I was feeling bad last Saturday afternoon. A night (and morning) of drinking, combined with a few restless hours of couch-bound half-sleep, had left me groggy and slightly frazzled, my head feeling roughly akin to an aeroplane seat cushion following a long haul flight spent underneath Eric Pickles. By the time my body was readjusting itself to the world of the living – ten to five in the evening, to be precise – Mark Hughes may have been wishing he could similarly disappear from view.
It's been intriguing to watch 'the Hughes situation' (as Glenn Hoddle would probably term it) unfold over the course of the past 72 hours. Following QPR's 3-1 home shaming by Southampton, Hughes' immediate response was to produce an admirable post-match performance in front of the awaiting cameras. Bullish and shot through with a stern-eyed bravado, it was infinitely more solid than anything his back four had managed in the previous two months. Credit to the man – if he was experiencing thoughts of desertion, he was giving off very little sign of it. Nonetheless, the media speculation as to his level of job security has been shuffling uncomfortably close to DEFCON 1 ever since. He hasn't quite arrived at Steve Kean levels of public blood-lust just yet, but Sir Alex he certainly ain't.
The last three days have seen a drip-drop of mixed messages emanating form the vicinity of W12. Tapping away at my keyboard on Monday evening, fingertips flipping between barren word document and text coverage of West Ham v Stoke (perhaps the dullest use yet for the internet – although I'll never need an excuse to remind myself of this contender), rumours abounded that Mark Hughes was to be relieved of his position of QPR boss following high-level 'crunch talks' (a term I'm a big fan of, by the way – something in it's visceral onomatopoeia, the definitive break, something irreparably cracking in two, never to be rejoined. They aren't called 'wobble chats' or 'flop yaks' for nothing you know).
Speaking of sounds, conflicting ones continued to pour fourth as the rumour mill went into full churn. Despite a trickle of semi-convincing assurances later that night that Hughes would not be relieved of his woes – sorry, position – contradictory evidence was presented the following day as London's Evening Standard reported that Hughes had been asked to quit. He refused, apparently, and without chairman Tony Fernandes on hand to pull the lever, Hughes opted for at least a few more torturous nights on death row.
Hughes' fate now struggles to mask it's own queasy air of inevitability; his departure becoming an entity of it's own: something slowly forming and coming to life, cells multiplying and dividing, no longer an abstract concept but rather a real, living, breathing thing. Of course, post-Southampton, the Hughes sacking narrative really built up a head of steam. Note, for example, the BBC football front page on Saturday night: '“I will not quit”, says Hughes'. A defiant statement for sure, but also a telling one, indicating the loss of faith in his managerial abilities was now reaching some kind of anti-employability event horizon. But it also suggested that the canny Welshman had quite possibly fallen foul of one of journalism’s most sadistic bluffs.
In the hit US political drama/liberal wet-dream The West Wing, White House press secretary C.J. Cregg is asked during a routine press conference if the president had considered a particular course of action (a lame duck Congressional session, to be precise) to avoid some upcoming legislative hoo-ha or another. Knowing full well that he hadn't – it was a silly idea and anyway, Martin Sheen's President Barlet was a bloody genius, OK? – but aware that she could not prove this for sure, she offers to check and report back. Both she and her colleagues know she has fallen into a particularly sneaky journalistic bear-trap, because the moment the commander-in-chief receives this enquiry the notion in question will automatically, unavoidably enter his mind. He will have considered it – fleetingly, and perhaps even unintentionally, but consider it he will most certainly have.
On Saturday evening the BBC asked Hughes if he “expected to still be in charge” following their latest defeat – an open-ended enquiry, not intended to judge exactly whose hands his future may be in, but one which nonetheless carefully placed a tantalising physiological probe. Others went further, openly asking Hughes if he would abandon ship, their initial questions coming vacuum wrapped with their own self-fulfilling answers. Step 1: Hughes is asked if he is intending to jack it all in and book himself on the first train back to Wrexham. Step 2: Hughes says he isn't, but the seed is sown, and even if he really isn't, it barely matters - a “will-he, won't-he” narrative is born anyway. “I don't run away from challenges”, responded Hughes, as the thought of running away from a challenge imperceptibly wormed it's way inside of his cranium like an unwelcome hanger-on at a party (albeit one where no-one's having any fun, the drugs have run out and the hosts are being disdainfully berated for just lying about the place, squandering their reputations and generally not giving a fuck).
