Spurred on by his new connections

INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS HUGHTON:Newcastle's assistant manager has his sights set on upsetting his former club at White Hart Lane

MAN AND BOY, Chris Hughton has been Tottenham Hotspur. From 13-year-old hopeful to 48-year-old coach, all Hughton's life bar two years in the early 1990s has been spent in and around White Hart Lane. Hughton is so Tottenham he has never been in the away dressingroom. But, when he arrives at the stadium tomorrow, Hughton will walk in there with a Newcastle United crest on his jersey and will comprehend that all has changed utterly for him.

He knows already, of course, yet there will still be a moment of heightened physical realisation just after lunchtime when the Newcastle bus pulls up Bill Nicholson Way. Hughton will recognise everyone and everything, except that when the door closes behind him he will be in a fresh environment.

He will be entitled to feel like a stranger in his own land.

"What's the word?" Hughton asked aloud this week, "surreal? Yeah, surreal. I'm not the most emotional person but, yeah . . . strange is probably not the right word, it will be a little bit surreal."

Professional football tramples on sentiment and where Hughton stood for so many years, he will see Juande Ramos and Gus Poyet. Ramos's arrival had been trailed in the press, so that Martin Jol and Hughton were critically undermined in the autumn, but there was an element of surprise about the blunt end all the same.

It came in late October, minutes after Spurs had lost a Uefa Cup game against Getafe. It seemed that night as if Jol and Hughton were the last in the stadium to know.

Hughton may have not been revealing his innermost feelings, so he sounded phlegmatic about the brazen cruelty of his industry. "The end was hard for Martin because of the circumstances," he said. "There were stories about Ramos in the papers. But that's the nature of the business.

"People ask me if I have any bitterness towards the club but the fact that I'd been there so long and I knew some time I would go, it means you're half-prepared. But there's a lot of people I never got the opportunity to see before I left. I left on very good terms with the chairman Daniel Levy, everybody, but, yes, leaving was difficult when you have spent so many years at a workplace, especially as we'd had two good seasons before - two fifth-place finishes under Martin.

"I was there as a professional for 13 years, for a good few years before that as a schoolboy, and 14 seasons as a coach. I worked under eight different managers as a coach, all but two of them with the first team. My first manager there was Ossie Ardiles, he brought me back. Eight different managers, changes of chairmen, some very good times and some troubled times. I've experienced a fair amount.

"But you have to look forward in football and on Sunday a good result would make it better, I know that. I'll certainly be focused enough not to go into the wrong dressingroom."

Hughton was speaking in his new territory of Tyneside, inside a Portakabin at Newcastle United's training ground.

This is where ... ... Hughton has been since he took a call from Kevin Keegan four weeks ago inviting him to the north of England to participate in what is hoped to be the re-establishment of a jaded football club. Tottenham is hardly a model of stable government - witness Hughton's managers - but too often Newcastle offers the imagery of the fairground.

Nevertheless, Hughton did not hesitate. "Obviously I knew Kevin from the circuit over the years," Hughton said of Keegan, "he's somebody I'd obviously spoken to. Simply a phone call from Kevin - 'Would I like to come up and assist with the team?' The answer was 'Yes' instantly.

"Why I'm here you'll have to ask Kevin, but because I'd had a long association with Tottenham and worked with a first team of their stature, I would say that had a fair bearing on why Kevin wanted to bring me in."

If Hughton felt the questions about how and why he came to Tyneside dripped with suspicion, he would be correct. The fact that he and Keegan had no previous connection was one reason for that but the politics of St James' Park was the real explanation. A club that can appoint Dennis Wise after Keegan, then two further recruitment personnel plus a new chief scout - with Keegan's agreement but not on his say-so - could presumably put a new coach in place too.

"I know what my brief is," Hughton said. "It is very much to work with the players and to work with Kevin Keegan, Steve Round and Terry McDermott with the first team in any way I can. There is no specific role. It is not defensive coach. Kevin felt he wanted to bring in another coach and that's me."

If St James' Kremlinologists wish to know if Hughton truly is inside Keegan's tent then they might be interested to know that, along with McDermott, Hughton travelled with Keegan to watch Newcastle's reserves at Bolton last week. Hughton was in the car, if not the tent. Round was not.

It was a small part in Hughton building a relationship with the Geordie Messiah. He recalled that Keegan and he had walked up the Wembley tunnel together prior to England's 2-0 win over the Republic of Ireland in 1980, when Keegan scored both goals.

That was the second of 53 Irish caps Hughton won. More recently there were two years with Ireland under Brian Kerr, which meant that when Hughton skipped through the door at Newcastle he at least knew Shay Given, Damien Duff and Stephen Carr personally.

"I enjoyed every minute of it," he said of Ireland. "Brian was a very enthusiastic manager, who deserved the job. The shame was that his record was very, very good and it was an abrupt end.

"It's a results business but after Mick (McCarthy) had left four games in, it was going to be difficult to qualify (for Euro 2004) and then in the World Cup campaign we lost only one game and that was to a fantastic goal from Thierry Henry at Lansdowne Road. If anybody looks back on Brian Kerr's reign I think he goes down percentage-wise as the best for quite some time.

"But I think Trapattoni is a very, very, good appointment. The last couple of years have been disappointing, not qualifying, and I think Ireland felt it needed that lift. When you appoint someone like Trapattoni you are going to get that, certainly initially."

Newcastle didn't get theirs under Keegan, not until last week against Fulham. But that restored some balance and a win tomorrow would fend off relegation. And Hughton could smile his way out of the away dressingroom at White Hart Lane.