It seems somehow appropriate that Bradford City – the eighth and easily most unexpected club on Mark Hughes’ managerial CV – train on the pristine pitches of Woodhouse Grove, a secondary school in Apperley Bridge, a few miles away from the cosmopolitan city centre.
After all, even at 58, Hughes is still learning. Having never managed below Premier League level before his son Alex – who is also his agent – emailed Bradford a speculative expression of interest in their vacancy back in February, he has embraced his first taste of life in football’s basement division.
“I’m really enjoying it,” Hughes tells i over the whir of a lawnmower cutting the spring grass outside. And you can tell he means it.
6am starts, days spent poring over training plans, discussing the club’s recruitment plans for a busy summer or pruning insights from his small team of data analysts, this is Hughes back on the front line. Back where he feels he belongs.
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The first 12 months were deliberate, spent on holidays with his wife Jill or “doing things at weekends you can’t do when you’re managing a football team”. The next year was because he found pandemic football behind-closed-doors left him feeling flat. “If there’s no crowds, there’s no games for me,” he says.
But after that he struggled to get jobs or even interviews which, given his previous record, came as something of a surprise. Life as an out-of-work manager did not suit him.
“You can quite enjoy a game of golf on a Saturday but there’s still that gnawing thing when results are coming in at 20 to five. That rush of adrenaline is missing.
“For a long time I just stayed away from the results, shut out the game. That’s what I do when I’ve been sacked. You fall out of love with the game a little bit but it’s always there in the background, drawing you back.”
And here, under slate grey skies in West Yorkshire, it is clear he is re-energised by the challenge at Bradford. “Every role I’ve had I’ve tried to do it to the best of my ability but this one really excites me,” he says.
“It’s certainly a challenge but it’s just the thought of getting this place going again that really excites me and motivates me.
“We feel there’s big potential here but first of all we need to win games and get the team right on the pitch. Recruitment is the key, probably more so at this level than any other level. We need a good summer, get the right players in [with] the right ability and character. If we do that, we’ll have a great chance.”
It says a lot about his character that he isn’t particularly worried about external perceptions of taking a job in the basement division. Initial results have been mixed but that misses the point: he inherited a group not suited to his preferred style of play. Nevertheless there have been glimpses of what he and assistant Glyn Hodges are attempting to do.
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His first two months have been an extended audition for next season when, he admits, the “pressure is on” to deliver promotion to League One.
“Listen, I’m probably opening myself up to reputational damage if I don’t get it right but I was prepared to do that. It’s what I wanted to do.
“I’m at that stage in my career where I was looking for something different, maybe. This is definitely it.”
Earlier in the day Fiacre Kelleher – the Bradford defender and older brother of Liverpool goalkeeper Caoimhin – had spoken to local media about a managerial appointment that still feels surreal to many in a squad that has spent a season of intense frustration bouncing around the bottom half of League Two.
“You’re never going to get a Premier League manager coming into League Two again, are you?” Kelleher says, when asked if the presence of Hughes might encourage players to sign for Bradford.
Probably not, which is what makes Hughes’ situation all the more intriguing. “To be honest I did wonder whether I’d come back [at all],” Hughes says of the experience of struggling to get interviewed for Championship or League One roles.
“It got the point where I put myself forward [for jobs] and thought ‘That’d be an interesting project’ but I wasn’t really getting the opportunities to get in front of people.
“I was getting that thing of ‘You haven’t managed at this level’ but it was starting to grate a little. Well why do you think my skillset won’t transfer?
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“The reality is Bradford actually asked me to come and maybe other clubs would have had a similar answer if they’d have asked the question. But for me, coming to Bradford is the right time, the right place and the right club with the potential. It’s the right project for me.”
Hughes’ experience chimes with what has happened to many experienced managers. Mick McCarthy recently applied for the Sunderland job but didn’t even receive a call back.
It isn’t as if Hughes is a dinosaur. An early adopter of Prozone 20 years ago, he is an advocate of data science and Kelleher speaks of being presented with “nuggets of insight” by his manager.
It is put to him that sometimes clubs pass over experience for what appears fashionable at the time.
“There’s certainly trends and there’s that sense of just following the crowd,” he says.
“They all go down a certain route and think that’s the right way to go without sitting down and looking at what certain people have achieved.
“It’s not just myself, it’s other managers who have had the careers they’ve had who are missing out and it can be difficult [but] it is what it is.
“The assumption is ‘He will only play one way, he’s not flexible’. It’s nonsense really. I’ve had to formulate tactical ideas and plans relating to games against some of the best teams in the world when I was with the likes of Manchester City. If you’re not tactically proficient, you’re going to get beaten by a hatful in those games.
“That has happened [to me] because on occasions I maybe wasn’t but when you have to test yourself against squads who are more talented, with more resources than you have got and some of the best managers – well you don’t survive for long in the industry if you can’t do it. The fact I have been able to do what I’ve done for so long tells you I’ve got a sense of what you need.”
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Bradford is a club waiting for lift off, attempting to reconnect to the city after some barren years. They are underachieving in League Two but Hughes can feel the “excitement” created by his appointment. Cheap season tickets – adults can buy one for less than £200 – will ensure crowds of more than 15,000 once again next year and his job is to build a team to match that.
Next week, they will announce a new recruitment structure. Hughes wants to retain Jamie Walker, a talented forward who joined on loan from Hearts, and Charles Vernam, his out of contract winger attracting interest from higher up the pyramid. Hughes’ job is to build a team of players who won’t be fazed by playing in front of the biggest crowds in the division.
He wryly observed when he took over that his appointment being lauded by Bradford fans made a difference from the antipathy that has sometimes greeted him at other jobs.
“In some jobs you’ve got to convince people of your worth and ability but I’ve found that once I’m in there for a period of time, people do say ‘He knows what he’s doing’,” he says.
“It has been different this time: people have had an excitement that I’ve come here which I hope will be maintained.
“Everything’s positive but we know next season is when we’ll be judged. I feel that expectation on my shoulders but that is what I want. I have always loved that, the big stadiums, the biggest games, the big crowds. I never run away from that.”
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