Mark Hughes loses on his return to management at Bradford

There were reminders all along for Mark Hughes that his return to management would be taking him to a very different kind of place.

His email application to League Two Bradford City was initially lost in the chief executive’s spam folder and every time he leapt to his feet from the dug-out on Saturday, it was into a narrow channel of sand, not a manicured technical area.

The last players he faced as a manager, three years ago, included Manchester United’s Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford. Here, it was Nigel Clough’s Farrend Rawson and Ryan Stirk.

Hughes looks a little older. The silver hair is a little longer. The challenge facing him at a club which has sacked seven managers in the past four seasons is, at the age of 58, to pick up his career with players who are well short of elite. He’s neither managed nor played outside the top flight, bar a brief spell in the second tier for Blackburn Rovers.

And then there is the expectation he has brought to this proud but careworn club. The huge numbers who attend — 16,797 , more than some Championship games — yearn for the success that included the League Cup final at Wembley nine years ago. Before a ball was kicked, the words ‘Mark Hughes’s Barmy Army’ were ringing out across the ground.

There was the old folded arms stance on the touchline, remembered from the 466 games of top flight management. But he looked like a man simply trying to assess what he has taken on.

He was quickly into conversation with four of his players during one first-half injury break — directing, listening, encouraging with slaps on the back. The team were in the ascendency at that stage, finding a direct kind of football to locate journeyman forward Andy Cook and Alex Gilliead, who look the main assets of