Ownership

Mark Hughes spent much of the first half of the season criticising the squad he inherited from Eriksson. Weak, unfit, unready for the Premier League etc etc etc.

While he had brought in new players (Wright-Phillips, Kompany and Zabaleta in particular) the squad was still more inherited than Hughes-created : containing Eriksson buys, Pearce buys and Academy graduates in almost equal measure.

With the addition of our four January signings, though, the 'Hughes players' are now the dominant force. Their shared character is based not just on being bought by Hughes, but in a shared set of characteristics, presumably which attracted them to Hughes in the first place. The outfield players are all aged between 22 and 29 (Given is 32), they all have at least 25 international caps (barring Zabaleta with 8), they all have Champions League experience (again barring Zabaleta, who has at least lost a UEFA Cup Final), they are all (and this is important) characterised by being quick, physically strong, athletic and competitive.

I know a lot of that sounds like meaningless platitudes - who doesn't want athletic 20-something full internationals - but I genuinely think it's not. Different managers look for differnt things in transfer targets. Eriksson looked for technically gifted foreigners playing on the continent (and Benjani...), Arsène Wenger looks for talented teenagers, mainly from the French and Spanish leagues, David Moyes looks for the best Football League talent, Kevin Keegan went for ageing millionaires, Damien Comolli for players who were good on Football Manager.

Of course I recognise that these are generalisations - but I do actually think there is an important point to be made here about different managers looking to buy different types of player.

The point here is that we now have seven such 'Hughes players': Given (slight exception), but then Kompany, Bridge, Zabaleta, Wright-Phillips, de Jong and Bellamy. Stephen Ireland could be classed an 'honourary Hughes player', given that Hughes has helped to transform his game and invested in him in the sense of not selling him to Sunderland when he had the chance in August.

The upshot of this is that Hughes now has ownership of our squad in a way that he didn't before. Yes, there are still Eriksson players making the team (but far fewer than in August), and of course Academy players (although he wants Academy players involved in the team anyway). But once SWP returns from suspension I imagine that all of those seven will start the majority of our league games. And so if we don't start winning games like West Ham away (March 1), Aston Villa home (March 4), and Fulham home (April 11) criticism of Hughes will rightfully become a bit sharper.