Mark Hughes is in a fight he cant lose at Qpr

Mark Hughes was once tipped to follow Sir Alex into the United hotseat but now he's in a fight he can't lose
By Martin Samuel
PUBLISHED: 23:00, 13 November 2012 | UPDATED: 23:47, 13 November 2012
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..If it all ends badly for Queens Park Rangers on Saturday, what next for manager Mark Hughes? Short term, another vote of confidence, maybe one more stay of execution. But beyond? What if, in time, the patience of his employer, Tony Fernandes, wears thin? What if the end is sooner than we think and the meeting with Southampton is Hughes’s last as Rangers boss? Where would he go from there?
A must-win game, Fernandes called the weekend fixture, which is never a good sign. He has been impressively supportive to this point and indulged Hughes in the transfer market in the summer, in quantity if not quality. Yet even his loyalty has a limit and it may be exceeded if Rangers pass another weekend without their first Premier League win of the season.
Nigel Adkins of Southampton is also under executive scrutiny and in the bottom three but he has successive promotions as collateral. Even were chairman Nicola Cortese to lose patience, there would be plenty who would recognise Adkins’s achievements. Being sacked by Southampton hardly impacted on the career of Alan Pardew.
Under pressure: Mark Hughes is fighting to save QPR's season... and his own managerial career

It is different for Hughes. Fail at Rangers and the man who was once regarded as one of the brightest young managers in the English game, and a contender for top jobs across Europe if successful, would be close to unemployable. If the stakes are high for Rangers, they are peaking for Hughes.
Harry Redknapp is a fine manager, but he is out of work right now because he is an awkward fit. Tottenham Hotspur deserted him last season, so did the Football Association, and what else is left? Is he likely to get one of the Champions League elite clubs: Manchester United, Manchester City, Arsenal or Chelsea? Not at 65. Would the mid-table comfort zone content him after challenging in Europe with Tottenham? Probably not, considering he turned down Newcastle United in 2008.

So what to do? Even if a club suited him, a job opportunity must first arise. Redknapp back at West Ham United? Not while Sam Allardyce is sixth in the league. Redknapp for Liverpool? Brendan Rodgers must be given at least a season first. Redknapp costs money, overhauls team rosters, always wants financial backing and is the same age as the singer from Herman’s Hermits. And nobody is booking them for Glastonbury next summer, either.
Hughes has similar baggage, putting off potential suitors having walked away from Fulham. And, like Redknapp, when times are tight, the cost of his new broom is seen as problematic. Being bottom of the league is bad enough, but resting there at considerable expense is a terrifying thought for all owners. Those outside Rangers will look at Fernandes’s predicament, shudder and place a mental line through the name Mark Hughes.

Ominous: Rangers' owner Tony Fernandes (right) has warned that Hughes must beat Southampton
He costs big, that is what they will think. He demands a significant budget — for wages, if not transfer fees — he brings an extensive backroom staff, he usually has grand designs on the training complex. And Hughes’s instincts for improvement are right on every count. Yet this season, he has also made some very public errors. Taking England goalkeeper Robert Green from West Ham United on £50,000 a week, and dumping him after three league games, was a shocker.

Julio Cesar, Green’s replacement, was also a free transfer but his wages will be significant after a career at Inter Milan. Green was blamed for a fair sprinkling of the nine goals which were conceded in matches with Swansea City, Norwich City and Manchester City — plus a smattering in pre-season friendlies — and Hughes acted swiftly. But £50,000 is a lot of money to pay a man to observe football from the sidelines.
Nor did it help when Cesar said that he accepted Rangers’ proposal because he wanted to live in London. Nobody was expecting him to cite a lifelong admiration for Stan Bowles, or the opportunity to work with Shaun Wright-Phillips, as his motivation, but such a flippant aside only contributes to the idea that Fernandes has ended up throwing good money after bad in his desperation to satisfy his manager.

A costly mistake: Hughes quickly lost faith in Robert Green - but the goalkeeper didn't come cheap
It is a myth that Rangers spent hugely in the summer but they had a relative go for a club who have the lowest average gate in the Premier League, and would only be 11th in the Championship and behind Sheffield United in League One in terms of crowd figures. Rangers are not even among the six best-supported clubs in London — Charlton Athletic are bigger, too — so while Park Ji-sung may have been a free transfer from Manchester United, for a club of QPR’s size, he won’t exactly have been a bargain. The same goes for Jose Bosingwa.
On Saturday, as Rangers lost again at Stoke City, Hughes’s agent, Kia Joorabchian, could be seen behind Fernandes in the directors’ box. Joorabchian has excellent contacts in South America. Players from that country, however, rarely come cheap. Hughes’s link to Joorabchian — which was also a feature of his time at Manchester City — will only cement his reputation as a manager whose tastes cost.
Fine, if Rangers were where West Ham are now. The club went the extra yard to get Andy Carroll, Kevin Nolan and Matt Jarvis for manager Allardyce but have reaped the rewards with an impressive start to the season. As QPR and West Ham are seen to have shared ambitions this season, while Fernandes’s project remains stalled, Hughes looks increasingly like a manager whose judgment is not worth the coin.
The fall from grace in modern football can be savagely swift. Hughes’s c.v. affords old-boy status at some of Europe’s greatest clubs — Manchester United, Chelsea, Barcelona and Bayern Munich — and when his early managerial career showed such promise, it was widely presumed that he would walk back through the door at one of them as more than a guest some day.

Down and out? QPR sit bottom of the Barclays Premier League and Hughes must quickly pick up his troops



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