Hughes on the brink as rivals find changes pay dividends
Uplift at other clubs who have sacked manager may prompt Stoke into a momentous decision
Six managers have fallen by the wayside in the Premier League this season and Mark Hughes heads into a crucial weekend insisting he will not become the seventh. Hughes’s Stoke City face West Brom today with his future hanging in the balance after a torrid run of results, yet he is still convinced there is no better man for the job.
While other strugglers have sacked their managers, Stoke have remained loyal and patient, desperate for a revival. However, there is a sense that time is running out for Hughes. A defeat and poor performance against Albion could force Stoke’s board, including chairman Peter Coates and his son John, into a momentous decision.
It was as far back as 1998 when Coates last sacked a manager during a season, with Chris Kamara’s departure signalling the end of his managerial career.
The absolute last resort for the Coates family at this stage would be to dismiss Hughes, and the lack of available replacements only muddies the waters. It is clear Stoke’s manager believes he is safe and he is in defiant mood.
When asked if there were any managers better qualified available, he replied: “Not in my view. I have proved over these last four years I can pick up points in the Premier League, I have proved it ever since I have been a manager.
“No one knows this group better than me. The owners have been in the game a long time, they are close to the coalface and would sense if something needed changing – and it doesn’t. We just need to get on with what we can do and, if that happens, we’ll be fine.”
It has echoes of a quote from Stephen Fry’s General Melchett in Blackadder Goes Forth – “if nothing else works, a total pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face will see us through” – and Hughes is certainly in the mire.
Stoke have lost five of their past six games, conceded 39 goals and fortune is in short supply, as proved by Manuel Lanzini’s dive to win a penalty last weekend which set West Ham on the way to a 3-0 victory. Supporters are running out of patience and there were the first signs of mutiny at the Bet365 Stadium last Saturday.
Stoke finished ninth in each of Hughes’s first three seasons but now the place feels like it needs jump-starting. What makes it worse is that some of the club’s direct rivals have enjoyed a clear “bounce” after changing managers, with Everton and Crystal Palace reinvigorated by the appointments of Sam Allardyce and Roy Hodgson. They are not alone, with Leicester and West Ham also benefiting from wielding the axe, while that pattern could be seen last season when four of the five sides to make a change enjoyed an upturn in fortunes.
Each of this campaign’s transformations are impressive in their own way. After a slow start since replacing Frank de Boer in September, Hodgson has guided Palace to 14th with a seven-game unbeaten run. His team have also secured three clean sheets in a row away from home. As for Allardyce, he has taken Everton into the top 10, winning four of the past five. Wayne Rooney is enjoying a resurgence. With reinforcements expected in the transfer window, Everton could even repeat their seventh-placed finish under Ronald Koeman last season. Leicester, meanwhile, seem reborn under Claude Puel, and David Moyes has made West Ham fitter and hard to beat.
Only West Brom have changed their manager this season and failed to see an immediate uplift, although Alan Pardew has had just four games since succeeding Tony Pulis – two of which were against Liverpool and Manchester United.
The club are still confident their faith in Pardew as a safe pair of hands will prove justified, despite the fact they have fallen into the relegation zone. And listening to Pardew himself this week he feels their perilous position may prove to be a positive, with West Brom going into today’s game at Stoke knowing they will leapfrog their opponents with a win.
“It’s a strange thing to say but going in the bottom three, when you’ve been hovering around it, is not such a bad thing,” said Pardew. “It gives a little bit of a reality check to everybody and I’ve encouraged the players this week not to hide from it. It’s important we get some distance from us and the bottom three. You look at the bottom 10 teams and they are all reachable for us.” Bottom side Swansea will clearly be preaching the same message when they make an appointment, after Paul Clement’s dismissal this week.
Hughes is next in the firing line and perhaps he is fortunate that Coates is a fan of Rudyard Kipling and his poem If. As that opening verse goes: “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs...”
Supporters are running out of patience and we have seen the first signs of mutiny