Quiet man turning up the volume

That's Chris Hughton rather than Iain Duncan-Smith

In recent years the words ‘Newcastle’, ‘United’ and ‘success’ haven’t exactly seen a lot of each other. Indeed if you rewind the clock to around 12 months ago, the club were facing relegation to the Championship after a season of utter chaos both on and off the pitch. This makes Monday’s achievement, promotion at the first time of asking, even more impressive.

Last summer the talk was of ‘doing a Leeds’; of plummeting down the division(s) and yet, at least on the pitch anyway a stabilising and harmonising within the team has led to the situation where the club has been able to secure its position back in the top flight with a month of the season still to play. For this, a huge amount of credit must go to the previously unheralded Chris Hughton who has been able to take a team that was ripped apart by internal divisions and turn into a highly efficient footballing side.

When he was appointed caretaker manager, many argued that was all Hughton was ever going to be. He didn’t look like a manager, talk like a manager, didn’t have the media profile to command respect from players with big egos. But then where had all the ‘big names’ got the club in the past? Hughton’s key achievements have been to forge a sense of unity within the dressing room and to also organise a team that over the past couple of years has been a minefield of unpredictability and instability.

This may seem like an underselling of the former Irish international’s accomplishments this season, but coaching and managing a football side needn’t require being a revolutionary or reinventing the wheel. Quietly, confidently and with assurance he has just done the sensible things, taken the decisions that make sense and that have helped engineer an environment where previously underachieving players have been able to thrive. The manager has also delegated a lot of power to a powerful players committee, senior players with big personalities like the captain Kevin Nolan, Steve Harper and Alan Smith that have helped to forge the unity at the club. And yet despite the impressive season the club has had there have still been many who have been slow to show praise.

The argument that’s been heard a lot is that with the squad and set of players that Hughton has had at his disposal, that anyone would have been able to achieve promotion. However if you rewind to the beginning of the season, a lot of predictions were highly pessimistic, the quality of player was roundly criticised, the squad too small. Critics can’t have it both ways. Yes their wage bill was higher than all their rivals, and yes the squad contained a number of internationals, but it was a hugely uneven and unbalanced playing staff and the players that people are now saying always should have walked the division are the very same that were being criticised for not being good enough even for this level.

That’s not to say that we’ve seen Barcelona in the Championship this season. The side has been functional and effective if not exactly expansive and free flowing and whilst other teams in the division, notably fellow promotion certainties West Brom, have passed and played their way up the table this season, Newcastle have heavily relied on overpowering opponents, not always displaying much flair and imagination. It’s also fair to say that if the club wants to survive in the Premier League then a considerable investment will need to be made in improving a squad that looks decidedly one paced.

For now though, the club should be able to indulge in a little success, given the paucity of it in recent memory. If you were to draw up a Championship team of the season then you’d be more than likely to consider several Newcastle players; Steve Harper, Fabricio Coloccini, Jose Enrique, Kevin Nolan, Jonas Gutierrez and Andy Carroll for inclusion. On top of that, players like Alan Smith, Danny Guthrie and Peter Lovenkrands have had fine seasons, whilst low key acquisitions such as Danny Simpson, Mike Williamson and Wayne Routledge have been far more successful than some of the bigger names that the club has wasted many millions on over the last decade.

Perhaps though the biggest accomplishment this season (a broken jaw aside) is the fact that for once Newcastle United have not been in the press every day as a crisis club, a club making barmy decisions, a club employing Dennis Wise to be a director of football. Indeed if ever there has been an advert for attempting to run a football club in a sensible manner and trying to achieve success that way, then this has been it and surely that’s something worth shouting about.