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[merged] : John Hughes Interview (BBC)


Scarlet Pimple

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The above heading comes from the very popular Johnny Carson show  that ran for years and years on U.S T.V.but went off the air a good whiley ago.

But here is an article I have just come across in my trolling of the SPL site concerning an  interview with our last Manager, John Hughes.http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/37216822

Very interesting stuff, Not sure I like his comments about Richie though. Not overly critical but a tad condescending.Judge for yourself . Seems like he may just be regretting parting ways with ICT......good luck, laddie I say.

Edited by Scotty
merged two topic. original topic title was It tttttttttttt's...... Johnny
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Just graceless. He could have just said "I wish Richie Foran all the best" and left it, but no: he has to put the boot in and say he doesn't see him as a coach and that he doesn't have any ideas! Forgive me for saying, but JH was hardly mastermind - his solution to every situation was to "keep possession". Who knows whether he's right about RF, but (a) give the guy a chance and (b) get off your high horse!

Edited by PerfICT
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Quite a bitter iinterview on BBC online

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/37216822

 

this extract shows he wishhes him all the best but is less than complimentary about new boss Richie Foran

 

 

He admits he did not see Foran as a coach, but says the 36-year-old Irishman will benefit from having Hughes' assistant, Brian Rice, at his side.

"He's probably been flung in at the deep end and I wish him all the best," Hughes said.

"He's a rookie. I don't think that coaching is his forte, coming up with ideas, being innovative, but that doesn't mean you can't become a good manager if you have other people doing that for you."

 

 
 
 
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How does anyone become a coach anyway, by doing the badges (which we all know Richies done) and then getting actual hands on experience. Hows anyone meant to get that without actually doing the job!

 

Way I see it is, if Yogi managed it, and managed it for 14 years+, anyone can!!

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Pretty classless from Hughes to be honest, not that I'm surprised anymore.

Absolutely no issue with what he was trying to do regarding keeping our better players but perhaps a more proactive approach in getting contracts handed out would help. His style of football, when it was working, was good to watch, he really took a lot of the players up another level and he achieved some incredible stuff with ICT but poor moves in the transfer market, assembling a shockingly unbalanced team, refusal to change his style of play when it clearly wasn't working and falling out with a number of players and other off field staff meant his time had come

As a Falkirk fan said on P & B he's a lot smarter than people think but he's nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is. Comments like those in that interview probably reflect that.

Edited by RiG
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The fact is that JH is now part of our past and, due to his own actions, a somewhat tarnished part of our past at that.

We now have a new manager who is admittedly inexperienced but is learning all the time, who is happy to listen to and respect the views of senior players. I suspect that Yogi would have regarded the recent players meeting as dissent rather than as a positive thing as Richie clearly does. A manager who is happy to be here, who has a good relationship with the board and chairman, who does not leave out key players out of petty revenge and who is content with his budget which is the maximum we can afford and is not to stubborn to change things when they are clearly not working.

ICT and Richie Foran have a bright future in the game. I doubt that the same can be said for John Hughes.

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I don't think it's bitter at all - just honest.

And I always had the impression that JH was an honest guy.

I suspect it'll be many years before ICT reach the heights that he took us to and I'll always remember him for those achievements - undoubtedly our best manager so far!

And didn't he achieve his highest finish in Scottish football when he was with us?

For a while ICT was good for John Hughes and John Hughes was good for ICT.

Don't forget that!

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Quote

"He's a rookie. I don't think that coaching is his forte, coming up with ideas, being innovative, but that doesn't mean you can't become a good manager if you have other people doing that for you."

And what exactly were Yogis ideas and innovations at Inverness? I appreciate the continental passing drills and the possession football were a novelty for the club, but taking other managers methods and implementing them isn't innovative, it's just copying! When one note Joe plays stairway to heaven on his guitar in the High Street, he isn't being creative, he's simply playing somebody else's tune. Innovation is when you stop following a script and solve problems using your own initiative. When performances dipped last season (new players struggling to perform the roles of old players, opponents adapting to stifle us etc) rather than change the system he stuck to the script and barely changed a thing. One note Joe indeed.  

I still think Yogi's contribution to the club was a massive net positive overall FWIW, but he'd reached the point of diminishing returns and it was time for both parties to move on.  

Edited by AlexJones
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Agree to a large extent with almost every post above ... which seems paradoxical maybe.

