“He’s a great man”

Of the many very surprising events of this campaign is the development of Stephen Ireland. Not only has his play showed extraordinary growth and the young man, once so troubled off the pitch has matured, dare I say, into a leader. His maturation under the Mark Hughes is nothing short of stunning and one of the best stories of the year to date. In an interview on the club web-site Stephen Ireland lauded Mark Hughes for his remarkable work with the club. While not a surprise to those familiar the work of the former Wales leader, Stephen Ireland commented on the manager:

“I remember the first day we met him and in his first meeting at Carrington he said;‘You might not like the way I do things, but I guarantee that I’ll make you better players at the end of it,’ and he has.

“You look at Elano, he’s running more now – I’m not saying that he was lazy before – I just mean that he’s turned from this number 10 type player, into one that can go box-to-box.

“Some people might not notice that he’s doing the hard work, but maybe he’s just not doing it cleverly enough. If I go box-to-box and make sure I win the ball then people say; ‘Oh Stephen’s everywhere.’ If Elano does that and doesn’t retain the ball it’s not that he’s not working hard – you’ve just got to be clever with your closing down.

“If you look back over the teams we’ve had since I’ve been involved and you know yourself, under Stuart Pearce we didn’t have players like that and the tactics were totally different, the game’s changing as the seasons go on.”

“This season we have a good team, we’re hungry, we know what we want to achieve and we’ve got a great Manager and great staff here.

“It’s just the consistency from us and we need to be stronger, mentally, especially when you go away and you’re up against it.”

“When we’re at home, it’s all great, we’ve got the fans behind us and playing lovely football but the question is why can’t we do it when we’re away from home?

“What should be the difference? It’s one football pitch, 11 players versus 11, so why can’t we do it? We just need to get that into our game but the gaffer’s working on it.

“He’s a great man and I think is doing great things for the Club. If any manager came in they wouldn’t do half the things he’s doing.

“He’s involved in every area of the training ground, the Club and developing it. I think if some other manager came in they wouldn’t do things like expanding the medical area or making a gym like the one we have, they wouldn’t really care, but he cares a lot about the game, his job and his players.

“I think it’s really important he stays there and I think he’ll get it right – I really do. I’ve watched us and I know he’ll get it right.

“I enjoy playing under him and he’s been great for me. All the other players are really happy at the moment, you can tell that in training, there are always smiles and training is great. We just need to get on a winning streak.”

“I’d like to stamp my authority on the team more because I want to be a leader as much as I can to everyone and really drive the team.

“I want to take as much responsibility as I can, especially away from home when things are against us. I have good enough energy to inspire other players as well, if I make a good tackle, or want to get the players up for the game because sometimes you just don’t get off the coach.

“Even against Blackburn, it was going into the last 20 minutes before we woke up, but you could see that we have the mentality and how much it meant to us and the staff as well. We’re just like one big family.”