Completely agree. The gaffer has looked care-worn for some time now.
Of course, in part that will be because he is in charge of a side that has lost 11 of its past 12 matches. It is inevitable that that will bear heavily on any manager, and probably even more so on Chris as a supporter of the club. Moreover, as a supporter, he'll be fully aware that the club has committed sums of money in the transfer market far in excess of anything we've ever done before. That will be weighing really heavily on his shoulders too.
The loss of the crowd has undoubtedly killed us. I said it would even before we re-started against Villa in June, albeit it is incredible that we, alone it seems, still can't come to terms with it, 19 league games later. In fact, the increasingly frequent references to the absence of fans in the players' interviews would suggest that the players have now started to wallow in it as an excuse.
I wonder whether the biggest factor in all of this and for Chris appearing to be defeated, is that he is mentally just worn out by the constant battle against superior odds. Plenty of commentators make the point that the Premier League is a relentless mental test for players and managers, as much as a physical test. Every single match, especially for teams like us, is a new and incredibly difficult test. And, because of the lockdown, that already mentally testing situation became even more intense with the games being crammed into a shorter period, allowing very little time to prepare for the next difficult examination.
The really top sides have the world class talent available to occasionally trust the players to get the job done regardless of preparation. There are no free hits for us, though. Similarly, many other clubs in the league have far superior and numerous coaching teams and resources to spread the load.
It may all have just caught up with Chris, Alan and the players. It happens. It happened to Eddie Howe and before that it happened to Wagner and Huddersfield, who just 'hit the wall' in their second season. Perhaps it's just inevitable when you're fighting against the odds every week? Perhaps, they're just mentally frazzled?
