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Mark Hughes' Stoke City revolution has failed and it's time for him to go
Where is the anger towards his side’s ineptitude, their inability to defend or provide entertainment for their fans? Perhaps Hughes will be best served by taking a long, hard look at himself and why Stoke have become what they are these days: a team lacking in identity and ideas. If his press conferences are anything to go by, however, we shouldn’t hold our collective breaths, introspection doesn’t come naturally to Hughes.
When Stoke tired of Tony Pulis and his brand of boringly stable football, Hughes was piloted in with a remit to improve the quality of the football being played at the bet365 Stadium. Stoke were never in danger of the drop during the five years Pulis led them in the Premier League, and his sacking had more to do with the dilemma facing virtually every mid-size side in England’s top flight.
Not good enough to trouble the big spenders and arguably too good to go down, where do they go from their well-remunerated state of stasis. For Peter Coates and the rest of the Stoke hierarchy, the answer to that question was to deliver an entertaining brand of football to their fans with Hughes the man earmarked to lead that challenge.
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To say that project has failed would be an understatement, indeed there’s an argument that Stoke have regressed under Hughes after a few false starts. The signings of Champions League-winning stars in Xhedan Shaqiri, Ibrahim Afellay, and Bojan Krkic was supposed to herald a brave new era of attacking football in Stoke; the final step in building on the resoluteness of Pulis-ball to create a defensively solid side capable of playing football that is also simultaneously easy on the eye.
That plan has since failed spectacularly: Bojan has faded and is on loan at Alavés, Afellay has only two goals and assists in 48 league appearances and has barely played this season. Jesé Rodriguez, a European Cup winner with Real Madrid, has dramatically gone off the boil since his debut goal against Arsenal. The only source of inspirations these days at Stoke is Shaqiri and it’s surely only a matter of time before he decides he deserves better. Stoke’s football is lifeless and anemic, a far cry from the vision the chairman had in mind when Hughes was appointed.
Yet Hughes almost never takes responsibility for his side’s woeful performances, a one-man excuse-generating machine that keeps on giving after each terrible showing. There are many questions to be asked of Hughes and the obvious one is why big-name signings continually fail to sparkle under his tutelage. Afellay, Bojan and Jesé, as previously mentioned, have all failed to make a mark at Stoke.
Then there’s the curious case of Saido Berahino, brought in for £12m from West Brom after a protracted and sometimes messy negotiation period. Berahino has now gone 662 days without scoring and his 28-minute cameo was his first league outing for well over a month. One player failing to make the grade isn’t particularly news, two is hardly a pattern but when the list extends beyond three-four players brought in at great expense, questions need to be asked of the man coaching them daily. Perhaps there are extenuating circumstances explaining the sharp decline in form of his players, nonetheless Hughes oversees them in training and his failure to get the best out of his squad is concerning.
The main worry for Stoke is undoubtedly their overreliance on Shaqiri who remains their lone bright spot amidst the fog of disappointment. It’s not outlandish that a team is reliant on its best player but at what point does that begin to mask the ineptitude of the rest of the team? Stoke have scored 19 goals in the league this season and nine of those have either been scored or assisted by the diminutive Swiss international. No other side in the Premier League requires its best player to carry that much of its creative burden.
The overwhelming feeling now is Hughes has a side that is clearly not as good as the sum of its parts. The defeat to West Ham puts that into a sharper focus and the quiet repair work David Moyes is undertaking at his new club shows what a refreshed manager can bring to a team that has lost its direction under an old boss. Arnautovic was derided for claiming “ambition” played a part in his decision to swap Staffordshire for east London but after watching Saturday’s game between his old and new team, can anyone question the wisdom of his choice?
With 39 goals conceded – the worst record in the division and a whopping 17 more than bottom placed Swansea – the statistics make for unpleasant reading for Stoke. Not only has the attempt to play attractive football failed, the solid foundations upon which the Pulis era was built is now long gone, a distant and fading memory.
If Hughes cannot deliver the task he was given at time of his appointment and he cannot, at the very least, maintain the structures he found in place, what, then, is the point of it all? Two consecutive ninth place finishes and a record total of 54 points in 2014/15 are high points of his tenure as is the heady period in 2015/16 when the dreams of Stoke-lona briefly flickered into existence. Now there’s a gnawing feeling that, much like West Ham with Slaven Bilic, Hughes should have been let go at the end of last season to bring in a new manager.
The Stoke top brass are famous for their reticence to sack managers and have been incredibly patient with Hughes in times past. But now with relegation now a credible threat and the man in charge seemingly out of ideas and options, it’s surely a matter of when patience runs out with their manager. The Premier League is simply to rich and the prizes on offer too grand for a club to miss out on the yearly bonuses that come with being present in it. Hughes may consider himself blameless and be angry at Arnautovic for daring to leave, but if this worrisome slide isn’t contained soon enough, he could be find himself out of a job in no time. Even the most patient bosses will eventually run out of it.
