SOCCER:CHRIS HUGHTON faced one of the most difficult choices of his life last summer. If some might say he made the wrong decision, it was reached for all the right reasons.
After overseeing Newcastle United’s unexpected canter to promotion from the Championship, Hughton’s stock was high. Several of his closest friends urged him to walk away from St James’ Park and straight into another job. For a time it seemed as if Martin Jol was bound for Fulham, and there were numerous phone calls between the Dutchman and his erstwhile assistant at Tottenham. But Ajax refused to release Jol, Mark Hughes ended up at Craven Cottage and Hughton turned a deaf ear to other soundings about his availability. Jol ironically resigned as manager of Ajax last night and was installed as favourite to replace Hughton.
Despite conceding to confidants that it would “probably all end in tears”, Hughton, who spent two decades on Tottenham’s back-room staff, was not about to sidestep his moment in the sun. Moreover, his powerful sense of loyalty would not allow him to sever ties to the players he had coaxed, cajoled and coached to promotion.
Other managers and coaches shook their heads at what they saw as shoddy treatment of a non-boat-rocking company man. A reported salary of €470,000 a year was unusually low by Premier League standards – certainly so at a club who had paid Sam Allardyce €3.5 million a year. Similarly, the board’s refusal to open negotiations about extending Hughton’s contract, which was due to expire in May, raised eyebrows.
Hughton’s future appeared to be further clouded after Colin Calderwood left for Hibernian in the autumn. Hughton advised Calderwood to join Hibs. Given that Newcastle already had the smallest back-room staff in the Premier League, it was a typically unselfish decision.
It also left in place a manager who preferred to avoid the boardroom machinations at the centre of a political struggle. Mike Ashley had, against Hughton’s wishes, placed Peter Beardsley in charge of the reserves in the summer; now Newcastle’s owner wanted Beardsley promoted to assistant manager. Hughton resisted with hitherto unseen vehemence, but his wish for “an external appointment” was not granted. Instead Hughton found himself unlocking his office door before 7am and not shutting it until after 8pm.
Hughton didn’t know quite what he was letting himself in for when he first clocked in at the training ground, in February 2008. “Maybe I should have suspected something, though,” he joked. “The wind was so strong it nearly blew my arm off when I opened the car door.”
After assisting Kevin Keegan and his successor Joe Kinnear, then enjoying brief stints in caretaker charge, he was sidelined – literally, reduced to putting out the cones – during Alan Shearer’s brief reign. It proved to have been a terrible mistake and Hughton showed why the following season.
He won over a potentially awkward squad with a bold brand of dressing-room democracy. With decision-making partly devolved to a players’ committee that featured Steve Harper, Kevin Nolan and Alan Smith, team spirit soared.
If his involvement as a twentysomething with the Workers’ Revolutionary Party taught Hughton, now a Labour member, much about the benefits of egalitarianism, he knew he had to tread carefully when dealing with players who were earning several times his own salary. He disguised his feelings and ego in front of the media and he appeared to be overly lenient when Andy Carroll reportedly broke Steven Taylor’s jaw in a training-ground altercation last spring, and then became embroiled in a couple of unrelated brushes with the law.
Hughton knew he could not afford to alienate core players, particularly while Ashley pursued an unrealistic dream. The sports-retail millionaire wanted to create an “Arsenal-on-Tyne” by signing cheap and as-yet under-achieving under-25s. Last month Hughton’s side won at the Emirates; Cheik Tiote, a young Ivorian recruited from Twente for €4 million, looks an inspired acquisition. But it will never be a wholly viable vision.
Hughton rarely had a chance to speak to Ashley and spell out such realities and was forced to communicate via Derek Llambias, the managing director, and vital connections frayed. It is not Hughton’s fault that Ashley is now seeking his sixth manager in less than three years.
