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Speaking on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football, Mark Hughes has admitted that he shouldn’t have left Fulham when he did.
The Welshman was appointed as Fulham’s gaffer back in 2010 after Roy Hodgson departed for Liverpool, and he enjoyed a successful season at Craven Cottage, guiding the Whites to an 8th placed finish.
However, when the season came to a close, Hughes infamously walked away from Fulham, citing the club’s lack of ambition as his reason for leaving.
The decision raised a number of eyebrows, especially as he went on to join west London rivals QPR, getting sacked after less than a year in the job at Loftus Road.
10 years on, Hughes has finally admitted that may have been the wrong decision.
“Everything you do is with the benefit of hindsight. There’s certain clubs you go into and you know, I left Fulham after one year. I should have stayed longer there,” Hughes said.
“I misread the messages I was getting from the club. I thought they weren’t going to invest in the team and we had a lot of players at the time who were coming towards the end of their time at Fulham and I was going to have to replace those players.
“I thought I wasn’t going to be given the means to replace those players, so I felt it was best I moved on, but that was a mistake as two weeks later they went and bought a £15m striker, so I should have waited a little bit longer.”
Hughes’ claim of a lack of ambition back in 2011 was rather staggering, considering that Mohamed Al Fayed was never afraid to put his hand in his pocket and the club had only reached a Europa League final the year prior.
Martin Jol came in and he was given the means to improve the squad, and while Bryan Ruiz wasn’t £15m as Hughes said, he was an eight-figure signing, and while a number of players were out of contract that summer. Few key names left the club.
We can only wonder what another year under Hughes would have looked like.
