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ON THE ROAD: It may be brutal and haunting at times, but Mark Hughes is happy to be back in the old routine of management despite losing his first match in charge of Bradford

Blink and you’d have missed Mark Hughes, standing at the back of the press room in front of the pie ovens, quietly embarking on surely the most low-key post-match discussion of his 20-odd years in management.

Many of the new surroundings, which he has boldly taken the challenge to work within, speak to the way that Bradford City have been neglected and mismanaged in the last decade or so. The pitch surface is poor. The Kop, bouncing in the days of Premier League football 21 years back, could badly use some paint.

Yet at 3pm on Saturday, Hughes found himself in a stadium where the fans sang his name before a ball was even kicked.