Richard Hughes has emerged as a candidate for the Celtic technical director role. The 41-year-old had a role behind the scenes with the English side, joining his former teammate in the Premier League’s recruitment department, providing the best possible players for his manager to have success on the field.
In an interview with the Bournemouth club website from 2019, Hughes outlined what his role entails as well as the relationship with Eddie Howe.
“The role is primarily heading up the recruitment department and having a structure in place which can put players in front of Eddie and his staff, allowing them to make decisions that are going to help in the recruitment of players,” said Hughes.
“Eddie has a high-pressure job that takes up so much of his time, managing a Premier League team, so you need the right people in the right places to minimise the amount of time dedicated to doing the other important parts of the job, recruitment in this case.
“I’m hopefully loading his gun to fire as many good bullets as possible, that’s what I see my main job as. Then I act as the liaison when he makes his mind up, working alongside chief executive Neill Blake in delivering that. There are other layers to it of course and it becomes all consuming and 24/7 if you allow it to.”
Howe is in advanced negotiations with Celtic as they look to sign the 43-year-old up as Neil Lennon’s replacement. Howe had eight years of success with Bournemouth whereby the club punched well above their weight, developed players and pulled off some tactical masterclasses against much bigger sides.
“I didn’t necessarily have ambitions to work in the recruitment side of things when I was a player,” he said. “I was a student of the game, loved analysing the game and loved having an opinion and sharing it with people – and I’ve found myself doing all that in recruitment.”
“Ever since then I’ve had very little chance to come up for air because it’s been one window after another and I’ve learned that it’s a job that never really sleeps, when one window shuts you’re preparing for the next one, especially when you’re working for a manager who’s as demanding for progression as Eddie is.”
“That cohesion between us all and the fact that we’ve all worked together for a period of time, know the manager as well as people in our position can, it puts us in a good position hopefully to allow Eddie to make more good decisions than bad ones.
“That’s the thing about recruitment, you’re dealing with humans and human performance so all you can do is to be as knowledgeable as possible, have as much information as possible and hope that you make more good decisions than bad.”
Hughes and Howe identified and developed talents that were then able to be sold on at a premium, providing players the platform to get progress their careers. Celtic would benefit from someone of Hughes’ experience and despite him being a name that was not initially suggested. He spoke about the process of finding players, using the information that they have amassed as well as dealing with them as people.
“Here, character and attitude is such a huge aspect of the players we have and the culture that Eddie’s instilled at the club. That means that finding information out about a player beyond what you can see in the 90 minutes is more important. That’s something which we’ve always been big on but we’ve increased our efforts in finding out as much as we can about the individuals that we’re bringing into the building.
“It’s not a science, because in very few cases can you answer exactly what a player is going to be like under a manager at a club at a given time, as well as all the circumstances that affect the happiness, mood and performances of a player.
“They’re all things that to an extent aren’t in your control but you have to have as much information as possible when you make that signing – and hopefully as we’ve gone on and got more experienced in this side of things we’ve been able to do that better than when we started.”
Hughes may be involved in a set-up under Fergal Harkin; however, it remains unclear whether it is a case of Hughes or Harkin.
