Former Celtic youth team skipper can’t wait for the serious action to begin as Fleetwood Town attempt to win promotion to the Football League.
Tonight’s friendly against a Manchester United XI is likely to attract a capacity crowd to Fleetwood’s Highbury Stadium as the ambitious Conference outfit prepare for their opening league match away to Grimsby Town.
Hughes has settled in quickly at his new club after three years at Celtic and is looking forward to the twin challenge of proving himself and bringing success to Fleetwood.
“At Celtic we were expected to win every game but it’ll be a bit different with Fleetwood,” he admitted. “It’s a tough league with a lot of games to be played, I know it’ll be hard but promotion is the target.
“For me it’ll be a big learning curve but I’ll need to find my feet quickly,
I’ll be up against a lot of experienced players who’ve been around in the game.
“That will toughen me up and I’m looking forward to the season starting. Our first match is away to Grimsby and that will be a hard match. We’ve worked hard in pre-season and the week we spent at Stirling University helped me settle in.
“We’ve got over 20 in our squad and everyone is trying to impress in the friendlies to play their way into the manager’s plans.”
Hughes left Celtic in May after skippering the u-19 side to a double double winning two SFA Youth Cup medals thanks to Hampden wins over Rangers. Despite those successes Hughes and four others were released.
Neil Lennon has close to 30 players with first team experience to choose from with the prospects for breaking through remote.
The decision to scrap the reserve league in 2009 closed off a route to the first team with players like Hughes, Niall McGinn, Dominic Cervi and Latvian duo Anton Kurakins and Krisjanis Vallers unable to make the progress that they would have liked.
Hughes admitted: “With the size of the first team squad and no reserve league it’s going to be tough for anyone to break through. You’ve got to be able to jump from the 19s into the first team which is lot to ask for.
“Maybe the Reserve League would have helped a lot of the boys, you’d like to think that you could come out of the youth team and move upto the reserves and use that to get into the first team.
“People complained about the standard of the reserve league, maybe some club’s played their youth team but it was a good opportunity to get games and develop.
“It was tough leaving Celtic but I enjoyed my three seasons there and don’t have a bad word to say about it, my career is going forward now in a different path.
“Winning the cup final was great to sign off , it’s something to look back on with pride and now I’m looking forward to my future with Fleetwood.”
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