Thread by @CoachesVoice

A THREAD! 👇 After coaching his home country, Mark Hughes became Blackburn's manager. Looking back on his time in charge, he talks about wanting to overrun teams, the physical tag his side was labelled with and going up against SIr Alex Ferguson and José Mourinho 🔵⚪ #Rovers

🗣️ "When I took over, I think they were second from bottom. It was only a handful of games into the new season but it was a difficult situation – Graeme Souness had left for Newcastle and I don’t think the club was quite prepared for a managerial change."

🔵⚪ #Rovers

🗣️ "The squad had a strong core of players I felt comfortable with. There was a good group of senior players – the likes of Garry Flitcroft and Brad Friedel, who was an outstanding goalkeeper – and some good young players too, and their work ethic was exceptional."

🔵⚪ #Rovers

🗣️ "I worked them really hard in that first season, but I felt it was important because I wanted my teams to be strong right to the end of games – and we were certainly that."

🔵⚪ #Rovers

🗣️ "It was the early days of Prozone, and we got great confidence from looking at the stats. We wanted to make sure that we were running further and doing more sprints than our opponents, and from that we always felt that we had a chance in the last 20 minutes."

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🗣️ "We were confident in our ability to overrun teams, and I was proud of our physicality. There were a few clichés thrown around at the time, and people made assumptions about how physical we were as a team, but in my view they were wrong."

🔵⚪ #Rovers

🗣️ "It all stemmed from one game. We played Chelsea in February 2005. Arjen Robben scored early but then had to go off after a mistimed tackle. It was a physical game but this was José Mourinho’s first season and his Chelsea team could look after themselves."

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🗣️ "I remember José whipping the crowd up. It was a physical game and we matched them. It ended 1-0, but I was proud of the way my team played.

"The headlines after the game weren’t great; the focus was on the injury to Robben and how our approach had led to it."

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🗣️ "I enjoyed testing myself against the best coaches and the best teams, and at the time I felt that the best was Sir Alex Ferguson.

"In my first full season, we managed to do a league double over United. We won 2-1 at Old Trafford and 4-3 in the home fixture."

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🗣️ "When you are able to overcome a club of that stature and a manager of that stature, then clearly that is going to resonate around football to a certain extent. Then, people might acknowledge that maybe you’re doing a good job."

🔵⚪ #Rovers