No return party for new boss Hughes
First game reflects the challenge ahead
THERE were reminders all along for Mark Hughes that his return to management would be taking him to a very different kind of place.
His email application to League Two Bradford City was initially lost in the chief executive’s spam folder and every time he leapt to his feet from the dug-out yesterday, it was into a narrow channel of sand, not a manicured technical area.
The last players he faced as a manager, three years ago, included Manchester United’s Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford. Here, it was Nigel Clough’s Farrend Rawson and Ryan Stirk.
Hughes looks a little older. The silver hair is a little longer. The challenge facing him at a club which has sacked seven managers in the past four seasons is, at the age of 58, to pick up his career with players who are well short of elite. He has neither managed nor played outside the top flight, bar a brief spell in the second tier for Blackburn Rovers.
And then there is the expectation he has brought to this proud but careworn club. The huge numbers who attend — 16,797 yesterday, more than some Championship games — yearn for the success that included the League Cup final at Wembley nine years ago. Before a ball was kicked, the words ‘Mark Hughes’s Barmy Army’ were ringing out across the ground.
There was the old folded arms stance on the touchline, remembered from the 466 games of top flight management. But he looked like a man simply trying to assess what he has taken on.
He was quickly into conversation with four of his players during one first-half injury break — directing, listening, encouraging with slaps on the back. The team were in the ascendency at that stage, finding a direct kind of football to locate journeyman forward Andy Cook and Alex Gilliead, who look the main assets of his inheritance.
Yet nothing could disguise the struggle to defend against a buoyant side who had not lost since November. Given how Hughes managed with limited resources at Blackburn, that will surely be something he attends to first.
With goalkeeper Alex Bass not exactly filling the rearguard with confidence, goals either side of the interval from Rhys Oates and Newcastle United loanee Matty Longstaff extinguished hope of a result befitting the welcoming party.
There was no chastisement from Hughes and when Cook headed over a rare opportunity at the back post he briefly wore the look of a man whose strikers have finished such a chance down the years. But he gave little away as he stood in the sand.
Confidence around this club is not high and Hughes acknowledged that fact, after a result which leaves his side 15th in the table. ‘You can understand that,’ he reflected. ‘They were desperate to do well today. Confidence is huge, as we know, in football and in sport.’
He had been reluctant, in just two training sessions, to ask the team to immediately drop the previous manager’s strategy of lumping the ball up to strikers.
‘I think it’s safe to say we’re going to play more football and try to dictate to the opposition a little bit more than we did today,’ he said.
‘That comes from being able to keep the ball in certain occasions. I think sometimes our decision to constantly try to go forward is incorrect. You have to make the decision when to go forward and when not to. But I was conscious before the game that it was important we didn’t fall between two schools of thought.’
Near the end, Mansfield’s fans sang ‘Sacked in the morning’. Bradford face promotion-chasing Swindon next Saturday and then travel to runaway leaders Forest Green. Hughes says he was ready for a challenge. He has certainly got one.