United teamwork is key to Hughton's success

Sep 12 2009 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

A YEAR to the day after agreeing to mind the shop for Mike Ashley, Chris Hughton’s reputation is on the rise.

ON September 12, 2008, Chris Hughton somewhat reluctantly took charge of a Newcastle United team for the first time. A year on he will be named best manager in his division.

“It’s been some year, hasn’t it?” he says, with deliberate understatement.

Then the Magpies were up for sale and in crisis. That apart, ahead of tomorrow’s trip to Cardiff City just about everything else has changed.

Protests rumbled in the stands during the first match since Kevin Keegan’s second resignation. Owner Mike Ashley put the club up for sale before taking it off the market, then again inviting offers.

Since then another club legend, Alan Shearer, has come and gone as manager, along with the comically inept Joe Kinnear as Newcastle went from the false dawn of a promising start to the season to the crushing disappointment of relegation.

In between time Hughton has served three spells as caretaker manager.

The first two were disastrous, his only win in nine matches coming hours after Kinnear was rushed to hospital with the chest pains which cut short his tenure, and with a team picked by the potty-mouthed manager.

In the relegation post-mortems, the fact Hughton’s second spell ran to six games was regularly cited. So when he was put in charge again for pre-season, they weren’t exactly stringing up the bunting. But Hughton has been third time lucky, leading a revitalised team to the top of their new division.

“Dignity” has come to St James’s this season not only in the players’ choice of post-match song, but in Hughton’s approach. After years of loose-lipped directors in brothels, replica-shirt-wearing owners downing pints on the terraces and boozy late-night antics from players, it had become a foreign concept.