Diplomatic approach quickly pays dividends for streetwise charmer

LOUSIE TAYLORon how Chris Hughton has turned Newcastle around from a club in continual crisis into one dominating the English Championship

CHRIS HUGHTON’S arrival as a coach at St James’ Park coincided with a gale of apocalyptic proportions and, some 22 traumatic months later, Newcastle United’s manager regards it as symbolic.

“The first day I came here the wind was very severe and we had to train indoors,” he says. “It was apt, because there was definitely a storm brewing at the club when I started.”

Hughton, who celebrates his 51st birthday today, weathered it in surprising style. While Kevin Keegan, Joe Kinnear, Dennis Wise and even Alan Shearer variously departed the scene with reputations damaged by involvement in Newcastle’s slow and agonising descent into the Championship, the Londoner unexpectedly survived to spark a quite startling renaissance.

Wednesday night’s 2-0 win at Coventry was the Championship leaders’ seventh in succession, so the team Hughton took charge of last summer equalled a club record set by Keegan’s Entertainers back in 1996.

Along the way Newcastle, and their manager, are breaking down several received wisdoms. Arguably the biggest of them is the idea that no player can possibly fully respect a boss earning a fraction of his salary. Hughton is believed to be paid around €300,000 a year to manage several individuals enjoying €70,000-plus weekly remuneration packages, including Fabricio Coloccini, Joey Barton, Alan Smith and Geremi, yet imposing discipline has not been an issue.

A key marker was seemingly established when Hughton dropped the currently injured Barton before coaxing a rare apology out of the controversial midfielder following an early-season training ground altercation. Then, on Wednesday he omitted Andy Carroll, a key striker, from the squad to face Coventry after the latter’s arrest after an alleged nightclub fracas, saying: “It was my decision; I felt it was the right thing to do.”

Everyone you speak to about Hughton claims he is “not a politician”, but the former Tottenham Hotspur coach did not spend two decades serving assorted managers at White Hart Lane without becoming extremely streetwise. Accepting that he possesses neither the necessary persona nor the requisite financial clout to rule by fear, the former Spurs and Republic of Ireland right-back has consequently deconstructed the concept of player power being a “bad thing” by actively encouraging dressingroom democracy.

Considerable power is devolved to Newcastle’s players’ committee. A body routinely consulted by Hughton comprises Steve Harper, Geremi, Kevin Nolan and Smith, with the latter two’s voices proving the loudest. The quiet intelligence of Harper, Newcastle’s long-serving goalkeeper, is heavily involved in dispute resolution. “Certainly the senior players are very much to the fore, we’ve got a few leaders,” Hughton says.

His former Spurs team-mate Peter Taylor applauds such delegation. “Chrissy’s clearly given his senior men responsibility, got them fully onside and everyone is working together to get Newcastle promoted,” he says. “It’s been a clever move but Chrissy’s very charming, very diplomatic.”

Allied to a refreshing humility and carefully disguised ego, the impact of that charm should not be underestimated.

Several players were understood to be dismayed when one of the first things Shearer and his unpopular assistant Iain Dowie did on taking over for the last eight games of last season was to sideline Hughton and virtually exclude his now assistant, the influential former Nottingham Forest manager Colin Calderwood. Significantly, the compulsory ice baths and daily squad lunches introduced by the Shearer-Dowie regime have long since been abandoned.

“It was hard when Alan was here,” says Hughton, whose media utterances tend to be purely of the straight-batting variety. “You are used to doing a certain amount and then you are not. It was difficult. But Alan was brought in for the right reasons. They felt the club needed a lift.”

“They” are Newcastle owner Mike Ashley and managing director Derek Llambias who should be offering daily prayers of thanks for Hughton’s extraordinary, criticism-deflecting rescue mission.

While the club’s supporters – many of them nurtured on big-name, high-charisma leadership in the mould of Keegan, Ruud Gullit and Bobby Robson – are not quite ready to pronounce themselves “Walking in a Hughton Wonderland”, they have at least taken to referring to their east London-born manager as “the Stratford Supremo”.

If he is quietly rather pleased, the first black man to play for Ireland is not letting on. “There are some over-powering personalities in football,” he says. “But I prefer to be low-key, to be judged on actions rather than words.”

So far those deeds are succeeding in uniting a club long synonymous with debilitating disunity. “For this team to be where we are at the moment speaks volumes,” Hughton says. “Seven wins in a row is wonderful. It will be a happy birthday.”

- Guardian Service