NUFC friendly with Terriers turns into a dogfight

Jul 22 2009 by Mark Douglas, The Journal

The right-back was withdrawn shortly – but not at the insistence of referee Jonathan Moss.

Hughton said that the unsettled Beye and Coloccini’s willingness to stand up for themselves illustrated that there is still plenty of fight and desire in the dressing room.

"I will be investigating the incident today. But sometimes it’s nice to have that bit of edge on the pitch - at times it didn’t look like much of a friendly," he said.

"That’s the nature of the game. You have got players who care out there and sometimes they over step the mark – but that’s part and parcel of the game.

"You’d rather have a game where the players care, and that is what happened with that incident.

"The referee didn’t ask me to take Habib off – I was always going to do that."

Meanwhile, the club will begin life in the second tier without Butt, who is set for an operation on the hand that he broke at Neasham Road on Saturday.

"It’s a blow – a big blow," Hughton admitted.

"Not only he is a fabulous player, he doesn’t miss many games and he’s an excellent personality to have around the dressing room.

"Of course, he will still be around but he’s the kind of player that you want out there on the pitch. We haven’t really had any injuries in pre-season and it was fairly innocuous, so it is disappointing."

Despite that, he won’t be looking to bring any new players in. "At the moment I’m not thinking like that. At this moment, this is the group of lads we’ve got," he said.

"If you told whoever starts the season as manager that they had these lads, they’d be happy with this squad."