Dave Kidd's article about him in the People today make Hughes look like a bit of ****.
Hughes goes from teapot tyrant to mug punter
IT was the image which defined Mark Hughes’ hasty coronation as Fulham boss last summer.
Mohamed Al Fayed grabbing the face of his new manager and attempting to physically manipulate a smile.
The Craven Cottage chairman has gone on record to describe the Duke of Edinburgh as a ‘****’ and the Royal family as ‘vampires’, he likes to make frequent jokes about ****** and has now erected a cartoon statue of an irrelevant pop megastar at Fulham’s historic ground.
Colourful would be one description.
Hughes, grey of hair and quietly menacing of voice, is a man who takes things rather more seriously. Not least himself.
It was clear that this would always be an uneasy marriage.
Hughes is, of course, a towering figure in recent British football history. He played for Manchester United, Barcelona, Bayern Munich and Chelsea – and won 11 major trophies thanks to a rare combination of cut-glass technique and raging-bull aggression.
As a manager, Hughes has been successful (to varying degrees) in *international football and with three different Premier League clubs.
He employs the unfeasibly slick Kia Joorabchian as his representative.
And when he arrived at Fulham, he demanded a bigger office and a grand £8,000 desk to replace Roy Hodgson’s more modest taste in furniture.
Mystique
No wonder the Welshman has found himself linked with Chelsea, England, Bayern and Aston Villa. He has the credentials to be a decent candidate for any job . Though not the mystique which comes with a foreign name.
And yet Hughes seems destined to end up with none of those jobs – thanks to his growing reputation as a mug punter.
Hughes was on the A-list of candidates to succeed Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, until he gambled on taking over at City.
And however decent a job he performed at Eastlands, however harsh his sacking and however brutal the manner of it, the fact remains that United will never appoint a man sacked by their gauche, noisy neighbours.
Last summer, Hughes, desperate to return to management after his City sacking and fed up with waiting for Martin O’Neill to quit Villa, got itchy feet and accepted Fulham’s proposal. O’Neill quit Villa days later and Hughes was left on the wrong bus.
And this week, after being installed as favourite for the vacant Villa job, Hughes walked out on Fulham despite having verbally agreed to sign a new contract.
The logic was clear. Fulham were refusing to bid serious money for Espanyol striker Pablo Osvaldo, while Villa had splashed out £18million plus substantial add-ons for Darren Bent.
Yet Villa felt uneasy, got cold feet and are currently looking elsewhere for their next manager.
Joorabchian claims Hughes’s resignation was proof of his sincerity.
And despite a suspicion inside Fulham that Sparky might still turn up at Villa Park in a month’s time this may, instead, be further evidence of Hughes’s rank bad sense of timing.
For all his air of reserve, Hughes certainly does not lack ego.
He soon created waves at Fulham’s sedate Motspur Park training ground, by expanding what his players began to call his ‘Oval Office’. Walls were knocked down, staff members moved out, others were frozen out.
There is another story of Hughes reprimanding the tea lady for not using a china teapot to serve his brew.
Bosses get whispered about and sniggered at in any walk of life, it’s an *occupational hazard.
There was respect, yet little affection, for Hughes among Fulham’s players, staff and supporters.
He kept his thoughts between himself and his close-knit Welsh coaching staff and created the impression the Fulham job was a little beneath him.
The truth is that Hughes owes Fulham, more than Fulham owe Hughes.
He inherited the best team in the club’s history, then succeeded in *changing little.
The first half of the season bordered on the disastrous, mainly thanks to an injury crisis, the second half was consistently decent – although Hughes’ League record against the seven clubs who finished above Fulham read: played 14, won none.
Nobody turned cartwheels at the end of the season. Few shed tears when he quit on Thursday.
By abandoning the club now, Hughes has done to Fulham what Manchester City did to him 18 months ago – in short, saying ‘sorry, but you’re just not big enough’.
Yet while good managers fancy the Fulham job, how many big clubs want Hughes?
The last two bosses to walk out of the Cottage in pursuit of loftier challenges were Kevin Keegan, to become England manager, and Hodgson, to take over at Liverpool.
Keegan ended up quitting in the Wembley toilets, while Hodgson was being hounded out of Anfield within weeks.
Followers of Fulham, who cherish their club and expect relatively little, will suggest that these things can happen when a man gets too big for his boots.