Watching Saturday's game hungry and hungover as I was, it was obvious even through my hazy peepers that Saints manager Nigel Adkins was remaining disarmingly calm and collected in the face of growing media speculation over his own position. Adkins strikes me as a man of cool, trim focus – the kind of soul who, following a Friday night bender, would be up and about at the crack of dawn, doing his stretches in the hall before departing for a quick 2km run, whilst the rest of us gingerly sip water and pull the covers back over our heads, wishing the outside world to disappear. He's one of those people: all fitness and zing, a wet-eared deputy head with a charming lack of cynicism. I don't understand them, but I hold a grudging respect for them. Not for Nigel the cruel machinations of the press pack – this is, after all, a man not afraid to throw down some verse during a routine post-match interview.
When he isn't busting out the balladry himself, Adkins has got his class leaping on the table, seemingly allowing his own methodology to rub off on his team. Like Arsene Wenger when he first arrived on these shores, Adkins has the look of a man more likely to advise you on your stock options than to drill Nathaniel Clyne on the nuances of the offside trap. But also like Wenger, he seems intent on instilling a cohesive philosophy into his charges (although he could do with splashing out on a centre-half or two come January), and the prettier the results, the better. Following a brutal start to the campaign (which included meetings with last years top three in the opening four matches) the Saints, judging by their neat, triangulated pass-n-invent display on Saturday, are in pole position to become this seasons' Swansea. I'm not altogether sure where that leaves Swansea – last season's Blackpool? 2000's Barnsley? – but they seem to be having a lovely old time under Michael Laudrup so I'm sure they're none too fussed either way.
Adkins is of course a rookie in Premier League terms, as opposed to Hughes who, like his Everton counterpart David Moyes, can no longer be considered an up-and-coming, saucer-eyed (literally, in the latter's case) dugout prodigy, but rather a fully fledged, experienced manager. And with such experience comes the inevitability of being on the receiving end of a good old fashioned sacking every once in a while. Writing for the Guardian in 2011 about the similar circumstances of Steve Bruce's dismissal from Sunderland, Barney Ronay argued that a manager is these days little more than “a patsy, a head presented on a stake at regular intervals as an emblem of progress”, and so true has this been of QPR in recent years. A project grimly decorated with the blood splatter of boardroom fall-outs and behind-the-scenes power struggles, every few months or so the manager was dismissed – a convenient scapegoat, a move often more political than sporting (although no-one really needs the veneer of 'politics' to give Ian Dowie the boot).
But then a funny thing happened. It may be by design or pure chance, but QPR seem to have been getting their sackings right of late, with each recent touchline prowler performing their function then departing. Neil Warnock finally got the Hoops back in the big time, but when it became obvious that his old-school stylings weren't going to give them much hope of survival, he was cast adrift to be replaced by Hughes. Sparky had experience of the pressures of modern Premier League era, but perhaps crucially offered a cooler alternative to the Yorkshireman's terrier growl. When Manchester City were bought on transfer deadline day 2008, Hughes famously continued with his round of golf, pausing only between holes to check his phone to see which superstar forward he would be greeting at training the next day.
So it seems – much like in his playing days – that Hughes' composure shouldn't be questioned. But if Tony Fernandes' goal at Loftus Road is long-term stability, that now more than ever means staying in the Premier League. Loyalty is all well and good, but for QPR to drop back down to the Championship they battled so desperately to escape would perhaps set the club back years. One certainly can't envisage Adel Taarabt relishing another nine months of Tuesday night trips to Bristol City, sat alone on the coach as it rumbles back east along the M4 at midnight, just his headphones and thoughts of rejected transfer requests of yore for company.
Obviously by the time you read this Hughes could have been sacked, which may indicate that Fernandes is either another trigger-happy firebrand or that he has acted swiftly to stop the rot before it fatally gnaws away at his team's hopes of survival. Or he might still have a job. Whatever Hughes' fate, I would like to think that Adkins is this morning once again waking up bright-eyed and bushy-vocabed, still in a job, still thinking in paeans not prose, lacing his trainers and readying himself for another day of good vibes and neato positivity. Now that I think about it, those sound like just the things QPR need. Maybe he should wait by his phone. Actually, he probably doesn't have one. He looks the type.
~ Matt
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