Hughton wins race to boss Birmingham

CHRIS HUGHTON is expected to be confirmed as Birmingham’s new manager in the next 24 hours as the club replaces Alex McLeish at St Andrew’s.

The former Newcastle boss is believed to have edged ahead of Roberto Di Matteo in the battle to take charge of the Blues.

Hughton has been out of football since parting company with Newcastle after a 3-1 defeat at West Brom in early December despite the Magpies being in mid-table in the Premier League in their first year back in the top flight following promotion.

He has impressed Birmingham acting chairman Peter Pannu when being interviewed during the past few days and City’s owner Carson Yeung is expected to ratify Hughton’s appointment.

It will be Yeung’s first managerial appointment since taking control of Blues during the early part of the 2009-10 campaign.

Former Republic of Ireland full-back Hughton will have the task of picking up the pieces at City after McLeish’s resignation 10 days ago when he replaced Gerard Houllier as manager of Aston Villa.

Yeung is looking for the club to regain their Barclays Premier League status at the first attempt as was made clear to McLeish in a statement issued at the end of the season.

Hughton has plenty of experience at Championship level and guided Newcastle to promotion 13 months ago as champions. He was previously a member of the coaching staff at Tottenham.

Meanwhile, new Fulham boss Martin Jol yesterday refused to speculate on whether he will recruit Robbie Keane from his old club Tottenham but admitted ‘a couple of signings’ are on the way to Craven Cottage.

While the Fulham boss refused to name possible transfer targets, Jol maintains he will need four or five new signings to complement what he feels is already a decent squad.

“It’s a good squad, experienced players with a couple of young, exciting players like [Moussa] Dembele who I know very well from Holland,” he said.

“I will decide on the players in the next few weeks. Four or five left, so we need to make a couple of signings.”

The 55-year-old was yesterday officially unveiled as Mark Hughes’ successor.

Jol had spells coaching in Germany and his native Holland at Ajax, who blocked his potential move to Fulham last summer, after being dismissed from White Hart Lane following three years at the helm in 2007.

The Dutch coach, however, understands success with his new club will be very much relative.

“Expectation is the same everywhere,” said Jol, whose first game in charge will be a Europa League qualifier against NSI Runavik of the Faroe Islands on June 30.

“There is always one thing that is familiar and that is to make people happy, so I can only be satisfied when everyone around me are happy.

“I had a good look at the [fans’ website] forums and they expect us to do well, but they don’t expect us to be in the Champions League.”

Fulham rallied following a poor start under Hughes to finish in the top half of the Barclays Premier League, and also being handed a European campaign via the Fair Play table.

Jol sees no reason why he cannot look to emulate those achievements during his first season at the helm in west London.

“We were eighth last season and hopefully we can get into the top 10 because four points could be the difference between seventh and 11th.

“It is Premier League safety first, then you want to try to do well in the cups, because it has been a long time since Fulham played in a final.”