However, Yogi's reign at Inverness was paradoxical ... on the one hand unprecedented cup/league/Europe milestones/achievements etc probably never to be repeated, often attractive passing football ... on the other hand petty fall-outs/benching fans' favourites, stubborn refusal to change approach, sideways tippy/tappy when having off-days, dodgy/unbalanced player recruitment.

The interview was strangely much the same ... plenty has been said of the negative above (which I agree is disappointing) ... but there was also positive ... he said he loved his time up here, "great bunch of lads" (should be his epitaph lol), acknowledged budget restraints were real, the Scottish Cup winning day was his happiest (or joint) in football and, notably post-departure, he jumped off his sofa in celebration hearing Meekings' winner go in on Saturday.

Over the piece, the positive times shared with Yogi far outweighed the negative times and that is good to hold onto.

 

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4 hours ago, RiG said:

As a Falkirk fan said on P & B he's a lot smarter than people think but he's nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is. 

The first part of that sentence sums up what I said about him when he was here and I formed that opinion after meeting him and listening to his interviews .... the second part, mirrors what I have thought since he left and his comments in the press immediately preceding that. 

There is no doubting that John Hughes was a successful manager for ICT the stats do back that up totally. The debate over best or not can be argued either way and I am not interested in having that debate as all managers brought something to the table .... but there is no argument that he will forever be in our history as the manager who won the cup and who took us into Europe in much the same way as Robbo took us to the SPL or as Pele took us from D3 to D1 and masterminded our cup heroics over the likes of Celtic and Hearts when we truly were still a wee team from the highlands.

I am not going to get all bitter that he left although I am disappointed in the manner of his departure and talking with fans of other teams where he has been manager there does seem to be a pattern of being successful for a short while then conflict with the respective club then a departure. Is it that he is just TOO ambitious for the 'smaller clubs' where he has been manager and has come up against their constraints, or is it something else? I don't know, I am not a psychologist, therapist or any other kind of -ist but I do know that our chairman is a reasonable man and the club in general are not afraid to back the manager outside of our financial comfort zone when they are able - just look at the cash they threw at TB to get us back to the SPL after relegation. 

What I do find utterly classless are his comments about Richie Foran and I hope that the reporting and quotes are out of context to what he actually meant or the entirety of his statements. Regardless of what he thinks of Foran as a person, or his ability as a manager, you dont throw them under the bus like that in public. Richie has completed his badges - he must have otherwise he could not be our manager in the top division as per UEFA rules - and despite the poor start to the season with a 'rookie' manager, he WILL come good. To go along with the coaching badges and everything he has learned as a player, he also has passion, commitment and a love for the area and ICT, so its just a case of it all falling into place (i hope). It'll be a rocky ride this year I think, but perseverance will be worth it. 

 

     

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It is worth remembering that Yogi always loathed talking to the press - he knew he wasn't very good at it, and often came across badly - especially when printed ad verbatim.  So I'm tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt with the Foran comments.

That being said, his claims that his departure was nothing to do with the budget are rubbish.  He clearly tried to talk his way to the sack at the end of last season - his repeated comments to the press about money were no accident and made his position untenable.

This interview is little else other than him advertising himself for a new job, claiming that anything that went wrong at the club was someone else's fault.

Edited by hislopsoffsideagain
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6 hours ago, hislopsoffsideagain said:

It is worth remembering that Yogi always loathed talking to the press.  

I can't say I ever particularly noticed that and if he did, he always kept it well hidden. Terry Butcher used to give us unprecedentedly long answers to questions which were great because you could sometimes get a couple of quotes or soundbites out of each one. However when John Hughes arrived, his answers turned out to be even longer than Terry's and he would even digress into providing answers to questions that he hadn't even been asked. I would have thought that someone who loathed speaking to the media would have kept things as short as possible, although conversely short answers aren't necessarily a sign that an interviewee doesn't like speaking.

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6 hours ago, hislopsoffsideagain said:

This interview is little else other than him advertising himself for a new job, claiming that anything that went wrong at the club was someone else's fault.

Your last line sums it up nicely.

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Yogis very much job hunting.

As for Richie's future hes got a lot of good guys around him which will help.

The safer option would have been as an assistant or manager of a smaller club first but if the ones paying his wages want him at our club then it speaks volumes about their belief in the man.

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