Another one eating crow on this. After Ipswich I was convinced we'd be using the November international break to find his replacement, but here we are, on track for our best season post-Nuno and with longstanding critical issues with the team - scoring goals, above all - finally put to bed.
I think the big thing I underestimated was that he's clearly a top-level man manager, and injecting confidence into this squad has done a huge amount on its own to right the ship after a couple of seasons of what sounds like a fairly toxic environment, both due to the Lage hangover and to the behaviour of some members of the squad. It's still relatively early days, though, and the jury's still out on other aspects of his game. There's night and day between the naivety with which he set up for matches in the first few months of the season (and responded to opposition tactical changes in-game) and where he is now, and I'm still not sure why that is. Took him a while to get a handle on the squad and what it could do? He's a super quick student of the game? That early season form was just a bad run and this was always his level (or vice versa, and this is the purple patch)? Whatever it is, happy to give him time now, because he's clearly not the PE teacher so many of us worried he was.