Top 30 Mark Hughes Quotes

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

Football’s become a non-contact sport, and that’s spoiled a lot of the fun for a lot of the people, including spectators.

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.

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.

Sometimes you have to park things you’re not happy with, because there are more important things to be done.

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.

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.

They say that pace is the first thing to go, but my game was never based on pace. It was about strength and power and withstanding challenges and getting in the right position.

If we are going to ask questions of the defensive guys, then we are going to ask questions of the guys at the top end as well.

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.

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.

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

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.

I remember Ron Atkinson used to play in the sessions at Manchester United when he was the manager. Rated himself as a player.

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.

As a player, I had no idea whatsoever about getting a team ready for a game, what it entails.

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.

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

Management is not about shouting and bawling, because some guys will not like that. They take it personally.

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.

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.

When I first signed schoolboy forms for United, as a midfield player, I felt for a while that I was just treading water.

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

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

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.

I try, when I go into places, not to belittle what’s gone before, because I know how difficult it is to manage, and everybody does it differently.

In my last years, I was conscious how I used to play the game when I first broke through. It was absolute chalk and cheese. I probably finished at the right time. There won’t be many players like me in the future.

I had no direct experience of a relegation scrap, but with Wales, I never had the luxury of being allowed to lose games. I was under pressure to win even the friendlies.

As a player, you just pick up your kit, go out, and train or wait for the ref to blow the whistle.

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