Hughton happy to be main man
Hughton is nothing if not a realist. For someone who spent most of his playing career in successful sides, with Tottenham Hotspur and then Jack Charlton’s Ireland, the majority of his life as a coach and now manager has involved battling adversity.
He worked at all levels at Spurs from 1993 to 2007, starting as youth coach, before rising to assistant manager and then taking over as caretaker manager twice. But these were hardly the glory days he had known as a player, winning the FA and UEFA Cups as well as gaining 53 caps for Ireland.
Then he was appointed assistant manager to Kevin Keegan at Newcastle two years ago, at the start of a disastrous period which ended with relegation to the Championship.
Renowned as one of the most honest men in football, Hughton is the first to admit he has had the easiest ‘apprenticeship’ in management, his graduation coming in November last year when he was formally put in charge of the Magpies, having been caretaker manager on two occasions. He led Newcastle to the Championship title and a return to the Premier League, and now says he feels like a true manager at last.
“Yes I do. It was a role I felt I grew into and that’s the reason I was offered the job on a full-time basis. There are always problems that you have to deal with, but the things that have helped me in that progression came in my years as a coach, certainly at Tottenham.”
Hughton worked as coach and assistant to 10 different managers at Spurs, and under three in one season at Newcastle, and says: “There were a lot of different managers and plenty of changes of management and the problems that came with that, so all of those things have certainly helped me. There were many tough times and they have helped me develop, but I’m certainly not going to say that I’ve cracked it. Every day brings up something different and new, and it is a very demanding job, emotionally and physically, every hour of the day.
“It is very difficult to switch off, but that comes with the job, and I know that come the first game of the season, the pressure becomes greater, especially at a club like this where there is always such expectation.
“You always have lots of emotions going into the new season, and the overriding one is of excitement. But we know there is a tough challenge ahead.”
Indeed Hughton has no illusions that Newcastle will not be able to “get away” with some of the mistakes they made last season while winning the Championship.
“For me the challenge is every bit as much as last season, but at least we are in the Premiership, where we worked so hard to be,’’ Hughton said.
“In all honesty there were things we did last season that would be a lot more difficult to get away with this season. We will have to be different in a lot of areas, certainly in terms of tactics.
“We’ve got to be able to cope and bounce back from the results that haven’t gone our way, perhaps theperiods where you lose two games on the spin, and then being able to bounce back to winning ways.
“And of course our home form will be vital again. We were able to win the vast majority of our home games and the crowd can play a big part.”
The Toon Army spent the previous season directing their anger at various players, management and officials of a club in decline, but most of it was directed at the owner Mike Ashley. The chants and demands for him to go continued well into last season, and even now it is fair to say most supporters would prefer a change of ownership.
But at least Hughton won them over, having initially been seen as part of the ‘Cockney Mafia’ that Ashley brought in under ill-fated director of football Dennis Wise. It was only early this year that supporters started singing Hughton’s name. “I must admit I’ve always felt that I had been accepted by the crowd. I felt the fans felt that I was doing the best job I could for the club, so the supporters singing my name wasn’t something that concerned me – and I don’t mean any disrespect by saying that.
“My job is to get the best out of the players on the park, and we have great supporters that get behind the team – that is the most important thing. If I hear supporters singing my name then that is a nice touch, but it is certainly very low on my list of priorities.”
He says although Ashley determines transfer budgets – and this year it is not big – he does not interfere in the day-to-day team matters, which is how it should be. “It’s a mixture of being hands-on financially, and letting me get on with running the football side,’’ Hughton said. “I speak regularly with him and we see him at the training ground often, but he realises what job I have to do and what I have to get on with.
“You need to have that sort of relationship with the chairman because there are always so many issues to deal with. Some of them are issues that I can get on with because they are to do with the team, but a lot are very much club issues that I have to be able to speak to the chairman about.”
Ashley has kept a much lower profile than the days when he sat among the fans in his black and white striped shirt, sinking pints, to the extent that he became the focal point of coverage as much as the team. Thankfully for Hughton, that has changed.
“That’s the position where we want to be, where in the press, most of the talk is about what we are doing on the pitch and hopefully doing well.
“What we needed at the club was a season where instead of Newcastle being on the other pages we needed to be on the back pages and to be talking about football. Everything here can be magnified. We needed a period of stability, and being at the right end of the table helped us settle down things.”
Hughton is not promising a top five finish this year or even next, but says: “That always has to be the aim, with the fan base, the stadium, and where the club was a few years ago. But the only way to get there is through slow progress. It’s not going to happen overnight. Are we, the season after next, going to be a team pushing for Champions League football? No I don’t think we are, what we hopefully will be the season after next is a team that has managed to make progress and hopefully can continue that progress.”
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