Mark Hughes: Please don’t judge me on 12 games at QPR Stoke City manager Mark Hughes says that other people can decide if he has restored his good name by his impressive work in the Potteries after being sacked at Loftus Road Mark Hughes: Please don’t judge me on 12 games at QPR Forensic: Stoke manager Mark Hughes is famous for his attention to detail Photo: PAUL COUSANS By Oliver Brown 9:24PM GMT 28 Mar 2014 Comments1 Comment This is, quite frankly, bizarre. Mark Hughes, hardbitten product of the Goulbourne Estate in Wrexham – a town whose present Labour MP swept into office by a margin of more than 9,000 votes – is giving an interview over tea and cocktail sausages at Manchester’s Winston Conservative Club. He is here to deliver a £100,000 grant to help revitalise the local amateur football teams. For in the game’s top-heavy pyramid such sides are an endangered species, although not half as much as a Tory in Wythenshawe. A sense prevails that for the firebrand Hughes, a fiercely loyal working-class son of North Wales, this quaint setting is not a natural milieu. But one habitat where he does appear increasingly settled is Stoke City, whose triumphs this season over Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United have suggested a team dramatically rejuvenated under his aegis. Their most recent statement of intent, a free-wheeling 4-1 win at Aston Villa, has even kindled talk of a first top-half finish in the Premier League. Somehow, despite the seething rancour and recrimination that disfigured his stay at Queens Park Rangers, Hughes is legitimate top-flight stock once more. From the aesthetic poverty of Tony Pulis’s tenure – five straight seasons in the Premier League, but an average of less than a goal per game – Hughes is on course, provided his players successfully navigate the first of their seven final games against Hull City on Saturday, to steer Stoke to the highest position, greatest points total and most home wins in their six years at this level. Dare one say it, but he has also, to judge by the thriving strike partnership between Peter Crouch and Peter Odemwingie, made them a touch easier on the eye, too. He is not about to deny, however, his part in the unravelling at QPR, whose dressing-room culture was described by Ryan Nelsen as “the worst I have ever seen”, or the blemish it left upon his reputation. “When you have a situation like that, it’s something that stays with you for a long time,” he says, reflecting upon his eventual sacking in November 2012. “Three weeks ago it was my 300th game as a Premier League manager, but for a long time yet at Stoke I will continue to be judged on the basis of 12 games at the start of last season for QPR. Twelve games out of 300 – it’s a little bit hard to take, because I feel I do understand what it takes to win at this level. Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, we couldn’t get the right dynamic at QPR. A lot of people put a great deal of effort and finance into it, but it didn’t work. It was very difficult, but thankfully the owners at Stoke looked beyond this, to what I had done at my previous clubs. They didn’t see only those 12 games.” Hughes has every reason to feel more content in the Potteries, given that Stoke chairman Peter Coates, who appointed him last summer, lives locally and has been a fan of the club from the cradle. Quite a contrast, then, to QPR owner Tony Fernandes, who divided his attentions at QPR with his business interests in Kuala Lumpur. “I have been taken aback by the warmth of feeling at Stoke,” Hughes admits. “Subconsciously, you sense perhaps that some people are expecting you to fail. I have never had that this season. Stoke are a stable club who understand that there are peaks and troughs in football, that you can lose games even if you do everything correctly.” While Hughes’s accomplishments at Blackburn, whom he led to three successive top-10 finishes, would withstand the sternest scrutiny, there is a suspicion that he is still downplaying the extent of the QPR aberration. He can point to the foolishness of Fernandes in lavishing an absurd salary upon Jose Bosingwa, but the bald truth is that this most fastidious of managers – one who takes pride in his nuanced knowledge of nutrition and sport science – left QPR a basket-case of a club. Take an excerpt from the memoir by his successor, Harry Redknapp, in which the attitude of first-team players is portrayed as “arrogant and contemptuous” and where a “culture of decay” is said to have taken root. He sighs at the reminder, acknowledging: “Maybe I spread myself too thinly.” Asked for extra detail, he explains: “An awful lot of things weren’t in place at QPR. The training ground wasn’t ready and we were trying to address that – we needed to create the right environment. But if you become too wrapped up in all of that you can lose a grip on your players and what they are doing on the pitch. I suppose I was being dragged into areas where I needn’t have bothered.” Plainly, Hughes is embarrassed by this chapter of his work. By turns wary, brittle and circumspect when his QPR failures are raised, it appears he would far rather dwell upon his recent rehabilitation. On the surface, his methods at Stoke have evolved little: he has retained fellow Welshman Mark Bowen as his ever-present deputy, and sources close to him confirm that the 50-year-old has lost none of his passion for vast screeds of ProZone data. But results, as underlined by a sequence of only one defeat in eight, have been emphatically revived. Hughes risked derision when he declared that he would bring a more dynamic, progressive brand of football to the Britannia Stadium, but he has since found himself vindicated. “To begin with we were probably overdoing the passing game, but Odemwingie has given us a little more of a cutting edge,” he says. “We used to find it difficult to dominate games, but now we carry a proper threat. We can be more direct, more quickly, but still have the capacity to retain possession. The balance is where it needs to be.” He defends his forensic approach, and his indulgence in such coach-speak as “key performance indicators”, arguing that the “only reason I go into that is because I believe it can make a difference