Photo Credit : Bradford City 

It has definitely been a rough time to be a Bradford City fan, things just haven't been going to plan the past few years but have we finally found the cure to those past few seasons with the appointment of new Manager Mark Hughes? 

The is no denying that this season so far has been absolutely terrible (but more on that another day as that is a whole post itself) with results just not going our way and terrible performances on the pitch. It is safe to say the majority of us fans went into the season with high hopes thanks to promises from the club and the then new manager Derek Adams, with his track record it was hard not to be hopefully of pushing for promotion. But this didn't go to plan and it was safe to say everyone was getting frustrated. 

With the manager & team we had there is no doubt that we should have been getting much better results but something just wasn't clicking and performances were boring and painful to watch, you just knew walking into the ground you weren't going to be seeing the best from the players and I really do believe this is due to tactics and falling outs more than anything else. The tactics just seemed all wrong how you can play with 1 man up front and play the long ball every time baffles me, you need 2 upfront in this league and if you are playing the long ball you need 1 man to flick the ball onto another striker not just 1 man doing all the work for 90 minutes. We have had our fair share of injuries too which hasn't helped but we have a bench full of players that are more than capable of stepping up and putting in a good performance if they wanted to and if they were given the opportunity to. 

I wasn't a fan of Adams as our manager if I am honest, the football her orchestrated wasn't fun to watch and he didn't seem to want to change, his ego was a bit too big for my liking too. He constantly played it off as it was fans at fault rather than himself and seemed to keep bigging himself up as a manager when performances told a different story. His comment about us not finding a better manager tipped me over the edge and I wasn't bothered if he left the club. I do find it funny though as that was one of his final comments then along comes new manager Mark Hughes... 

With all the names being thrown around on who could possibly fill Adams shoes I honestly thought we would end up with Steve Evans or Richie Wellens especially with them being the most frequently spoken about names. I really didn't see Mark Hughes becoming our next manager, in fact when it was announced I was so shocked I thought it was a parody account that had tweeted it. When it finally did start to sink in though it got me thinking about what could be to come for the remainder of the season and next season. 

Mark Hughes is one of those managers who has been around for a while now and has managed at some great clubs with some big names playing at the clubs at the time, I have actually enjoyed watching the teams he has managed so lets hope that doesn't change with him now being in charge at City. With Hughes being used to managing at higher levels it is going to be interesting to see how he does with us in League 2 with standards and tactics being totally different to top leagues, I am sure given time though he will settle in nicely and find out the strengths of the team and how we can make it work in the league. He has notably had a few years away from the game too but I can't see that being too much of an issue with him and fingers crossed it brings him in with a clear view of what he wants to achieve. 

All that I can seem to think about though is the connections he possibly has from previous appointments and just his general time in the game to date, not only that his name should also bring the club to some great players attention and should help us build a great squad for the future. Granted there is not much he can do this season unless he brings in some free agents whilst that is still an available but I am more looking forward to the summer transfer period when fingers crossed we should be able to build up a strong squad and really look to push ourselves up the leagues in the future. Let's just hope we are right and his name does help bring in some great players as it is definitely needed in most positions on the pitch at the moment.

The announcement definitely seemed to help win back some fans and give them a little bit of a sense of hope after how the season has gone so far but I think most fans are going to have the same attitude of not getting their hopes up too high for the remainder of the season thanks to how the previous appointment turned out but I do believe the general sense is that we could actually be onto something good here and if given the support from the board I really hope this turns into a long term appointment and we could end up going back to the days of Phil Parkinson being in charge where fans really looked forward to game days and the stadium was full of fans chanting unlike it has been the past few months. 

I definitely aren't going to set my hopes too high with this appointment and I think it is going to take time to see drastic changes which we need but fingers crosses Hughes settles well at the club and gets plenty of backing from not only the board but the fans too, I know we have been having a bad season so far but miracles don't happen over night. We need to give Hughes time and a good chance to build his team, if results don't go our way straight away we don't need to be giving him abuse straight away because remember he inherited this team, he needs to have a chance to find out what works and to bring in the players he can work with the best. 

Fingers crossed we start to see the results change and start to go our way and lets hope the players start playing to the best of their ability now too and give Mark Hughes a reason to pick them week in week out. Hopefully we can start picking up points rather than dropping them. 

What do you think to Mark Hughes becoming Bradford City's new manager?