I honestly believe, had Hughes scored against West Ham, our season would be totally different. I’m sure had the ball ended up in the net that afternoon, we’d gone on to win that game. The three points gained against the hammers would have settled us down and Javi would probably still be our manager today. I know we’ve had horrendous VAR decisions go against us this season which obviously haven’t helped but the Hughes miss was, in my opinion, pivotal to our downfall
I’m not sure. We were improved going forward in that game, but we were still an absolute shambles at the back and they cut us apart time and again. I think it’s probable they’d have got back into it.
To be fair we have been missing sitters all season. Doucs should of wrapped up three points against Arsenal, Gray has been accountable on more than one occasion and Delafoo seems to lose his head in front of goal or does too much alone. It is impossible to blame just one player, but all have been mis-firing in front of goal when we have had chances - (Sheff Utd a big stand out). It's 50% of the reason we are where we are.
Doucs miss against Arsenal would’ve been way more important. It wouldn’t have been subject to conjecture, it would’ve got us three points and a massive confidence boost. There was by no means any sort of guarantee that had Hughes scored his chance we’d have won that game. Our defence was a shambles, we could still have easily drawn or lost it. Javi had his hands tied behind his back with our defence, but even if we’d got a result against west ham it wouldn’t have changed how bad it is. He wasn’t capable of organising them anymore or changing the formation to make us less feeble at the back, so it would’ve just delayed the inevitable.
