He is exactly what you need right now and next season too. I think youll stay up as long as your above norwich with 5 games to go. You were dead n buried with Holloway and now you have a great chance.

TP will devide supporters. There will be the 'as long we stay up' group and the 'i cant watch this kind of football' group. To survive hes exactly what you need.

Stoke are safe now qand playing really well, most stoke fans are hoping Palace survive too. A proper Club with Proper fans.

Firstly to the OP - mate thank you for coming on here and sharing - really interesting to hear your views and they pretty much match what I would expect. Seems like you have enough experience with message boards to ignore the keyboard warriors too.

I have discussed our woeful goals for column with my boss who's an Arsenal purist. While he would never want to watch a game even he concedes that TP was (and still is) the only manager who could keep us up. He thinks we should bin him in the summer but that's a very naive comment as the club as a whole needs to 'get used' to being in the prem.

I also think our current lack of goals has as much to do with the fact that we have literally no premier league goalscorers so he has to be mindful of that when planning his tactics. He cannot guarantee a goal so works on trying to ensure we don't concede. Makes sense to me, and as a fan of many years and being more circumspect these days I'm happy to ensure we stay in the PL for a few seasons before we look for more flair - the trapdoor doesn't go away - just ask Charlton or Fulham who both had several seasons in the prem before going down. As Fulham surely will this year.

Interesting comment about playing players out of position and wingers who will defend. Rings very true.

Thanks again and good luck - think Stoke and Palace have a lot in common as clubs.

Edited by FinchleyEagle (19 Mar 2014 1.41pm)

He's doing his best and trying all he knows but his biggest handicap is our lack of strikers who can magic goals. Most of our rivals have at least one of those which is why they get unexpected results against top-half teams. Believe as we might, we can never expect the unexpected from our set of strikers. The one who did have the magic is Murray but he is still struggling to get back where he was in the first part of last season, when he was scoring for us from all angles. Gayle's winning goal against Hull is the one exception to all this but he's not even making the starting line-up.

For my part the football is horrendous and I know it won't change next season.

Not a chance this season, he doesn't have the tools to do the job, so will stick to what he knows. He really likes Ward and has played him at CM and LB when he is a RB, and definitely seen our wingers (Puncheon & Bolasie) tracking back hard a lot.

Getting Ince on loan seems to go against his type, so that was surprising. Currently we've had some tough games and there has been plenty of angst about the defensive tactics but I see he has had little choice - when we can attack with more confidence against lower opposition under TP, we have, so I expect more in the games against West Ham, Cardiff, Fulham and Villa. The rest will be about trying to nick a point and we are certainly very difficult to break down. Very low goals against figure for where we are and plenty were shipped before TP. I imagine if he'd been here from day 1 we'd be safe already.
How does Hughes compare ?

Hughes is Tony Pulis without the frustrations. He still has the physical side with a big lad up fron ie crouch. We arent conceeding a lot of goals and go long when we need to. He plays players on form and in their correct position. Tries to win every game and not to not lose. He doesnt talk other teams up only ever talks about his own club. He gives licence to midfielders to go forward and espress themselves as long as one sits. Full backs get forward too.