Chris Hughton

Chris Hughton
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Chris William Gerard Hughton





Current Club/Country: N/A.

Previous Clubs/Countries: Brighton & Hove Albion, Norwich City, Birmingham City, Newcastle United.



Honours: N/A





Hughton is a man who is known for his ability to organise a defence and build a team that can defend solidly and hit on the counter. That is enough to win promotion to the Premier League and keep a team in the league but he has problems in taking things any further. When it comes to making his team more expansive and take the game to the opposition he struggles very badly.



Whether that is because he has not been given the time to work at a more expansive style or whether he is incapable of it is the question that has yet to be resolved. At Norwich they got relegated when he tried to open them up and make them attacking. This season at Brighton, he kept reverting back to a more pragmatic style and managed to keep them up, but still got the boot.



His recruitment has always been decent, usually bringing in players that improve the team, but he can be overly loyal to those already in it. The fact that Dunk and Duffy were still the centre back pairing of choice this season tells you a lot. Those two are woefully unsuited to a team that wants to play higher up the pitch and be more expansive and attacking. Those kind of decisions hold back his teams.



As far as his coaching is concerned, it seems to be more of a case of teaching the players organisation rather than making them better players. There are very few players who have shown marked improvement through his coaching, which is one of the things, in my opinion, that most holds him back.



Hughton is one of the nicest guys in football, you would have to search hard to find anyone (if there is anyone) that has a bad word to say about him, but it has not seemingly held him back. He has led a number of teams to promotion from the Championship to the Premier League, but organising a team can only get you so far and he seems to have found his limit in mid-table of the Prem.



Requested by Livebird31