“You want the challenges in life.” Hughton on Ashley, Keegan, Shearer, promotion…
Posted on November 22nd, 2009 | 47 Comments |
In one of his more revealing interviews since his arrival at Newcastle, Hughton has spilled the beans on his time in Toon. Kicking off with the effect his main goal, promotion, would have on Mike Ashley’s efforts to sell the club Hughton commented:
“Of course, it must be a fact that if this club are doing well and if this club is back in the Premier League it is a more saleable asset,”
Moving on to Ashley himself, he continued:
“Does he have a passion for the club most people don’t see? I don’t think you can have the involvement that he has in this club and not be passionate about it, that is an impossibility.
“He could not have foreseen what the last two years would bring. Mike has made mistakes and he has been the first one to hold his hands up.
Speaking on his own relationship with the portly sportswear mogul, Hughton went on:
“My relationship with him is good. I either speak or get some communication from Mike after the game. It is generally by phone call.
“Occasionally he comes down to the training ground. He likes to come and see the players.
“I identify the players”
The Stratford Supremo then touched on the the er, touchy subject of who controls which players come into the club, saying:
“The situation we have here is what happens at any club. I identify the players I would like to bring in and I present that to Derek Llambias and Mike. What I have been told is they are prepared to back me but there are financial constraints.
“I have been told they will back me and I don’t see any reason why they won’t. What will happen at any stage, you don’t know. At this club you get used to working around what could happen at any particular time. It has taken so many twists and turns.
Outside politics.
On the outside politics that have whirled like a storm around Hughton’s dressing room bubble, he commented:
“The issues outside the team, although there are some I have to get involved in, are easier to separate. Those issues are the responsibility of the administration side of the club and the owner. They need to get on with that. My objective is the playing side. You have to distance yourself from it.
“My objective is to get promotion. Where that will lead to with the ownership of the club I do not know.”
“We knew everyone wanted us to get beat in the first game at West Brom, we knew it would determine how the season went. The players gave everything. The spirit was excellent. I thought then we would be okay.”
When it was put to him there were still suggestions that his dressing room is too powerful, and that the club is managed by a committee of senior players more than himself and right hand man, Colin Calderwood, Hughton responded:
“Everybody has their way of working, I prefer to be low key.
Discreet discipline.
“There are some overpowering personalities in the game. The best way to work is within the personality I have got. Discipline is done inside the club and I deal with it.
“If somebody comes away from that you have to deal with it. It doesn’t matter who the player is. You have to do the role. You have to manage the right way and be yourself. If you come outside of what you are, people very quickly see through you.
Moving on to Newcastle United’s king of disciplinary problems, you know who. When Joey Barton was involved in a Benton bust up with Toon’s Argentine dynamic duo, Jonas Gutierrez and Fabricio Coloccini under Hughton’s watch, he was disciplined by Hughton without the usual fuss that attends Barton problems. On this, Hughton added slightly enigmatically:
“If the Joey one is highlighted, I have to make decisions every day, some are bigger than others.”
Special K. and Big Al.
Continuing along the minefield of controversial subjects in Newcastle’s recent past, the subjects of Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer were inevitably brought up. With Keegan, Hughton seems to have had a warm relationship. he says of the mini messiah who first brought him to the club in the wake of the Jol Hughton sacking farce at Tottenham:
“Kevin was everything I expected, charismatic, enthusiastic and humble. When he called me, the answer was yes straight away.”
On Shearer however, Hughton is more expansive, but also, seemingly, slightly more ambivalent:
“It was hard when Alan was here. You are used to doing a certain amount and then you are not. It was difficult. Alan came in for the right reasons. They felt the club needed the spark and the lift.”
Stormy weather.
Concluding at the beginning, his first day at the coaching grindstone at Newcastle’s Benton training ground, Hughton recalled the weather, with a suggestion that it may have provided something of a premonition of what was to come:
“The first day I came here we had to train indoors the wind was that severe. It was apt there was a storm brewing when I arrived.
“There have been very difficult periods. Sometimes you have to be the calmest when that happens.
Finally in sentiments that are somewhat reminiscent of Edith Piaf’s Je Ne Regrette Rien, Hughton signed off:
“Even if I knew everything that was about to happen, I would have come. You want the challenges in life.”
Well you certainly came to the right place for a challenge, Chris!
NUFCBlog Author: workyticket
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CH Revolution.