Mark Hughes

Carlisle v Barrow on Sky on Thursday. I’ll be keen to watch that!

 

Tranmere lost again last night, at home to Accrington too. They are in a bad way and have just sacked their manager. If Hughes is going to catch anyone it's Tranmere and Morecambe, beyond that the other clubs will probably make enough points.

It would be funny for Rooney to take over at Tranmere, with his links to the area.

 

95 min OG-thats got to hurt

 

Looking tough for Carlisle now. Looks like only 3-4 of the January signings started today. Hughes said that’s because none of them are fit enough.

 

Ok chaps, 'Bluebry' here your favourite Carlisle fan!!
Just wondering what Bantams fans thought of Hughes when he was manager when he was at VP, especially the last couple of months of his reign.
On the face of it he looks like he's done fairly well up here at Brunton Park. He made a hell of a fist of saving us from relegation at the end of last season. And this season has guided us to 3rd place but after the money we've spent and the poor standard of the league.............
I was a bit surprised at how negative he can be, especially in games where he thinks the opposition can be 'difficult', see our last two games away at York 0-5 and at home to Rochdale yesterday 0-2. Yesterday for example he played 3 holding midfielders and 5 at the back, needless to say we got completely overrun in midfield, he blamed the result on 'a bug going around the dressing room', however I'm not having that, as I think it was a poor set up from the off!! Does this sound like the Hughes at the end of his reign at VP??

 

He wasn’t bad for us overall (we’ve had much worse managers) but he underperformed nevertheless and spunked a good L2 budget.

Ironically, the playoff defeat at your place (when we led) was the game where a lot of us decided we wanted him out. He subbed on a defender for a winger, which typified his mentality.

He guided us to the playoffs but often wouldn’t let the shackles off and games were tight. We drew games chucking away narrow leads because he didn’t go for it and try kill games off.

He’s spent most of his career higher up the pyramid but he seemed stubborn on doing things his way and not adapting to the rigours of League 2. Pretty passing out from the back wasn’t the right approach given the personnel he’d recruited.

I hope he has some success at Brunton Park. He’s a nice guy, just wasn’t the right man for us.

 

Yes

 

Lovely fella. But the polar opposite as a manager, than he was as a player. As a player, he was a warrior. Aggressive, brave, all action, direct. A fabulous player. As a manager, for us at least, he was tepid and dull in how he tried to play. Negative, not great to watch, lacking in inspiration. We’ve only gone from strength to strength since he left.

 

Good guy and did well to get us into play offs but his obsession with possession football and playing out from the back cost him his job. Hope he gets it right for you

 

I get the feeling he has tried to adapt to the modern game in an attempt to become relevant again.

He had a blood and thunder approach at stoke and Blackburn when it was deemed acceptable back then so I can't see any other reason why he would change a fairly successful approach.

By having success,playing the "new" way of football he may have attracted suitors higher up the ladder again.

I just think he now falls into the same group of managers who are where they are due to trying to be too cute, playing none football and worrying too much about the other team instead of focusing on their own strengths

 

I'll cut straight to the chase, decent fella but not the guy to get you back in the football league. Your club needs a rethink as to where it's heading and how it wants to get there.

 

Boring football. A very decent chap though, and laid the foundations of bringing some dignity back to our ravaged club, ultimately though Hughes was part of an era that brought in some very dubious signings on very long contracts and the bottom line is he failed to deliver.

 

And bored the arses off us all in doing so.

 

Same bloke who took off Scott Banks in the playoff second leg for a centre half. You scored within the next couple of minutes so the defensive sub didn’t work. He never recovered from that IMO. From the outside looking in, lovely bloke. Commands respect. Should have good contacts. Dull possession based football with no threat. Quick to make defensive subs. We’ve had better managers for this level. He probably works better with more talented players.

 

As others have said, lovely guy and gave us some great memories in his first full season in charge.
Some of the football great bur frustrating at other times. As many people said, he tried to play Premiership football with League 2 players.

Graham Alexander’s football is much more exciting, fast and aggressive whereas Hughes was more measured - not necessarily what you want in the lower leagues.

His undoing IMO was a poor transfer window after we lost to you in the playoffs. I can’t recall whether they were his signings or who our recruitment person was (probably Stephen Gent), but dishing out long contracts to the likes of Clark Oduor and Vadaine Oliver, and signing loan players such as Chisom Afoka was not a recipe for another promotion push.

He also signed players for a particular system but then decided to change the system after the window had shut, thus necessitating the putting of square press in round holes on a few occasions.

His interviews towards the end were pretty bad - eg suggesting we played well and deserved to win when we didn’t. It became pretty obvious at the end that he’d lost the dressing room.

Incidentally he did sign Ryan East for us who played for Rochdale when they beat you on Saturday.

In conclusion I’d say he probably needs to get your players to take the shackles off a bit. I don’t think his lack of knowledge of the NL will help his cause.

 

Those subs at Carlisle and the team as a whole should shoulder a heck of a lot more responsibility for that day irrespective of the MH changes

 

Great guy and the football was something to behold ..........i couldnt wait to get down to VP and view in amazement how the ball would be passed along our back line to pass into midfield to pass back to our defence to pass it to the keeper to then pass it to our defence ×10
He did well for us but a far braver manager would have had us league 2 during the play off season

 

I think it’s fair to say most City fans were excited at his appointment for us and the last quarter of the season he arrived gave us all optimism.
Sadly, and probably out of his control he failed to hang on to key players for the following season.
He recruited reasonably well during that summer, bringing in the likes of Harry Lewis and Richie Smallwood along with quality loans like Scott Banks and Tyreik Wright.
As others have said though, he never allowed the team to express themselves fully, quite often winning games 1-0 but also because of the above, ending up drawing too many games. Eg. The home leg of the playoffs the tie should have been over but because we never pushed for another goal it wasn’t enough.
His stubbornness and refusal to change was his downfall.

 

He was okay but never got us going. As for the subs he took of Banks who was flying at the time and he did bring on 5 centre half's and your smaller player scored a free header so who is to blame for that...? Stay with him that division is a nightmare some really good clubs.

 

2 games under Hughes come to mind
Harrogate at home and Grimsby at home.Both big games with near 20k crowds and decent away followings.

We equalised late in both games.
90+5 against Harrogate
89 against Grimsby

Both goals should have brought the roof down but the football under Hughes had become that turgid that I (and I presume many others) just couldn’t be arsed properly celebrating.

Going to lots of games under Hughes definitely became a “chore”