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Possibly the greatest living Welshman, Mark Hughes seems to have
finally taken his side clear of the relegation places and able to
enjoy the final few games of what has been a fraught first season
at the helm of a league team for him.
Having regularly been linked with a move into club management over
the last couple of years, Hughes finally found the temptation of
Ewood Park too much to resist earlier this season, finally embarking
on a managerial career which many suspect will go from strength
to strength in the years to come.
Not that his record to date is too shabby as it is, for he helped
turn Welsh fortunes around to the point where they pushed Italy
hard for much of the qualification stage of the European Championships
and has turned Blackburn from a soft touch at the start of the season
into the kind of team that nobody wants to come up against, a hard
working unit capable of playing some great football when the opportunity
arises, but more than happy to dig in and slug it out if that’s
the way to win a game.
And that very much sums up the way “Sparky” was as a player
too, a centre-forward with skill and flair but also a rugged battler
who could give out as much stick as he typically had to take from
central defenders all over Europe. Spells playing with Bayern Munich
and Barcelona rounded out his footballing education but Hughes made
his name in two spells with Manchester United, learning the game
from both Ron Atkinson and Sir Alex Ferguson.
Fergie has long been the past master at deflecting criticism away
from his team and Hughes has shown signs of being equally adept
at that art, even as defender Andy Todd was being charged with violent
conduct for appearing to elbow Robin Van Persie in the ill-tempered
FA Cup semi-final with Arsenal.
Reflecting on the game and the stick that he and his players took
from the press and from Arsene Wenger, Hughes said, “I was
astounded by the level of criticism, I thought it was unbalanced
and bordering on the hysterical. Sometimes you can get caught up
in the event, but I've watched the game again and my view hasn't
changed. We had a game plan, we try and compete and I think that’s
what we did, I felt first half we more than held our own, but in
the second half we were open towards the end. We were competitive
- what's so wrong with that? - but to call us dirty or suggest we
had a game plan to kick the opposition was just too ridiculous for
words.
“The criticism, some of it very personal, hurt us, but the
players, staff and fans will all pull together even harder now for
that is what we are about here at Blackburn Rovers. At times like
this you become stronger as a club. There was a lot of mud thrown
around at the weekend and mud sticks, it will take time before we
can shake it off and that is a shame.”
Mud does indeed stick and Hughes will need to mount some kind of
charm offensive over the course of the next 12 months, on and off
the field, if he is to restore the luster to his reputation and
return to the days when he was revered for his exploits with Wales.
But that’s a challenge for next season. In the meantime, Hughes
and his Blackburn side will be fully motivated to ram all the recent
criticism back down the throats of the critics by enjoying a strong
end to the campaign and by winning as many games as possible.
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