Top 25 Mark Hughes Quotes

When I come away from the ground, I’m quite quiet, but I like match day – that’s when I come alive.

I always wanted to win, but I only used to get upset if I hadn’t done myself and the people around me proud – that was my motivation for always wanting to do better.

I’ve never tried to artificially create distance between myself and the players.

I suddenly thought, if I was going to make a go of it, I was going to have to look after myself and not keep apologising for knocking people over. That transformed my career.

There are certain games where you have to hold your hands up, take your medicine, and move on to the next one.

At City, I didn’t realise how much we had to do until we got there. Here, I didn’t need to change the staff because there is quality already. So they certainly don’t need me getting in the way in training by trying to show I can still play. No way.

Clearly, there comes a point where you have to demand from your front guys; goals is what sustain attackers.

If you are loose and not quite taking clear-cut chances in training, then clearly you are not going to do that come match time.

My job as a manager is to get the best out of your players. Sometimes you get it wrong, and you won‘t get the response that you want, but we all face that every single day.

The four and a half years I had at Stoke is something I will always look back on with pride because it was a huge achievement. To be able to last in a high profile job as long as I did showed that, for the most part, I did a decent job there.

If you feel a bit aggrieved or hard done by, you probably need the break just to reset yourself and give yourself time for different learning – to get out there and experience different things.

If Ryan Giggs was plying his trade and been the player he had been here in a foreign league, he would go straight from playing to an AC Milan or Inter Milan or any top European club out of the mix.

Attacking football is what I want to watch as a manager; it’s what I want from my teams. It’s easier to be destructive and get people behind the ball than to be constructive and creative.

I would like to think that during my time at Stoke – and other clubs I was at – I was always a manager that wanted to play in the right way, with purpose, with drive, and to try to dictate to the opposition if you could.

It’s no secret that I enjoyed the physical side when I was a player. I was a bumps-and-bruises man.

The perception is that the Stoke players were one-dimensional: that they could only play in a certain way, and that was the top and bottom of their capabilities.

Every United player understands what United is about. The players understand it is a privilege to play for United.

All the major sports have video reviews, and for some reason, the Premier League, which is watched all around the world, is still in the dark ages.

At United, there has been continuity with the manager, with the success they have had. It gives them a different dynamic.

You’ve got two huge clubs in Manchester that have got ‘celebrity‘ managers, huge resources, massive turnovers. They can generate resources the rest of us can only imagine, and that’s before the TV money even kicks in.

You have to win football matches, and if you don’t, you allow people to criticise you.

Competing in the Premier League is more difficult than winning trophies in plenty of countries abroad.

As a player, when you get beaten, you can comfort yourself by saying you did reasonably well. As a manager, when you get beaten, you think it’s all your fault, but 70,000 people and all those watching on television know it’s your fault.

There’s a full Football League programme every Tuesday, so I see those games and get to check out people like Paul Jones and Robbie Savage by playing against them.

You can’t manage one size fits all; you’ve just got to know your group and know what ticks players’ boxes.