Mark “Sparky” Hughes won just about every honour the English game could bestow, while at Old Trafford – either side of a Spanish interlude in which he went on loan to Germany – and then added further FA Cup success while at Chelsea.

When David Jones tempted him to Southampton, Mark was approaching 35 and the obvious question was whether he could still hack it in the Premiership. His apparent determination never to give it less than 100 per cent was reflected, unfortunately, more in the number of his bookings than in his contribution of goals, as he struggled in what was, to be fair, a struggling side.

One memorable volley at home to Newcastle was the final nail in the coffin of their manager, Ruud Gullit, but, other than that, Mark’s explosive finishing ­could be witnessed only on old United videos.

Before he left for Everton – Glenn Hoddle had arrived and Mark did not fit into his plans – he had become Wales’s manager: the first time the Saints could boast an international manager in their forward line. In 2002, Mark added, at 38, to his collection of medals when he featured in Blackburn Rovers’ Rumbelows Cup victory over Glenn Hoddle’s Tottenham. After which, he soon hung up his boots to concentrate on the Wales job. In 2004, he started out, at Blackburn, in club-management.

He progressed to Manchester City, but fell foul of their impatient, incoming Arab owners. And so he came to West London, first to take Fulham into the Europa Cup and then to succeed Neil Warnock at Loftus Road. He kept them in the Premiership – just – but the crunch came in November 2012, when QPR hosted Southampton in a foot-of-the-table “six-pointer”. The vultures – aka journalists and bookies – circled, with their doom-laden predictions as to which manager would go first. The Saints’ 3-1 victory left Rangers without a win and at the bottom of the Premier League and so Mark was obliged to give way to Harry Redknapp.

He moved onto Stoke with a point to prove and didn’t fare too badly with three successive 9^th place finishes but a series of poor ventures into the transfer market led to Stoke struggling and in the January 2018 after losing to 4^th-tier Coventry in the Cup he was relieved of his duties. Stoke duly lost their place in the Premier League but Southampton under Mauricio Pelligrino were also struggling to avoid relegation and in the March appointed Hughes until the end of the season in a desperate attempt to climb above the 18^th position they were currently in. Eight points from the eight remaining games which included a crucial 1-0 victory at relegation-threatened Swansea was just enough to do the trick and that summer, he and his two assistants Mark Bowen and Eddie Niedzwiecki, were rewarded with three-year contracts.

But 2018-19 started badly and with just nine points from the first 15 games the axe fell on his neck for the second time in 2018. Since then he has kept a low profile although in March 2020 he popped up in Qatar working as a pundit for beINSports, the Qatari channel which owns exclusive rights to the Premier League across the Middle East and North Africa.