All 62 Stoke City players used by Mark Hughes ranked and rated
Mark Hughes doesn't give many interviews when he's not on football's frontline. Mark Bowen, his long-serving number two, admitted that even he had trouble getting hold of him when they weren't together at a stadium or training ground.
But the 61-year-old has been tracked down for a new documentary in the Legends of Welsh Sport series, broadcast on BBC iPlayer and BBC One Wales (Tuesday, January 7, 10.40pm). It will review his career, although the focus will be on his time playing for Manchester United and Barcelona.
He had four-and-a-half years in charge of Stoke City and his first three seasons saw the club finish in the top half of the Premier League, claim regular scalps against some of the biggest clubs in the world and produce some scintillating performances. The latter stages were not so rosy and he left in early 2018 after an FA Cup defeat to a League Two Coventry side managed by his old Man Utd teammate Mark Robins.
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This documentary gives us a chance to reflect on his time at the bet365 Stadium. We have gathered all the statistics from 174 Premier League games after he replaced Tony Pulis in the summer of 2013. That’s 62 players who were named in his match day squad, including six who never got off the bench.
Best points return
Victor Moses headlines the all-important success rate from his time on loan in 2014/15 when he was often electrifying, if also all too-often injured. He started just 19 league games (only lasting 90 minutes eight times) as Hughes borrowed him from Chelsea but Stoke won nine and drew four of them, scoring 24 goals in the process. That earns him a points return average of 1.63 per start.
Peter Odemwingie (1.625) comes in next thanks to the impact he made after arriving in the January of Hughes’s first season. Stoke averaged 1.4 goals per game with him in the team, only bettered by Wilson Palacios (1.8; nine team goals in five starts under Hughes … but just one win).
A surprise in third and fourth perhaps, as Philipp Wollscheid (1.57) and Stephen Ireland (1.48) enter the charts. Wollscheid helped record 13 clean sheets in his 44 games, helping to clock back-to-back ninth placed finishes. Ireland is third behind Odemwingie in terms of making the team tick going forward. They averaged 1.3 goals per game when he starts.
Asmir Begovic (1.43) completes the points average top five. The keeper kept 16 clean sheets in his 67 league starts under Hughes, winning 26.
Worst points return
There are seven players who started under 10 league games who have a worse points return than Saido Berahino (11 starts, two wins, 0.73 points average). That includes Marco van Ginkel (seven starts, no wins. 0.43), Shay Given (eight starts, one win, 0.5) and Jese (seven starts, one win, 0.71).
In terms of players who have played more than 10, Berahino is followed by Oussama Assaidi (13 starts, two wins, 0.85), Kevin Wimmer (14 starts, three wins, 0.93), Darren Fletcher (21 starts, five wins, 0.95) and Ramadan (16 starts, four wins, one).
Most called upon players
Peter Crouch was in 167 of Hughes’s league squads, starting 71 times and coming off the bench 51 times. He had 26 goals in that time, including eight as a sub.
Charlie Adam was in 163 squads and eventually overtook Marc Muniesa in terms of being most unused sub. Adam was left in the dug-out 55 times, followed by Muniesa (54), Crouch (45) and four keepers Given (38), Tommy Sorensen (34), Jakob Haugaard (30) and Jack Butland (27), who is level with Ireland and Bojan.
Marko Arnautovic was Hughes’s most subbed player, being hooked in 46 of the 112 league games he started for Stoke. Xherdan Shaqiri (38), Adam (36), Whelan (34) and Bojan (30) come next.
Biggest impact in a season
A shout for the mesmeric Steven Nzonzi, who started every game in 2014/15 – Stoke’s best season in the Premier League – with an average return of 1.42 points per outing.
Three other players started 37 games in a campaign; Glenn Whelan (1.38 in 2015/16); Geoff Cameron (1.32 in 2013/14) and Ryan Shawcross (1.27 in 2013/14).
But when you measure Stoke’s record with and without certain players in one season, the impact of Wollscheid and Jon Walters in 2015/16 is remarkable.
Stoke didn’t win any of eight games without Wollscheid that year while they won 14 and drew five of the 30 when he was in defence (1.56pts per game with and 0.5 without). Stoke won 10 and drew four of Walters’s 18 starts that campaign; losing 11 of the 20 he missed.
How should Hughes be judged by history?
An interesting column from Shawcross reflecting on the era.
"It will always surprise me, no matter how it ended, just how much criticism Mark Hughes gets when he was the best manager I played under at Stoke," he wrote. "I don’t think I really hear anyone apart from me come out and say it.
"But I knew straight away from the first time I met him that he was going to be successful for us. He had a tremendous football intelligence and I was convinced by everything he said. That sounds silly but it is so important when you’re trying to get everyone on board.
"He took me into his office after two or three days to tell me about how he wanted to change our style and play out more from the back. I felt that was the perfect thing for me at that time of my career. I’d played under Tony Pulis for five or six years and felt I needed to get back to that Man Utd type of approach where I could be more ball orientated.
"Alongside Mark Bowen, Eddie Niedzwiecki and Damian Roden it was a tremendous mix, built expectations up with fans, the signings in the first two or three years were brilliant, well thought out and really successful."