in the Premier League. Here it is about fine margins. You need to understand that or you’re not doing the best by your team”. Attempts to elicit what key texts might feature in his private library, or whether he searches beyond sport for his inspiration, prove fruitless but Hughes does offer his own intriguing slant on leadership. “I probably have hundreds of books that I never read, but I just pick key sections from them to use in the role I have. I wouldn’t say I am one for Churchillian speeches, but they can be interesting to study.” Hughes is uneasy about any intimation of criticism of his predecessor Pulis, but he realises that any depiction of Stoke as one-dimensional, long-ball brutes has been rendered redundant under his tutelage. “I was always impressed by the technical ability of these players – that’s why I felt that we could be a little different, that they could achieve more. We haven’t spent much money, though. Of the bottom 10 clubs this season, eight have smashed their transfer records, but we haven’t been anywhere near ours. We have paid only £5 million on two players [Odemwingie and Marko Arnautovic]. We have changed, and yet we have kept the qualities of the best Stoke teams, being difficult to beat and to break down. We have just added more strings to our bow.” For all his scrupulousness as a manager, not to mention his gifts as a player for Manchester United, Barcelona and Bayern Munich, Hughes does continue to make some peculiar decisions. It is odd in the eyes of many that a man of considerable erudition would, for example, keep Kia Joorabchian as his representative, aware of the agent’s controversial past and accusations that he was influencing player contracts at QPR. “Kia’s just a friend and an adviser,” he says, bristling slightly. “He hasn’t been involved at Stoke, he’s just a guy whose company I like.” Hughes can be acutely conscious of his public image. So as for whether he has restored his good name in the wake of the QPR debacle, he resists sounding too triumphalist. “I was quite prepared to allow others to take a view on it,” he concludes. “I kept my own counsel and waited for the opportunity to change people’s minds about my abilities. At Stoke, I’m allowed to work how I want. All I hope is that people will now see I’m not too bad at what I do.” Budweiser Club Futures has invested £1 million into non-League football over two seasons, providing 16 clubs with £50,000 grants. Two of these clubs, including Wythenshawe, received additional £100,000 Super Grants
I really don't like the guy at all Not a shred of contrition, the blame always lies elsewhere where he is concerned.
We will have to wait for his book to get a 'true' insight from him on what happened at QPR. He lost control and in was clearly despairing at the end of his time with us. I reckon he was relieved when he got the chop.
I guess that, were he alive today, Captain Edward John Smith would bemoan the fact that history remembers him for that one particular voyage... The truth is that Spunkface isn't a particularly bad manager, but then again he isn't a particularly good one either. Ability and hard graft are but two requisites. Hughes played his part in saving QPR from relegation, yes, but was promptly given the keys to the sweetshop and stuffed his face until we were all sick. I'm sure he's delighted that he's a success once more and gives little old QPR little thought other than relief. He was proved correct when he said we'd never be in the same position again under his watch.
The 12 games at the start of the season, which were a carry on from the season before where we survived because someone else lost! He is a manager who can take over an ok club and keep it ok but is clueless when it comes to building a successful team, as long as the damage he caused to our club remains(not just his fault) then he will be remembered for it!
He's right. Much fairer to judge him across his whole 34 games in all competitions, 20 of which he lost including two away points in his entire time at the club. Much fairer to judge him on the signings of Bosingwa, Mbia, Diakite, Park Ji ****ing Sung, Granero, Hoilett and Cesar. Much fairer to judge him on purposely alienating players in a bid to drive them out of the club, forcing them to train with the reserves and creating rifts in the dressing room. Much fairer to judge him on the fact he spunked possibly the only chance this club will have to establish itself as a top half Prem club again, the arrogant ****ing sheepshagger clueless ****.
Trouble is he's not the only one and I doubt whether TF has really learned any lessons at all - for as long as we seek success overnight rather than building a team over a period of time the cycle will repeat itself. If we go up the aim next season should be to survive and no more. The plans have to be long-term and will only come into fruition if we can stay there while the new stadium and talent factory are made reality.
He's hardly been a success has he? A rated teenager from League One or even the youth player of your choice would have contributed at least as much.
A terrible Manager for us, he seems about the most unpopular of all on here. But when he was appointed most on here seemed happy with him! I didn't want Colin replaced then as I thought he was going to bring in some new players of his own and keep us up, so I wasn't at all happy with Hughes appointment ,especially as he had a record as a slow starter at new Clubs which we didn't have time for, but I never thought he'd be as bad as he turned out to be.
I can safely say I was never happy with him! I didn't judge him on 12 games, I judged him on his whole time here in which he was a dour disaster.
I reman baffled how, having avoided the drop the previous season, Spunkface managed to **** it up so totally in such a short period of time. It was almost the harder thing to do, given the resources at his disposal, the summer period to plan and, presumably, a positive air of great optimism after 2011-12.
He won again today. He convinced TF we needed a revolution and couldn't handle the treats he was given as a result. At Stoke he's come into a structure and had to work with limited change. And clearly there was a work ethic there already.
