings on a game-by-game basis, you can follow us on twitter https://twitter.com/beatyourmanager or become a fan at http://www.facebook.com/beatyourmanager. You can play the game by searching for “Beat Your Manager” in the Appstore/Google Playstore or by following the link for Android (http://goo.gl/WlNfJX) or iPhone (http://tinyurl.com/BeatYourManageriOS).

Thanks for reading!

The Beat Your Manager! Team

Are You The Special One?