MARK HUGHES

When I first signed schoolboy forms for United, as a midfield player, I felt for a while that I was just treading water.

Competing in the Premier League is more difficult than winning trophies in plenty of countries abroad.

Management is not about shouting and bawling, because some guys will not like that. They take it personally.

As a player, when you get beaten, you can comfort yourself by saying you did reasonably well. As a manager, when you get beaten, you think it's all your fault, but 70,000 people and all those watching on television know it's your fault.

I would like to think that during my time at Stoke - and other clubs I was at - I was always a manager that wanted to play in the right way, with purpose, with drive, and to try to dictate to the opposition if you could.

At City, I didn't realise how much we had to do until we got there. Here, I didn't need to change the staff because there is quality already. So they certainly don't need me getting in the way in training by trying to show I can still play. No way.

Sometimes the manager actually is the glue that holds everything together, and when you take that manager out, sometimes that's when things start to go really wrong.

There's a full Football League programme every Tuesday, so I see those games and get to check out people like Paul Jones and Robbie Savage by playing against them.

Sometimes you have to park things you're not happy with, because there are more important things to be done.

I'd knock people over and bruise their pride, but I never went out to hurt people. That is not acceptable, and I don't want to see it in my team.

I've never tried to artificially create distance between myself and the players.

It's no secret that I enjoyed the physical side when I was a player. I was a bumps-and-bruises man.

Every United player understands what United is about. The players understand it is a privilege to play for United.

At United, there has been continuity with the manager, with the success they have had. It gives them a different dynamic.

As a player, I had no idea whatsoever about getting a team ready for a game, what it entails.

Football's become a non-contact sport, and that's spoiled a lot of the fun for a lot of the people, including spectators.

If Ryan Giggs was plying his trade and been the player he had been here in a foreign league, he would go straight from playing to an AC Milan or Inter Milan or any top European club out of the mix.

I had no direct experience of a relegation scrap, but with Wales, I never had the luxury of being allowed to lose games. I was under pressure to win even the friendlies.

I suddenly thought, if I was going to make a go of it, I was going to have to look after myself and not keep apologising for knocking people over. That transformed my career.

I try, when I go into places, not to belittle what's gone before, because I know how difficult it is to manage, and everybody does it differently.

If we are going to ask questions of the defensive guys, then we are going to ask questions of the guys at the top end as well.

The perception is that the Stoke players were one-dimensional: that they could only play in a certain way, and that was the top and bottom of their capabilities.

You've got two huge clubs in Manchester that have got 'celebrity' managers, huge resources, massive turnovers. They can generate resources the rest of us can only imagine, and that's before the TV money even kicks in.

The four and a half years I had at Stoke is something I will always look back on with pride because it was a huge achievement. To be able to last in a high profile job as long as I did showed that, for the most part, I did a decent job there.

If you are loose and not quite taking clear-cut chances in training, then clearly you are not going to do that come match time.