Must admit I struggled with the hype around him when people started call him the best English manager around without actually achieving anything in the PL (yes I know it's not all about the PL)I said he was a bang average PL coach at best, with a 6 game hot streak (at the start of a season) literally as good as it’ll ever get.
It’s all relative for us, what preceded GP - CH pragmatism, ultra defensive safety first PL status saving football, to the detriment of entertainment… of course by proxy Potterball snd 15th-9th seemed like a beautiful waking coma … we had zero expectation and (naturally) he was allowed to flourish accordingly… time, patience and decent enough football, boy we lapped it up… the barren spells were mostly forgiven - after all we were grateful, we were trying to attack … wow !!
We were unique, the timing in our PL gestation likewise… he/we got lucky, perfect bedfellows.
But then, he took the big bucks, ran and decided he could bring his slow burn (one for fabs) process to entitled BIG TIME clubs like Chelsea and West Ham and their curious ‘way…’
He tells us he’s not thick - okay, maybe from a mercenary perspective - yeah… but from a place of believing his own hype and hubris - what an idiot, he’s never going to have it so good again.
He was lucky to have us, not the other way round.
Bang average to us ?!? back then ? - more than enough… he should have stayed, and I suspect he knows it and not deep down either.
This summer and next season with West Ham will show us if he was a fluke at Brighton or he actually is a top flight coach
West Ham were a mess this season before he came in, not an overnight fix